Is There A Spring Rally In Your Housing Market?
What are you seeing in your housing market? Motivated sellers in the classified section of the newspaper? Builder incentives on a billboard? Anecdotal accounts of the market slowing down? Here’s some from the topics thread. “One of my students told me just yesterday that she and her mother are having to move. They rent half a duplex from her aunt, who has four rental properties, all with ARMs.”
“They have reset, and now the aunt is having to unload all of her properties, because the payments have nearly doubled and the rents will no longer cover them. This is, I suspect, only the very beginning.”
Another from California. “Hearing lots of ads on the radio up here in the Bay area advising people to break their ARM, and then the subtlety in the ad is that they will put them into another arm (saying five year fixed, etc). They are continuing the loan churning without any regard to the customers they are supposed to be servicing.”
“Then hearing that Chris O’Donnell at the O’Donnell group cares about you and will get you a 40 yr, 5 fixed, at low rate, etc (till I get sick from all of the lying). We will have real stories all over about ARMS resetting.”
Another noted the absence of a spring rally. “Something that I find astonishing is that there was no spring sales rally in real estate this year. Usually the buyers come out in spring and the market takes off. This year was the opposite. The sellers came out and that trend doesn’t look like it is done yet.”
“The other funny thing is the CNN headline of ‘If you’re a speculator … get out now.’ So how many months ago was it that CNN was running headlines about RE being the next sure thing? Six months? The tide has really turned and quickly and we are no where near low tide yet. Where are all the economists that were saying first of all that there was no bubble and then that the landing would be soft. We haven’t hit the ground yet, but this doesn’t look like it will be soft!”
“Its funny to see bond yields rally the last week after having been stuck at 4%ish for so long. It seems the stock market is waking up to the deficit and housing bubble situation and starting to take things into account.”
There is no joy in Muddville, Arizona this spring. The April numbers stunned Phoenix.
Ben…there’s no mud in AZ, you know that! Just read that the entire state has been declared by USDA as in “extreme drought” in order for farmers to get government dough…forest closures are already here and the USFS is currently placing water containers thru out the forest because the lakes do not have enough water to fight fires.
I’ve said it before here and I’ll say it again…the main event that will finish off the AZ housing market is the drought. And fire.
And dopey developers who continue to press for building permits w/o assured water supply.
…the main event that will finish off the AZ housing market is the drought.
The main event that will finish off the AZ housing market is the flood … the flood of sellers.
It’s another week! PHX inventory up again!
5/14: 23,572
5/07: 23,058
Another 514 more Phoenicians wanted to get rid of their houses than were able to get rid of their houses, this week!
It’s another week! Tuscon inventory up again!
5/14: 8,198
5/07: 7,991
Another 207 Tusconans wanted to get rid of their houses than were able to get rid of their houses, this week!
http://www.benengebreth.org/housingtracker/
Welcome to the Arizona housing slump of 2006-2009.
Sorry, I mean …. Tucson.
Northern Virginia - April down big and May will be even worse, if the current contracts are any indication. Just talked to a home seller who gave up trying to get $200K more than he bought for two years ago and has decided to rent the home out. He said he got tired of the “lowball” offers. Should be an interesting flood of rentals on the market this summer. Either that or price reductions.
April, 2006 Market Statistics
http://www.nvar.com/market/marketstats/apr06/index.html
Alexandria City SFH
Contracts -29%
Settlements -38%
Listings +242%
Arlington County SFH
Contracts -32%
Settlements -9%
Listings +145%
Fairfax County SFH
Contracts -35%
Settlements -22%
Listings +307%
Does he know the market was already saturated with rentals as of 2 years ago ? If I could walk walk away from a house I bought 2 years ago with another $100K let alone $200K I’d be more than happy.
This particular house is renting for $1900 a month - recent PW County assessment is nearly $700K. Buying at $1900 a month gets you a $300K condo. More tempting to rent a SFH with a yard. On another note, I’m also seeing more auctions in Northern VA. Kind of weird.
Absolutely.
