What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

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investingdad
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What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by investingdad »

I'm curious what Bogleheads are seeing in their local housing markets. Where do you live and what are you seeing? Are existing homes moving quickly or are they languishing? Are new construction homes popping up? What kind of financing trends?

I'm about an hour northwest of Vanguard's corporate office in PA. Some random data points:

- house in a custom home neighborhood across the street from my development recently sold for about 700K, down from 900K asking after two years on the market
- homes in the 200K to 300K price range seem to be moving within 3 to 6 months of listing
- builder around me just started two spec homes in our neighborhood (spec = no buyer, building on speculation) though prior sales over last 2 years has been VERY sluggish
- some smaller homes in our zip code are selling with 100% (or more) financing

The last one surprises me, I thought lenders wouldn't go back to this but clearly they are. Our county Deed Recorder make this information readily searcheable and I keep tabs on what is happening.

My overall assessment is that the market is picking up but only if sellers are willing to move their homes for what I think is roughly equivalent to 2003 price levels.
ieee488
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by ieee488 »

In the area where my mother just sold her home, the realtors have been cold-calling.

In my area of central NJ, phase 1 of a new development sold out in one weekend.
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Hayden
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Hayden »

I am surrounded by for sale signs. Homes around $300k take 1-3 years to sell. Homes around $500k are simply not selling. I have several friends who had to leave town who gave up on selling their homes and are renting them instead. The realtors here claim that the market here is strong, but I haven't seen any evidence of that in the higher price ranges.
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steadyeddy
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by steadyeddy »

Anything under $300k sells within days--buyers are putting in offers before they have a showing. Anything up to about $500,000 sells within weeks. More expensive homes in desirable neighborhoods sell well enough, but there is a glut of McMansions in circa 2005 developments (far flung suburbs with poor amenities) on the market for roughly $800k that are simply not worth that much to buyers right now.
Last edited by steadyeddy on Thu Jun 27, 2013 9:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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mhc
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by mhc »

Where I live the median house price is $255k. Houses in this price range go in hours. Developments that started in 2008 and stalled are now being built out. It is a seller's market.

I live an hour north of Denver on the front range.
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Grt2bOutdoors
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Grt2bOutdoors »

A neighbor sold her home after 3 years on the market - original ask $699K, :shock: (that is what happens when you become :greedy) went through 3 different realtors and trying to sell it themselves before finally selling for $408K, two months ago. New owner has/is spending money - re-sided the home, and is doing an untold amount of work inside the home (DIY'ers).

Other than that, homes are not selling unless they are litterally giving them away (foreclosures). Some owners are trying the "For Sale by Owner" route but are just being plain ridiculous with ask prices - so they just sit and sit, and continue to sit. High taxes do not help in selling homes when the monthly tax amount supercedes the amount of P&I. :oops: Those who aren't selling are spending money fixing up the homes beyond regular maintanance (I wonder how much of this is truly self-financed as opposed to leveraging up?).

I also hear through the grapevine that those buying are putting down less than 20% :oops: . Some people never learn.
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Sheepdog
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Sheepdog »

I live in a smaller college town (5 institutions of higher learning)j. They and the regional hospital industries now hire the most people since so many industries left and they are having to control costs, so there is little hiring or wage increases. Housing is not growing appreciably here, except for some apartments. Existing homes are selling better, but not robust.
In Indianapolis, my closest larger city, it is reported that real estate is selling quickly, many times for full asking prices. New homes are sprouting from former farm fields once again. Developers are proposing new subdivisions to town and city boards throughout the metro area. Building permits are on pace to increase 20 percent this year from 2012 in Central Indiana, which would lead to a six-year high.

Mortgage rates are rising quite rapidly, it is written.
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raginrapids
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by raginrapids »

I live in Nashville, now in a trendy area a few miles from downtown. A historic neighborhood.

Right now, values are up, up, up. Lots of cash purchases and teardowns. Most homes are in the 300-650k range.

Good for values, bad for neighborhood character.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by mlipps »

I live in Chicago & have been looking at houses in the near-north suburbs recently, in the $100-$200k price range. When we started looking in February, houses had been lingering for months. The weekend before our wedding, May 11, we looked at 5 houses in one day. When we came back from our honeymoon, all of them had sold but one. There's suddenly next to nothing on the market. One of the houses we had looked at on the 11th sold for $187k, cash, with a list price of $165k. Sudden insanity. We're biding our time and waiting for the right house to come on the market & for interest rates to level out a little, as they seem to be changing every day now and it's a little stressful not knowing what to expect. A quarter point in interest makes as big a difference as $10k in price, so it makes it hard to know what we can really afford.
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LAlearning
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by LAlearning »

I'm not sure about 2013, but the avg home price in my neighboring city in 2012 was 800k......
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HornedToad
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by HornedToad »

Silicon Valley. House prices are up ~20%+ YoY. New townhomes around where I live went from ~700k to ~850k over the last year for less than 2000 square feet. It's crazy.
the mind bogles
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by the mind bogles »

Where I live the median house price is $255k. Houses in this price range go in hours. Developments that started in 2008 and stalled are now being built out. It is a seller's market.

