An Upturn in the Housing Market May Be Reversing – NYTimes.com
But what about Sonoma County and Northern California? If you read this article in the business section of today's New York Times, An Upturn in the Housing Market May Be Reversing - NYTimes.com you'd find very justifiable skepticism about the increase in real estate sales volume nationally that we've experienced this summer and fall. As some friends and I discussed at dinner in Healdsburg Monday night, no one is convinced that the economy is on firmly recovering footing, Wall Street enthusiasm aside. So are we up for a "W" recovery--meaning another downturn in housing prices? From the article, which discussed the latest Case Shiller Housing Index Report: The two housing price reports lag, by a month, the figures on the volume of home resales, which were issued Monday for October. Home resales jumped 10.1 percent to the highest level in two years, better than analysts had expected. Much of the increase was attributed to the $8,000 first-time buyer’s tax credit, which had been set to expire Nov. 30 but has been renewed through spring. Buyers who have already owned a home are now eligible for a $6,500 credit. While brisk sales volume should, in theory, push up prices, Maureen Maitland, the vice president for index services at S.& P., said the oversupply of inventory was acting as a brake. “You can look down the street and have 10 houses to choose from,” she said. About 3.57 million used homes are for sale, a number that has been declining but is still higher than the historic average. It represents seven months of inventory at the current sales rate. Ms. Maitland speculated that the housing market might follow a “W” pattern, as the price lows plumbed last spring are tested again this winter. It's all well and good to look at national statistics, but (and this is a cliche so forgive me)--looking at the national housing market to try to determine what is happening with home values in your neighborhood is like trying to know what the weather will be like by knowing what the average temperature in the US is at any given time. Just look at the paragraph above--7 months available inventory nationwide. In Sonoma County we have less than three months of inventory available county wide, and less than two months at the lower price ranges. Even at the upper price ranges we have about 10 months of inventory...
Google gets deeper into Real Estate but Offers Inaccurate Results
Google has added property search of current real estate listings to Google Maps. You can go to Google Maps and search a community, even add in your criteria in terms of beds/baths/etc. and the map will highlight current listings and display detailed listing information on the left hand column--Google provides a video overview below. I thought I would check it out for accuracy. I ran a search for Healdsburg and found a property listed for $639,000. which was news to me as I have clients looking for something like that--I follow all the key markets in Sonoma County regularly on the search for new inventory and sold results. So I clicked through to the property info and it turns out the listing was on Piper Lane in Sonoma! Somehow Google pulled the listing info, stripped the town of its Sonoma address (about an hour away) and added Healdsburg to the property address! That's one way to get new inventory! (not) Very misleading. It also picked up a listing in town on North Street which had four lots of about 25 acres each. Not possible--that would swallow the whole town of Healdsburg. When I clicked through the property links I found an empty page on a local broker's site. And these are only the first two errors that I saw. It appears that data is pulled from a variety of sources, including print magazines and other listing aggregators such as ListHub. All I can say is don't go to the bank on what you find because it can be very erroneous. Obviously the search itself is not ready for prime time but also the data being searched is unreliable. Garbage in Garbage out. Until there are agreements with regional MLS's (don't hold your breath) take the real estate information offered on Google Maps with a grain of salt. ...
Which of these is the screamin' real estate bargain?