NoVA is tanking. The inventory situation has gotten much worse since April. As of yesterday, we’re just below 20,000 active listings, up from 4,359 a year ago. In May, the inventory has gone up eleven percent in eleven days. Unbelievably, builders are still breaking ground on new units.
i sold to rent last summer and folks snickered. nice to see that my bet is panning out. i’m looking in arlington and there are SFH’s in established neighborhoods for not much more than condos that are for sale. it’s going to be fascinating to see this thing implode because there are SO MANY investors that need out. people can blow smoke up their @$$es about how they’ll rent out homes they can’t sell for their desired price, but ARM resets are going to pummel them. one interesting phenomena i’m seeing is that there’s much more inventory in desirable areas than there was at the beginning of the year. i’ve got a screen set up on ziprealty and i’m starting to see a lot more homes falling into my screen that look decent. regardless, i’m sitting it out for 12 more months to watch prices plummet. it’s starting to happen, but i think folks are still in denial. once we start getting some sales at discounted prices on the county books, they’ll fall like dominos.
Sounds like you could soon pay for a couple of year’s worth of rent by selling at the top and buying after the inventory glut has pushed prices back down to pre-bubble levels.
No spring rally in the Boston area
Tons more ads for rentals (higher prices = flipper desperation) and for sale sections of Craigslist
I’m watching Pulte for drops in their ridiculous condo prices for this area on their web site. I know they are giving incentives now but I figure when they actually advertise lower prices it means the toast is burning.
Ads for “professional room-mates” for single-family detached and condo occupancies doubling in local paper.
Buyers are desperate to keep current on their overpriced purchase and carrying costs. Will even take in strangers!!!!!!!!
Another reason why future rents will remain stable or decline.
My wife agreed with me that there are a rising number of rental signs showing up.
Anybody out there have a National REALTORS® Database System (NRDS) ID number? I’d love for somebody to post New Hampshire inventory and sales figures from nhar.org.
N spring bounce in LA. But no price drop either. Just a standoff. More and more inventory on the market…and sometines it sells.A 3+2, 1400 sq ft house in a good area is still about 925K.
Waaayyy too much $. It’ll feel good when it starts falling
Agreed. Inventory building, sales time slowing, but price reductions are negligible.
Some anecdotal evidence, but really uneven at this point. Not enough inventory buildup in my opinion.
Are you sh&*ing me? $925k for a 1400 sf 3/2? Whoa..why would anyone pay that to live in that town?
California is beautiful, but Iowa is sounding better everyday….
If this spreads, costs might really go up for the home builders…..
“I have a friend who is president of his homeowner’s association down in Washington. They’ve been having a terrible problem with trash on the side of the road around their homes. The reason according to my friend is the construction of six new homes…..big ones!
My friend said the trash is coming from the Mexican crews working at the construction sites. (McDonald Bags, Burger King trash, etc). He has pleaded with the site supervisors and the general contractor to no avail, called the City,County, the Police and got NO HELP WHATSOEVER.
So ……………… guess what they did?
About 20 homeowners named themselves “Inner Neighborhood Services” and went out at noon to “police” the roadside. They got some navy blue baseball caps and had the initials “INS” in gold put on the caps. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what they hoped people would think.
Well the day after their first pick-up detail, with them wearing their caps and some carrying cameras; 46 out of 68 construction workers did not show up for work the next morning …………. and haven’t come back yet! It has been ten days.
Now the General Contractor, I understand is madder than hell, but can’t say anything publicly, because he would be busted for hiring “illegal aliens”.
The homeowners can’t be accused of impersonating INS, because they have it on their home owner association records the vote to form the new committee within their association, plus they informed the INS about what they were doing in advance, and the INS said basically ………….. “have at it”!
That is classic! very funny!
Now if the supervisor and contractor had just been more understanding to the reasonable request of their established neighbors instead of being so arrogant, this wouldn’t have happened. What was so hard about putting a barrel out for the workers to dump their food waste?
They’re mad? Serves them right.
Oh great. Now I’ve snorted milk on the monitor. So much for eating cereal and reading the blog at the same time.
That is funniest thing I’ve read in a while.
