My neighborhood seems to be doing just fine, still, despite everyone screaming about the market. They did a lot of urban renewal in my immediate area (southeast Portland, OR), with the main road running through getting a ton of new business moving into updated old buildings. It’s cool and trendy now, as opposed to “an ok neighborhood.”
Houses sit for maybe 2 weeks before the “Pending” sign goes up. Actually, thinking about it, our house was on the market 4 hours when we bought it, and the two houses nearby that sold around the same time all sold on listing day. So I guess it is slower than before, but still not at all bad. People are still paying what I believe are bubble-bursty prices - more than double, often triple, what 5 years ago they were priced at. FWIW, my neighbor bought his house in 2002 for $179k. It sold last week for $505k, his asking price, and he did absolutely nothing to improve it. He took care of the inside, let the outside landscaping go to crap, and felled two enormous trees that just lay in the yard. I couldn’t believe it sold, let alone so quickly at that price. He didn’t even bother mowing the grass when he listed it.
I have a few friends with places for sale in the outlying neighborhoods or suburbs. Those don’t seem to be moving much. It seems like downtown and close-in neighborhoods are what people are willing to buy right now.
Southern California here. Our completely remodeled condo took nearly 4 months to sell. The major complaint was it had a detached garage (nothing we can do about that). Still, we wanted OUT–baby RuffLlama needs a yard!–so our agent pulled out all the stops. He expired then relisted the condo so the 100+ days on the market didn’t show, dropped the price 15,000, and increased the buying agent's commission to 5%. We sold 6 days after relisting. Increasing the buying agent's commission was very clever--5% is 2% more than most, and it means a lot of -starved agents were pounding down our doors. It also meant that if their client was considering two properties, their agent was motivated to push our property.
We turned around and bought a very nice home that our agent had felt was underpriced–and still got their price down another $30,000 because the market is really drying up around here. At the time, our agent said there were 266 homes on the market in our (new) city–and an average of 23 were entering escrow each month. A 10-1 ratio–yipes!
The short answer is–yes, they’re selling, but not for the overinflated prices of a year ago, and not as fast. Basically it’s a buyer’s market, so you need the right bait to attract the few fish.
There are still 5 condos in our former community on the market. One of them–also completely remodeled–wants $35,000 more than we sold ours for. Another who has completely lost his mind wants $92,000 more than anyone has EVER paid for a condo in our complex. Yeaaaaahhhh. Good luck with that. 2005 is over, man.
Greater Boston area here. I just bought a place this week, I’ve been shopping for 6-7 months but with no real rush on my part. This place is the third I’ve bid on, the other two I was outbid, at well over asking price, and I didn’t even get to bid on some that sold before the open house.
Others have been on the market for 6+ months, and I’ve seen the asking prices drop 20-40%, some more. The places that are selling quickly have great location (near the popular squares, the subway), have recently redone kitchens (granite countertops, S/S appliances), are in great shape, well stages, and have good parking. With more sellers then buyers, any one reason not to take a place lets people move on to the next. I happened to be in the same bracket as the other motivated buyers, so we competed for the few excellent choices.
Not at all. We live in a small townhouse development; there are five places for sale here that have been on the market better than a year. In the immediate neighborhood, there are at least eight houses for sale and no takers. My sister has been in the Real Estate business in St. Pete for 30+ years; she told me she hadn’t had a sale this year.
Six houses on my two block drive to the freeway and a couple of them on the block for at least 8 months. The poor couple one block over from me got screwed hardcore. They bought the house during the boom hoping to flip it and haven’t been able to sell it for over a year now. I see them working on it every once and while but it usually sits empty. Probably paying a double mortgage. He recently added siding and an asphalt driveway. On one of my jogs I stopped by and asked how much he was selling it for just out of curiousity. They guy was practically begging me to buy it.
Things have slowed in southern Maryland. Three years ago, we wrote a full-price contract on our house the very day we looked at it because prices were on the way up and nice places were being snapped up instantly. Today, there are 4 houses in our neighborhood that have been sitting for many months with multiple price drops. Thank goodness we don’t have any plans to sell.
There’s a house about 15 miles from here that’s been on the market for over a year. Built in 1954, 3BR/1BA, 1 acre - *STILL * asking $575K!! It’s on a major road across the street from a shopping center. Any wonder it’s still on the market?
Lafayette Indiana has been the slowest market for some time, so things aren’t worse than a few years ago because they were terrible then. A friend of mine told me that houses are typically going for what the person bought them for years ago or a little under.
I’m just very glad I don’t HAVE to move right now, because I’m sure I’d take a huge hit if I did.
