Archive for the 'Local Market Updates' Category
Everyone, okay maybe not everyone but a great number of homeowners and prospective homeowners in Northern Virginia are keeping a close eye on the Northern Virginia real estate market. In general the area has seen some signs of delicate recovery.
Last week I took a look at look specifically at Woodbridge inventory in Prince William County for January 2010. Each area in Northern Virginia has different numbers and if you are thinking of buying or selling a home looking at the specifics for your neighborhood is important.
The following video from the local MRIS and Market Watch gives their take on the market as of the end of January 2010. Video has music and voice so watch the speaker volume.
If you are thinking of buying or selling a home in Northern Virginia give me a call at 703-346-2213 to talk about the specifics for your neighborhood or the area you are considering buying. Let’s see if the numbers work for you.
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Is Woodbridge Inventory Low or Are We Imagining It?
February 26th, 2010 Categories: Focus on Prince William, Local Market Updates
There is constant chatter among agents and buyers that the inventory for detached homes in Prince William County is at an “all time low.”
Though Woodbridge inventory for detached homes and townhouse is down from the 2008 and 2009 it isn’t at an “all time low” for this decade.
What makes the lower inventory harder for Prince William County buyers to take is that of the 218 detached home listing posted in the MRIS in January only 128 of those listings are for “regular” sales (not a short sale or foreclosure.) Townhouses are hit even harder with only 50 of the January listings carrying the regular sale tag.
For buyers who are hoping to get a home under contract by the April 30th deadline for the extended tax credit and settled by the June 30th the low inventory means moving quickly when new listings come on the market. But remember don’t make a hasty decision that you may later regret. Make sure you are writing your best offer and including the right contingencies designed to protect you.
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When the market was sizzling hot in 2003-2005 buyers and their agents worked hard to come up with creative ways to get their offers noticed. Escalation clauses, waiving contingencies and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies arrived with hand delivered offers.
During 2006-2008 the market changed and the buyers had the upper hand. Lowball offers, multiple contingencies and starving agents were the norm. Now here we are three quarters of the way through 2009 and we are back to multiple offers again.
There is a rule of thumb (I have no idea who made the rule) that if the available inventory in an area is below 6 months then we are in a “sellers market” and above that number we are in a “buyers market.” If that true then we have made a dramatic turn and are back in a seller’s market. According the reports for July 09, Northern Virginia currently has a 3.62 month supply of homes.
Add to the dwindling inventory the prices are starting to creep up as well. Investors who snapped up the homes no one else wanted are now flipping those properties back on the market at double what they paid for them. Does this mean that sellers truly have the upper hand again? No but it does mean that buyers need to think twice about trying to play the wait and see on a home they really like. It also means that seller may not be inclined to give away the store when it comes to accepting an offer.
Personally I’m hoping we end this roller coaster soon and find some balance. We need a market where deals can be made without a winner or loser.
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According to NVAR ( Northern Virginia Association of Realtors) the volume of home sales in April edged upwards by 6.12% from a year ago. Better yet pending home sales are up 24.8%. With inventory numbers still lower than anticipated, low interest rates and for some the option of the $8000 tax credit some buyers who had been waiting for the “bottom” have decided to make a move.
Housing Inventory
The second source of data for the Northern Virginia area is the monthly report produced by MRIS. The April housing statistics were released this week and they also show the Days on Market has dropped as well as a leveling off of prices in some areas.
Three of my listings in April all received MULTIPLE OFFERS! Now what may have helped is that all of them were regular sales, something that seems to be rare in our current market. We are in an unusal market for Northern Virginia and there are opportunities for savvy buyers.
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Let the Bidding Wars Begin Again in Prince William County
April 12th, 2009 Categories: Focus on Prince William, Local Market Updates
Have the prices in PW County (VA) finally hit bottom? Have the lower interest rates sparked new interest in home ownership? Has the $8000 tax credit finally gotten buyers off the fence?
Whatever has happened the bidding wars to buy lower priced properties in Prince William County are back and going to strong. Look at this list of current list to sales prices for townhouses in the Lake Ridge neighborhood.
List Price Sold Price
$87,900 $125,000
$97,900 $135,576
$119,000 $128,000
$128,900 $145,000
$125,900 $150,000
$139,900 $159,900
$139,900 $160,000
$149,900 $160,225
$144,900 $175,000
This past week I spent a good deal of time searching for properties for a buyer and one property on our must see list have 5 offers on it in 3 days and another one had 15. In the agent remarks we see the comments “multiple offers received”, “best and final only”, “contracts sent to the lender” and “no more offers being considered.”
The good news is that this is going to have a positive impact on prices this spring and we should see the list prices for foreclosures start to be more in line with true market prices. This will help “regular” sale and possibly short sales as well. It also means if you are a buyer you need to have your mortgage paperwork in order and be ready to make an offer on the property you want.
