People Buying To Actually Live In It Have A Chance
The Denver Post reports on Colorado. “Single-family home sales in metro Denver last year beat a record set during the housing boom, according to Metrolist, the area’s multiple-listing service. There were 42,762 single-family detached homes sold last year, which surpassed the previous record of 41,682, set in 2004. Those homes sold for an average price of $336,831, which also was an annual high. Some homes last spring were selling within hours of listing after receiving multiple bids. Later in the year, concerns that the Federal Reserve would end its bond purchases sent mortgage rates higher and restrained the overheated market.”
“‘Our brokers and agents have seen a very busy year with a record-setting selling season,’ Metrolist CEO Kirby Slunaker said in a statement. ‘While the market has cooled slightly at year-end, as one would expect, the numbers year over year are incredible.’”
The Gazette in Colorado. “Positive Electric, a decade-old Colorado Springs company that wires homes for about 10 local homebuilders, saw its business start to ramp up about a year ago, said owner John Mays. By midyear, his company was so busy that Mays and his employees were having a tough time keeping up with the workload. ‘In the early summer to the end of the summer, we were working overtime on a consistent basis, asking the guys to put in extra hours because we couldn’t hire anyone fast enough to keep up with the increase,’ Mays said.”
“Economist Fred Crowley of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs said local housing is poised to take off again. In his latest quarterly report on local economic conditions, Crowley said he expects another round of pent-up demand from buyers to propel homebuilding. Also, he said, people will have gotten used to the idea of long-term mortgage rates in the neighborhood of 4.5 percent and will move ahead with plans to buy homes. ‘I see no reason why it’s not going to continue,” Crowley said about housing construction. ‘People are going to have to realize you’ve missed the boat at 3.5 percent. It’s not coming back.’”
The Telluride Daily Planet in Colorado. “2013 has been a good year for luxury condominiums in Telluride and especially Mountain Village as sales have been brisk and new units have come online. Brian O’Neill of Telluride Properties said he thinks the lack of available homes in Telluride has led buyers to condos, which have started to see higher selling prices as a result. ‘This is a good indicator that people are starting to and are willing to pay ahead of the market, which hasn’t happened since 2006-07,’ O’Neill said.”
The Aspen Times in Colorado. “Last year the dollar volume of all real estate sales in Pitkin County totaled $1.49 billion. This year’s sales volume is down about $181 million, or 12 percent, from last year’s mark. Tim Estin, a broker associate with Aspen Snowmass Sotheby’s International Realty, said many sellers are convinced that the market has turned and that prices ’should be rising.’ But buyers in every price category are still seeking bargains, according to Craig Morris, a partner in Aspen Snowmass Sotheby’s International Realty. The difference between the listing prices and the selling prices is at least 20 percent, on average, he said.”
“In other words, buyers aren’t just looking for deals — they are demanding them.”
From Fox 5 Vegas in Nevada. “Southern Nevada home prices ended the year on a positive note, landing 24 percent higher than they were 12 months earlier. The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported that December’s median home price was $185,000, up 1.1 percent from the month earlier. Association chief Heidi Kasama says prices have been rising since they bottomed out at $118,000 in January 2012, but notes the jumps have stabilized in recent months and are expected to remain steady in 2014.”
“‘People have to remember we were greatly undervalued. So we’re coming back up to the reasonable prices,’ Kasama said.”
“‘We don’t have the cash investor volume we had over the summer, trying to compete with them. It makes it easier for buyers to actually stand a chance of getting a home,’ said Las Vegas realtor Cynthia Silver. She said having more houses on the market doesn’t hurt either. ‘This summer I wouldn’t have had anything to show in their price range that was a single family home,’ Silver said, after helping a local family put in a bid for a 1400-square-foot home.”
8 News Now in Nevada. “The real estate market in southern Nevada is expected to have a brighter future in 2014. In the resale market, Omar Lopez with Cosmopolitan Real estate says you can find deals in the market right now. He says some listing prices have gone down, and more cash-paying investors are leaving the market, meaning people buying a home to actually live in it have a chance. ‘Perfect opportunity for buyers to take advantage of the increasing inventory.’ Lopez said.”
