“They Didn’t Realize Buyers Weren’t Coming Back”
The Review Journal reports from Nevada. “Dennis Smith of Home Builders Research reported a slight increase in Las Vegas new home sales in November to 2,829, up from 2,606 in October. He counted 2,753 resales, the lowest monthly total since early 2004.”
“Median new home prices climbed to $335,850, an 11.3 percent increase from the same month a year ago. However, factoring out the 366 high-rise condo units that closed escrow in November, the median price of a ‘traditional’ single-family home rose 2 percent to $329,655, Smith said.”
“‘Don’t forget there are also sales incentives that could average 10 (percent) to 20 percent. That would result in a year-to-year decrease of about 17 percent. This would be closer to the real price points of new homes,’ he said.”
“SalesTraq, another Las Vegas-based housing research firm, showed similar numbers, with 2,868 new home sales, down 24.6 percent from a year ago. SalesTraq analyst Larry Murphy estimates that 300,000 homes will have been built from 2000 to 2010, compared with 180,000 homes built in the 1990s.”
In Business Las Vegas. “The tough times may not be over for the Las Vegas Valley housing market. Last week, Nevada gained the top spot in the country in the number of homes entering foreclosure. RealtyTrac reported foreclosures in Nevada rose 12 percent from October to November and are up 188 percent from November 2005.”
“And the problem is expected to worsen in 2007 because of the heavy use here of exotic mortgages that will substantially raise monthly payments beyond the ability of some to pay.”
“‘We have this high housing stock, and it’s not going to go away right away,’ said Alan Schlottmann, a UNLV economics professor. ‘It could take a whole nother year.’”
“Las Vegas real estate guru Richard Lee said he wouldn’t be surprised if the price of resale homes fell at least 15 percent during 2007. ‘Over the next 12 months, it needs some sort of an adjustment,’ Lee said. ‘In certain neighborhoods you will see as much as 15 percent and even more. It got overpriced because of investors and low interest rates. The pendulum swung too far and needs to come back a bit.’”
“Inventory jumped from a little over 13,000 in January and surpassed 20,000 for most of the year, a 10-month supply. In a vicious cycle, the inability to sell existing homes prevented many buyers from purchasing a new home.”
“‘It was a surprisingly quick downturn,’ said John Ritter, CEO of developer Focus Property Group. ‘The cancellation rate started to increase in the third quarter of 2005 and when it was slow during the holiday, people thought that was a seasonal slowdown, but that masked what was happening. They didn’t realize until the middle of the first quarter that buyers weren’t coming back. The cancellations continue to rise and the resales started to climb.’”
“The downturn, Ritter said, was prompted by an excess supply prompted by the irrational exuberance of investors and the public. That spurred massive amounts of national television coverage that exacerbated the problem because consumers were worried about buying a home, fearing its price would decline.”
“‘In the last big downturn 15 years ago, we weren’t in a world of 500 cable channels and 20 news outlets all trying to scream for attention,’ Ritter said. ‘The media latched onto this and when it slowed down, it fed the frenzy. People who were looking to buy a home just froze. They were worried about the bubble bursting.’”
The Las Vegas Business Press. “With plans still up in the air about the future of its large land holdings on Harmon Avenue, Edge Resorts has hired a financial consulting firm to help work through different offers and options. The Harbor Island land was formerly designated for the abortive ‘Las Ramblas’ project, abandoned by The Related Co. earlier this year.”
“Edge Director of Public Relations Maggie Feldman added that Edge has no intention of building the Las Ramblas plans. ‘A high percentage of our buyers who had reserved at W have pulled out and reserved at CityCenter or bought a resale at Signature at MGM Grand,’ (broker) Bruce Hiatt said. ‘The question is one of timing and what’s happening in a softening market. Right now we’re not getting any calls for W.’”
The Gazette Journal from Nevada. “Big incentives offered by home builders appear to be helping to keep the new single-family home market afloat in the Reno-Sparks metro area, according to a newly offered report.”
“Incentives offered to buyers, such as $60,000 in free upgrades, a relatively common offering, does not count against the sales price of the home and could account for at least part of the pricing strength shown in the report, said analyst Brian Kaiser.”
“‘It’s not like (builders) are giving away the house and you are seeing a dip in pricing. They are keeping them at $400,000 and piling on some more incentives on top of that so it is not reflected in these numbers,’ Kaiser said.”
“The new home market appears to be in contrast with Northern Nevada’s resale market. The median price for an existing single-family home in the Reno-Sparks metro area has fallen from the previous month in every month this year since May, landing at $312,400 in October.”
“At least part of the slump of the existing homes market could be because sellers are forced to compete with new home builders’ incentives, said Rebecca Dickson, vice president of Dickson Realty’s luxury home division.”
