You ever have one of those weeks that just blasted by you like a freight train, and by the time you know it, it's Friday afternoon? This has been one of those weeks for me...
Most of you probably don't get the distinction between North and South Vandenberg Village. For our MLS purposes, it divides along Highway 1. There are some differences in the types of properties that you find in these two areas. Most of South Village - up until the new construction started in Providence Landing a few years ago - was built around 1960. North Village was built more in phases. There are a core of homes there that are similar in age and style to South Village, but there are also neighborhoods that were built in the 70's, 80's, and even a few from the 90's. It's a bit more of a grab bag.
North Village has probably held its value better than most areas in our MLS. As you can see from the price chart I posted last week, we've dropped around half of our value from the peak prices in late 2005/early 2006 in the market as a whole. There isn't really sufficient data to come up with a price per square foot chart for individual neighborhoods, but it appears that most of the North Village houses are down more like 35-40% from the peak when we look at similar properties.
Like most areas, we have less on the market in North Village than we've had over the past couple of years. We only have 9 active listings up there today, and 5 of those are in some form of contingent status. There's only one pending listing, and we've had 5 sales up there in the past three months.
North Village wasn't hit quite as hard last year by the foreclosure wave as the rest of our market. Only 32% of the sold units up there were REO's, and there were no closed short sales in 2008. However, 6 of the 9 active and contingent listings there right now are short sales, and one of the contingent listings is an REO.
Come back Monday to see the big picture numbers, and later next week, I'll do South Village to compare how things have gone there.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Monday Morning Numbers 2/23/09
Good morning once again, let's get this week started off.
Active Listings: 106
Contingent Listings: 30
Pending Listings: 43(24.0% of the inventory)
Price changes for the past week: 8 (7.4%)
The number that got my attention this morning is the one for pendings. This is the first time since last March that we've been under 50 pending units. I still think that we have pretty good demand when you factor in the contingent listings, and it's not unusual to see a seasonal change in these numbers. Also, taken as a percentage of the total inventory, it's still looking pretty solid. It'll be something to watch in coming weeks. If we get to the end of March with something like a 15% number, it probably would be an indication that our demand is waning.
I don't have a clue what I'm going to write about later this week. Any requests?
Active Listings: 106
Contingent Listings: 30
Pending Listings: 43(24.0% of the inventory)
Price changes for the past week: 8 (7.4%)
The number that got my attention this morning is the one for pendings. This is the first time since last March that we've been under 50 pending units. I still think that we have pretty good demand when you factor in the contingent listings, and it's not unusual to see a seasonal change in these numbers. Also, taken as a percentage of the total inventory, it's still looking pretty solid. It'll be something to watch in coming weeks. If we get to the end of March with something like a 15% number, it probably would be an indication that our demand is waning.
I don't have a clue what I'm going to write about later this week. Any requests?
Saturday, February 21, 2009
The Long Threatened Price Per Square Foot Chart
OK, maybe it's only been threatened a couple of times over the past week or two.
There are a lot of ways to express home values for a market, and none of them are perfect. When most media outlets talk about home values, they typically discuss median prices. This can be a useful number in trying to figure out what market segments are most active, but they tend not to reflect the changes in values that happen in market cycles.
I prefer to measure price trends in our market by average price per square foot for sold units. This is again a less than perfect measuring stick, but it tends to show changes in overall values a little more accurately than median prices. Not all areas in our market will track to this number - some, like North Vandenberg Village, have seen a bit less price erosion than, say, Mission Hills. At one point a while back, I tried to break it down by area, but I found that there were too few data points in most areas to make the data meaningful.
These numbers are taken primarily from the Lompoc Valley Association of Realtors MLS. This represents all houses and condos sold in ZIP Code 93436 for each quarter in our MLS. I omitted sales that were primarily land value listings, such as Cebada Canyon homes on large parcels. In a very few instances, I've filled in square footage data that was missing from our MLS with information from county records.
