Hits: 10
That may be a lame title…we are working on it? You may decide how lame, but the point is that if your head is buried in something like sand, or paperwork, or personal problems, or worldly problems such as our POTUS election cycle and the sick drama it features, you might not know that we continue to climb the charts and continue to improve on our real estate market numbers. That’s a long sentence, but it says we are doing well enough to write about, just not as well as our neighboring states and what our bankers and creditors would want to see.
We still are selling foreclosures, pre-foreclosures, short sales and homes that are selling below what the owner paid years ago (underwater defines homes where the debt is greater than the value). Who knew that some nine years after the bubble started to burst that we would be still up to our necks in problems? If you knew then, what would you have done differently?
Asset managers still have a death grip on humorless communication as they try to unload stuff they should never have made loans on in the first place. Whether you blame the lenders for the mess we are still repairing, or blame the “political system” for the agenda and candidates facing off this November, we made the world we live in. Investors and stockholders wanted higher returns from those banks and mortgage companies (to support lavish lifestyles maybe) so they pressed for more loans to be made, more creatively and more more more such that every American could be a homeowner. Never mind that many had no nickel to rub against a second nickel, to coin a phrase. Many should not have been home owners since they had no reliable or steady income, no track record of responsible financial behavior, no savings in case of illness or a layoff. Yet we loaned them the money anyway.
Try selling a home in Chimayo or Pecos or La Mesilla or Madrid that has a debt well above the home’s value today. What do you do? Give it away? Discount it in a short sale and leave the lender with a deficit? Back to the election, what do you do when your choices are thin? Do you go with a third-party? Do you bite your hand when you pull the voting lever and pray that our America does not crumble as so many on all sides would have us believe? Do you start shopping for a home in Canada? Probably the best answer to these and similar questions is that you get to work. Yes you. Get busy fixing the world you live in. Get busy fixing the economy and the real estate market. If you want to super charge our relatively flat real estate market conditions, try bringing an additional 15 home buyers into the picture each month. But make sure they have income and good credit and maybe a years worth of payments in the bank. Try selling that 30 year old home that is priced as if the floors are gold leaf and the cabinetry is silver plated. The point is to sell homes to people who will nest there, keep them in good shape and build memories and lives in that home. The point is not to make some bankers and lenders extra money so they can buy another car and take an island vacation while we wait for trickle down. How was your trickle down?
Whats up with our market today? True that inventory is way down, keeps going down in fact, although we are now entering the typical spring season run-up of new inventory. It’s not “new”, by the way. These are older homes that did not sell last year. They are homes the owner stayed in or leased out after realizing they could not sell them a few years ago. Many people said to me and said to themselves back in 2008 thru 2012 that they would wait for the market to improve. They would wait for the market to catch up to their home’s true value and then sell it when they could get all of their money back. There is a special place at the back of the diploma line for those folks. Realistic expectations never landed in their laps and the market did not magically return to those days of liar loans and no doc packages that put people into homes they had no business owning, or living in. We learned that lesson. Why would someone wait for our market to return to the days of home sales that was completely unsupported by facts and real numbers?
We have seen about 10 homes a month sell in the One Million plus range for many months now. Let us home we can see that number grow in the next year or two since we have several hundred plus homes listed publicly for sale in that higher price range. A great target would be 12 or 13 a month! At the other end, below $500K and even more so below $300K, homes sell quickly and without much fuss. Buyers in those price ranges usually want and need to buy and would love to get settled soon; while sellers usually have little choice but to sell; the opposite of the high-end transactions. Try talking a seller of a $1.8 million dollar home into selling at a deep discount when their other two homes are in different time zones and are highly sought after prizes. It’s difficult to accept that their beautiful Northern NM gem is not worth what they paid for it a decade years ago.
Help yourself to the numbers in the various spreadsheets and charts available on this website and blog. They are for your enjoyment and education. They are not perfect, nor is the blogger, but we try to be fair and even-handed, never playing favorites or grinding our own axe when its yours that needs sharpening.
So sharpen away and feel free to share this information with real estate players in all price ranges. There is always something to be gained by reading and understanding.
If you need assistance, I know someone that can help you buy or sell. Or both. Contact the author.
Thank you.