Nothing like home buyers having to pay an over the top price on an item that was built by people involved with criminal activity so they can cut costs (and perhaps quality).
The INS doesn’t exist anymore under this name, it is now called USCIS and other agencies, and this not since yesterday but years. I am surprised that the foreign workers panicked.
I’d imagine that “foreign workers” aren’t generally up-to-date on bureaucratic minutiae. I didn’t know the INS doesn’t go by that name anymore, either.
“Usually the buyers come out in spring and the market takes off. This year was the opposite. The sellers came out and that trend doesn’t look like it is done yet.”
That pretty much describes Marin County, CA. Spring has been a pathetic did and they cannot blame April’s lame results on the rain this time.
Marinite
Marin Real Estate Bubble
Rhode Island multi-family home sales down 27% first quarter this year compared to last year, price up 3%. And there is no press release anymore from the realtor association.
I was listening to this radio show this morning in the car on “Free Radio FM”. It was a mortage broker and a financial “Adviser” taking calls and pushing their hare-brained products. I immediately had a headache from the self serving advice and “you’d better buy now” mentality untill I started pay more attention to the callers. Total assholes. The best one was a jerk from San Diego who has had his manufactured home on the market for a year at $900K with no interest. He finally got buyer from Mexico but the deal failed after 2 months due to bad credit. So the idiot asks should I just finance the buyer and can I charge 10% interest. Well of course the mortgage guy was in heaven, he can do a no doc loan ! For a buyer in Mexico with bad credit no less who for some reason doesn’t want to fill out paperwork but has $400K to put down. The Idiot sellar went on a classic rant about buyers were crazy to wait since interest rates were going up and San Deigo is gaining 18% a year so you are LOSING by not buying and of course that was all backed up by the mortgage pusher. Another clueless caller had cashed out of her house and wanted to know where to park her money until she buys again in January, the finacial guy instead of advising her to keep it somewhere safe had a great investment in a real estate fund for her paying 12% . I wanted to vomit but the stupidity and arrogance of both the callers and hosts was hard to turn off.
I finally forced myself to turn off talk radio. There are times it makes Lingus look positively Shakespearean.
First you realize people can be that dumb.
Then you realize that the market consists of people.
Then you realize that you’re a person.
I think only then it’s possible to make decent investment choices…
In many cases the “callers” to such shows are shills reading from a script, and it is all just as real as a professional wrestling match or a George Bush town hall meeting.
Comment by jm
2006-05-13 15:03:39
In many cases the “callers” to such shows are shills reading from a script, and it is all just as real as a professional wrestling match or a George Bush town hall meeting.
______________________________________________________
Amen. It should be no mystery as to why Bush constantly stutters and appears stupified on a daily basis. He hasn’t expressed a thought of his own in years. His handlers won’t let him. Script only.
Santa Monica, CA.
No sign of many sales happening, but lots of signs out. It looks like the condo “investors” are trying to unload a bunch of units. Not nearly as many SHFs with signs out, although there are some on the south side. I have seen quite a few moving trucks lately, but mostly in the multi-family neighborhoods that are still apartments [unconverted condos]
Slightly OT, but driving to Manhattan Beach this morning, I heard an advert on the radio encouraging older folks to take out reverse mortages to “liberate their capital” for investment in the advertiser’s “structured investments” that “track the equity markets” and are “very safe investments”. Some religious-affiliated group was sponsoring. I guess they’re trying to pull in the last suckers before the game ends.
SM
Update: On Montana Avenue this afternoon (dividing line between 90402 and 90403), through street intersections have Open House signs on three of four corners. And this is only Saturday. I don’t recall ever having seen this many signs around here.
mothers day…… tomorrow should be quiet
Spring rally? In Vegas it was more like a body hitting the pavement. With inventory up and todays’ temperature hitting 100F spring is gone. Now we are in for a long hot summer. Ziprealty says inventory is 20,111 but I think they are understating.
I imagine that since Zip offer a kick back of the buying agent commission they don’t show any homes that are in the MLS offering a low buyer agent split.