OK, the link is coming - as I alluded to a couple of posts back, it's not for the faint of heart. Seriously. Viewer discretion is advised. Do not click on this link if you are pregnant or have a heart condition. Viewing this link may cause nausea, hives, and hair loss. You must be at least this tall to click on this link.
OK, you've been warned...
Click here.
Told you so. The good news is, it looks like this quarter might be just a touch better than last at this early stage. I won't have another one of these charts up until sometime in mid-April, so we'll see then.
There are a lot of ways to express home values for a market, and none of them are perfect. When most media outlets talk about home values, they typically discuss median prices. This can be a useful number in trying to figure out what market segments are most active, but they tend not to reflect the changes in values that happen in market cycles.
I prefer to measure price trends in our market by average price per square foot for sold units. This is again a less than perfect measuring stick, but it tends to show changes in overall values a little more accurately than median prices. Not all areas in our market will track to this number - some, like North Vandenberg Village, have seen a bit less price erosion than, say, Mission Hills. At one point a while back, I tried to break it down by area, but I found that there were too few data points in most areas to make the data meaningful.
These numbers are taken primarily from the Lompoc Valley Association of Realtors MLS. This represents all houses and condos sold in ZIP Code 93436 for each quarter in our MLS. I omitted sales that were primarily land value listings, such as Cebada Canyon homes on large parcels. In a very few instances, I've filled in square footage data that was missing from our MLS with information from county records.
OK, the link is coming - as I alluded to a couple of posts back, it's not for the faint of heart. Seriously. Viewer discretion is advised. Do not click on this link if you are pregnant or have a heart condition. Viewing this link may cause nausea, hives, and hair loss. You must be at least this tall to click on this link.
OK, you've been warned...
Click here.
Told you so. The good news is, it looks like this quarter might be just a touch better than last at this early stage. I won't have another one of these charts up until sometime in mid-April, so we'll see then.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Focus on Property Taxes
We've seen a couple of mailers in the past couple of weeks that have been telling us that our property is eligible for reassessment at a lower value, and a huge property tax savings could be ours. For the low, low price of $179, these fine people will be happy to do a review of your property value and submit the necessary documentation to the County Assessor's office for you.
You may have seen one of these as well. Sometimes, they come on nice, official looking forms, giving them an air of authenticity and authority. One of them I saw even said that if you don't file before a certain date, a $30 late fee would apply.
I really hope I'm preaching to the choir here - don't do it.
I'm not going to call this a scam, because for all I know, these folks will do exactly what they say they'll do. But it is a waste of your money. They aren't doing anything that you can't already do for yourself, and in most cases, you'll learn that the County Assessor has already done it for you.
We had a presentation today from Joe Holland, the Santa Barbara County Assessor. He comes to speak to the Lompoc Valley real estate community about once a year, and he's quite informative. One of the topics of the day dealt with this. We've known this for some time, but it might be news to some of you: the Assessor's office is proactively going through property records and reducing the assessed values for properties where it is appropriate. They reduced the assessed value on 13,956 properties in the county last year, approximately 11% of the total parcels in the county. I can personally attest to this - they reassessed ours last year, and I expect that they will again this year.
Yeah, that's right - you won't hear this one often: There's a government agency out there that's trying to make things right and lower your taxes where it's appropriate.
That's not to say that they'll be perfect, although I thought that they got it right with ours last year. If you believe that your property is worth less than the assessed value, or if they've reassessed it and you think they're still higher than fair market value, click here. This will give you a quick overview of how this works, and a link to a form you can fill out and submit.
If you need help with some of the sold comps they need, call us. Heck, we won't even charge you $1.79...
You may have seen one of these as well. Sometimes, they come on nice, official looking forms, giving them an air of authenticity and authority. One of them I saw even said that if you don't file before a certain date, a $30 late fee would apply.
