Dec 2008 Home Sales UP

[F16 1UB]

Hey ouma, mikark, nONIE, donna, john, & a host of others - Existing home sales for Dec 08 were up a 6.5% average nationwide. Now if it would just trickle down to the above mentioned folks, just to name a few.... :beer3:

[NJblue]

My agent sent us the statistics for our town - it definitely contradicts any national upswing. It was VERY down compared to December 07.

However, on the bright side, the new year is off with a bang (I guess the price reduction helped)! We had 4 showings on Saturday, with a two appearing quite interested. On Sunday we had an open house and 21 potential buyers showed up, with three serious potentials. We also had another showing today (Monday) which appeared very promising and will have yet another tomorrow. I asked our agent, who has been in the business for over 20 years, when was the last time he had an open house with 21 buyers showing up. He said never ... his previous record was 16.

Now we just need to change the lookers into buyers - hopefully more than one to bid the price back up.

[Donna]

Hey 16..Great news! Hopefully we will all have something to celebrate!

Lets do a dance....:pepper2:

[scottke]

F16, I sure hope that's true for our part of NJ when we put our house back on the market. We're just sitting the cold weather out but with what NJBlue has said maybe we should put ours back on the market now! NJ Blue please send some of those Monmouth Cty lookers across 195 to Mercer Cty. Good luck in 2009 to all of us who want to be frogs in TV. I want to do Donna's happy dance.:pepper2:

[Safe Home Watch Mary Edwards]

Wow!!! Wonder how many people in the TV are in the same boat,still have a house to sell somewhere????.We seen the numbers but only two lookers so far this month,guess we will lower the price.Can't wait to have all of my furniture here,tired of the echo and 19"Televison.

[rshoffer]

Wow!!! Wonder how many people in the TV are in the same boat,still have a house to sell somewhere????.We seen the numbers but only two lookers so far this month,guess we will lower the price.Can't wait to have all of my furniture here,tired of the echo and 19"Televison.I don't know but I played golf Sunday at Del Web, Spruce Creek and was shocked at how many homes were for sale.

[SteveFromNY]

F16, I sure hope that's true for our part of NJ when we put our house back on the market. We're just sitting the cold weather out but with what NJBlue has said maybe we should put ours back on the market now! NJ Blue please send some of those Monmouth Cty lookers across 195 to Mercer Cty. Good luck in 2009 to all of us who want to be frogs in TV. I want to do Donna's happy dance.:pepper2:
DEFINITELY put it back on the market.
We let our listing expire Dec 2007, with the intent of waiting out the winter. Well, we found our buyer (from a realtor we'd never met) in January! They cold called us.

[NJblue]

We were strongly thinking of taking it off the market for a couple of months. Our agent talked us out of it saying that the "spring" buyers start to come out in January already. I'm not sure if it is because of that, or historically low interest rates or our reduced price, but the activity on our house has definitely picked up. We get hit count statistics on our virtual tour web site and last week we had 100 hits which was considerably more than we ever had since we put the house on the market in early October.

However, all this traffic hasn't yet resulted in another offer. After our first offer fell through, we have become a bit calloused to the potential for a real buyer to show up. If this latest fury of activity doesn't result in an offer and a contract we plan to head down to TV and camp out in our place down there. It will be just our luck that as soon as we get down there an offer will come through and we'll have to scurry back to NJ to prepare for the move. Maybe that's what it will take to get this deal done.

[Mikitv]

F16

I know what you mean because our local Realtors keep saying our market is better than the national market, but I worry that maybe we are just behind the rest of the country and who knows when that will change.

Right now we are watching the ice storm destroy some of our lovely trees and since the rain and ice won't be out of here till possibly tomorrow it might do more damage. How lucky just when we have the house on the market. I just keep praying that when the ice starts to melt the damage won't be too bad.

I hope you sell soon.

Mik

[SteveFromNY]

...After our first offer fell through, we have become a bit calloused to the potential for a real buyer to show up.

NJBlue - We had a very similar experience as we went through the process. It was like we lived in a musuem. Put on the radio, light some candles, be sure the grass is cut, put everything away, wait for them to come. Time after time. Then we had a really interested couple that came back 5 times. They came themselves, then brought the kids, they brought mom, they brought the other kid, they came back again. We were elated! A bad market and we found a buyer in a matter of a few weeks. Then, after more than a month of visiting, they just decided "No". We showed the house many more times, still enthusiastically, and then got tired. We lost all enthusiasm, and became jaded about the "buyers". The winter was coming, the listing was expiring, so we said "Let's wait for the spring because the house and property look bad in the winter". One day last January a realtor called that we'd never met and asked if we're still interested in selling. We said OK (what did we have to lose?), they came to see the house (both of us thought they didn't like it) and made an offer after a day of thinking it over. They had a house to sell, and I was reluctant to wait (we figured it would never happen but nothing else was happening either), so I gave them a few weeks to try, and they sold their house in a matter of two weeks - they really wanted our house and priced theirs very aggressively.
Anyway, the point of the story (sorry for rambling) was the showing and the offer and the sale were all something we just thought wouldn't amount to anything. The winter (pool closed, bare trees, no flowers) was good to us as it turned out. So when you least expect it, it can still happen!