I live an hour north of Denver on the front range.
Echoing this, in the Denver area the market is hot. Houses around the median price range are selling in 24 hours with multiple offers.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Mudpuppy »

There are very few listings and most listings are selling quickly if they are priced within the normal range. Prices are also slowly ticking upwards, but nothing too extreme, about a 5% increase overall (edit: increase is over the last year). That being said, there are listings which are not selling. Some of the foreclosures on the low end, particularly the smaller condos that line the 6-lane major road this neighborhood is built off of, have been listed for half a year or more without offers. But that is likely due to traffic noise, damage to the unit, and the small size of these units.

My neighbor is the only single family house listing I've seen that has not had nibbles, but he horribly overpriced the listing (30% over what other homes in the neighborhood were selling at). His realtor also misrepresented the neighborhood in the newspaper and online listing descriptions (listing a slightly more desirable neighborhood on the other side of the major road instead of our neighborhood). I knew as soon as I saw the listing that he wouldn't sell, given those two factors alone. Add in the fact that he's currently renting to a bunch of college kids who think hanging out on the roof in lawn chairs is a great weekend activity (and they leave the lawn chairs up on the roof all the time), and there was no way he was going to sell it at that price.
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Go Blue 99
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Go Blue 99 »

My neigborhood is doing well. Our neighbor put his place up for sale and had multiple offers within 2 days, and had it sold within a week. We have realtors going door to door begging people to sell their homes.
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Cosmo
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Cosmo »

Here in The Woodlands just north of Houston, everything is all bid -much of it due to the pending Exxon relocation over the next year or so not too far from here. Homes regularly go above the list price here and there are even stories down here about serious buyers putting a contract on a home before they even view it -in fear of it being gone by the time they get around to viewing it.

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robjer
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by robjer »

Live in Branson, MO in a condo.

Hardly any Foreclosure, bank-owned anymore.
Lousy with them when we bought one in November 2011.

Prices of condos on our golf course up more than 30% since Nov. 2011.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by MnD »

Denver suburbs.....
Severe supply shortage of existing home listings, bidding wars on day one of used home listings, rising prices that have fully recovered (they are now at/above the prior market peak), many new home developments underway. Commercial development is getting fired up. A real dump of a 1960's built retail area near our home is FINALLY getting bulldozed and redeveloped. Yay!
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mojave
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by mojave »

Far northwest and northern suburbs of Chicago.

This is relevant as we are looking for an investment home. We're young and don't have a lot of money so we're looking in the $50k to $150k range. What I'm finding is in this range, you can't really flip and sell because the Chicago area has so many forclosures and short sales. MOST of the sales are that. What people are doing in this range is buying them, fixing them and renting them out.

Higher ranges, which we cannot afford, have the ability to flip for a profit.
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mojave
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by mojave »

Oh and new home construction is booming.

In 2007 new homes were going for around $350k+. Now, in the same neighborhood, they are going for about $150+. Which is exactly why it is booming.
Scooter57
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Scooter57 »

The market is slow in our area (Western MA) for anything priced over $400K which is a lot of properties. An agent told me deals are falling through because people aren't able to get the mortgages they need to buy the houses. There is a lot on the market that has been on the market for 2 or even 3 years. Stuff in the $200s is selling, but it always did. There is very little new building, what there is is priced mostly in the $450-500 range. There are a few $750K homes being built but they take a year or more to sell and usually sell to professors relocating from urban areas where that is the price of a middle class home (here it's a palace.)

On the Southern part of Massachusetts' South Shore, most of the homes we have been tracking since February are still for sale. Little is closing over $400K. There are developments full of unsold lots and the offering prices of quite a few of the homes we are looking at are still $100K or more under what they were originally bought for in the early 2000s. These are areas that are too far away to be a reasonable commute to Boston. Closer to Boston stuff is easier to sell, I'm told.

