GREATER ROCHESTER ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® RELEASES YEAR-END STATISTICS
ROCHESTER, NY – January 25, 2010 –The Greater Rochester Association of REALTORS® (GRAR) released its year-end statistics for 2009.
When compared to 2008, overall year-end activity remained relatively stable, with total sales slightly down 1.3 percent. Pending sales were up at 2.3 percent. Median home prices decreased a mere 0.9 percent, from $117,000 in 2008 to $116,000 in 2009.
“Although sales in 2009 reflected a slight decrease over 2008, we still considered it as a somewhat sturdy market,” remarked Ryan Tucholski, GRAR’s chief executive officer.
“We feel that we weathered the worst of the storm,” stated Carolyn Stiffler, GRAR board president. “We are looking forward to a strong second quarter, with April being the month that I expect to carry the quarter, in part because of the extension and expansion of the tax credit.”
Federal legislation not only extended the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers, but also included an expansion to included current homeowners who are selling their home and who may be eligible to receive a $6,500 tax credit for the purchase of another principal residence. In order to qualify, homeowners must have used the home sold as a principal residence, consecutively for 5 of the previous 8 years. There are additional eligibility requirements that apply for first-time homebuyers and current homeowners. Both must have a written binding contract to purchase by April 30, 2010, which is when the tax credit expires. The purchaser will have until July 1, 2010 to close.
Significant increases in sales were realized specifically in Chili, which showed a 21.2 percent increase and Wheatland, with a gain of 89.7 percent. Sales in the city of Rochester decreased 7 percent, but showed a 14 percent increase in the median sales price.
The results cover the city of Rochester, all Monroe County towns and villages, and Genesee, Livingston, Ontario, Orleans, and Wayne Counties.
GRAR will continue to support the local residential real estate industry through its Time2Buy marketing campaign, which focuses on the benefits of owning a home and using the services of a REALTOR® when buying and selling a home.
The New Norm
At first I didn’t think any thing about it, but after several weeks, it started to dawn on me that we are actually in a different climate with real estate transactions! Maybe it’s only in Rochester, New York, but I think not! Welcome to the new norm!
Here is what that means to you as a buyer, no longer can you expect to put an offer in on a property, go to the bank, and close nonchallantly 45 days later.
Now, it’s a tug-a-war with the seller over every little thing that doesn’t meet their expectation in the purchase offer.
Then after the home inspection, the seller is going to balk at everything we asked them to correct in the house.
Then, it’s off to the mortgage company to get the loan. Good credit, good job history and a solid downpayment, should be a piece of cake! WRONG! After the basic application, comes a steady flow of requests right up to the commitment. Then more requests after the commitment to get cleared to close. Then follow-up on the repairs and maybe it will close only 3-4 weeks late.
I hope as other agents do, that this process is a temporary one and the mortgage process will return to a more normal and sane process in the future!
But until this happens, you can count on me to be with you every step of the way!
How much is your Home Worth?
Whether you are selling or buying or refinancing or paying taxes, it’s important to know how much your home is worth.
Many people will tell me what their tax assessment is and think that it represents their home’s worth. Others will measure their home’s worth by comparing it with homes that are on the market or even worse, homes that have expired on the market.
The value your home has is never a fixed value. It is constantly changing with the economy. The interest rates affect it, the world economy affects it, the local economy affects it, and the real estate market affects.
Fortunately for us that live in Rochester, our home values have increased each year for the past 30 years that I have been in the real estate business until 2008 when they dropped slightly, about 1-3%.
What Realtors do to determine your home’s value is to do a CMA, comparative market analysis, which is a snapshot in time of your home. It is arrived at by a careful review of the recent sold homes that are similar to your home in square footage and features.
Usually we also have to make some additions or subtractions for features present or absent in the sold homes as they are compared to your home. This is a subjective valuation by the Realtor doing the CMA. Because of this subjective value, you could get different values for your home if you were to have several Realtors do a CMA for you.
This is why it is important for sellers who are interviewing several agents for listing their home that you don’t want to make your decision based on the highest price received from an agent, because they could be too high in their subjective additions. You need to look at the agent’s years in the business, experience, credentials, and marketing plan.