Lowball offers are dead!
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PW County Inventory-What’s Missing from our Numbers
March 19th, 2009 Categories: Focus on Prince William, Local Market Updates
Currently the MRIS data shows that the number of new listings in our area is down. This chart shows Prince William County inventory for Feb 2009 as compared to Feb 2008.
Okay this should be good news. However along with every set of data comes the back story.
In the case of lower inventory some of that back story has to do with foreclosure listings. Last fall Freddie Mac along with other lenders put a moratorium on new foreclosure proceedings until the economic stimulus packages worked their way through Congress. Only those properties that had already been through the foreclosure process made their way to the MLS and not even all of those have been listed.
For example one agent in my office who handles Freddie Mac foreclosures has just now received the go ahead to list a few of the properties that had been through the foreclosure process last October and November. Even more interesting is that in one case the owner of the property is still living in the property five months after the foreclosure. A quick look through RealtyTrac.com shows a few hundred properties with the title transfers to a lender, yet none of them have made it to the market. A recent Friday Washington Post showed close to 300 Trustee Sales at the PW Courthouse alone and those properties haven’t hit the market yet either.
At some point many of those properties that have been in a holding pattern for the last three to five months will make their way to the spring market. Add to those the properties where tenants have been living with their lender landlords and you begin to see when the foreclosure moratorium is lifted that we could have a huge influx of new foreclosures on the market.
Hopefully the lenders are looking at the impact of how unleashing all of these listings at one time could devastate an already fragile Prince William County market. If they don’t consider a staggered release of this pent up inventory we could be facing another significant drop in prices, creating even more problems for those sellers in the middle of trying to refinance their homes.
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Northern Virginia Market Reports-Get the Data Right
October 7th, 2008 Categories: Buyers Corner, Local Market Updates, Real Estate Ramblings
We hear the doom and gloom on the real estate market everyday on the news. We remind ourselves and our clients regularly that all real estate is local and what they read in the Wall Street Journal may not translate to their neighborhood. So when we make the decision to post a market report about our own area don’t we have a duty to make sure that the data we post is accurate? Will our market reports picked up by Google and spread throughout the blogosphere create more concerns if they are inaccurate?
Recently I’ve been doing some “fact checking” on local market reports posted on a variety of blogs across the Northern Virginia area and found some major discrepancies in market data. We tend to forget that most of the data we have access to ourselves is also now available to the average person with a computer. So not only can other agents “fact check” our market reports but so can a savvy buyer or seller. I often check the MLS sales data against the local county tax records something that anyone can do. Not all sales are reflected in the MLS at the time they happen. New home sales may not appear until the end of the year, if an agent was involved and never if there was no agent involved. The same is true with FSBO transactions. Then you get into the naming conventions in a neighborhood. Not all agents know that what might look like one neighborhood in a basic MLS search might actually be multiple sections of a neighborhood with different names.
If we are going to post a market report are we ready to stand behind our data. If a consumer reads our reports and asks the question how accurate is our report can we provide the data to back it up? If market reports are close then it would be easy to say that it was the time that the agent compiled their data but if they are significantly different how do they decide who is right? Recently I came across a market report that showed only one townhouse sale in a Prince William neighborhood in 2008 and only two currently on the market. Since I had sold a townhouse in the neighborhood I knew that data wasn’t correct. In fact 18 townhouses have sold in the neighborhood in 2008 and 4 under contract. That is not an insignficant difference in data.
If as agents we want to help stem some of the fears of our clients and our prospective clients then we need to be diligent that the data we post is accurate. No one is expecting us to be statisticians and get every analysis dead on. I took two semesters of statistics in graduate school and there is not way I’m going to even come close to knowing all the formulas needed to compile 100% accurate variables. However, consumers do rely on us for basic accurate information and if we don’t get that right then we need to be ready for a long cold winter.
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Marketing Reports-The Paul Harvey View
October 3rd, 2008 Categories: Buyers Corner, Local Market Updates
I rarely post market reports. On occasion when an area is on the rise or on a steep decline as the market in Prince William County has been over the last year it is interesting to post a perspective. The reason I don’t post many market reports is because they don’t tell the whole story about a community and can often lead to confusion. As Paul Harvey would say ” and now for the rest of the story.”
A perfect example of how a market report can confuse buyers and sellers is to look at Belmont Bay in Prince William County. To date in 2008 there have been 19 settled condo transactions in the neighborhood. Six of those transactions are new construction either in HarborSide or River Club 2 and the other 13 are spread out in the other condo buildings in the neighborhood.