I looked through my area’s “Parade of Homes” booklet. First thing I noticed was that one house had “INCOMPLETE” printed horizontally across it. I guess that means the builder just stopped mid-construction? LOL. On a home scheduled to be in the “Parade”. I suppose they’ll resume contruction if some greater fool comes along during the “parade” that wants to buy the overpriced POS.
Also, we finally got a “coastal homes sales slowing” article on a local newschannel’s webpage. But of course, they blamed it on the hurricanes instead of the gazillion condos they built in the last couple years because of all the speculators.
In my area (southwest Charlotte) which is mostly SFR’s, I would not call it a rally, but homes are selling. I am noticing that overall people are getting better prices than last year– but it’s the best condition homes that sell. Tired looking homes can take a few months of time and a price reduction, before they go pending.
Yeah does not surprise me. A quick scan of sdcia.com shows that hot money has targetted the Carolinas (and Idaho, Texas etc.) Going by their track record this year will be hot in the Carolinas because of their buying and the next year will be bust when they all hope to cash their chips.
On my TV channel Eric Estrada is selling land in Arkansas so my guess is that it will be the next destination of the hot money!
Too funny! I’ve heard there’s a development project in Arkansas called “Whitewater” that has a lot of potential. Apparently the sellers are a couple of well-known politicians.
LOL! I would make sure to mention it to my ex-congressman (Randy “Duke” Cunningham), who by the way himself is a genius whn it comes to RE investing.
Last year around September I was in Sleepy’s buying a mattress. The sales agent was reading the real estate section of the newspaper. He said to me he flips houses. I told him I rent , and he urged me to buy a house. I told him the houses are too expensive. He then said I should buy multi-family and be a landlord. Then he said :”you will move in a few years anyway , look, you probably change car every two years.” I said”no, I just drive the same car I bought 9 years ago, still in good shape.” then he lost interest in talking to me. I guess that ’s about when the market peaked!
Well, you see if you flipped houses you could afford a new car every two years.
I can’t believe I have to explain this. It’s so EASY!
Saw a house for sale at 455K, there are a total of 3 for sale within 100 meter range. Agent keeps calling me to make an offer. Today she called again. I told her I may be willing to go 400K. She said the house are not for fire sale. I told her I am not the one who is in a hurry. She said another house on the same street just sold for 500K in Feb. I said I am not going to pay that ridiculouse price for an 1600 sqt colonial.
Tell her YAHOO was pulling $350/share in 2000, but you’ll be glad to let her steal some for $200.
At only 12% off, your verbal offer was generous, IMO, in light of the current and future market. Hopefully that agent did her duty and passed on your offer to the seller. Fire sale? To me, a 30%+ discount is a fire sale. Foolish sellers who fail to keep the ball in play, regardless of the offer, will come to regret it. Their day is gone — it now belongs to the bears.
Here is what they are saying in Sonoma County:
“Having news of Petaluma’s expensive housing market broadcast to the world by the New York Times is not necessarily a bad thing, some said.”
‘”It says this place is special,” said Barry Pectol, manager of Bell Home Loans on Kentucky Street.”
(my comments) Of course it is. Sonoma County is special. We are the chosen people. It is different here. Real Estate never goes down. You can’t lose. They aren’t making anymore land. Tinkerbell nests in the trees in the plaza in Sonoma Valley and sprinkles pixie dust all about. Everyone wants to live here.
Ding Ding Ding… we have a new winner of the HUA Award.
“The average person is going to put it together that something is going on here … why would you want to pay so much unless it was worth it?” (Only if the average person has their head up their butt too.)
The cost of housing has not stopped people from buying, he said.
“Publicity about Petaluma’s high housing costs may bring in a few more visitors, said Onita Pellegrini, executive director of the Petaluma Area Chamber of Commerce.”
‘”It’s not going to make anyone go away. It’s not going to make locals stop buying homes,” she said. “Home prices are market driven and this is wonderful place to live.”‘
Ah Petaluma. Where did all the chickens go when the houses sprung up?
The chickens are now being called buyers.
