Are we losing momentum?

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Home sales are easy to track and difficult to understand sometimes. Even in New Mexico where public disclosure of a home sales price is not the law, there are many ways to find out what a home sold for. A popular pastime is to ask the Realtor. We have the information, if the sale was entered into our MLS database. We willingly share that information with customers and clients if it seems pertinent to their efforts to buy or sell property. How else could we share market information?

Should we publish a list of the addresses and sales prices? The answer is no. Anyone that did would be subject to serious legal action against them. But conclusions can be drawn and trends can be detected. Right now the trend seems to be a leveling off of sales numbers. We are ahead of last year comparing as of end of September: 1305 homes in 2013 and 1351 so far in 2014. But that is a modest 3.5% increase. Yes, increases are nice and all that. But many people want to see double digit increases. Or at least they want to see maybe an 8 or 9% increase over last year. Such results might mean that home values could be expected to climb. But facts are still facts and we are yet crawling out of the huge hole we fell into when much of real estate and the overall economy fell apart financially the last 10 years.

Today I have published 6 updated charts and spreadsheets of general market results and numbers for Santa Fe NM (specifically SF city and county). You can view them by clicking on the list of reports along the left margin. Think you have a pretty good idea what is going on in residential real estate for this area? These reports may help you get your arms around the data. It is not wonderful but better yet, it is not terrible. Maybe we will have more success in the future. For now we have headwinds and some demographics slowing us down.

What is the long term outlook for Santa Fe real estate? We will see more of that information posted on this site in the future. For now it is correct to assume we will continue to grow and expand, despite the higher than average cost of living here and the unknown amount and quality of water available to us down the road. I am not an expert on water, by the way. Some say we have plenty for at least 30 years. Others think we are about to run out.

Please feel free to comment if you have any words of wisdom to share with this blog’s readers. And if you would like professional, honest and patient assistance with your real estate needs, call, text or email me. We should discuss how we can work toward your goal.     505-470-7153 or alanball2@gmail.com

Thank you

Posted in Posts & Updates, Santa Fe area real estate, Statistical Data - Santa Fe real estate market and tagged , , , , .

The writer is a 68 year-old young man engaged as an active REALTOR (associate broker) with Keller Williams, in real estate sales and management in the Santa Fe NM market area. My career has been in and around the real estate industry for more than 35 years, ranging from mortgage lending (interim, commercial, residential); residential property management and leasing; shopping center development and leasing; real estate sales; sales training; title insurance as an executive and an escrow officer; various management positions; consulting and other related activities. That plus a bunch of banking experience including our family-owned Bank of Santa Fe in the 1980s. Where has the time gone?
My background means you have my working knowledge of the entire transaction process at your disposal. That comes with honesty and no bullshit.