The East Valley Tribune from Arizona. “Over the past couple of years, a mass of Valley and outside developers attempted to capitalize on the housing boom by converting thousands of apartments into condominiums. Now, a consequent glut of properties on the market has some investors ditching the condo idea and switching their projects back to rentals.”
“Conversions in all price ranges are switching back to rentals, local housing analyst RL Brown said. ‘(Investors) found out the buyer pool wasn’t as deep as they thought it was,’ said Marc Huisken, at brokerage Grubb & Ellis in Phoenix.”
“Meanwhile, more condo conversion projects will likely revert back to apartments in 2007, said Tyler Anderson,at commercial real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis in Phoenix. CG Development recently made the decision to go back to apartments for its Haven project and has plans to begin leasing units in February.”
“Rents could range from $850 for a studio to about $1,400 for a two-bedroom, two-bath with a pool view, CG’s Jon Goldman said. The company is renovating the apartments, putting in granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances and new lighting fixtures.
Some of these guys can say the bottom is just around the corner, but cancelling/changing these big projects is proof they don’t expect a turnaround for years, IMO, if ever. It would take that long to finish these Vegas condo towers.
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i have a friend who owns 3 preconstruction condos in miami. he thinks he can sell them at 330k+. he says the man above him is desperate and wants to sell at 280k but has not takers. he says he will lowball him at 230k and pick up this 4th one if the guy is desperate enough. he says he’ll just hold onto them for a year until the market turns around and rent them if he has to.
i then asked him this:
1. if the guy above you can’t sell at 280k, what makes you think you’ll get 330k+?
2. if the guy does sell at 280k, what do you think will happen to your comps?
3. if the guy gets desperate and does sell to you at 230k, what do you think will happen to your comps????
4. Do you really want to feed these alligators with cash flows and also possibly hold 3-4 depreciating assets right into the shiiiter?
i like him but he didn’t have any answers for these questions.
1) Because his are different
2)The new comp calculation will be the three HIGHEST sales +/- the past five years
3) See number 2
4) Negative cash flows will be made up with +20% appreciation
Gekko, get with the new ‘07 RE economics! :o)
One day this “investor” will figure things out and realize he has made some very bad decisions. It is people like him who are currently propping up the market. When these people figure it out we will then see the market really crash and prices will plummet. I give it another year.
imagine the money lost in progress- just zoning cost zillions
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imagine buying a very expensive house in 2005 (or more than one) as a first-time buyer (with no benefit of bubble-gain) or as a speculator and now suddenly finding this blog and seeing all of these news stories - and the stories are accelerating in quantity and intensity daily. nasty.
Yep. I frequently think about the first-timers who bought our California POS tract house for over a half-million, especially since the prices have dropped about $30k since we sold. Ouch! And, no, I’m not gloating. I worried about them when they bought it, too, but they wanted it and bid it up, accordingly. They are a nice family, and I hope they can hang on.
“Rents could range from $850 for a studio to about $1,400 for a two-bedroom, two-bath with a pool view, CG’s Jon Goldman said. The company is renovating the apartments, putting in granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances and new lighting fixtures.
It’s nice if you want to put in Granite and stainless steel for a rental but don’t expect me to pay $850 for a damn studio to get it. And speaking from experience, unless you want to be innudated with noise NEVER get a place near the pool.
Agreed. And if you don’t like noise, avoid apartments near a college. College students don’t have the 8 to 5 habits that us mortals have. I lived 5 miles from ASU for a couple of years. I could always tell when the Scottsdale bars closed. Sometime around 1 a.m. a bunch of ghetto blasting noise by white boys in cars in the parking lot, occasional episodes of DUI testing by cops of drunk college-age people, and so forth. I tend to go to the apartment ratings web sites. I study the ratings and read between the lines. If the apartment was rated low only because it’s too expensive, but high in the other categories (good management, responsive maintenance, safety and peaceful), I go for that complex. It works for me. Usually the riff raff go for the cheapo rents.
Bingo… this is exactly why a landlord might prefer vacancies to just lowering the rent.
Additionally, we renters can live like kings. I just did a search on forrent.com for any apartment in Phoenix starting at $1250 per month for 2 bedroom 2 bath and it produced only 6 complexes. I can easily afford $1600 per month rent. I prefer large complexes to single family homes because although I like it very quiet, I also like a sense of community among professionals. Responsive maintenance is almost a sure thing, certainly better than a real estate management maintenance response on a SFH. Plus large complexes have the swimming pools, jacuzzis, occasionally tennis courts, and those are the winners over renting a SFH. I expect to live like a king (renting) for the next 5 or 6 years. Maybe more.