Seriously… The Index Tribune’s real estate section has this column written by a local realtor every week. Today’s headlines are urging buyers to be brave and make an offer. Apparently all of us non-buyers are now chickens.
Isn’t Petaluma home of the wrist-wrestling championships?
No spring rally here in Sarasota, FL. There was a slight improvement in March so the hungry baboons…I mean Realtors….started proclaiming the worst is over and it’s upwards from here on out. Well, April numbers were miserable and a decline from March. We’re sitting with an 18-19 month supply of SFH’s and same for condos, although my own observation has been that there are tons of For Sale by Owner’s out there. Some big condo projects downtown have people (flippers) walking away form their contracts. Condo conversions have been a disaster and I see one down the road that had been advertising their new “Condos” are now advertising “Luxury Rentals”…hah!! Also, drive through any new community and you will see 30-40% of the houses have For Sale signs. This market is toast…..
Flic:
I am south of you in Naples and see roughly the same thing. Everyone down here is talking about an “affordable home crisis”, well the market will take care of that crisis. Sales are down 50% and prices are dropping.
I am here in Port Charlotte on a lake, two sfh’s with pools next to me have been on the market for a year asking in the mid $300k area. New homes going up all around displacing the older ones.
In southwest florida higher interest rates wont be the only thing to lower home prices, insurance coverage or lack of will.
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060514/NEWS01/605140439/1075
Is there a spring rally here?
Noticed on CNYhomes.com that 77 homes reduced their prices this week. After eliminating the 194 added this week, that’s over 3% of listings that reduced in 1 week.
A rash of fires in unoccupied homes has hit the news.
All reports from realtors I’ve spoken with are an admission that open houses are unvisited or visited by tire kickers….and that things are “slow”.
As reported earlier there was a rash of entry level homes flying off the sales shelf. I have seen a few move in the $500k and above price point, most still have their realtor signs. Adding to the fun: Home reassessments moving taxes up, up, up.
MHO is the slowdown has hit CNY.
I have seen multiple news stories about housefires as well. (I thought the newscasters were trying to incite panic again, as it is fire season here in Florida right now)
Strange, isn’t it?
Just got my haircut. Even the barbers know its over.
An appraiser friend said that back in September she knew it was over in Sacramento when the TacoBell guy was talking up real estate. Rockefeller used the shoeshine boy as a harbinger to get the flock out of the stock market… and the appraiser used the taco bell cashier to get out of real estate.
Zips 94501 and 94502 (Alameda, CA) have seen a significant increase in inventory over the last couple months, with only good properties at good prices selling.
I started paying close attention to the mkt in Alameda at the end of last year. At that time, inventory was right around 120, and it stayed there through about Feb of this year. Then in March properties started coming on the mkt faster, but there was also a little uptick of sales, so the inventory number held pretty steady.
Then in April sales seemed to taper off, but new properties kept coming on the market. It’s been a steady trickle of new listings, with not too many sales. The inventory number today is 175.
As I said, nice houses at good prices are still selling fairly quickly. Overpriced houses are sitting, though, and by overpriced I mean anything priced higher than what the house would have sold for last Summer. We are also starting to see some significant price reductions, as well as the usual tricks — e.g., a house will come off the mkt and then reappear a month later with a much lower price. I wouldn’t say it’s a “crash,” but the mkt is definitely in transition.
So what do people see around NYC? I’m seeing a slower market, but not to be confused with slow. And it seems the prices are still pretty stratospheric (though there are some reductions in particularly insane list prices … )
CA Central Coast: Inventories still rising. Many sellers are lowering their asking price, but as asking prices are very inflated, this is not translating into price drops (yet).
Until recently, local t.v. was full of ads from mortgage brokers and lenders. Recently, I’ve been seeing fewer of these and more from banks touting their CDs.
Moses Lake, WA and the surrounding small towns are very seasonal for selling, and spring and summer is when it happens. The housing market is roughly 4-6% over priced, and zero down mortgages are popular even out here in the Columbia Basin. New homes cost roughly $80-SqFt, which is easily doable with a college degree; lots of single wage earner families around these parts. The region’s economy is experiencing slow but steady growth as more companies relocate here for the hydro-electric energy and plentiful land. When the Portand and Seattle markets tank this area’s housing market will go flat, but we won’t see the bottom drop away. It’ll be a good vista to watch the $hit hit the fan around the country. Keep your powder dry!