The Arizona Republic. “Home sales across metro Phoenix slowed to their slowest pace in several years during November. Home sales were down 27 percent in November compared to November 2012. ‘Demand (from home buyers) is drastically lower in a slide that started in July,’ said Mike Orr, director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at W. P. Carey.”
The Phoenix Business Journal in Arizona. “There were 5,846 single-family home sales in November in the Phoenix area — a 27 percent plunge from a year ago, according to the latest Arizona State University housing report. ‘By the beginning of January, demand had weakened enough to drop even below the limited supply here, despite the fact that we have 15 to 20 percent fewer active listings than normal,’ said Michael Orr, the report’s author.”
“As demand wanes, the dramatic price increases the Valley was seeing in the first half of 2013 have slowed substantially. The Valley’s median price reached the $200,000 mark in October, but didn’t budge at all in November. It was still, however, up 23 percent from a year ago. Orr said home builders were also pretty disappointed with the end of 2013, noting that new-home permits in the Valley, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, took a sharp 35 percent drop from October to 667 in November.”
“‘Despite all of this, time has shown us the Greater Phoenix housing market is very volatile,’ Orr said. ‘Conditions could quickly change during the first quarter of 2014, and we could see some surprises.’”
How much equity did Peyton throw to the Squad yesterday?
It was incalculable. And as Goonie said, you don’t even have to own a house to get some free equity! Peyton’s arm can do anything! (Except win convincingly)
Isn’t magic wonderful?
“Road trip!”
‘How much equity did Peyton throw to the Squad yesterday’
If you don’t have a TV this doesn’t make much sense. From this sentence, it doesn’t sound like I missed much.
Yah, I don’t do cable in California. I am more worried about government abuses and usurpations than to numb my brain on spectator sports. Rome is burning.
I am more worried about government abuses and usurpations
If you worry about that 24/7, you’ll lose your mind.
But yeah, hitching your happiness to how well a football team owned by a billionaire, who will move the team to another city unless his economic demands (free brand new stadium) are met by local taxpayers, is pretty dumb.
Watching a football game, commercials included, has turned into an intensive exercise in propaganda. I still watch one game per week, because I’m a fan, but that’s all I can tolerate. And if any of our sports teams threaten to leave unless they get taxpayer-funded facilities, they can go. I voted for the “community investment tax” in 1996 to keep the Buccaneers, and I regret it.
Rome is burning DOWN. All the firehoses in the world won’t stop it, nor will pointing fingers at who started the fire.
It’s time to roast marshmallows, wait for the ashes to cool, and rebuild.
form a local
here’s mine http://www.fcta.org
If you don’t have a TV this doesn’t make much sense.
The cult of Peyton borders on the absurd. At the gym at the office I often park myself on an exercise bike. There are several TVs hanging from the ceiling at the gym, all tuned into ESPN. They’re going to talk about him even more now
I never cared about football until I moved here. If you do a bong hit every time Peyton throws a TD it makes the game much more interesting. And you’ll be doing alot of bong hits, because Peyton throws alot of TDs.
“If you don’t have a TV this doesn’t make much sense.”
I think equity went up for both of us by not watching TV.
Wait, after years of fake moon landings, the “progressive-neocon” party, $40K boat slips, sun spots, beanie babies, and gay Sharia marriages, you pick NOW to point out an HBB post which doesn’t make much sense?
respect the equity.
too bad the washington and baltimore (recycled cleveland browns) teams suck, you’ve got nothing to cheer for and no equity.
“Single-family home sales in metro Denver last year beat a record set during the housing boom, according to Metrolist, the area’s multiple-listing service. There were 42,762 single-family detached homes sold last year, which surpassed the previous record of 41,682, set in 2004. Those homes sold for an average price of $336,831, which also was an annual high. Some homes last spring were selling within hours of listing after receiving multiple bids. Later in the year, concerns that the Federal Reserve would end its bond purchases sent mortgage rates higher and restrained the overheated market.”