Which of these is the killer real estate bargain? (See the answers below--these are true stories based upon real estate sales in Sonoma County over the last year--details have been eliminated for obvious reasons.) 1) an REO (bank-owned) home in Rohnert Park/Cotati that sells for $304,000 with 19 offers. Original asking price $256,000. Nearly 20% over asking price. 2) a country property in Healdsburg with two cute cottages that nearly sells for $137,500 under asking price. 3) a country property in Sebastopol that sells for full asking price ($1,750,000) with four cash offers. 4) an REO in Santa Rosa that sells for asking price with two offers. 5) a cute country property in Sebastopol that sells in a week for 95% asking. 6) a fixer (read:teardown) with a bad floor plan on a busy street that sells after a year on the market for 50% of the original asking price. 7) a cosmetic fixer on a great lot with good bones and multiple offers, sells 5% over asking. 8) property someone buys from a friend of a friend before it hits the market at 10% less than the supposed listing price because the seller doesn't want the hassle of selling or to pay commissions. ANSWER: 1) A BARGAIN--Are you crazy? The buyers paid $48,000 over asking. Yes but the bank significantly underpriced the property by not attributing enough value to the oversized, landscaped 1/3 acre lot with its own redwood tree and raised beds for gardening. A most unusual feature that attracted a horde of buyers. Fortunately my wonderful clients prevailed and bought a home for the price that was their target price all along. Now they have a house payment lower than the rent they were paying previously, before taxes. For their first home, a bit of country in a great commute location, with no repairs beyond their budget or skill set. It even appraised at full price. 2) A BUST: It seems like a bargain on paper, but what if the original sales price was about $175,000 too high and the property sits and sits and sits. Even with a $137,500/16% price reduction, the buyer might be paying too much. This property is still sitting on the market racking up interest and taxes. 3) A BARGAIN: A great retreat property that sold in...
Extension of First Time Home Buyer Credit Approved by Congress
Congress approves extension and expansion of home buyer tax credit through April, 2010...
Shades of a Seller's Market? Or, "How to Buy a Bank-Owned Home" by Kris Berg
Kris Berg of the San Diego Home Blog makes a movie about a seller's market in Bank Owned Real Estate...
"It ain't over till it's over." or what Yogi Berra can teach first time buyers about Real Estate
So if you know me well, you know that I am a die-hard THIRD generation New York Yankees fan. (DISCLAIMER: Despite this fact, I have several clients, good friends and colleagues who are Boston Red Sox fans, but that is another story.)
How does Yogi Berra relate to the current real estate market in Sonoma County, Ca?
Well as current clients of mine will tell you-they thought they’d found a perfect house. We’ll call it “Park Place”. Great commute location, walking distance to shops and restaurants, and best of all a vastly over-sized, 13,000 square foot park-like back yard (complete with its own redwood tree and veggie garden). Unfortunately for them, 18 other buyers also thought it was a great property and the winning offer was not ours, even thought we went well over asking, my clients were extremely qualified first time buyers. In this case it wasn’t enough. But they gave it their best shot at a price that made sense to them and lived with the results.
After a four week break to take care of family obligations, my clients were ready to write an offer on another pretty interesting property. Â Meanwhile, I had told the listing agent for the first property to keep us posted if something happened to the original offer.
Also we kept an eye on things. We don’t want to rely on an overburdened REO listing agent. To make this easy for everyone, I set up a private web site for my clients updated in real time with changes to the MLS (Real Estate Multiple Listings Service). You may not realize it but most public facing websites are not reliably up to date, so a property could be back in escrow and not available again before you know it.
In this client website, we can keep homes in “Newly Matched”, “Saved”, and “Rejected” Tabs. That way we are in sync and can both keep tabs on things so to speak. With my out of town clients, the “Comments” feature helps my get to know their preferences pretty quickly.
Back to the Yogi Berra situation: the same day we were writing on place number 2, I received a phone call from the listing agent on “Park Place” –the house of the 19 offers. Apparently the first buyer could not perform due to problems with their FHA financing.  The 3`cash buyers had gone elsewhere. My clients were selected next by the bank who owned “Park Place” (bank as property owner-is an “REO” for real-estate owned).
Long story short, my clients are now in escrow to purchase “Park Place”. Of course, it ain’t really over till escrow closes. It is always wise for buyers of any property not to fall in love until they are moved in. But this one, given up for good a month ago, looks pretty good now.
So thanks Yogi, for the real estate wisdom.  And I thought you were just a great catcher, hitter and 10 time World Series Champion!