There’s a very nice (but overpriced, IMHO) house that I drive by frequently that has been on the market for over a year.
My Chicago condo has been on the market for 10 months now. I’m by the lake, and fairly close to Wrigley, so I’m starting to think that ‘location, location, location’ mantra is complete bullshit. I’ve dropped my price $26,000 since I first listed it, and am now giving $3,000 cash at closing to the person who buys it.
The market is pretty swamped with condos right now, so the few people that are now getting qualified for loans have their complete pick of the litter.
So, no, in answer to the OP, houses are not selling in my corner. Or more importantly, my house isn’t selling. :mad:
Southern Arizona. I’ve been shopping for a long time now, and houses are just not moving around here. There are houses that have been on the market a year. I’ve seen a lot of signs go from “For Sale” to “For Rent.” Part of the problem is that prices are still way too high because people still want the prices other people were getting two years ago when prices were sky-high and average time on the market was something like 3 days. But prices are still about twice what they should be, and now that the subprime loans have dried up, that’s that many fewer buyers who can afford anything.
The market will pick up when people finally realize that their houses just aren’t worth as much as they want them to be. Buyers will be able to get loans again because everything isn’t overpriced, and things will balance out. But I think it could be a year or more before that happens.
I live in a rural central Virginia area, and the market is terrible here. My house is closing today but I first put it on the market last September or October. Some houses in the same area have been on the market over a year, so I was lucky all things considered.
The housing prices here skyrocketed a few years ago, but it seems like the prices remain high even though there are much fewer buyers now.
Happens all the time here in the desert southwest. I’ve seen the many houses relisted 3 or 4 times in 6 months, some even with the same pictures. Buyers really need to beware and do their homework. The agent showing you a property has access to all this information and is required to disclose it if you ask, but in my experience, you have to ask. I think there should be a law to make number of days on the market more transparent.
Well, the house doesn’t go bad while sitting on the market, so the only information you get from number of days on the market is an indication of how willing the seller may be to take a lower offer just to get rid of the house. If they are re-listing and re-starting the clock, that seems to be an indication from the seller that they aren’t willing to negotiate any more from the listing price than one would normally expect.
If you’re willing to offer $300K for a house, it should be worth $300K to you no matter if it were on the market for 6 days or 6 months. Whether the seller is willing to accept that offer may differ if the house has been on the market 6 days or 6 months, but that’s not information that prevents you from making your offer.
Things have slowed down up here, but it’s not tanking at all. The more expensive homes are just sitting there, but anything more middle-of-the-road is doing fine; there are a lot of people around here who want to buy but have been priced out of the market until recently. There aren’t a lot of high-salary jobs around here, so there are a lot of people who make medium money and want to buy but couldn’t (or still can’t) afford it. A lot of my friends are renters.
[hijack]I’ve heard this argument before and I really don’t agree, especially in a falling market. To me, if a house is listed for 300K and has been on the market for a long period of time, that might suggest that the seller’s price is unrealistic and the thing might only be worth 275K. I’m also going to look at comparables before I make an offer but we want all the information: how recently it sold, what it sold for and how long the current sellers have been trying to sell.
If the sellers are restarting the clock by relisting, it clearly indicates, IMO, that they want improve their negotiating position by trying to hide the fact that their house has sat unsold for as many days as it has. Otherwise, why do it?[/hijack from weary bubble area renter]
When I got my listing sheets from my agent it had the cumulative MLS history on the property. If it went on and off the market, I knew. Beside, my agent would know if this happened and tell me about it.
If a house is on the market for a long time, the owner may be burning money. In a perfect world when you don’t have other deadlines time on the market may not be a big deal, but in the real world when people need to move or pay two mortgages, or get ready for the rental season time-on-market is an important factor in determining how much to offer.
There are about 5 houses on the market in walking distance of my house in Austin. A couple have been on the market for at least 3-4 months. Making things worse is the fact that this subdivision isn’t fully built out and DR Horton is continuing to build.
This really sucks as I consider pulling up stakes and moving to Toronto.
Things in Columbus, Ohio are generally slow, based on everything I’ve read.
However, several houses (5 or 6) have been sold on my street in the past 6 months, all but one pretty quickly. One just went into contract days after being put on the market (although I imagine it’s possible the house was informally on the market earlie). One house was on the market for more than a year, went through 3 realtors as well as a FSBO stage. I think they also tried to rent it at one point. They finally sold it to a real estate agent who turned it around in about a month. I didn’t look to see how much they were asking, but I’m guessing their original price was way too high. There were two houses very close to it for sale as well (for a much shorter time). All three went within a week of each other.
I live in a very nice suburb, immediately NW of downtown Columbus.