Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
sdrealtor
ParticipantAbout 2800 of the current pendings went into escrow in April. About 290 have already closed. I would suspect that your 2700 making it to closings will be about right.
Time to go pay the bills…
ParticipantHere’s some data that might help. Its the best I could do in a minute or two. Last April, 4113 properties went into escrow and made it to closing. As of now, there are 3,194 properties that went into escrow during April and have closed or are still in escrow. Not all of these will close. You can probably be pretty safe in saying that pendings are down 30% in April over last year.
ParticipantRockyroad
The questions you ask are very good ones but nearly impossible to answer. I have historical data for a couple ZIP I can look up and will provide next time I am in my office but country wide cant be done without pouring over thousands of listings it would take over a month.For example, you could look at the closings for last year and identify the ones that went pending but you would miss out on the opnes that went pending during a period of time and subsequently fell out. As for % price reduction, you would have to go over every single listing and enter the original price in a spreadsheet. Then you would have to go back and search under the property address to see if it was listed before at a higher price. Throw in range pricing (i.e. seller will entertain offers between 750 and 900) and it gets downright messy.
Sales price to listing price ratio…same problem. Things have been reduced, relisted and range priced so much that these stats have lost alot of their value. Answer this question, when a property is originally listed in a range of 999 to 1.15 then gets reduced to 95 to 1.099M and sells at 1M what is the % price reduction? what is the sales price to list price ratio? Answer..one big mess for anyone trying to calculate anything meaningful.
The truth is that we dont know where the market is right now re: prices. You start somewhere and adjust based upon what the market is telling you (showings? offers? others reducing etc.). My listings have been closing within 2% of where I told my clients they would. In general they have wanted to test the market a little more and while some have sold in less than 2 weeks some have taken longer to be willing to get the price right. Hope this answers you concerns as to why I cant provide the data you ask for. If not…I really don’t care…skip my posts.
Anyone who has MLS can verify this including Rich.
ParticipantHere’s one area where Rich deserves alot of credit and which I have heard no one mention. Rich said the speculation was much higher than the 18% stat for SD that came out a few weeks ago. He postulated that people buying primary residences with risky financing in hopes of future gains were speculating.
I heard from a colleague, the Anderson folks said that prices were fine until late 2003 and then got wacky. They atributed the gains of 2004 and beyond to speculation. Those who have been on this board a while may have heard me saw that things made sense to me until 2004 began and that I thought that’s where we had to go back to. So now you’ve heard it from 3 sources of varying credibility. I think prices will go back to Fall 2003 levels plus 5 to 10% for more reasonable appreciation. In my area that would be about 20% off current levels.
ParticipantFortunately I have a thick skin that your nonsense rolls off. I’ve been very busy and havent had time to crunch numbers. As for being too stupid to crunch numbers tell that to the unversities where I earned degrees (bachelors and masters) in finance, accounting, economics, finance and marketing specifically (market research).
My preference is to write off the cuff now but rest assured I can run statistics as well as anyone. My problem with statistics comes from spending hundreds of hours analyzing homes sales data on a micro-level. Around every corner there is a problme or unique aspect to nearly every data point. I tend to relie on the intuition I get from being around real estate everyday. I has kept me 6 months to a year ahead of the market and I have satisfied clients that would agree as well as people who didnt listen only call back later wishing they did in both the boom market and the cooling market.
If you don’t like what I have to say, don’t pay attention. I promise I wont be offended. BTW, I may be a poor typist prone to errors but you did a pretty good job butchering the English language above yourself.
ParticipantI have spoken to several property managers in the last week and all say they have NEVER seen a better rental market. If you are renting a nice place with a landlord committed to owning it a long time don’t balk so quickly at a reasonable increase. It looks like the single family rental market is going to get very very tight unless some who have been trying to sell give up.
ParticipantAmen! Accountability is a good thing and often lacking.
ParticipantAs usual right on target Bugs. Unfortunately I’ve seen quite a few appraisals that seem to lack bias and participation in the existence of a transaction. I’ve never heard of it happening but have you ever heard of lenders coming after appraisers for fraudelent appraisals (i.e.hitting the number to keep the business coming in).
ParticipantI guess what I left out was what i praying for. I’m not praying for them to get an extra $50,000 in their bank a/c’s. I’m praying that it will be over for them. We reduce the price to make it the best priced home in the area and don’t know if that will be enough. Sure they could reduce another $50,000 and offers might come pouring in. Would you do that or would you want fair market value for your property? The problem is that we dont know what FMV is right now in this transition period and its very stressful finding out.
What I find funny is that the general public’s consensus is that everyone who bought a couple years ago and is now selling has a $500,000 gain. Personally, I bought extremely well in 1999 in a neighborhood that has appreciated far above the norm. After factoring in everything I put into my home in improvements, I could sell and net about $300,000. Don’t get me wrong, thats a HUGE amount but not $500K in 3 years. The truth is I dont really think about it much because my home is my home not a financial instrument. I have no plans to move in the next 20 years. Some day I hope its worth something but I really plan on giving it to one of my kids some day.
ParticipantI agree with you Bugs and yes I felt great concern for buyer clients. Last year was very tough for me to represent buyers and most I worked with I kept on the sidelines. The few I sold bought around 50K below the comps so they are still in good shape for what they bought.
