Chris Loeliger
Windermere Real Estate/S.C.A., Inc
Chris Loeliger | Direct: 425-785-9217 | Email: cloeliger@windermere.com
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The Latest Numbers
Posted on March 6, 2009
The NWMLS released the statistics for the month of February. I thought I would share some of them with you. It's not all bad.
| King County Statistics, Residential | |||
| February 2009 | Last February | Last month | |
| New Listings | 2736 | 3256 | 3149 |
| Total Active Listings | 9525 | 9875 | 9006 |
| Pending Listings | 1264 | 1609 | 1159 |
| Closed Listings | 661 | 1148 | 674 |
| Average Sold Price | $473,517 | $531,447 | $453,118 |
| Median Sold Price | $375,000 | $429,900 | $382,500 |
| Average Time on Market | 87 Days | 81 Days | 89 Days |
I'll tell you straight up that the prices are not what interest me the most. Sure, they are critical. However, they are what they are at this point in time. We are all looking to the future for better news. With that in mind, I think the various listing numbers and days on market numbers are of more importance to me. They will determine how the market and prices behave in the future.
I love that the February new listings are down compared to both last year and last month. This is a time of year that the sellers are looking to get their houses on the market for a sale prior to the summer. Seeing a smaller number of new listings on the market is encouraging from the supply and demand perspective. The total number of listings is higher than last month, but lower than this time last year which is a bit conflicting. However, the number I like the most though is the number of listings that are pending. Not all of these will close in the next 30 days, but it is a great indicator of how many homes may close in the next 30 days. Compare the number of pendings, 1264, to the number of closed units, 661. This is a great direction for the market to be going and reflects the increased activity level I am seeing from my clients day to day. The average time on market has also begun to come down slightly since last month. It is a small change... but I'll take it as it is, again, a good trend.
I pulled up the same set of numbers for the East of Lake Sammamish area as well.
| East of Lake Sammamish (Area 540), Residential | |||
| February 2009 | Last February | Last month | |
| New Listings | 192 | 256 | 225 |
| Total Active Listings | 774 | 814 | 725 |
| Pending Listings | 64 | 134 | 77 |
| Closed Listings | 53 | 100 | 40 |
| Average Sold Price | $595,630 | $637,500 | $536,967 |
| Median Sold Price | $464,701 | $597,444 | $495,000 |
| Average Time on Market | 124 Days | 79 Days | 99 Days |
The trends here at this detail level are pretty consistent with King County as a whole. The exception to me is the number of pending listings. That number is down from both last year and last month and indicates we might see a smaller number of closings next month. Similarly, the average time on market is higher which is not a trend I like at all.
Got an area that you would like me to pull the detailed numbers for? Just shoot me an email or give me a call and I'll jump on it.
Post a Comment : Author: Chris Loeliger
Banks, Heal Thyself!
Posted on February 5, 2009
As my broker will tell you... I can talk. I can talk about almost anything. While he gets on my case about it, there is a positive side to it. I talk to my colleagues daily about what they are seeing in the market. What are the new trends? The hidden gotchas? The daily frustrations? What great houses have they seen lately? What agent made a goofy mistake in entering a listing in the MLS?
Anything.
I also sit on the Windermere Standards of Practice board where we, you guessed it, talk. We talk primarily about how to make ourselves and Windermere better agents and better brokerages. About six to eight months ago the question of short sales, bank owned properties, and foreclosures was almost a non-issue. At that time, very few (if any) of the agents on that board were specifically targeting distressed homes in the business practices.
However, there has been a change in the market and, not surprisingly, in my conversations. Both in my day to day chats with colleagues and on the Standards of Practice board the conversation has definitely changed to how to deal with these properties. What that really means is that we have a conversation on how to deal with the banks that hold the loan.
You see, the sad part of this is that the owners of these properties are no longer making the decisions about selling their own properties anymore. The banks are making the decision... sort of. Check this story out. (The complete CNNMoney.com article can be found here.)
One example of how price declines can doom a short sale occurred recently in Phoenix. Curtis Johnson, a real estate broker there, worked with a health care worker whose hours were being cut and who could no longer afford her mortgage. She fell behind and decided to sell.
Johnson was able to find a buyer willing to pay $183,000, and got an approval from the lender. The owner confidently moved out, got a new place and started a new life. But the lender folded and the mortgage went to a new servicer, who took six weeks to approve the deal.
"Unfortunately, the buyers who were approved were no longer interested because the real estate market had dropped significantly," Johnson said. "They wrote a new offer, considerably lower then the first, and it was time to start over."
Two more offers eventually fell through before a new buyer was found and the owner's bank approved the price, this time at $163,000. On the day of that closing, however, the parties discovered that the buyer's lender had run out of funds and dropped out of the deal. The home went to foreclosure auction before another sale could be arranged.
The house is now on the market for $139,900.
"[The house is] listed for less than what would have been received had the bank been willing to work with us, and still has not yet sold," Johnson said.
I have heard so many versions of this story from my colleagues. It seems most agents have now experienced this story personally in one way or another.
This is a big issue. Really big. I understand that the banks are trying to make good business decisions and get the most money they can for each bad loan. I also understand that many of the banks don't actually own the loan they are just servicing the loan and answer to investors. But, while the banks are running around not making the critical decisions the number of homes on the market continues to grow... pushing the prices down... and the cycle continues to spiral out of control.
