Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving weekend. We were able to take a few days off ourselves, with a little work interspersed in there. Managed to avoid the shopping frenzy for the most part. Call me counter-culture if you will, but you couldn't get me within 100 yards of a mall on Black Friday. Anyway, let's take a look at our market numbers this week:
Active Listings: 68
Contingent Listings: 57
Pending Listings: 49 (28.2% of the inventory)
New listings: 8
Months of inventory: 3.8
Click here for an updated price per square foot chart.
No big changes here this week. I was a little surprised to see as many new listings as we did this week because it was a short week. I still think we're in a little bit of an upswing in listings, but it may not last for very much longer.
Later this week I'll get back into the groove of writing about neighborhoods with a Southside focus.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Giving Thanks
I'm going to depart from my usual mode of market commentary this week, because it's Thanksgiving weekend and I want to get a little personal and sentimental. So indulge me a little bit.
I'm a lucky guy. I'm not going to sit here and list all the things that I'm thankful for, because you'd stop reading after the first few pages. Heck, I'm married to Diane. 'Nuff said. Suffice it to say that I'm loving life, and I hope that comes through once in a while. What I want to tell you about today is why I'm thankful for my chosen profession.
I worked for 18 years doing computer support in a large corporate environment. It was an OK way to make a living. The money was good, had some good benefits, I was getting 4 weeks of paid vacation every year. But truth be told, while I didn't hate my job, I never really loved it. It was just something I did for money. I knew a lot of people in that field who really did love it - major techie geeks, couldn't get enough of it. I just wasn't one of them.
I watched the corporate culture change a lot over the years, and it got more cut-throat and less employee friendly with every passing year. Maybe that's not true; maybe I just tuned into it more as time went along. Coming up on about 6 years ago, the company I worked for outsourced my job to a vendor, and they let a lot of us who had been there for years and years go, figuring that they could get our jobs done by less expensive employees. By that point, I was really OK with that. A couple of other life changes led Diane to make a move into real estate sales, and about a year later, not liking what I was finding in the job market, I followed her into the business. Seemed like an interesting way of filling my days.
And interesting it is. In spades. Selling houses is one of the most challenging, difficult, and occasionally infuriating enterprises that you can find. Especially now, with REO's dominating the market and the lending side of the equation being as turbulent as it is. Every deal is different, and they're all white-knuckle rides all the way to the end. And you know what? I wouldn't do anything else. And a while back, I realized why that is. I actually care about what I do for a living now. It's part of me. It's who I am.
Ask anybody who sells real estate what their favorite days are, and most of us will tell you it's closing day. And for those of us who really love this, it's not just because we get paid (although that's a good thing, too). It's because we've just gotten a nervous client through a stressful period in their life. It's because we get to hand the keys to those first time buyers that we've been working with for over a year while they worked out some credit issues. There's a sense of accomplishment on closing day that I'd never gotten before, even at the end of a big project, or after I had solved a particularly vexing problem at work.
About a year ago, we hosted a morning at the movies the weekend before Thanksgiving. We didn't get that planned in time for the same time this year, but we hope to put together another one pretty soon. I told the crowd at the movie then that it was appropriate that we were doing that right before Thanksgiving, because it was our way of thanking them for their business and referrals. I told them that when you get to do what you love, every day is Thanksgiving.
And that's my wish for everyone. May every day be Thanksgiving for you.
I'm a lucky guy. I'm not going to sit here and list all the things that I'm thankful for, because you'd stop reading after the first few pages. Heck, I'm married to Diane. 'Nuff said. Suffice it to say that I'm loving life, and I hope that comes through once in a while. What I want to tell you about today is why I'm thankful for my chosen profession.
I worked for 18 years doing computer support in a large corporate environment. It was an OK way to make a living. The money was good, had some good benefits, I was getting 4 weeks of paid vacation every year. But truth be told, while I didn't hate my job, I never really loved it. It was just something I did for money. I knew a lot of people in that field who really did love it - major techie geeks, couldn't get enough of it. I just wasn't one of them.
I watched the corporate culture change a lot over the years, and it got more cut-throat and less employee friendly with every passing year. Maybe that's not true; maybe I just tuned into it more as time went along. Coming up on about 6 years ago, the company I worked for outsourced my job to a vendor, and they let a lot of us who had been there for years and years go, figuring that they could get our jobs done by less expensive employees. By that point, I was really OK with that. A couple of other life changes led Diane to make a move into real estate sales, and about a year later, not liking what I was finding in the job market, I followed her into the business. Seemed like an interesting way of filling my days.
