When Are We Going To Get Back To Normal?
The Greeley Tribune reports from Colorado. “For months, Mitzi Williams has been searching for a house in Greeley. She doesn’t want anything extravagant — just a rental with two or three bedrooms and a yard for her dogs. But she and several other potential renters these days are caught in the middle of the tightest rental market the area has seen since 2002. Just Friday, hours before she had hoped to walk through a potential home, she got the call. ‘They called back and told me they rented it already,’ said Williams. ‘I’m online every day looking.’”
“Real estate officials believe it’s a product of not only the high foreclosure rate in Greeley in the past few years that has kicked former owners back into the rental market, but the lack of people qualifying for home loans, and new employees. Vacant single-family homes aren’t even included in the state surveys on vacancy rates. But the number of vacant homes on the market for sale is unheard of, said Lori Jarrett, owner of Take Me Home Real Estate, which deals in real estate throughout northern Colorado.”
“‘There’s so much property on the market for sale right now, and 32 percent of property on market is vacant,’ Jarrett said. ‘To me that’s unheard of. If there’s that many properties vacant and so many people needing housing, it would make sense for so many properties to rent until the market turns around for the sale.’”
The Salt Lake Tribune in Utah. “The high-end home market has taken a beating during the past four years, even more so than the market for more affordable properties. You either need to have a lot of cash to buy a property in this price range — about a third of such homes along the Wasatch Front are purchased with cash — or a fairly high six-figure income. And in these challenging economic times, there just aren’t enough of those types of folks around.”
“In Draper, Lisa Armstrong is trying to sell another former Parade of Homes property, this one built in 2002. She and her former husband bought it in 2003; outdoor features such as a pool were added in 2004. It has no shortage of luxury items throughout its 7,600 square feet.”
“In 2008, Armstrong had the home on the market for its appraised priced of $2.1 million, but took it off when there were no takers. ‘Now, prices are back to where they were in 2002,’ she said. Now remarried, Armstrong says she’d like to sell the home for about $1.1 million — an amount, she says, is what she has invested in the property.”
“Ginger Williams of Draper has her home, with 8,332 square feet of space, listed for $995,000. She and her husband purchased the lot with the stunning views at the height of the market in 2006, designing and building their home in 2007. Williams said they have about $1.4 million invested in the property. ‘We bought the lot at the very worst time you could have possibly bought,’ she said.”
“Although the couple want to sell and design and build another home nearby, Williams says she’s not going to give her house away to do it. ‘If it doesn’t sell for this price, we’ll just take it off the market. This is as low as we’re going to go.’”
From Vegas Inc. in Nevada. “The demand for existing homes in Las Vegas strengthened in May but that hasn’t stopped prices from falling, according to SalesTraq. The 4,942 sales in May is 17 percent higher than May 2010 and one of the strongest months since existing home sales started rebounding in 2009. The median price dipped to $106,200 in May, $700 less than April and nearly 14 percent below the $123,000 price in May 2010. At that rate, the year-end median price would be the lowest it’s been since 1990.”
“Foreclosures and investors remain a big factor in the housing market’s dynamics with 2,233 homes repossessed in May, the highest number for this year and 2010, according to SalesTraq. It was 31 percent higher than May 2010. Foreclosures amounted to 2,005 of the 4,942 existing home sales in May with their median price at $102,000.”
“Some 51 percent of homes sold in May were bought with cash and 79 percent were vacant, SalesTraq reported.”
From KTNV in Nevada. “Armed with bug spray, Benedeane Blake-White is fighting a losing battle. ‘Just recently, the last couple weeks, we’ve been inundated with mosquitoes.’ And after searching her backyard near Durango and Blue Diamond, she decided to peer over her next door neighbor’s wall. That’s when she saw it… ‘A nasty green pool and tiny baby little mosquitoes,’ says Blake-White. ‘They were just everywhere.’”
“Blake-White hasn’t seen anyone living at the home for quite some time. County records show it went into default back in 2009 and a new foreclosure notice was just posted on the front gate this week. The notice shows more than $431,951.71 owed on the home. It’s now worth half that.”
The Las Vegas Sun in Nevada. “Although burglaries happen all over — gated communities, apartments, unattended homes — police said the greatest concentration tends to be in the southern end of the Northwest Area Command, an area dubbed the ‘Rainbow Corridor’ because of Rainbow Boulevard running north-south down the middle.”
“Part of the success of the new initiative lies with residents communicating with officers and safeguarding their homes, police said. The changing nature of neighborhoods since the economy’s collapse, however, makes that more challenging because people don’t know their neighbors and, as a result, might not notice irregularities as easily, Lt. Daniel Zehnder said.”
“‘There is no such thing as a bad part of town anymore,’ he said. ‘That crime has migrated because the people have migrated because the housing has diversified.’”
Inside Tucson Business in Arizona. “Although active residential listings in the Tucson area have decreased for four consecutive months, as many as 2,100 bank-owned houses are not on the market. As of June 1, Bryan Hill, owner of Tucson Foreclosure Source, said there are 2,127 ‘pre-market REO’ units. REO is real estate owned by banks.”
“Most shadow inventory is concentrated in the central and southern parts of the city. In these areas, Hill reports there are about 1,160 pre-market REOs, or 55 percent of the total. Throughout the city of Tucson, there were about 5,800 homes listed for sale. Of that total, 1,700 units are classified as distressed. The data shows ‘most areas of the city have larger shadow inventories than active listings,’ said Hill.”
The Arizona Republic. “An apparent breakdown in the basic economic law of supply and demand has shaken Phoenix-area real-estate agents’ confidence in the local housing market, according to a report. Despite several consecutive months of increasing buyer demand for housing, the median price of homes hasn’t budged, said Bob Bemis, CEO of the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service.”
“Another reason for the drop in confidence, Bemis said, could be that agents were coming to the realization that home prices are not going to change significantly from what they are today. ‘The Number 1 question is, ‘When are we going to get back to normal?’ he said. ‘I think it’s very possible that this is it - we’re not going to have boom days returning like we did in 2005 and 2006.’”
The News Herald in Arizona. “Arizona State University’s President Michael Crow visited Lake Havasu City in May and announced that one of the nation’s largest universities would open its first campus outside of the Phoenix area in this small city by the lake. From commercial to residential — no one really seems to know exactly how the coming of ASU will affect real estate in the immediate area.”
“Bob McClory bought nine vacant lots surrounding the former Daytona Middle School in 2004. First he was going to build a strip mall, then it was announced that The Shops at Lake Havasu was being built. So he scrapped that idea, he said. Then he was going to build a gate-guarded community, but then the housing bubble burst.”
“Then he thought about an assisted living center, but then that market started degrading as well, he said. ‘Now it’s just empty land,’ he said.”
“All along Swanson Avenue, there are signs for properties for sale. Including three vacant lots that Havasu Management Services, Inc.’s owner Bob Bennett has had for sale for more than a decade.’
“‘I don’t see any way that the prices are affected by the college at this point,’ he said. ‘I don’t see sales increasing or anything because of it. I’m in favor of them having the campus. I wouldn’t mind if they came over and bought this cotton-picking property, but I don’t anticipate it ever happening.’”