I really hope I'm preaching to the choir here - don't do it.
I'm not going to call this a scam, because for all I know, these folks will do exactly what they say they'll do. But it is a waste of your money. They aren't doing anything that you can't already do for yourself, and in most cases, you'll learn that the County Assessor has already done it for you.
We had a presentation today from Joe Holland, the Santa Barbara County Assessor. He comes to speak to the Lompoc Valley real estate community about once a year, and he's quite informative. One of the topics of the day dealt with this. We've known this for some time, but it might be news to some of you: the Assessor's office is proactively going through property records and reducing the assessed values for properties where it is appropriate. They reduced the assessed value on 13,956 properties in the county last year, approximately 11% of the total parcels in the county. I can personally attest to this - they reassessed ours last year, and I expect that they will again this year.
Yeah, that's right - you won't hear this one often: There's a government agency out there that's trying to make things right and lower your taxes where it's appropriate.
That's not to say that they'll be perfect, although I thought that they got it right with ours last year. If you believe that your property is worth less than the assessed value, or if they've reassessed it and you think they're still higher than fair market value, click here. This will give you a quick overview of how this works, and a link to a form you can fill out and submit.
If you need help with some of the sold comps they need, call us. Heck, we won't even charge you $1.79...
Monday, February 16, 2009
Monday Morning Numbers 2/16/09
Good morning, happy Monday. Time for some market stats again:
Active Listings: 105
Contingent Listings: 28
Pending Listings: 50 (27.3% of the inventory)
Price changes for the past week: 8 (9.0%)
A very small shift in the numbers this week as we saw more properties move into a contingent category. Active listings dropped off a bit this week to the lowest point of the young year. We have 5.0 months of inventory on the market this morning.
It looks like we've found a plateau on our inventory and activity for now. We don't stay on these plateaus forever, although we stayed very stable throughout most of 2008. I suspect that this year will see a bit more change, one way and then the other. If we do stay at around the inventory level we're at now through the year, I think we'll see home values stabilize sooner rather than later. There's a lot of buyer competition for the better values out there right now, and quite frankly, probably around a third of the total inventory right now are short sales that aren't going anywhere real soon.
Active Listings: 105
Contingent Listings: 28
Pending Listings: 50 (27.3% of the inventory)
Price changes for the past week: 8 (9.0%)
A very small shift in the numbers this week as we saw more properties move into a contingent category. Active listings dropped off a bit this week to the lowest point of the young year. We have 5.0 months of inventory on the market this morning.
It looks like we've found a plateau on our inventory and activity for now. We don't stay on these plateaus forever, although we stayed very stable throughout most of 2008. I suspect that this year will see a bit more change, one way and then the other. If we do stay at around the inventory level we're at now through the year, I think we'll see home values stabilize sooner rather than later. There's a lot of buyer competition for the better values out there right now, and quite frankly, probably around a third of the total inventory right now are short sales that aren't going anywhere real soon.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Focus On Condos
OK, you're off the hook - I'll spare you the price per square foot carnage this week. I'm still trying to figure it out. Well, actually, I'm trying to make time to figure it out...
So this week, let's talk about our condo market. This can be kind of a hard thing to get your arms around, because we lump a lot of things into the Single Family Attached (SFA) category in our MLS. This is a designation made for homes that share a wall or walls with other units. This includes everything from sub-$100,000 Cypress Woods condos up to Country Club cluster homes in the $300,000s. Some of the units in that category aren't technically "condos" - some of them own a patch of land and the owners do their own building maintenance.
Instead of going into the whole technical discussion of what a condo is or isn't, I'll tell you how I track them here. It's pretty simple - I look for SFA units that aren't in the Country Club. The only reason that I throw those out is because one or two of those can really skew the numbers. They tend to be a lot more expensive than the rest of the SFA units, and really, they're kind of their own little micro-market. The rest of the SFA units in town - even though they have different characteristics and price points - all tend to track similarly in how market forces affect them.