On the Upper Cape, the luxury homes we toured last September are almost all still on the market or withdrawn (priced over $600,000). I've been getting a weekly update from a realtor showing sold properties and there may have been 2 or 3 out of 40+.
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mojave
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by mojave »

Oh and downtown Chicago is absolutely INSANE. My brother was looking for a condo to buy - he would go for a showing and keys were never there in the lockbox because realtors steal them so no one else but their client can make an offer. He looked at 8 places and this happened at every one of them. It's so insanely competitive he just gave up and is going to rent because he can't even LOOK at anything.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by origami »

In Seattle prices are noticeably up comparing to one-two years ago (one bedroom in downtown you could purchase for $140K is $190K now and sells fast). New construction is everywhere.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by NOLA »

We live in New Orleans, which has a weird real estate market. You can have million dollar listings & two blocks down the road there are section 8 homes. We live in a historic neighborhood and listings never last very long. Its definitely a seller's market. Our realtor told us a year ago that there weren't enough listings for the buyers.
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Imperabo
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Imperabo »

mojave wrote:Oh and downtown Chicago is absolutely INSANE. My brother was looking for a condo to buy - he would go for a showing and keys were never there in the lockbox because realtors steal them so no one else but their client can make an offer. He looked at 8 places and this happened at every one of them. It's so insanely competitive he just gave up and is going to rent because he can't even LOOK at anything.
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keystone
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by keystone »

Montgomery County, MD just outside DC.

I would categorize the market as extremely hot. It is definitely a seller's market and multiple offer/bidding wars are not uncommon. We bought our house a year ago and lost out on 3 bidding wars prior to that. One of the houses had 9 offers on the same day. When we sold our previous house, we had two offers and were under contract within 48 hours. I hear it is just as hot, if not hotter now and people tell me there is quite a shortage of supply. In fact, the one house on my street that was up for sale last month had a contract the day after it was listed (they canceled the open house). Basically if you have a listing in a desireable neighborhood here (near the city and close to metro is a plus) and have it priced right, you should have a contract within a week. If not, you are probably asking too much $$$.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Jill07 »

I'm in the suburbs of Philly.. about 45 minutes out. The starter homes are selling like hotcakes, especially the last month. Anything that is nice is gone as soon as it is listed. We have a huge oversupply of McMansions. These are not selling and I keep seeing more listed in foreclosure. Most of these large homes were built just prior to the housing crash and they have not recovered. They are listed several hundred thousand less than what the owners paid. A big deterrent is the high property tax bills with these homes.. 12k - 15k /yr. One house I just saw listed for 620K, last sold for 828K in 2005. Property taxes are 13K. The taxes have been reassessed down from 16K in 2010.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Allan »

Here in Houston the market is as hot as I've ever seen it. I am a home builder and I just sold a new home for more than list price, it went pending the 1st day on the market, and closed $150,000 over the appraised price. And I cannot find buildable lots, inventory is almost non-existent.

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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by reisner »

Pismo Beach, CA. Prices have been going up at least 1% per month, maybe more. (And we bought two years ago at the bottom. :D ) And the realtors here are starved for listings. Cape Cod, where I dreamily keep track of the many, many listings, seems to be still sinking a little; I suppose that's because so many houses are second homes, and that market will probably be the last to rise.

I am blessed when it has come to home purchases and sales. Without meaning to, we have timed the market almost perfectly. Sold in San Diego just a few months before the peak. Sold in Port Townsend, WA just a little after the peak (PT lags behind in every trend). Stayed out of the market for personal reasons for two and a half years, before finding the house we liked back in CA. We stepped in it.
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pennstater2005
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by pennstater2005 »

Western PA. Homes are moving quickly in my neighborhood. Low taxes, low cost of living. This just started happening recently though. Three homes along my street all sold within the first month. We bought 2 years ago. I'm glad we did.
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mbenz1997
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by mbenz1997 »

Houston most definitely feels like a bubble.

Houses are being sold within days of listing and over listing price. These are houses in the 800k+ range, especially in the city proper. Some people are going to pay a big price when all is said and done.
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SnapShots
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by SnapShots »

I live in a large university town in Oklahoma. Although, Oklahoma has not had the downturn other states have had sales in our community since 2008 have been a struggle and falling.

I heard at the end of last year, 2012, the housing inventory was getting very low. Last year houses in my area were taking over a year to sale, and selling for much less than assessed value; one was taken off the market.

Spring of 2013 it has turned into a hot sellers market. I held my recently deceased mother's home off the market last year, hoping the market would be more upbeat in 2013.

