How many Sold signs?

[Jim Brubaker]

NotARocketScientist gets a B plus, I had a good laugh.

I’ve read a lot of his posts and this one seemed so different.

“Secret location,” should have been a givaway.

At the same time I wouldn’t be surprised to see your blurb quoted in the North County Times–Just Kidding!!

[powayseller]

Sold signs are picking up. My daily-drive count is up from 2 in Jan-March, to 6.

[nin_sis]

I’m in the Mira Mesa area where prices are a bit lower than the rest of SD county (older homes). I’ve seen several signs go up in the past 3 months, but only 2 sold signs and one sale pending (has been up for 1.5 months though). One of the “sold” signs was on a house that was 30+ yrs old, needed major work and had been for sale for about 45 days at a mid $400 price range. The other was on a busy street, mid-$500k and was for sale about 3 months. I see these homes daily as they are part of my daily commute to work. As of now, there are about 150 SF homes and 150 condos for sale in Mira Mesa alone. About 100 of these have gone on the market since Jan. Price reductions are few as time on market has been increasing steadily.

[lostkitty]

The SOLD signs are all over the place here in upstate NY in my town. (Guess all those ARM & foreclosure people need to move somewhere affordable). Homes are selling briskly. Inventory hasnt budged a bit either. Consistently between 37 and 39 since early January. Hopefully it will stay that way, but hard to say. Lots of homes come on the market and are snapped up before even hitting the realtor websites. Friends still call each other to say, “Weren’t you looking for a place? … because i heard so and so is moving?!” And the other person says… “NO WAY! Where is their house? How much are they asking?” The word spreads quickly to everyone that has been waiting to upgrade or move to our school district. I remember when Solana Beach and Coronado were like that…. CRAZY.

[sdrealtor]

The number of sold signs are meaningless as most agents never put them up….I don’t. The only agents that ever put them up are the one’s that specialize in a particular neighborhood and want the neighbors to see that they sold the house. If you have a listing in a random neighborhood (which is probably about 60 to 80% of the listings in most areas) why would you put up a sold or pending sign when sign calls are a valuable lead generation tool?

[john67elco]

Only sold signs seen may be from investors that dont pay attention to newspapers, news, or any other souce that says selling is down?

[davelj]

I’m speculating here, but it wouldn’t surprise if upstate New York has never experienced a real estate bubble. I’m sure it’s a nice place to live, but that region has been losing population for a few decades.

[lostkitty]

Yes…. C-O-L-D… but beautiful the rest of the time. Stunningly beautiful. Right now it is as colorful out my windows as a bag of jellybellies.

[MANmom]

I live in Rancho Penasaquitos, and I have seen in my neighborhood three homes for sale in a row on a certain street, one sold in a week, obviously priced right, the other two are still open every weekend. And on my way to my son’s school, I see a “Bank Owned” sign, it has been up for more than three months, someone is taking a bath on that one…There is a house on that same street that has two signs, one for sale and one for rent. There is also another street with probably six homes for sale, one side of the street is particularly noisy. Most of the for sale homes are on the noisy side of the street, and one in particular has probably 5, I kid you not, 5 signs for sale in front-three are the ones that have a great big arrow on them…no desperation there.

[powayseller]

With so much inventory, buyers can be choosy. So they avoid busy streets. That makes sense.

[sdrealtor]

I think I know the street you are speaking of. If I’m correct it overlooks 15 and houses have always sat on this street for a very long time.

[JJGittes]

Really, right now in the San Diego area I think going w/o a broker, or with a discount flat fee broker is the only way you can squeak out of a property with gains similar to what you would have got a year ago. By that I mean that buyers with any brains smell blood in the water and expect good deals now. For a seller, the best fat to excise from a deal first is the 5-6% agent commission, or at least half of it. So, the strategy would be to use a flat fee broker to put it in the mls at 2-3% to buyer agent, price it 2-3% lower than you otherwise would have (since you are not paying a seller agent), and advertise hard to find a buyer yourself and thereby even avoid the buyer agent commission. You may screw your (former) neighbors with the comp you leave behind, but you might still be able to squeak out a net proceed similar to last summer after actually landing a buyer, while other agent represented properties sit. Of course, it all requires some work, and some realism about what your house will truly sell for.

[MANmom]

No, wrong street, this one is in Park Village, the road runs behind the houses and is loud. The street the homes are on is not too busy, just Park Village road, which is the only way in and out of the area, so it is very busy. We looked at a rental on that street, and the noise was unbearable.

[North County Jim]

JJ,

Maybe it’s counterintuitive but I’d probably go the other way and hire a full-service agent. Most of us on the site agree that the path of least resistance is down. In that environment, I’d rather get the deal done ASAP.

I’d probably also throw in an extra point on the commission for a sale in the first 30 days. I’d want as much agent and buyer traffic as possible.

I’d probably also go with the agent who came up with the lowest estimate of the home’s value.

I don’t believe this is a time where you want to stagnate looking for that miracle offer.

Unless, of course, this scenario would cause you to bring a check to the settlement table that you didn’t have.

[john67elco]

North County Jim is 100% right. My best friend is using sellers.net to squeeze the other 3% out of the way.

Results in 1 month of trying to sell:
1 person walked through the home (probably a to show why to buy another home close in that area)

0 offers.

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