So if you would like to know you home’s worth, just call me or a Realtor in your area and we will be happy to meet with you and work up a CMA on your home.
The Reality of a Short Sale!
Over the past ten days I have been working with a property that is heading towards foreclosure. To sell it, the price will need to be less than the outstanding loan balance. This is called a short sale because it will be short of funds at closing to pay the loan balance and the closing expenses.
It is obvious to everyone that there is tremendous value in this property at the listed price which is below both the assessment value and the market value. So why is it, when we finally got an offer on the property, and we got two offers, that they are another $15,000 under the listed price?
Quite simply, Human Nature!!! The buyers are in the driver’s seat and the banks need to sell the property at the price the market will bear out, however low it is! Unfortunately, they are not helping the property values for the neighborhood that they are moving into by putting a sales comparable on record at that price. But at least, they are taking a vacant property off the market by buying it and moving in.
We need the small local investor!
I wrote up an offer this past week for a small investor to buy a foreclosed single family home in a suburb of Rochester. As I was working with it, I realized how much the neighborhood needs this “small investor!”
I had sold a home in this neighborhood a few years earlier and I was familiar with the values of the homes. At $70,000, this home was selling for $50,000 under what the average values are for this neighborhood. This small investor was going to clean, paint, carpet and repair this home, then put it back on the market for a price that would match the values of the neighborhood. In other words, flip it, a word that refers to process of buying a home, fixing it up quickly and selling it for a profit.
Nobody out there is giving these guys any assistance! Nobody is making it easy for them. They are using their cash and hard work! They are taking all the risks! The end results are a house is restored to its neighborhood value. Hopefully they will end up with a profit to make it all worthwhile too!
Think about it, who else is doing something like this with no government involvement? Next time you see one of these guys, give them a thumbs up! We need the small local investor now more than ever! Our neighborhoods need them. The economy needs them!
Is News Print passé?
Last week, I decided to hold two of my listings open on the weekend, usually on Sunday. I made a mental note to write up the Open House ads for them on Thursday. Well, Thursday came and I was crazy busy from the beginning of the day on and at 5pm when I was showing customers through my new listing, I suddenly realized I had not done the Open House ads and I had just missed the deadline!
At first, I was bummed because I had things in place for holding the two houses open and now I did not have an ad coming out in the Saturday Open House section of the newspaper. This has been the vehicle that the public and real estate agents have relied on for promoting and finding Open Houses in Rochester, New York.
But I decided to hold them open anyways, with just the internet postings and Open House signs. Wow! To my amazement, we had 7-8 groups through each house and possibility buyers for both of them.
Can we finally eliminate our need to pay for costly newspaper advertising and rely on the internet for exposing our listings to the public? Maybe the time has come! This REALTOR, who you may be following as @RochesterREguy, is leaning in this direction.
Let me know where you find the Open Houses to see or if you are an agent, are you moving in this direction too!
Sell Before Buying??
I was reading the Saturday morning real estate section from our local paper and the lead article was about move-up or scale-down buyers. The two agents interviewed both felt that they should sell first before they made an offer on another house. The problem I had with this article was not the position the agents had but the reasons they gave for doing so.
There are many areas in our marketplace where the purchase offer with a contingency of selling a house will not make any difference and will not affect the selling price that is negotiated. This is because the sellers are so glad to see an offer that they will readily accept one even with a contingency.
Unless a neighborhood has a shortage of inventory and is in high demand, most sellers, if properly advised by their agents, will accept a contingent offer. In our area, the listing does not have to be changed to reflect a contingent offer and no one knows it has an offer on it except the seller, that buyer and the agents.
This way, the odds are in the seller’s favor, because now there are two houses on the market and if either one of them gets an offer, the seller is good.
So why wouldn’t a buyer make a contingent offer? Yes, there is the possibility that another offer could come into the picture and they would have to do a bridge loan to keep their offer or they would lose it. But generally, if they price their house properly, de-clutter it, and then stage it, the house will sell fairly quickly. To wait until you have sold your home, to then start looking, you may not find something suitable and you will have to move twice, first into temporary rental housing and then into your next house. This would far out weigh the cost of carrying two mortgages for a few months.