And interesting it is. In spades. Selling houses is one of the most challenging, difficult, and occasionally infuriating enterprises that you can find. Especially now, with REO's dominating the market and the lending side of the equation being as turbulent as it is. Every deal is different, and they're all white-knuckle rides all the way to the end. And you know what? I wouldn't do anything else. And a while back, I realized why that is. I actually care about what I do for a living now. It's part of me. It's who I am.
Ask anybody who sells real estate what their favorite days are, and most of us will tell you it's closing day. And for those of us who really love this, it's not just because we get paid (although that's a good thing, too). It's because we've just gotten a nervous client through a stressful period in their life. It's because we get to hand the keys to those first time buyers that we've been working with for over a year while they worked out some credit issues. There's a sense of accomplishment on closing day that I'd never gotten before, even at the end of a big project, or after I had solved a particularly vexing problem at work.
About a year ago, we hosted a morning at the movies the weekend before Thanksgiving. We didn't get that planned in time for the same time this year, but we hope to put together another one pretty soon. I told the crowd at the movie then that it was appropriate that we were doing that right before Thanksgiving, because it was our way of thanking them for their business and referrals. I told them that when you get to do what you love, every day is Thanksgiving.
And that's my wish for everyone. May every day be Thanksgiving for you.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Monday Morning Numbers 11/23/09
Good morning, welcome to a new week. Traditionally one of the shortest work weeks of the year, which I'm sure makes many of you happy. I always like this week, because it's the last few days of refuge from the non-stop barrage of Christmas music on the radio. I rarely listen to the radio during the rest of the year anyway, except that there's one in the office. And for whatever reason, I always seem to be around the office a lot between Thanksgiving & Christmas. My only prayer is that I can escape the season without getting subjected to "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer". Anyway, strap yourselves in for another exciting MMN thrill ride:
Active Listings: 71
Contingent Listings: 55
Pending Listings: 48 (27.6% of the inventory)
New listings: 14
Months of inventory: 3.7
Click here for an updated price per square foot chart.
We got a nice little bump in our active inventory this week with those 14 new listings. It's still very thin, but that's a move in the right direction for anyone trying to find a home to buy. 8 of those 14 new listings for the week are REO's, so it appears that some of that small backlog that I've been tracking for the past few weeks is starting to break loose. Our months of inventory still remains low, in large part because the 3 month sales number that I use to calculate it is at 102, which is a high point for the year.
I think that I'll have something a little different for you later this week.
Active Listings: 71
Contingent Listings: 55
Pending Listings: 48 (27.6% of the inventory)
New listings: 14
Months of inventory: 3.7
Click here for an updated price per square foot chart.
We got a nice little bump in our active inventory this week with those 14 new listings. It's still very thin, but that's a move in the right direction for anyone trying to find a home to buy. 8 of those 14 new listings for the week are REO's, so it appears that some of that small backlog that I've been tracking for the past few weeks is starting to break loose. Our months of inventory still remains low, in large part because the 3 month sales number that I use to calculate it is at 102, which is a high point for the year.
I think that I'll have something a little different for you later this week.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Hey, look! Another REO update!
You come to look at a real estate blog, you're gonna get some REO action now and then. It's been a couple of months since I did an update on what our REO activity looks like, so I figure I'm due for another one.
Not a lot has changed since the last update in terms of percentage of the market. As of today, 27.1% of our active listings are bank owned. That seems to be a pretty stable number, although the inventory is turning over rapidly. Despite accounting for only around a quarter of the active listings, though, REO's account for 44.7% of the listings in our MLS so far this year. What that tells you is that for the most part, they don't stay on the market very long. In fact, the median days on market for a sold REO this year has been 22 days, versus 53 days for non-REO's.
REO listings continue to account for most of our sales. 60.5% of sales this year have been REO's. That number might be trending down a little, as 57.4% of our sales in the past three months have been REO's, and only 53% of our pending sales are REO's. That trend may not hold if we start to see an increase in REO listings, however. I have some thoughts on that further down the page.