It looks like things are still at a standstill around here (Orange Co. NY area about 70 miles N of NYC). This time last year houses were selling very quickly thanks to overflow from the NYC market, now houses don’t seem to be selling and prices are falling - albiet very slowly. When there is a price drop it’s generally around 5K. New 3,000 sq. ft. houses at upwards of 500G’s+ are definately sitting on the market longer this year with some builders giving incentives rather than dropping the price. It will definately be interesting to see what this fall brings as far as prices.
Things are slower than before, but still totally insane here on the San Francisco Peninsula. There was a really nice but very tiny 2br/2ba with no garage on a less favored street listed at around $750k that got so many offers it got relisted at roughly $800k. That is very close to $700/sqft for the roughly 1150 sq ft, or around $400k for each roughly 12×12 bedroom. The reason it is this cheap is the area is kind of sketchy. Life in California is a total freak out, I swear.
Saw a builder advertising on a billboard yesterday offering a new plasma TV with the purchase of a new house in the Perris, CA area.
I think somebody needs to tell the Eureka Times-Standard paper in Humboldt county that the boom is over. Ever few weeks, they run a story about real estate prices “rebounding” even though all the incorporated towns actually saw declines in prices (areas outside the towns apparently saw gains that more than made up for the losses).
It is still discouraging, though, as two 500K+ homes in the neighborhood that I’m renting in just sold this week, with new people actually moving into them. These two houses had been on the market since October without even a nibble of interest previously. Compared to other parts of CA, it seems like the housing market isn’t slowing as fast (especially compared to the cratering Central Valley).
Still, I have a little hope…inventory for the county, which had been sitting at around 500-525 from October through early April, quickly mushroomed past 600 about two weeks ago, and now sits at over 670…with over 310 homes for sale in Eureka (pop 28,600) alone.
Too many speculators from Santa Rosa here…I hope they get burned!!
I hear you. I live in Ashland, Oregon. Median home price currently pushing $500k. Inventory rising, but now major price declines yet.
Re Ashland, Oregon, I am looking to move there in 2007. I see some price declines, and a lot of inventory sitting, but nothing major. As a local Ashlander, what’s your sense of the market over the next year? Any way prices can stay where they are??
In Sonoma today we are at 346… population 9000.
for the County we are at 3187
Heard from my cousin today that folks from his local business group have been buying up buttloads of houses in Arizona! Didn’t hear anything about Humboldt, but he was naming names of soon to be FB’s that were buying multiple houses in Arizona subdivisions thinking they were going to make a killing.
Yeah,
Bay Area investors return to your lairs and leave us poor underemployed Jeffersonians in peace.
Inventory rising in the Rogue Valley, Oregon, but prices are still absurd.
Inventory growing like crazy in north San Diego county. However one house in my neighborhood that has been on the market for at least 6 months now has a “SOLD” sign on it. Good for them! That poor fat real estate hag had been doing open houses on it every weekend. Most of the time She was sitting in her Caddy with the front door of the house open talking on the phone, not a customer in sight.
12 home in my area for sale now, 2 more added this week.
Nothing but “For Sale” signs…
Southern, MD, Housing Bubble News
Nothing but For Sale signs here…
Southern Maryland Housing Bubble News
In the Woodland Hills (L.A. County) the inventory has gone from 260 houses in February to 382 as of today. Houses are sitting…. and sitting. The only ones selling are those that have been reduced or have been priced lower.
Everything is still way overpriced.
Do you think there’s any future in this nascent “prefab” (mostly modern) house market? Some of the ones I’ve seen are very cool and allow a person to live in something that would have been cost prohibitive to most (one-off design fees, etc.) in the past. Dwell Mag for instance, has been very much covering this.
interesting subject.