For the first half of last year, the market for condos in our market was, to put it mildly, sluggish. Through the end of June, we had sold a whopping 16 condos in the Lompoc Valley. While overall sales for that period were up 28.3%, condo sales were down 11.1% for the same period in the previous year. Part of what was going on had to do with the screaming deals that were available on houses. The price spread between the two was just not enough to make entry level buyers opt for a condo most of the time.
The second half of 2008 was a different picture. Overall sales for July through December nearly doubled from the same period in 2007 (95.5% increase). Condo sales for the same period increased 258.3% over 2007.
Two hundred fifty eight point three percent increase. Holy &$#@!
Now mind you, the last half of 2007 was just a horrible time in our market in terms of activity. We had months where the number of sold units in the entire valley was in the teens. Honestly, I'd like to just repress most of the memories I have from that period. So what happened? Why did condos increase in volume so much more than the market as a whole in the last half of 2008?
Well, like everything else in this market, it comes down to price. At the beginning of 2008, a 3 bedroom 2 bath Lompoc Village condo (a pretty good benchmark for this) was going somewhere in the low 200's. At the end of the year, one of those could be picked up in the 120's. That's nuts. During a period when values dropped something like 27% across he board, condos were dropping closer to 40% of their value. And when that happened, the spread between condos and entry level houses got big enough to make them a viable option again. Now, well priced condos move just as fast as well priced houses, and aggressively priced ones almost always have multiple offers.
It'll be interesting to compare this segment of the market to the market as a whole as we move forward. When we start to see our values stabilize and recover, will condos lag, or will they keep pace with the rest of the market? I'll revisit this in a few months.
So this week, let's talk about our condo market. This can be kind of a hard thing to get your arms around, because we lump a lot of things into the Single Family Attached (SFA) category in our MLS. This is a designation made for homes that share a wall or walls with other units. This includes everything from sub-$100,000 Cypress Woods condos up to Country Club cluster homes in the $300,000s. Some of the units in that category aren't technically "condos" - some of them own a patch of land and the owners do their own building maintenance.
Instead of going into the whole technical discussion of what a condo is or isn't, I'll tell you how I track them here. It's pretty simple - I look for SFA units that aren't in the Country Club. The only reason that I throw those out is because one or two of those can really skew the numbers. They tend to be a lot more expensive than the rest of the SFA units, and really, they're kind of their own little micro-market. The rest of the SFA units in town - even though they have different characteristics and price points - all tend to track similarly in how market forces affect them.
For the first half of last year, the market for condos in our market was, to put it mildly, sluggish. Through the end of June, we had sold a whopping 16 condos in the Lompoc Valley. While overall sales for that period were up 28.3%, condo sales were down 11.1% for the same period in the previous year. Part of what was going on had to do with the screaming deals that were available on houses. The price spread between the two was just not enough to make entry level buyers opt for a condo most of the time.
The second half of 2008 was a different picture. Overall sales for July through December nearly doubled from the same period in 2007 (95.5% increase). Condo sales for the same period increased 258.3% over 2007.
Two hundred fifty eight point three percent increase. Holy &$#@!
Now mind you, the last half of 2007 was just a horrible time in our market in terms of activity. We had months where the number of sold units in the entire valley was in the teens. Honestly, I'd like to just repress most of the memories I have from that period. So what happened? Why did condos increase in volume so much more than the market as a whole in the last half of 2008?
Well, like everything else in this market, it comes down to price. At the beginning of 2008, a 3 bedroom 2 bath Lompoc Village condo (a pretty good benchmark for this) was going somewhere in the low 200's. At the end of the year, one of those could be picked up in the 120's. That's nuts. During a period when values dropped something like 27% across he board, condos were dropping closer to 40% of their value. And when that happened, the spread between condos and entry level houses got big enough to make them a viable option again. Now, well priced condos move just as fast as well priced houses, and aggressively priced ones almost always have multiple offers.