Spring of 2013, before putting it on the market I had several people call me direct and sold it at asking price, no inspection, a cash sale without a realtor. We sold it for more than $10/sq ft than what it would have sold for the year before. This was a garden home that was bought in 2002 for $169,000. Sold for $173,000 in 2013. (This is a luxury garden area in our location)

We have a condo in the Crested Butte, Colorado. There have many foreclosures on the market. People are buying up these properties but property values continue to decline. Before 2008 condos in our area sold for $425K. (This is on the low end of condo prices in CB. At one point new condo prices were a stupid and outrageous $1,500/sq ft)

The lasted assessed value for these $425K condos was $177K. It's still a buyers market. The inventory is getting low and once the foreclosures are off the market the tide should start turning back up.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by angelescrest »

Go Blue 99 wrote:My neigborhood is doing well. Our neighbor put his place up for sale and had multiple offers within 2 days, and had it sold within a week. We have realtors going door to door begging people to sell their homes.
Where would that be?
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by ThatGuy »

boroc7 wrote:
Go Blue 99 wrote:My neigborhood is doing well. Our neighbor put his place up for sale and had multiple offers within 2 days, and had it sold within a week. We have realtors going door to door begging people to sell their homes.
Where would that be?
Cold calling and door-to-door realtors have been common practice for many months in Silicon Valley. MPR had a story about it in Las Vegas just this week. They show an increase in price of 32.8% in the past year.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by NightOwl »

A good friend bid well above asking price on a $2 million apartment and got crushed by at least five all cash offers WAAAAY above asking price. Gotta love NYC.

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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by billyt »

For those that have been in the real estate market for a long time: Have prices always been this volatile or is this something new?
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by roymeo »

I've been looking for a house in San Francisco, and we keep getting overbid by quite a lot, by people with cash (or remnibi) and/or no contingencies. Low inventory, most prices are just starting points, many bids coming in on anything that shows up.

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damjam
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by damjam »

NightOwl wrote:A good friend bid well above asking price on a $2 million apartment and got crushed by at least five all cash offers WAAAAY above asking price. Gotta love NYC.

NightOwl
Yeah, I live in Southern Brooklyn, ie: not one of the hot neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights or Park Slope.
My neighbor put their house on the market a couple of months ago. Sold after one open house, five offers over ask. The final price was ~6% over the ask and the asking price was a record (or near record) for this neighborhood. It's 2005-2006 all over again.

When we bought in 1995 the market was just coming out of the ditch. I remember people saying that real estate was never going to be a good investment again. Luckily I never thought of my home as an investment.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by mlipps »

billyt wrote:For those that have been in the real estate market for a long time: Have prices always been this volatile or is this something new?
I'm wondering the same. Surely there's a middle ground between the madness of the last two months & the slump of the previous few years.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by roymeo »

I've been hearing "the housing market is recovering" a lot which would probably provoke a lot of people to say "yeah, it must be a good time to buy, then" and "hey, markets are recovering, we should consider putting that property on the market"....much like when any asset class starts to recover.

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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Colorado14 »

the mind bogles wrote:
Where I live the median house price is $255k. Houses in this price range go in hours. Developments that started in 2008 and stalled are now being built out. It is a seller's market.

I live an hour north of Denver on the front range.
Echoing this, in the Denver area the market is hot. Houses around the median price range are selling in 24 hours with multiple offers.
I'm in the Denver suburbs and considered downsizing this spring, then realized that plan would leave me homeless. While houses in my neighborhood are selling within a day or a week at most, I can't buy a downsized home for much less than my current home's value, so there's really no point in downsizing. It's wild...realtors are coming door to door to try to find people who are willing to sell.
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by astrohip »

Allan wrote:Here in Houston the market is as hot as I've ever seen it. I am a home builder and I just sold a new home for more than list price, it went pending the 1st day on the market, and closed $150,000 over the appraised price. And I cannot find buildable lots, inventory is almost non-existent.

Allan
Agree. Also in Houston (same industry, by the way... small world!). Our son is trying to buy his first home, a townhouse in the inner city. Decent properties are being snapped up in days, cash is king, multiple offers with most being over list... it's a crazy market right now. I hate to use the word bubble, as Houston has been mostly immune to the housing bubble, but overheated is definitely applicable.
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harrychan
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by harrychan »

Southern California. The market is red hot. My immediate neighbor to the left just sold his house for $735k! It was listed for $668k. I gave him a text and he told me they had 17 offers all except one was over asking! Only one all cash offer though. A year ago when they moved out I thought they were going to be lucky to get $550k. Mind you this is for a 1400 sq ft home. Now my neighbor to my immediate right has put up their sign. Great for me I suppose :)
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Ketawa
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Ketawa »

I just bought a condo in Norfolk, VA. I was looking for about 2 months before settling on one; I probably looked at almost 40 different places. I've mainly been looking in the Ghent neighborhood, which is kind of the trendy area of town. Prices are lower than the immediate downtown but higher than anywhere else in Norfolk.