I agree that you have to bring alot of bad news to people but here’s the big difference. You email the report to the lender and word gets passed onto the buyer. I deliver the news face to face in people homes.
ParticipantYou greatly underestiamte what they paid and overestimate the gains by at least double and fail to take into account transaction costs. More so you miss the point. They feel fortunate to have made anything on their homes, are not greedy and have the incomes to make that money back. These arent people running around in H2’s or MBZ’s. These are hard working people dring 10 year old cars paid off that live within their means. They watched other homes sell for alot more. Now they are looking for a reasonable price, with reasonable terms so they can get on with their lives. They have hopes just like everyone else. It’s no fun to have to crush them.
ParticipantSorry but this is gonna take alot more than 500 words and you’ll have to refer back and forth to get the questions.
1. Lots of pendings are actually closed already. Every few months Sandicor sends a message out to agents asking them to update their closed listings. Alot of this comes from Open Listings (i.e. FSBO’s posted on the MLS), Onesy/twosy a year realtors, lazy realtors, more sellers accepting contingent offers and longer escrows being accepted. It really isnt an unusually high number.
2. Sales volume is down and some long time agents are feeling pain. Many have been through this before. Listings are coming in strong and since I work with alot of good agents that are capable of getting price reductions as a group we are probably better off than most. We keep hearing about lots more to come on the market.
3. Each agents piece of the pie is so small that a few milion dollar sales can make your year. Heck, I know people that have recently cashed checks deep into 6 figures for a single transaction. Barry Sanders always had great production on a lousy Detroit Lions team.
4. Some sellers are hanging on because it is a big disappointment to wave good bye to something you thought you had but never really did. Good agents provide their clients the data to connect the dots, the encouragement to do so and have the credibility to get them. Some agents try to buy masrket share by promising clients the moon which hurts them and their clients in the long run. My clients tend to be well educated and I make sure they have the data they need to make good decisions. They have lots of equity and are truly motivated to sell (i.e. relocating). They put thier trust in me and it is a heavy burden to carry. If you havent read my post on the “Rich is the man” thread you are missing out on a window into the life of a realtor trying to do the best thing for his clients. It was written from the heart.
5. To me it is volume and I follow/track my market areas religiously. Inventory, pending and closed sales. I ran some numbers to today and they were pretty scary. The question that seller’s will begin asking is not how much I can sell for but rather can I sell at all.
6.The buyers I am working with currently are bringing huge cash positions 30 to 50% down or even all cash) and high stable incomes. Rates dont affect them as much directly but they worry what effect rates will have on prices as weaker buyers are impacted. They are picky as to what they want and expect to negotiate hard. I’ve created some comps in the last year that havent made the neighbors happy.
7.Hopefully they are but I dont have much to do with this. I’m very fiscally conservative and birds of a feather tend to flock together. I don’t beleive I have any clients that are at risk unless they foolishly refinanced out of a good loan they bought with. Cant control that.
8. Foreclosure rate was so low because anyone in trouble could refi out for the last several years making % increases of little value. I’d look at the foreclosure rate and volume as a better measure as 2 is a 100% increase over 1. No personal experience but have heard of several. Typically they are recent homebuyers that were represented by poor agents. They typically overpaid even considering the high prices and had very risky financing. Others pulled out equity to finance lives they couldnt afford. Appraisals done recently that I find hard to beleive got past underwriters. You will be hearing the phrase short sale more and more.Lastly, in PS’ last post I found the part about the agent coming up to her and saying “You did the right thing. You will be able to buy it back in 3 years for 25% less. Call me.” quite humorous. Some agents have no scrupples. I’m surprised she didnt tell him to @%$&* off.
ParticipantI provide plenty of data and explanations for her questions. She chooses not to beleive them, questions my honesty and ignores the answers because they do not necessarily support her views.
ParticipantAmen to that! I speak from my heart and if it occassionally offends someone it’s just the heat of the battle. I’d bet dollars to donuts PS and I would enjoy each others company if we sat down to chat about family and community as we both share alot of the values.
I won’t stop posting because I beleive I add value that you cant get anywhere else. While PS is very well studied and strongly opinionated the information she brings is someone elses. If you want to hear other opinions all you need to do is Google something like “housing bubble”, “Real estates values” “Home Prices” and you can find all you want to read. I try to bring what is going on in the trenches. Beleive me when I say it, I do not have a fun job.I have spent the last few nights at clients dinner tables reviewing market data and getting price reductions. My client s are all fine upstanding people that anyone would love to have as a neighbor, truly sincere people with good values. They have tons of equity and are committed to selling at whatever the market is. Now imagine that you have to sit across the table from your best friend and pour over market data. They listen intently, think deeply about what they have heard and then ask the ultimate question…..”What should we do?” Then you look them in the eye and say…”I think we need to lower the price $50,000 and hopefully that will be enough”….They look at you with the disappointment in their eyes of someone who just gave up the hope of an additional $50,000 in their pockets but trust and belief in you. They follow your advice and after some brief conversation you get in your car and drive home hoping it will be enough. On the way you think of the conversation they are having and personally feel their pain. You walk in your door, kiss your wife and then go to your computer to check email and the MLS. One more house just came on the market around the corner and another reduced their price $30,000. You say a little prayer for your friends and go to bed……………
-
AuthorPosts