Sonoma County Real Estate Market Half-Time Report
The long days and sunny weather have taken me away from my computer--sorry it has been so long since my last post. I have a new iPhone (fun and without a doubt best new productivity tool in a long time--probably since my first Palm Pilot in 1996). I am available by phone or email or Twitter, Facebook, etc. if you have an immediate question, please feel free to contact me. And thanks to those of you who already have! We are in the thick of a hot summer market here in Sonoma County. Buyers have been coming back into our market in increasing numbers since late last year. Now, nearly every property sold under $400,000 has multiple offers. First time buyers or conventional buyers with ten or twenty percent down should expect to have to write offers on multiple properties before they get "the one". There is only 2-4 months supply of inventory available at the current rate of sales (at price points under a million dollars). What about the new wave of "shadow" inventory of foreclosure properties being held back from the market by the bank? At this point, it would appear that the market of existing buyers (both first time buyers and investors) will absorb it fairly readily....
Are you a Property Virgin? $8,000 $Reasons to find why now might be the time to buy your first home
I have got to give credit where credit is due..Krisstina Wise is an Austin real estate broker, head of the Good Life Team. Earlier today she followed me on Twitter. I decided to check out the website of her self-described "hip" Austin real estate brokerage. I found it engaging, well-thought out, informative and professionally done. They use video judiciously and well and have some good tools for buyers and sellers. Their blog had a post on the new federal tax credit for first time home buyers. It wasn't the feds who coined the "Property Virgin", nor did I, so I MUST give credit where credit is due. Thanks to Krisstina and the Good Life team. Here is a bit of their post: No joke. The 8,000 reasons to buy today are quantified in terms of real dollars — $8,000! That’s right. As part of the stimulus package, Uncle Sam is offering “First-Time Homebuyers†(Let’s call you Property Virgins) up to $8,000 in the form of a tax credit for purchasing a home in 2009. If you have been on the fence or if you are considering buying a home in the next year or so – you must learn about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – The First-time homebuyer tax credit. This is a special opportunity that enables you, as a Virgin, to be one of the few who can BENEFIT from this crazy economy. What is it? As part of the Stimulus package, a Property Virgin who purchases in 2009 is eligible to receive up to 10% of the cost of the house –up to $8,000– in the form of a tax credit on their tax return (did we just use stimulus and virgin in the same sentence?). A tax credit means that the $8,000 is a dollar for dollar reduction in what you owe in taxes. This means that if you owed $8,000 in income taxes and you received the $8,000 tax credit, you would owe nothing to the IRS. If you are owed a refund of $1,000, after the credit you would receive a refund of $9,000! And no, you don’t have to pay it back if you live in your new home for at least 3 years. Actually both the term property virgin and first time buyer are not really accurate. Eligibility for this tax break really focuses on your...
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
The title of my last blog post was so upbeat I was a tad embarrassed on reflection. Was I just drinking the real estate Koolaid?  If you read the body of the post last week, you'd realize that my comments were a little more nuanced, but there was good reason for my optimism. I was in the midst of a multiple offer competition on a property in Healdsburg (my buyers are now in escrow and very happy), there were many properties going into escrow in the last couple of weeks in Sonoma County, and not just in the bottom end of the REO pool. Some really special country properties in Sebastopol and Graton that interested a number of my clients sold within a week of coming on the market before people could even get up here from out of town to see them. Open houses were packed all over the county. My transaction coordinator, Alise Posman, had 10 newly opened escrow files on her desk Monday morning and she is only one of several TC's at our office. It seems that there is a lot of pent up demand, and people with cash are deciding to invest in real estate here rather than stuff it under a mattress. Some are buying rentals, some are buying homes for the first time. Some are buying weekend homes, or rentals that will eventually become their wine country retirement homes. Some are searching for horse properties and there are some great deals at a variety of price points. That said, I felt a little sheepish about the headline, given the brutal reality of current conditions in our country. The old title of Richard Farina's 1966 book came to mind: "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me". I guess we are taking these signs of life as encouragement where we can this spring. No one has any illusions that happy days are here again but there are little glimmers of hope, kind of like the first bulbs coming up in the spring. It will be interesting to see how this year unfolds. But don't believe if you are a buyer that you will be without competition for the best properties, well-priced and in good condition this spring. If you are a seller take heed, and do what it takes to be perceived as a deal right out of the chute. You might be pleasantly surprised....
How far do I have to walk home from wine-tasting? or Cyrus?
You can take advantage of Cyrus' two Michelin stars and have less than a 1/2 mile walk home. ...