One of the problems of the better prefab homes is that they are still relatively expensive (although you usually get good value for money). Looking at the price structure I don’t see that changing quickly, there are still a lot of one-off labour costs involved. But if they can lower prices significantly it would be a strong selling point in a market under pressure.
The end of the current housing boom could cause a shift in favor of smaller homes instead of McMansions (prefab works far better for smaller homes) and more energy-efficient homes (there are already some clever designs, and it will probably get even better in the next years).
For really good pricing on prefab we probably need to get China involved
Sacramento, CA inventory continues to set records, but no price budge yet. I’m counting 10,577 listings in Sac County with an asking median of $385,000.
We’re seeing a lot of pricing games out here, with asking prices fluctuating on a weekly basis. You get stuff like this:
8860 Mannington
Elk Grove, CA 95758
Beds: 5 Baths: 3
Size: 2341 Square Feet
MLS# 60031517
$514,000 On 04-09
$498,000 On 04-15
$489,999 On 04-27
$499,000 On 05-12
All in all, the houses are coming onto the market priced high, and then the prices walk down in small ($10k - $20k) increments. We should start seeing some real desperation in the next couple of months if the buyers don’t show up.
The building pace has slowed markedly. The builders used to work 6AM to 8PM, seven days a week. Now they’re 8-5, Mon-Fri with holidays off. I’ve seen a few job sites that haven’t seen work in 2-3 months, but mostly the building continues at a much slower pace.
Max
nitricacid.blogspot.com
I’ll piggyback on the Sacramento report, since where we are (Reno) tends to follow trends in Northern California. My wife and I are actually willing and able to buy a house here if we get a good, fair price. We sold our house in CA 12/04 and have been renting since then.
Inventory has increased here, but there are a lot of buyers looking. I know this because our rental is on the market, and we choose to leave the house when it is being shown. There are some price reductions, nothing to get excited about.
“Official” DOM is about 90 days, and “offcial” median prices are still up 8-9% yoy.
We have literally looked at 60-80 houses in the past few months (because our rental agreement ends 6/30). Most was crap, and a lot was in subdivisions where there is no privacy and a lot of uncertainty about what kind of neighborhoods they will become. We’re not interested in a condo. HB’s are offering some incentives, but nothing drastic.
We actually found two houses we were interested in. The first was sold for full price before we had a chance to make an offer. This house was overpriced by at least 10-15% based on the comps for the past 6-12 months. The second one we put out an offer and we were actually outbid by someone who offered over the asking price (!). Very discouraging, to say the least.
The best I can figure out is that the more reasonable houses are being priced somewhere around what they would have sold for 6-12 months ago, but that’s it. No signs of a significant crash in prices.
Hi. I’m Gary Watts, from Orange County, California.
Some people may have led you to believe that employment was the key to the Real Estate market in Orange County, and America.
I’m here to tell you not that they were wrong, but maybe optimistic.
I have a home to sell you in Mission Viejo, CA.
You really need to see this home.
You can reach me on my Blackberry at Garywattsfleesca@yahoo.com.
Please ignore the sound of waves crashing in the background.
I assure you, I don’t vacation in Tahiti when trying to sell my home. Or yours.
Anyone, especially my archnemisis Auction Heaven in ‘07, that might suggest that to you is utterly satirical.
Even he would agree to that.
p.s…
David DiaLeareah has my Magic Appreciation Wand.
Can anyone get that weepy bastard to give it back?
Hi. Gary Watts again.
I need to correct a misspelling in my previous post.
David Dialeareah was misspelled.
The correct spelling is ‘David Lereah’.
If you can pronounce that correctly…
…I got a house to sell you in Tahiti, too…
just the regular update from Europe:
in the Netherlands the housing market shows extreme confidence at the surface, far better than 2-3 years ago. RE agents and the banks are predicting big gains over the next 5-10 years (despite the 600-1000% runup in the past 15 years). No mention of a bubble to be found. Still lots of refi going on (longterm rates still near 4-century lows).