There are actually buyers out there. So, it seems to me breaking this cycle has to start with the banks. They have got to make the critical decision in a timely manner, say overnight, or in 48 hours. No more than you would allow for a non-distressed homeowner to respond to a purchase offer. If the banks can sell these houses and get them off the market, we'll begin to see more buyers enter the market with confidence that the house they are writing an offer on will actually be sold to them and not hung up in red tape for months on end.
Just imagine what would happen to home prices and the economy if we had more houses going off the market than coming on the market...
Banks, heal thyself!
Post a Comment : Author: Chris Loeliger
Some Good News
Posted on February 4, 2009
I promised some good news after my last complete downer posting. Today, I am here to deliver. This news isn't even what I had in mind back then... but this is good stuff.
This article is a breath of fresh air:
An index that tracks signed contracts to purchase existing homes rebounded in December, as buyers snapped up properties at deep discounts, especially in the South and Midwest.It was the second positive sign in the past two weeks for the troubled U.S. housing market, and may indicate that a bottom is forming - at least for home sales.
In specific, the index of pending home sales released by the National Association of Realtors gained 6.3% from 82.5 in November to 87.7 in December. Additionally, the 87.7 reading represents a 2.1% increase from December 2007. That's right... by this measure, December of 2008 was better than December of 2007.
The index does point out that the greatest rebound is happening in the South and Midwest while the Northeast and the West are still seeing modest declines. That doesn't surprise me too much. The Northwest typically lags the national market trends. We were a little late to see the effects of the down turn and I suspect we'll be a little behind a rebound.
To look at what is going on locally, I put together these graphs from our MLS data. (Click on the image for a larger version.) This first one is the Median Price Change from the previous year in single family homes from King County. All those blue bars in the positive territory were the sweet years. Prices going up by large percentages year after year. In November of 2007 we saw it dip into negative territory representing the first loss in value from the previous year. The losses have piled up and increased through 2008. This graph only goes through December of 2008. The January 2009 data has not been released yet... but that didn't stop me from getting it myself. For all of King County it looks like prices will be down about 10.9% percent compared to January 2008. Not great news. But it is in line with what we have been seeing.
Things look better to me over on the Eastside. As compared to King County as a whole, the highs on the Eastside have been higher and the lows have not been as low. That's all good news. The Eastside also shows a more defined trend of the prices working their way out of the negative territory that they have been in recently. So, how does the Eastside look in January? Not as bad... the official numbers have only been released through December. However, I show that the Eastside numbers are down about 6.7% from last year. Again, I think this shows that there is a trend towards the prices bottoming out. We aren't there yet... but there is light at the end of the tunnel!Next up... Banks need to help themselves!
Post a Comment : Author: Chris Loeliger
Weekly Financial Outlook
Posted on January 26, 2009
Looks like this week will bring a lot of economic news. Here's Doug Ward's overview.
Post a Comment : Author: Chris Loeliger
Facts...and Not Facts
Posted on January 23, 2009
The bad news is coming in waves again. It all started with the banks, local and national. But, now it is making its way into every other industry in the area.Yesterday, it was this news about a layoff at Microsoft. Today, it was this news about a layoff at Starbucks.
No numbers have been posted for how many at Starbucks are set to lose their jobs. Over at Microsoft it looks like they have released 872 people locally and 1400 people overall. There are approximately 41,500 local employees and 96,000 worldwide for Microsoft.Those are hard numbers. Facts.
For each and everyone of those folks (and I know several) my heart goes out to you.
What does this do to the local real estate market? On the surface, I don't think it does much. Inevitably there will a few more houses to hit the market in the near future. Some will be in secure financial positions as they sell their house. Some will not be. They will be in danger of foreclosures or short sales. They will be walking away from their dream home, their friends and neighbors, and more.
But if you dig a little deeper, not to minimize the harm to those 872 families, I think there will be a bigger psychological hit to our market. Microsoft announced that there are a further 3600 jobs (not sure how many of them will be local) that will be eliminated in the next 18 months.
Overnight, not only did we lose those local jobs, but now we have an additional 3600 families that are now wondering if their job will disappear in the next 18 months. Anyone that was thinking of taking advantage of the relatively low prices and buying a home... suddenly is not very motivated to do so. No one wants to buy a house that will become a financial anchor around their necks in 18 months.
The few buyers that were out there just hunkered down a little more! That isn't a fact I can measure in hard numbers, but I think it will be just as true in the near future.
There is good news... more on that next time...
Post a Comment : Author: Chris Loeliger
When Was the Last Time...
Posted on January 16, 2009
...you heard from your Real Estate Agent?
No, really. I don't mean the flyers, postcards, or even the occasional email you may get from your agent. I mean, when was the last time you sat down to lunch with him or her? Or when was the last time they came to your doorstep and chatted with you?
I have to admit, I am not good at that myself. Although I am a very social person it just isn't in my nature to actually go to someone's doorstep and chat for 5 minutes.
That being said, over the last week or two I have been making the rounds of all of my clients from last year. I have personally met face to face with and talked with each and every one of them. I have heard about new business ventures, dysfunctional Home Owner Associations, the joy of living in the new house, everything has come out one way or another.
I vow to be in touch, face to face, with my clients more regularly!
Post a Comment : Author: Chris Loeliger
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