We know where the epicenter of the next cascade of defaults will be.
Fort Apache: Denver.
‘Some homes last spring were selling within hours of listing after receiving multiple bids’
Interesting how this is playing out. No mention of “insane, artificial” prices. No one wonders aloud how what was unsustainable then is now somehow sustainable. It’s Denver! The hot-bed of, well, nothing really.
Long time readers might remember that Denver gave this blog it’s first real world lesson in the median price statistic back in 2005. It was all falling apart, and the median was still going up in Denver. UHS were telling everyone who would listen that prices were actually going down.
we’ve got peyton and we’ve got legal weed.
it’s different here.
…to say nothing of HUUUUUUGE tracts of land!
and mountains pointy enough for a Madonna video…
The Grand Tetons are in Wyoming, not here.
Yet The Craters are in every town, city and state in the US.
“There were 5,846 single-family home sales in November in the Phoenix area — a 27 percent plunge from a year ago, according to the latest Arizona State University housing report.
The collapse always starts out West.
“‘People have to remember we were greatly undervalued. So we’re coming back up to the reasonable prices,’ Kasama said.”
Realtors are so cluelessly stupid.
they are salesmen. no need to look any further beyond that. they need to eat too.
‘we were greatly undervalued’
It’s not their job to set values, any more than a use car salesman can tell me what I should pay for a used car.
Oh boy, you want to know the latest little thing these people are trying to sneak in? Experts. I read lots of articles and I now see these UHS referring to themselves as “experts”!
This has to be something they cooked up at NAR HQ.
An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until finally he knows absolutely everything about nothing.
The word expert is from the Latin for try. I’d say they are trying.
The imbeciles will try anything.
Realtors are my minions. Their ranks should be expanded and they should be cultivated so as better to serve me and my interests.
The way we’re going, we’re going to become an economy of realtors, public relations people, help desk drones, and informants.
There’s a way to get rid of the middle men - send them off on the B ark.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
16,00 bedside irs agents coming soon
“Also, he said, people will have gotten used to the idea of long-term mortgage rates in the neighborhood of 4.5 percent and will move ahead with plans to buy homes. ‘I see no reason why it’s not going to continue,” Crowley said about housing construction. ‘People are going to have to realize you’ve missed the boat at 3.5 percent. It’s not coming back.’”
I find the number of economists who fail to understand the connection between interest rates and household-level housing purchase budget constraints quite appalling.
Realtors think if the interest rates go up, people will “have to” pay higher prices for the mortgages. It never ceases to amaze me how clueless they are. Or they are just plain stupid or they are just lairs. They cannot comprehend that increased “value” of housing means less demand for housing. It also usually means higher rents which also means people have less money to save for a down payment which means even lower demand and so on.
As we continue to read news reports about how much slower the market is now versus last spring, I keep wondering about the point when last year’s red hot, bid-war driven investor demand will morph into a race for the exits. Will this happen at the point when the next leg down in prices is obvious, or will investors hang on to their falling knife losses for some time thereafter?
I am watching a certain area in PHX. Every house sold in the last couple of months was reduced in price. And it is slower now than it was then.
Some people have to sell for personal reasons. Home builders have to sell. Some may see a chance to get out without a loss or with a small gain if they get out now.
The real estate market is like a human body. Homeostasis of a variety of loops and processes. Stability is just a surface impression of some things pulling one way and others pushing opposite.
And when you see 2 months in a row where the median comes out as the exact same, not 1000 more or 1000 less, it’s usually a red flag that things are going down and stats are being manipulated to cover it.
‘things are going down’
If you read the report, they spell it out, as much as a cheerleader can. “Price is a lagging indicator”, etc.
Warning, it’s a large PDF file:
http://wpcarey.asu.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/center-real-estate-research-and-practice/full-report-201312.pdf
How surprised they are at ASU! Not only are the big investors leaving (they aren’t going to cover that in future reports, BTW, unless they start selling!) but the retail buyers have disappeared to an even greater extent. Oh dear, who’s going to buy all these old Phoenix shacks?