A couple of months ago, I posted a chart that outlines what's going on with homes in the foreclosure process. I pulled the data from Foreclosure Radar, and they've since updated the way that they track active auctions. I like the new way better - it looks more in line with the actual numbers that I've been seeing for unresolved trustee sales. So I've fixed my chart now to reflect that. What you'll see here is that over the past several months, there's some fluctuation in the number of notices of defaults and trustee sales, and the number of properties going back to the bank. There's not a strong trend in these numbers, although you could make a case for a slight upward trend over the past year. There's one easily identifiable trend, however. Do you see it? The red line? That's active auctions. What that's telling us is that we've got a growing backlog of unresolved trustee sales. I've written about this a few times. What we've been seeing more of than anything in recent months at the courthouse steps is postponements. Some cancellations, a fairly stable rate of properties going back to the bank, and a metric ****load of postponements. So that red line is going higher and higher. As of today, we have 146 unresolved trustee sales, which is actually down a little bit.
One of the things I've mentioned on a couple of Monday mornings in recent weeks was a growing backlog of unlisted REO inventory - properties that had gone back to the bank, but hadn't yet been put on the market. There's always going to be some backlog of these. In some cases we see properties get listed within a couple of weeks of the foreclosure date, but in some cases it takes months. We had seen that backlog grow to the mid-60's a few weeks ago, but it's back down to about 60 today, which is kind of on the high end of the normal range. We'll probably start to see some more inventory coming out of that over he next few weeks, and in fact, we probably already have seen some increase in listings from it. That's probably a good thing.
At some point, as I've said before, those unresolved trustee sales are going to resolve one way or another. Some of them are going to cancel, but most of them are probably going to go back to the bank and get listed as REO's. It's not going to happen overnight, and there aren't enough of them at this point to reset the market. The thing to watch moving forward is the active sales line on the chart. If it flattens out, or starts to trend down, it might be a sign that the tides will change, and short sales will probably start to take a bigger share of the market until values increase. If it keeps moving north, then we're probably in the REO market for a good while longer.
Not a lot has changed since the last update in terms of percentage of the market. As of today, 27.1% of our active listings are bank owned. That seems to be a pretty stable number, although the inventory is turning over rapidly. Despite accounting for only around a quarter of the active listings, though, REO's account for 44.7% of the listings in our MLS so far this year. What that tells you is that for the most part, they don't stay on the market very long. In fact, the median days on market for a sold REO this year has been 22 days, versus 53 days for non-REO's.
REO listings continue to account for most of our sales. 60.5% of sales this year have been REO's. That number might be trending down a little, as 57.4% of our sales in the past three months have been REO's, and only 53% of our pending sales are REO's. That trend may not hold if we start to see an increase in REO listings, however. I have some thoughts on that further down the page.
A couple of months ago, I posted a chart that outlines what's going on with homes in the foreclosure process. I pulled the data from Foreclosure Radar, and they've since updated the way that they track active auctions. I like the new way better - it looks more in line with the actual numbers that I've been seeing for unresolved trustee sales. So I've fixed my chart now to reflect that. What you'll see here is that over the past several months, there's some fluctuation in the number of notices of defaults and trustee sales, and the number of properties going back to the bank. There's not a strong trend in these numbers, although you could make a case for a slight upward trend over the past year. There's one easily identifiable trend, however. Do you see it? The red line? That's active auctions. What that's telling us is that we've got a growing backlog of unresolved trustee sales. I've written about this a few times. What we've been seeing more of than anything in recent months at the courthouse steps is postponements. Some cancellations, a fairly stable rate of properties going back to the bank, and a metric ****load of postponements. So that red line is going higher and higher. As of today, we have 146 unresolved trustee sales, which is actually down a little bit.
One of the things I've mentioned on a couple of Monday mornings in recent weeks was a growing backlog of unlisted REO inventory - properties that had gone back to the bank, but hadn't yet been put on the market. There's always going to be some backlog of these. In some cases we see properties get listed within a couple of weeks of the foreclosure date, but in some cases it takes months. We had seen that backlog grow to the mid-60's a few weeks ago, but it's back down to about 60 today, which is kind of on the high end of the normal range. We'll probably start to see some more inventory coming out of that over he next few weeks, and in fact, we probably already have seen some increase in listings from it. That's probably a good thing.