I only just moved here and can't speak to how the market has changed over time. I can say that one place I looked at a couple months ago and was interested in sold after about a month, back when I was hesitant about putting in an offer. This is my first time going through the whole process. Another place I was interested in that was almost certainly listed too low had a few offers within a couple days, and I missed out on it.

I ended up finding a condo that fit everything I wanted, put in an offer without much delay (maybe 2 days after it was listed) and in the end I got it for $5k below the list price of $289k. Sellers here seem willing to accept a reasonable offer and won't hold out for something higher. In my case, the seller is actually in Germany and is probably motivated by having a vacant condo.

I would say that the supply seems to be limited. In my price range, there are only 4 or so properties available at any given time in the entire neighborhood/ZIP code.
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FrugalInvestor
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Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by FrugalInvestor »

Hayden wrote:I am surrounded by for sale signs. Homes around $300k take 1-3 years to sell. Homes around $500k are simply not selling. I have several friends who had to leave town who gave up on selling their homes and are renting them instead. The realtors here claim that the market here is strong, but I haven't seen any evidence of that in the higher price ranges.
Very similar situation here. We are in a rural area in the Pacific Northwest. I read that nearer the city the market is strong.

Our son very recently sold his house in Alaska just a few days after listing it.
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Location: Philadelphia

Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Kosmo »

Western suburb of Philly. 3 houses in my neighbors have sold this year. $300k (house I bought, short sale), $385k and $450+k. The last one sold for near asking price in under a week. There's one more up for sale now also. I'd say it's turning more towards a seller's market.

I get the same sentient from my brother. He lives in central MD and is liking at buying a condo. He says new buildings are going up left and right. Most being sold before they are even breaking ground.
nonnie
Posts: 3014
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2008 8:05 pm

Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by nonnie »

mojave wrote:Oh and downtown Chicago is absolutely INSANE. My brother was looking for a condo to buy - he would go for a showing and keys were never there in the lockbox because realtors steal them so no one else but their client can make an offer. He looked at 8 places and this happened at every one of them.
Interesting that realtors in Chicago aren't more tech savy. Here in CA tech realtors use electronic lockboxes instead of combo boxes to make sure this doesn't happen and therefore ensure more showings and multiple offers. Realtors then can monitor and identify everyone who accessed the property either online or with smartphone and follow up accordingly. The electronic system requires that all realtors-or other professionals-- visiting the home and/or bringing clients use a personal card (looks like a credit card) to swipe the lockbox in order to open it and gain access to the keys. This records and identifies the realtor and time of entry and exit. A realtor would only have to steal the keys once in order to have their card deactived by the local MLS service.

http://www.supraekey.com/Pages/Home.aspx

Nonnie
bungalow10
Posts: 2311
Joined: Sat Apr 09, 2011 6:28 am
Location: Chicago North Shore

Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by bungalow10 »

Madison, WI - a friend listed their house and had multiple offers in one week. Sold for slightly over asking price.

Grand Rapids, MI - coworker put in an offer for $20k over asking and was outbid. His condo sold in 1 day, he didn't even put it on the MLS.
An elephant for a dime is only a good deal if you need an elephant and have a dime.
nonnie
Posts: 3014
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2008 8:05 pm

Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by nonnie »

Oh, oh-- fastest rise in prices since 2006:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/home-p ... 2013-07-02

National home prices jump 12% in May:
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/l ... 6806.story
Easy Rhino
Posts: 3278
Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2007 11:13 am
Location: San Diego

Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Easy Rhino »

we're currently in escrow here in San Diego.

Not many houses being listed. realtors knocking on doors of houses they think might be selling.

Houses priced under $500k are going to have an offer and enter escrow within a week or two unless there's something very wrong with the house or the price.

prices up substantially since, say, last year.

also, a lot of investor properties are still being flipped.
Quickfoot
Posts: 1166
Joined: Fri Jan 11, 2013 12:03 pm

Re: What are you seeing in your Local Housing Market?

Post by Quickfoot »

Houses where I'm at in Idaho are selling rapidly, prices are up 15-20% in the last 4 months. I have 3 friends that are closing on houses this month.
Our son very recently sold his house in Alaska just a few days after listing it.
I'm from Alaska, the thing about the Alaskan real estate market is it isn't super strongly correlated with the lower 48 market. They did see declines but not as bad as most of the rest of the country because the building season is pretty short and availability is generally not as high as many other places.
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