Prices have ranged from a low of $237,000 to a high of $490,000. This is obviously a wide range and it would lead a buyer to question why would anyone pay $490,000 for a condo when you could buy one for $237,000? The difference between the two units is significant and unravels the story of the price difference. The unit that sold at $237,000 was a ground floor condo in foreclosure. The only view that this unit has is of a street and a small view of the community tennis courts on the side. It does not have a balcony and due to its location provides absolutely no privacy for the owner. In fact the previous tenants who lived in the property said they were never able to open their blinds so it was like living in a cave.
The highest priced unit at $490,000 sits on the top floor with views of the Belmont Bay Marina and Occoquan River. It has light all the time and a balcony with terrific views. The owners could leave their blinds open 24 x 7 if they wanted and no one is going to be walking by peering in their window at any time day or night. Each of the other condos that have sold can tell similar stories. Since I have sold 6 condos in the neighborhood this year and been in all of the ones for sale I could easily describe the differences.
If I posted a market report that is only based on number of units sold and the price range of those units I’ve only told you part of the story. When I break it down to tell you the differences in the units, the differences in the amenities in the buildings and the differences in the views then the picture becomes a whole lot clearer.
Thanks Paul Harvey for always reminding us that there is another part to every story. In the case of market reports the true picture of a neighborhood goes deeper than the latest MLS statistics.
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What is Hot in Northern Virginia Besides the Weather?
June 13th, 2008 Categories: Buyers Corner, Focus on Prince William, Local Market Updates, NOVA Foreclosures
Sales in Prince William County would be the answer. Sales may be stagnant in other parts of Northern Virginia but buyers are flocking south to Prince William to take advantage of the lower prices and great bargains in the area.
Check out the total sales comparisons between 2007 and 2008 in two zip codes in Prince William County.
So why the sudden interest in Prince William County? Obviously it is due to the significant price drop which has happened over the past year.
Neighborhoods in 22191 include both the newer subdivisions of Port Potomac, Belmont Bay, Rippon Landing and River Oaks. Older neighborhoods such as Georgetown Village, Marumsco Woods and Newport have been some of the hardest hit with foreclosures. Neighborhoods in 22193 include Dale City, Lake Terrapin, Winding Creek Estates and Pearsons Landing.
Does this mean that Prince William County is out of the woods yet? No as there are still a significant number of properties for sale and there is anticipation that more foreclosures will be coming on the market through the summer. However as new properties are listed the expectation is that we will see additional price reductions in certain neighborhoods in Prince William County creating even more values for savvy home buyers.
For investors, who are looking to buy and hold for a few years, and particularly buyers who are looking for a new home that falls well within the limits of a FHA or VA loan there are terrific homes and neighborhoods to explore. From the starter home in Lake Ridge to the luxury mansion in Haymarket you can find a deal in Prince William County.
If you are interested in exploring your options in Northern Virginia give me a call. I’ll travel the highways and back roads of Prince William County looking for a deal for you.
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Will the Fed Rate Cut Help Home Sales?
September 19th, 2007 Categories: Local Market Updates, Real Estate Ramblings
My immediate reaction to the announcement of the ½ point cut in the Federal is SO WHAT?
I think it is unreasonable to expect to see a major rush of buyers applying for new loans due to this cut. The people who will benefit immediately may be those who have adjustable rate mortgages that were ready to change. And I say maybe because just because the Feds have cut the rate doesn’t necessarily mean that your mortgage company will pass any savings on to you.
We all hope that this announcement will begin to stir positive press and better news for the local housing market. In the meantime if you know your rate is scheduled to adjust and you are struggling to make your payments now is the time to pick up the phone and make a call to your mortgage company. Don’t assume that this announcement is going to work in your favor. Be proactive. Your mortgage company would rather work with you than own your house!
Here is a quick run down from USA Today on the impact on the rate cut:
Credit cards. Most banks peg credit card rates to the prime rate, which fell to 7.75% after the Fed’s rate cut Tuesday. But you might not get a lower rate for one to three more billing cycles, depending on when and how often your bank resets rates.
Fixed-rate mortgages. Average rates fell to 6.31% last week, down from 6.74% in June. It’s hard to say if rates will fall further because fixed mortgage rates typically follow the 10-year Treasury note’s yield, which was unchanged Tuesday at 4.47%.
Adjustable-rate mortgages. About half of ARM rates follow the yields on short-term Treasuries, which fell Tuesday. The three-month T-bill yield, for example, fell to 3.94%. If your ARM is tied to Treasuries, your rate won’t rise as much as it would have if the Fed hadn’t cut rates. ARMs pegged to the London Interbank Offered Rate might not get much relief. Most subprime loans — higher-rate loans taken out by people with poor credit — are tied to LIBOR. LIBOR has remained high because many banks remain reluctant to lend. Those willing to lend demand higher rates to account for today’s risky credit markets.
Savings rates. Yields on money market mutual funds closely follow the fed funds rate and should fall half a percentage point in the next few weeks. Rates on bank CDs may fall less, because banks are bidding aggressively for consumer deposits.
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