I have a friend in Tucson who has been renting a 3 bedroom luxury apartment at a complex for ten years. He’s happy with that. He figured his stock investing was a better place to put his money than RE.
Agreed, apartments near a university are almost always a bad idea. However, SFHs are much more of a crapshoot. A couple of group houses can really harm a block, but in their absence, life can be nice. At least in a place like College Park, Maryland with truely draconian rental laws.
That is going rate for a good appartment in inner loop Houston. You could pay less but they would not so good places
Alan Schlottmann, a UNLV economics professor. ‘It could take a whole nother year.’”
Wow, this guy went to College, and became a professor to learn how to form a sentence. I am amazed at the depth! By golly it could take a whole nother year.
is “nother” even a word ?
Huh. I didn’t think it was, either. But — it is.
Shore is, here in the South! Ya just got to put an apostrophe at the beginning, if you want to be correct with your punctuation. (’nother)
Alternative spelling, but low-rent: ‘nuther.
Maybe he’s dyslexic?
“It could take whole another year”?
Well, it is unlv — loosely defined as a college, but more often defined as a basketball team with a campus.
Good economics professors figure out that there is more money to be made in other fields and change majors. I’m a computer science professor and I say that price depreciation is going to last five years. You can trust my advice.
Also, “nother” is a word and so is “other” which is really just a shorter way of saying “another.” In English you are allowed to use any word that makes sense. Just ask Shakespeare.
So the truth is now the benchmark for this month will be sales of last month and if you go from, say, 2300 to 2400, it will be qualified as an increase!
Lies damn lies and statistics…
We can take comfort in the fact most people are uneducated and can’t understand statistics besides slogans, and given the funny money has dried up now there is nothing an upbeat greater fool can do to get that house even if he drank all the Kool Aid the CAR or Lereah force fed him through his throat…
Bill Russell, former Boston Celtic great, once had this to say about statistics:
All I know about statistics is what my father taught me: “He knew of a 6′ 6″ man who drowned in 4″ of water.”
ot-but i have to tell you guys about this little nugget today
my wife was out getting her nails done today in garden city ny
a pretty tony area, well anyway she was waiting and a conversation between two women is going on
oh boy the market is terrible and i think it is going to go down more, and it turns out she was a realtor, then the best part happens
she has left the real estate business to go back to work as a social worker due to no sales and no income
i wonder if she used her social worker skills to soothe the fb’s as she sold them some overpriced albatross
it is getting good and heck it is like 40 days or so until the superbowl
“it is getting good and heck it is like 40 days or so until the superbowl”
I know and I keep remembering back to last year this time. What a difference!
Go Chargers
Seattle will kick their butts and Alexander will run for 300 yds. We are at the bottom of the bubble. Bernanke will lower (raise) interest rates. Pick the true statement. Bingo hehehehehehehehe
“Bernanke will lower (raise) interest rates.”
This statement is true without a doubt.
You must be a renter or have bought a long time ago if you are actually able to focus on the game.
There have got to be a lot of people faking it this Christmas.
Neil
Hey, they’ve been faking it for years. The difference is now they won’t be able to use next summer’s ReFi to pay for this Christmas’ bills. And when the reset comes…
GO Broncos - and yes I know ypu beat us twice, but that was with that Bummer, oh sorry I meant Plummer!
Finally someone is admitting that the real decrease is 17 % because of incentives/kickbacks . I really doubt that the sub-prime “special lenders” of the builders are requiring a greater down payment because of the incentives . Can anybody see how these incentives are also screwing up the comps in areas ? It will mess up refinance comps also . I don’t know about the rest of you , but I don’t like what is going on and the data is incorrect because of it . The taxes will be incorrect because of it . Wait until this all comes out in the wash .
Hmmm. So we’re already at almost 20% off. And the pain has barely started. Anyone out there still want to argue that we can’t get to 50% off? The builders are still playing games with the official price. Wait until their backlog runs dry and they really start the price discounting.
13 million vacant houses and condos…..
12% vacancy…..
A year from now 14 to 15 million vacant houses and condos.
Higher interest rates, higher taxes, higher operating costs.
Who the hell bought all of this bull sh-t ?
Wow now that’s a great investment climate ! Real hot hot hot!
The lenders are paying for the incentives by giving a loan above 100% . In other words the buyers are getting a loan in excess of 100% because the incentives are not figured in to adjust the appraisal .
It really doesn’t matter what the purchase price is ,what matters is that the appraisal is adjusted to reflect the real market price comp because of the incentives/kickbacks .It’s a bunch of game playing and its a distortion to the real drop in prices .
So we have another year of the true picture in real estate being distorted and we all have to pay down the road with the bailouts .