What did Orr think was going to happen? Sure, let’s go on a crazy investor binge for 3 years. Then mom and pop will be happy to step and pay what these stupid Canadians and wall street people out-bid each other for since 2010. Naturally!
Mom and pop are probably champing at the bit to do just that, but there’s that recurring problem with them being completely unable to afford to do so.
Thanks for the link to the report.
The prices are higher and the inventory is much lower. Here, in King County, WA you can barely buy a shed in 350-400K range. If you look at something more decent (less than 30 years old, 2000+ sq. ft., etc) you usually pay above $400K. And I don’t see this changing with inventory flooding the market. All new constructions are above $500K in our area…
‘Since March’s record low, the supply of homes for sale in the Seattle metro area has steadily climbed. Not coincidentally, the rate of bidding wars has plunged, according to data from Seattle-based Redfin, an online real-estate brokerage.’
‘In November, about 43 percent of offers submitted by Redfin agents for home shoppers faced competition, down from 75 percent in April.’
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2022564171_housinginventoryxml.html
Here’s another one of those articles that wonders, “golly, if land wasn’t so expensive, we could do something about this”:
‘Banks, largely because of failed real estate deals, aren’t eager to hand out construction loans. That’s especially true in Las Vegas, which became bloated during the boom years with office parks, industrial buildings and strip malls, many of which went bankrupt and now are desperate for tenants.’
‘Last year, land prices in prime areas of the valley sold for about $400,000 an acre, according to Home Builders Research. Downtown, real estate regularly sells for at least $1 million an acre.’
‘The area has been highly priced for several years now as landowners, emboldened by redevelopment efforts that promise to make downtown thrive, put big values on their holdings, Focus Commercial Group broker Brandon Wiegand said.’
‘Meanwhile, assembling enough land for a large project downtown can prove difficult. Many of the area’s vacant parcels are chopped up among several owners, so buyers might have to negotiate with five or six parties to get a chunk of property.’
‘One potentially lucrative development option is housing, which brokers say is sorely needed to lure more workers and residents downtown. But home sales and rental prices aren’t high enough in the neighborhood to make a condo or apartment tower profitable.’
“You can’t find enough land at the right number to make it (work),” Wiegand said.’
“lucrative”
We need more houses for people who don’t yet want to live here.
The entire bubble is in land prices. Materials, while a bit higher in recent years, are somewhat stable .
Materials are not somewhat stable when they double and triple in a few years. The biggest expansion of housing, government building, road construction, production facilities and pet grooming parlors the world has ever seen could have something to do with a “materials” bubble. It is collapsing now along with the credit bubble.
Someone, I think bubbabear, posted a link yesterday showing L.A. RE inventory up 24% and Phoenix inventory up 34%. So it does not surprise me. Even Mike Orr is admitting Phienix sales are down.
Indeed they are. Bubba merely posted confirmation of what we already know through statistics provide by Movoto and Zillow.
A painful reality for millions of suckers.
Vegas is really screwed up. I know the trend is changing but I’m still feeling ill watching the web estimates of my rental rise every few days; it was flat but now it’s up 3% in the last two months. My accidental LL is very close to being out from underwater.
If he decides to sell, we’re on the move again. This would be the fifth time in almost eight years. It gets old. I doubt he would price it cheaply, once a realtor gets hold of him. His better half has informed me “they never lose money on real estate”. I chuckled at that one, since they couldn’t sell this house without losing money (until recently) and the one they’re in now is still worth a good chunk less than what they paid. They’re in their early to mid-thirties.
probably has a long way to go- has to cover sales commission etc
no worries
Remember… Demand is collapsing in Vegas.
“Never” is a pretty magical word when you are in your early thirties! They might yet learn a thing or two.
How much do you learn when nobody could have seen it coming?
I see some houses around here sitting for months without price reductions. But since the inventory is so low, those still gradually being purchased…