It'll be interesting to compare this segment of the market to the market as a whole as we move forward. When we start to see our values stabilize and recover, will condos lag, or will they keep pace with the rest of the market? I'll revisit this in a few months.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Monday Morning Numbers 2/9/09
Happy Rainy Monday, everyone! We're starting to see some traffic on our new website (yay!), and that may translate into new readers for this blog. So if this is your first time seeing the Monday Morning Numbers, go back to the 1/5/09 post for a fuller explanation of what this stuff means. Here's what we have going on this morning:
Active Listings: 111
Contingent Listings: 21
Pending Listings: 52 (28.26% of the inventory)
Price changes for the past week: 8 (5.19%)
I'm officially giving up on the two week sold number this week. It's meaningless, because we see way too many listings get updated several weeks late after they sell. As of this morning, we have 4.8 months of inventory on the market.
This is the first week since the Monday before Halloween that we've seen our inventory increase a little bit. One week does not a trend make, and we're still looking at very low inventory levels and solid demand.
I'm trying to figure out a technical issue - if I can, I'm going to post a price-per-square-foot chart later this week. It's kind of ugly - viewer discretion is advised... If I can't figure it out, I'll come up with some other "Focus On" topic. Stay tuned.
Active Listings: 111
Contingent Listings: 21
Pending Listings: 52 (28.26% of the inventory)
Price changes for the past week: 8 (5.19%)
I'm officially giving up on the two week sold number this week. It's meaningless, because we see way too many listings get updated several weeks late after they sell. As of this morning, we have 4.8 months of inventory on the market.
This is the first week since the Monday before Halloween that we've seen our inventory increase a little bit. One week does not a trend make, and we're still looking at very low inventory levels and solid demand.
I'm trying to figure out a technical issue - if I can, I'm going to post a price-per-square-foot chart later this week. It's kind of ugly - viewer discretion is advised... If I can't figure it out, I'll come up with some other "Focus On" topic. Stay tuned.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Focus On Short Sales
One of the things that I frequently find myself trying to explain to clients is "what, exactly, is a short sale?". So let's start with the basics - a short sale happens when homeowners find themselves in a position where they have to sell their home, but they owe more on it than they'll be able to sell it for. For instance, let's say I bought a Mission Hills home in 2005 for $400,000, financed 100% like so many purchases in that time frame. Now, something has happened (job loss, the loan has adjusted, I'm getting relocated, divorced, etc.) and I can't make the payments. Big problem, because that house is now worth around $180,000. So here are my options in a nutshell:
- I can stop making payments on it. The bank will eventually start foreclosure proceedings, and unless I'm able to get it together and get caught up, I'll eventually lose the house.
- I can play the lotto and hope like heck that I win big. The bank will eventually start foreclosure proceedings... You know the drill.
- I can try to see if the bank will work out a loan modification for me if it makes sense in my situation (that's a whole other blog post for some day).
- I can list it and try to sell it, even though the proceeds will fall well short of the amount owed on it.
49% of the active listings on the market in the Lompoc Valley as of today are sellers who are trying that last option. This is way up - that was close to 20% a little over a year ago. This is primarily a result of falling home values and our bigger economic picture - which is being damaged by falling home prices... Sometimes this stuff makes my head hurt when I think about it.
Here's the catch - of the short sales on the market right now, maybe 30% of them will sell. 7.7% of our 2008 sales were short sales, but short sales accounted for 24.4% of the homes that came on the market in that time period. Let's put this another way: looking at resolved listings - those listings that have either sold, been withdrawn or expired - our market as a whole had a 61% success rate over the past 15 months. That's pretty good; a year ago that number was closer to 38%. It's amazing what an influx of well priced inventory can do for a market. Let's compare that to short sales. We saw a 24.6% success rate for short sales over the past 15 months. Again, this number has come up quite a bit; it was at around 9% a year ago.