If the incentives are part of the house, does that really affect the appraisal? Granite counter tops, extra rooms, etc. actually make the house work more. The lender really isn’t taking any more risk, because the house is worth something.
If the builder is paying cash back, or throwing in cars that of course is a different story.
Incentives have a cash value verses the houses that didn’t have the incentives .. In other words , the house would not of sold at that price without lets say 50K in incentives thrown in .Therefore the house is worth less than the purchase price .
The appraiser has to figure the market value of the incentives for it to be on the up and up to get the correct adjusted appraisal .
Although traditionally, most improvements are worth less when the house is sold than they cost.
To clarify, I believe the incentives Housing Wizard refers to are the type which are not attached to the house, including cash, cars or fancy vacations.
city peak price peak date current price % drop
boston 449,000 9/28/05 419,000 -6.7
chicago 299,000 8/07/06 289,000 -3.3
dallas 150,000 6/28/06 149,000 -0.7
las vegas 350,000 11/07/05 329,000 -6.0
los angeles 650,000 8/21/05 585,000 -10.0
miami 425,000 8/14/05 374,000 -12.0
phoenix 380,000 9/07/05 330,000 -13.2
san diego 548,000 9/21/05 499,000 -8.9
san fran 749,000 10/14/06 729,000 -2.6
seattle 440,000 9/7/06 435,000 -1.1
wash. dc 500,000 9/28/05 440,000 -12.0
(data from housingtracker - 50% median)
I never could understand why there was so much development in Vegas. I was there for the first time in late August 2005 and it was insanely hot. You couldn’t even touch the outdoor handrails during the day and the cement was still hot at midnight. It’s just a desert, with an adult Disneyland. Why would anyone want to live there??
There is a lot of work here–especially for construction workers. And not that long ago it was affordable to live here. I’m not sure why people are still moving here. But I think there is a larger number than ever leaving. I know that the middle school my kids go to was so short of students this year that they had to lay off three teachers (the principal told me they were down about 300 students–that’s like 1/4 of their population.) This is jawdropping news when you consider that just last year the school was overcrowded. A couple of years ago the overcrowding here was so bad they were having to shuffle kids around to other schools and come up with other ways to handle it. I haven’t heard any of that in the news this year. I think families are moving out. And I often wonder how many of the 5000 to 7000 people who are supposed to be moving here every month are investors who lied on their mortgage applications about whether or not they will live in their house.
Wasn’t Las Vegas importing Philippino school teachers just recently?
““Rents could range from $850 for a studio to about $1,400 for a two-bedroom, two-bath with a pool view, CG’s Jon Goldman said. The company is renovating the apartments, putting in granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances and new lighting fixtures. ”
Nice going, you brilliant converters. I wonder how many months, or years, it will take to recoup these blown conversion costs, in what ultimately may be a soft rental market, or how expensive it will be for them to restructure the loans they took to finance this mistake?
The pendulum swung too far and needs to come back a bit.
I love this misapplied metaphor. The pendulum will come back a bit, right before it swings back the other direction, just as far toward bust as it did toward boom. Thus is the nature of pendulums (pendula?).
“‘Don’t forget there are also sales incentives that could average 10 (percent) to 20 percent. That would result in a year-to-year decrease of about 17 percent. This would be closer to the real price points of new homes,’ he said.”
How is this possible without rampant appraisal fraud?
“The downturn, Ritter said, was prompted by an excess supply prompted by the irrational exuberance of investors and the public. That spurred massive amounts of national television coverage that exacerbated the problem because consumers were worried about buying a home, fearing its price would decline.
‘In the last big downturn 15 years ago, we weren’t in a world of 500 cable channels and 20 news outlets all trying to scream for attention,’ Ritter said. ‘The media latched onto this and when it slowed down, it fed the frenzy. People who were looking to buy a home just froze. They were worried about the bubble bursting.’”
Ritter ought to read Shiller’s book before attempting to explain irrational exuberance. I especially recommend Ch 5, The News Media, which describes the role of the media in bubbles dating back to the Dutch tulip mania of the 1630s. Of particular note is the media’s role in precipitating and propogating attention cascades. Althought Shiller does discuss the recent advent of CNN and a global news culture, he does not suggest this has resulted in a major shift in the media’s role since the advent of newspapers.
bold tag off?
“‘We have this high housing stock, and it’s not going to go away right away,’ said Alan Schlottmann, a UNLV economics professor. ‘It could take a whole nother year.’”
Ziprealty says that there are 22,396 homes for sale in the LV area (not counting FSBO’s).
Gee professor, am I ever glad that these will all be sold next year so our home values can start skyrocketing again!