[Boomer]

For some reason I have been tuned in to the real estate market for almost all of my adult life though it has never been my career. Even when I am not buying or selling, I stay tuned in. I thought the hyperinflation days of the late 70's and the 80's were surreal. I was a kid, buying a house, actually my third at the time, and I can remember hunting down the mortgage and proudly bringing home a 10%, fixed rate. Quite a deal it was.

Why am I telling you tales of my youth?

Here's why...

My guess is that most of the homes that you have on the market right now are family homes. Your buyer may be relatively young and will need a mortgage. Of course, real estate is most often about the pricing of the home, but additionally it is quite often about the size of the house payment. Well, it should be anyway.

When I stop by my brick and mortar bank, I sometimes talk a little with the boss banker and the loan officer if I see them. "So how's business?" I always ask.

What I am hearing is that there's lots of re-fi shopping going on and that there are also some actual buyers out there. But there is a common denominator for those who can qualify for a mortgage. And that is the interest rate question. How low can it go?

Those who are looking for mortgages now seem to not be in any hurry overall. They think that the mortgage rates will go even lower. I think they are right. Couple that with winter in so many places, and the already depressed market slows down even more for a while.

We have never seen anything like this. Talk about surreal. Nobody knows where it is going. No matter what they say. One guess is as good as another.

But for what it is worth, I think spring and early summer may begin to shake loose some buyers. I do not for one minute think that this thing will be all over by then. But I do think that there are those who are out there to buy, but are waiting for a feeling of some kind of stabilization. Perhaps for their jobs. Perhaps for their investments. Perhaps for mortgage rates. Or for all those things.

But those who want and need to buy and who can buy will not wait forever.

But right now they are betting that the cost of buying is only going lower and they feel that they can wait and see. These are not speculators. These are real buyers who know that they may need to wait a little while and that it is not likely to cost them to do so, not in home price, not in the interest rate. There is a lot of sitting and waiting going on right now out there.

If I had a house on the market, I would price it right and keep it for sale if I knew for sure I wanted to sell it. I would want to be on the market when those solid buyers decide it is time to move forward. For now they are watching and waiting. Spring may spring a few.

We have all been around long enough to know that there is a psychology to every economy. A psychology in addition to all those stats, all those numbers.

I wish you all the best. (This just ain't right.)

Boomer

[Donna]

F16

I know what you mean because our local Realtors keep saying our market is better than the national market, but I worry that maybe we are just behind the rest of the country and who knows when that will change.

Right now we are watching the ice storm destroy some of our lovely trees and since the rain and ice won't be out of here till possibly tomorrow it might do more damage. How lucky just when we have the house on the market. I just keep praying that when the ice starts to melt the damage won't be too bad.

I hope you sell soon.

Mik

Mik..If a buyer likes your house, they will buy it regardless of trees..We sold our big house in NY a week before Christmas! I too gave up after awhile, as StevefromNY said..It is a very frustrating experience, people walking through your home, opening cabinets, closets, making comments..Not an easy situation, to say the least..
Buyers are stealing the houses in this market, and they should all realize just what they are getting...A lot of peeps are going to be upset when this market turns around, especially the buyers that let a beautiful house (like yours) get away because of something petty..

[Peggy D]

We dropped our price at our agents suggestion. He's thinking of another decrease in
price....we'll see.

No showings since beginning of Dec. but no one is thinking "beach" in this weather. Luckly not getting the stuff those of you in Jersey and Pa, but it is cold and nasty here
in southren DE
They say Presidents Day weekend is the begining of the real estate season.

Hope so. Good luck everyone

[chuckinca]

Who woulda thunk:

About 5 years ago, an adjacent new subdivison to ours was building 50 new houses. The first 8 homes were offered in the low $800K's on a Saturday and they had over 50 buyers prequalified that day and on Sunday pulled 8 names from a hat!

Today those homes are priced about 30% lower and the only sales are bank owned ones.


.

[NJblue]

It's good to hear some of the success stories that have materialized out of thin air. The frustrating part is to have someone come through, appear to really like your house and indicate that they want to return to see it again .... and then - nothing. An example: this past Tuesday we had a woman come through who was previewing homes that she thought were worthwhile to bring her husband back to on the weekend. Our agent said she was ecstatic about the house and definitely wanted to bring her husband on the weekend. Now it's the weekend and we're sitting here looking at the phone, waiting for it to ring. And it is silent. We gotta get away for awhile!

[bestmickey]

Maybe they're just busy preparing for a Super Bowl party on Sunday. Keep the faith! They may call for next weekend.

[Hacienda Hills Guy]

9 months on the market and sold in January. did an aggresive price drop and got the deal done for asking price in 3 days after drop.

things will get better

[JohnnyM]

Thanks F-16 for the good news. Scottke, hang on!!!

[scottke]

Johnny - we're hanging in there. Our house is going back on the market this week and we're heading to TV for 2 weeks. Maybe it will happen while we're gone - Oh Please St. Joseph. F16, one of these days we'll be in TV all the time.

[JohnnyM]

Great, we will look for you both at the square(s). Have a safe trip!