Asking prices are often 20-30% higher than last year (showing high confidence from sellers), but inventory keeps increasing. Average sales prices for the whole country increased just +/- 5% last year. I’m hearing many complaints from people about homes that aren’t selling - apparently they cannot make the connection with high inventory and ridiculous asking prices. It is getting more difficult to get reliable housing statistics here, some numbers are no longer published and the numbers that are published are lagging and/or severely massaged.
On the Spanish costa’s it seems that the authorities are now getting serious with the real estate mob. Many high ranking officials are already behind bars, more and more (often illegal) developments are halted or sometimes even teared down. I guess that the good times for Spanish real estate are coming to an end, because the building boom at the costas was based on fraud, criminal money (mostly drugs trade) and black money (from wealthy individuals, mostly from northern EU countries like UK and Netherlands).
Also, there are some clouds hovering over the real estate boom in Turkey that is also driven by EU ‘investors’. Seems tourism from EU to Turkey is declining (for sure because of all the negative talk from government officials about muslims) and that would not bode well for all the ’second homes’ that are being build there. They really need to keep the pyramid scheme growing …
On the other side, when one of the highest EU officials (Ms. Neelie Smit) can remain in office despite working very closely for many years with criminal RE brokers/developers, and lying about that time and time again, there is not yet much for the RE mob in Europe to worry about.
nhz,
what do you hear about Paris? Any links? TIA!
we don’t hear much about France because of the language …
As far as I know, Paris is still digesting the record price tags of 10-15 years ago. Even small apartments can easily cost a million there. In the rest of France (outside Paris and Cote d’Azur) the housing bubble started in the late nineties and is probably still growing although slowly. Foreign speculators are mostly buying in a few specific areas (Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts); the rest of the country is left to the French themselves.
“Hearing lots of ads on the radio up here in the Bay area advising people to break their ARM, …”
My crystal ball shows lots of broken ARMs to come over the next three years.
If you’re interested in the latest Bay Area stats, click on the “View from Silicon Valley” link on Ben’s blog. The latest numbers are pretty telling, especially for San Mateo County (updated 5/13).
Eric Estrada pimping more real estate? Almost worse the DiLeah and Idiot “It’s in the bag” Watts. Guess those CHIPS rerun checks have run dry on him.
A Taco Bell worker speaking english? I haven’t heard any English in a Taco Bell for years? Though, plenty of language I don’t comprehendo senor’.
The ’spring bounce’ for Northern NJ, where many work in NY City, was a 24% drop in sales:
http://nnjbubble.blogspot.com/2006/05/northern-new-jersey-april-residential.html
New realtor lingo for 2006:
* “Months on the market”
* “Someone showed up to my open house”
* “Languishing on the market”
* “Not bad, closed for only 20% below asking price”
* “Can I make any money selling insurance?”
I keep thinking of the gameshow in The Simpsons Japan episode when the crowd chants “Plummet Plummet!”
Am starting to see properties pop up on the MLS that say “realtor owned” in the past couple weeks.
The interesting thing about them is that they are more reasonably priced than similar properties on the market.
Will realtors who need to get out be the ones who bring the comps down?!
Since Real Estate is their livelihood, and they are dealing with multiple sellers and the market every day, I’m not surprised that they would be among the first to get past the denial and attachment, and bolt as fast as they can for the exits.
I believe a realtor is obligated to mention a listing is “realtor owned” if they want to remain a realtor. (Yeah, I know, they’re concerned about ethics.)
Let’s see… in Sacramento we’ve had any number of annoying loan ads, and they’re getting increasingly desperate. Centex Homes started sponsoring the traffic report a month or two back. And that guy who thinks you should get a loan like you get a pizza is depressingly omnipresent.
On the other hand, I was listening to the real estate show this morning and they had a professional loan broker call in and explain, multiple times, that though you can make money in real estate right now, you really have to know what you’re doing. In other words, if you’re an amateur, this is a kindly warning that you’ll lose your shirt trying to flip right now. The local gurus seem to be quite sensible and wanted to have this guy back on the show, since I guess they’re followers of the school of “Only if you can AFFORD it” real estate.
According to my sister, her landlord/realitor had an open house yesterday. Exactaly zero, zip, nada people showed up.
Dead as can be in the housing market I live in .