At some point, as I've said before, those unresolved trustee sales are going to resolve one way or another. Some of them are going to cancel, but most of them are probably going to go back to the bank and get listed as REO's. It's not going to happen overnight, and there aren't enough of them at this point to reset the market. The thing to watch moving forward is the active sales line on the chart. If it flattens out, or starts to trend down, it might be a sign that the tides will change, and short sales will probably start to take a bigger share of the market until values increase. If it keeps moving north, then we're probably in the REO market for a good while longer.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Monday Morning Numbers 11/16/09
Good morning everyone! Last week was as crazy as we anticipated, and this week looks to be another one. Hey, if I want stability and a predictable schedule, I need to go find another job. I can't even fathom doing that anymore...
Let's look at this week's market stats:
Active Listings: 59
Contingent Listings: 59
Pending Listings: 55 (31.8% of the inventory)
New listings: 10
Months of inventory: 3.6
Click here for an updated price per square foot chart.
No big changes this week from last week. It looks like our backlog of unlisted REO properties is continuing to grow, which probably indicates that we should see new listings increase in the coming weeks. It's been a couple of months since I updated REO activity, so I'll do that later this week for my "Focus On" post.
Let's look at this week's market stats:
Active Listings: 59
Contingent Listings: 59
Pending Listings: 55 (31.8% of the inventory)
New listings: 10
Months of inventory: 3.6
Click here for an updated price per square foot chart.
No big changes this week from last week. It looks like our backlog of unlisted REO properties is continuing to grow, which probably indicates that we should see new listings increase in the coming weeks. It's been a couple of months since I updated REO activity, so I'll do that later this week for my "Focus On" post.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Focus On Mission Hills
It's time to take a look at our activity in one of our entry-level areas, Mission Hills. For a little background on the area, check out the first post I did on the area earlier this year.
Most areas in our market have been thin on inventory, and this area is razor thin at the moment, with one lonely active listing at the moment, a traditional seller. If you want to take a flyer at putting in a backup offer on a contingent listing in the area, you have two of those to choose from, both short sales. Waiting for the "tidal wave" of REO listings to shake something loose here? I hope you're patient - we only have two unlisted REO properties, and five unresolved Trustee's Sales in the wings.
Because there haven't been a lot of listings to sell this year, the sales activity has been tepid at best. We have 4 pending sales in the area right now, 3 REO's and 1 traditional seller. And that's exactly the same number for our three month sales: 3 REO's and 1 traditional seller. Such beauty in the symmetry...
Last time I covered this area, I had noted that it looks like values have been holding, and that still appears to be true. This area remains the bargain entry into some school districts that are well regarded, and these homes rent well, which make them attractive to investors. If inventory remains this low, and it looks like it probably will for a while, we should see some very stable, and perhaps slightly appreciating values here in the coming months.
Most areas in our market have been thin on inventory, and this area is razor thin at the moment, with one lonely active listing at the moment, a traditional seller. If you want to take a flyer at putting in a backup offer on a contingent listing in the area, you have two of those to choose from, both short sales. Waiting for the "tidal wave" of REO listings to shake something loose here? I hope you're patient - we only have two unlisted REO properties, and five unresolved Trustee's Sales in the wings.
Because there haven't been a lot of listings to sell this year, the sales activity has been tepid at best. We have 4 pending sales in the area right now, 3 REO's and 1 traditional seller. And that's exactly the same number for our three month sales: 3 REO's and 1 traditional seller. Such beauty in the symmetry...
Last time I covered this area, I had noted that it looks like values have been holding, and that still appears to be true. This area remains the bargain entry into some school districts that are well regarded, and these homes rent well, which make them attractive to investors. If inventory remains this low, and it looks like it probably will for a while, we should see some very stable, and perhaps slightly appreciating values here in the coming months.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Monday Morning Numbers 11/9/09
Good morning! We had a rare weekend off (more or less - it's kind of hard not to work at all in this profession), which is good, because we're looking at what promises to be a crazy week ahead. Let's take a look at our market numbers this morning:
Active Listings: 61
Contingent Listings: 55
Pending Listings: 55 (32.2% of the inventory)
New listings: 9
Months of inventory: 3.5
Click here for an updated price per square foot chart.
The number of active listings went back up a little bit this week, so our inventory is a little less anemic than it was last week. It's still incredibly low, and we didn't exactly have a big influx of new listings.
Later this week I'll take a fresh look at Mission Hills activity.
