While the woes about Real Estate rage along in the news and everything you hear about Real Estate is bad, we had a great Realtor meeting yesterday. Rivendale Homes had a great open house party planned and announced that sales had picked up in their offices, apparently Christopherson homes had the same happening at their new home subdivisions. And one of the Realtors mentioned that he had multiple offers on his bank owned property -> it’s in escrow now. One of the properties I am currently selling in the JC area at 1228 Morgan Street gets a lot of showings and we had over 30 people come through the open house last Sunday.
It seems like we have hit bottom in Sonoma County. Nobody knows that until home prices are going up again but it looks interesting right now. Doing a count while writing this blog this morning we have 2498 active residential listings in the MLS and 366 listings in escrow/under contract. While we all know that some of these contracts will fall apart due to several reasons, it does give us a nice snapshot. This gives us a 6.8 month inventory – comparing the properties that are still on the market to the ones that have an accepted offer. Yes I know, usually this count is done for homes that have sold, however doing this math with homes that are in escrow gives us a closer look at what’s currently happening.
There were 366 parties that found a property that matched their need and thought is was worth putting in an offer. That’s encouraging! By the way, don’t forget, interest rates are still at historical lows!
This morning I did run into a new website : ‘Trash your Realtor” . I do understand that home owners who bought when the market was at it’s top are trying to blame somebody (“any body”) and Realtors are an easy target. I did see an article of people suing their Realtor for buying an ‘overpriced home’.
Don’t forget that Realtors do not set a price, a buyer does. It’s our job to help you find and get you new a home and yes, of course, to run a market analysis to give you an idea about property values in a certain neighborhood. But when the market was so hot, everybody wanted to get in, bidding wars were the norm. Who are you going to blame for this? I have to say that some of my clients did loose out on bidding wars simply because the price went up so far that they felt they could no longer afford that home. I felt bad at that time however, later when we spoke about this she was glad they lost out, it would have gotten them into trouble. When she told me that, she did make my day, just because I had wondered whether I had done right by not pushing them beyond the amount they had told me they could afford. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what the right thing is. If anyone has feedback/an opinion on this please do so, I am curious about your feedback.
In general, people move in droves. Right now it’s a great market to but, however, most buyers will wait until the market turns around and home prices go up. That’s just how the market goes…
Well this was my rant for the day, it’s going to be a beautiful day in beautiful Sonoma County.
Have a great day!
Mirjam (mirjam@c21alliance.com)