Two questions come to mind when I see these numbers. First, why do short sales lag so much when it comes to success rate? There are a handful of reasons for this. First of all, they take longer than a normal sale. You have to go through a whole approval process with the lien holder or
The second question that comes to mind when I see the numbers is, "Why are we having a better success rate now than we did a year ago?". In a way, it seems counter-intuitive. With so much well-priced REO inventory out there, why is it that the short sale success percentage improved at a much better rate than the market as a whole? I think it's all about the lien holders. For the longest time, banks were badly understaffed in their loss mitigation departments, and they have slowly been getting staffed up and getting their processes in place to make these things run more smoothly. 18 months ago, a short sale was just about the kiss of death. Now it's just the kiss of a really bad flu episode. But things are getting better, clearly, and I think we'll see more successful short sales this year as banks figure out how to make it work.
I'm going to give you three pieces of advise if you're thinking about making an offer on a short sale: First, be prepared for a long ride. It's going to require a lot of patience and waiting on your part. And don't stop looking at other options in the interim. You don't want a great deal on something that fits you well to get away on a question mark.
Second, they aren't all created equal. The short sale with some listing agent from out of town who picked it up by cold calling an NOD list, is priced 30% below market value, has had no contact with the lender, and the owner has already given up and moved out of state - let's not waste our time on that one. The ones that are listed by competent local agents that we know will get the job done are much better. Better still if we can find one that just fell out of escrow because the previous buyer lost patience - the hard work has most likely already been done, or at least started.
Finally, don't make an offer on it if you don't love it. Really, I give that advise to most non-investor buyers, but I pound it home for short sales. Even with a shrinking inventory, if you aren't finding what you want, hang in there, it'll come around pretty soon. Life's too short - don't go through the wringer only to settle, especially when it comes to the big stuff.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Monday Morning Numbers 2/2/09
Happy day after the Super Bowl! Was that some fun, or what? Here's what the numbers look like this morning:
Active Listings: 109
Contingent Listings: 17
Pending Listings: 55 (30.4% of the inventory)
Price changes for the past week: 10 (7.9%)
Sold listings for the previous two weeks: 10
We have 4.8 months of inventory on the market this morning.
It's pretty surreal to see our inventory drop this far this fast after the ride we were on for the past few years. We had a good long discussion in our MLS Marketing meeting on Friday centering on the challenges presented by loan modifications. One of the things that we heard from a couple of agents who do a lot of REO listings is that they've been told that they should expect some more listings coming on the market in the next couple of months.
Judging by the Notice of Default numbers I've been seeing, I'd say that it's likely to be summer at the earliest before we see REO listings make a big impact on our inventory level, if then. And frankly, from talking to other agents around town, I think that if we saw a big influx of another 20-30 REO units hit the market today, that there is enough demand out there to absorb that.
Anybody want to buy a short sale? That's the "Focus On" topic for later this week.
Active Listings: 109
Contingent Listings: 17
Pending Listings: 55 (30.4% of the inventory)
Price changes for the past week: 10 (7.9%)
Sold listings for the previous two weeks: 10
We have 4.8 months of inventory on the market this morning.
It's pretty surreal to see our inventory drop this far this fast after the ride we were on for the past few years. We had a good long discussion in our MLS Marketing meeting on Friday centering on the challenges presented by loan modifications. One of the things that we heard from a couple of agents who do a lot of REO listings is that they've been told that they should expect some more listings coming on the market in the next couple of months.
Judging by the Notice of Default numbers I've been seeing, I'd say that it's likely to be summer at the earliest before we see REO listings make a big impact on our inventory level, if then. And frankly, from talking to other agents around town, I think that if we saw a big influx of another 20-30 REO units hit the market today, that there is enough demand out there to absorb that.
Anybody want to buy a short sale? That's the "Focus On" topic for later this week.
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