Active Listings: 61
Contingent Listings: 55
Pending Listings: 55 (32.2% of the inventory)
New listings: 9
Months of inventory: 3.5
Click here for an updated price per square foot chart.
The number of active listings went back up a little bit this week, so our inventory is a little less anemic than it was last week. It's still incredibly low, and we didn't exactly have a big influx of new listings.
Later this week I'll take a fresh look at Mission Hills activity.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Focus On Newer Construction
Another crazy week, so here I am pushing off my "Focus On" post to the weekend again...
This week we're due to take a look at the activity on newer homes. As a refresher, what I mean by "newer home" is a house (not including condos) built in 2000 or later. I'm only including resale homes in this category, so homes that are being sold by the builders are excluded.
Most of these homes were sold at or near the peak of the market, back in the days of easy credit. So not surprisingly, the big bulk of these resales are distressed properties. Our inventory has been thinned out pretty much across the board, and these homes are no exception. We only have 3 active listings at the moment, 2 short sales and a traditional seller. We have 5 of them in contingent status, 4 short sales and 1 REO.
Sale activity has been pretty good on these units. We currently have 6 pending sales, with 3 REO's, 2 short sales, and one traditional seller. Over the past three months, we've had 8 sold units, with 5 REO's, 2 short sales, and 1 traditional seller.
On limited data points, it appears that these prices have been pretty flat for the past several months. These homes are above the price level that is our most active, but they do tend to sell pretty quickly. These types of homes used to be almost all move-up buyers, but those types of buyers have been rare in this market, so what we're seeing more of now is first time buyers with somewhat higher incomes buying these homes. The general rule of thumb is that newer homes hold their value better in down cycles, and appreciate better in up cycles, and that's probably going to be true here. I expect that when we start to see appreciation, these homes will do better than the market average.
This week we're due to take a look at the activity on newer homes. As a refresher, what I mean by "newer home" is a house (not including condos) built in 2000 or later. I'm only including resale homes in this category, so homes that are being sold by the builders are excluded.
Most of these homes were sold at or near the peak of the market, back in the days of easy credit. So not surprisingly, the big bulk of these resales are distressed properties. Our inventory has been thinned out pretty much across the board, and these homes are no exception. We only have 3 active listings at the moment, 2 short sales and a traditional seller. We have 5 of them in contingent status, 4 short sales and 1 REO.
Sale activity has been pretty good on these units. We currently have 6 pending sales, with 3 REO's, 2 short sales, and one traditional seller. Over the past three months, we've had 8 sold units, with 5 REO's, 2 short sales, and 1 traditional seller.
On limited data points, it appears that these prices have been pretty flat for the past several months. These homes are above the price level that is our most active, but they do tend to sell pretty quickly. These types of homes used to be almost all move-up buyers, but those types of buyers have been rare in this market, so what we're seeing more of now is first time buyers with somewhat higher incomes buying these homes. The general rule of thumb is that newer homes hold their value better in down cycles, and appreciate better in up cycles, and that's probably going to be true here. I expect that when we start to see appreciation, these homes will do better than the market average.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Monday Morning Numbers 11/2/09
Good morning everybody! I started fighting a cold in the middle of last week, so I'm working on getting out of my NyQuil coma with an extra cup of coffee this morning. So far the NyQuil is winning. That's some evil stuff. But if you want a good 12 hours of sleep, it's your ticket to La La Land. Anyway, let's look at some numbers:
Active Listings: 54
Contingent Listings: 58
Pending Listings: 60 (34.9% of the inventory)
New listings: 4
Months of inventory: 3.5
Click here for an updated price per square foot chart.
Inventory continues to slide a little bit, and we saw a handful of closings at the end of the month, which is pretty typical. Our unlisted REO properties are up to about 59 today, which is on the high side of normal, so I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see new listings increase a little in the next couple of weeks.
Later this week I'll cover activity on newer homes.
Active Listings: 54
Contingent Listings: 58
Pending Listings: 60 (34.9% of the inventory)
New listings: 4
Months of inventory: 3.5
Click here for an updated price per square foot chart.
Inventory continues to slide a little bit, and we saw a handful of closings at the end of the month, which is pretty typical. Our unlisted REO properties are up to about 59 today, which is on the high side of normal, so I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see new listings increase a little in the next couple of weeks.
Later this week I'll cover activity on newer homes.
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