Month: April 2013
The home bidding wars are back!
Always nice to find a good article to share. Enjoy By Les Christie CNNMoney
The home bidding wars are back!
The bidding wars are back. Seemingly overnight, many of the nation’s major housing markets have gone from stagnant to sizzling, with for-sale listings drawing offers from a large number of house hunters.
In March, 75% of agents with broker Redfin said their clients’ offers were countered by rival bids, up from 56% who said so in late 2011.
The competition has been most intense in California, where 9 out of 10 homes sold in San Francisco, Sacramento and cities in Southern California drew competing bids during the month. And at least two-third of listings in Boston, Washington D.C., Seattle and New York generated bidding wars.
“The only question is not whether a new listing will get multiple bids but how many it will get,” said Kris Vogt, who manages 14 Coldwell Banker offices in the Sacramento area. One home in an Elk Grove, Calif., subdivision recently received 62 separate bids. The final sale price was for more than $150,000, well above its $129,000 asking price.
In Cambridge, Mass., two condos that could be combined into one large home hit the market two weeks ago for $800,000 each, according to Pat Villani, president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in New England.
“The brokers stopped taking names after the number of bidders reached 250,” she said. The winning bidder offered $2 million for both units.
Related: Five best markets to buy a home
Homebuyers eager to purchase before home prices and mortgage rates rise are finding few homes for sale as sellers hold out for better deals, said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s CEO.
Many homeowners are still underwater, owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, and they want to wait until selling becomes profitable again. By doing so, they can avoid short sales, which carry big hits on credit scores, 85 to 160 points, according to FICO.
“Many people have been holding on for a profit and they’re just now getting their heads above water,” said Kelman.
Those who want to sell and buy a new home are encountering a market where it’s difficult to find a new place of their own, said Vogt.
Related: Five best markets to sell a home
Over the past few months, Jackie and Cliff Kaufman have bid on four different homes in St. Petersburg, Fla., including one short sale and a foreclosure.
The pair, who have two adult children and run an online jewelry business, said they bid $5,000 more than the $495,000 asking price on the first home they had their eye on and never heard back from the seller’s agent. They were later told the house sold for nearly $550,000.
Next, they bid on a short sale listed for $600,000. This time, they came in $10,000 above the asking price and again, they were beaten out. The house was only on the market for two days.
The third attempt to make an offer on a bank-owned property was also met with silence.
Related: Buy or rent? 10 major cities
“It was very frustrating,” said Jackie Kaufman. “We felt we were always on the outside of the loop and that people who won the homes had the inside track.”
By the fourth try, the couple successfully bid through a listing agent, who they believe pushed their bid harder in order to earn a double commission since she was representing both the buyer and seller in the deal. And they managed to get the place for $30,000 less than the asking price.
They were lucky. Inventories of homes for sale continue to shrink. In February, the National Association of Realtors reported a 19.2% decline in inventory year-over-year. While the number of homes for sale should rise with the onset of the spring selling season, housing inventory is expected to remain low, pushing prices higher.
Related: Fastest growing boomtowns
And new home construction, especially in markets hit hard by the housing bust, is still moving forward at a snail’s pace, since the cost to build the homes is often more than what the property ends up selling for, said Jeff Culbertson, president of Coldwell Banker’s Southern California operations.
Even though home prices are on the rise, the balance between buyers and sellers has been thrown off balance, said Kelman.
“With buyers out in force and sellers cautious, the market is in an awkward ‘tweener’ phase,” he said.
I read this article at: http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/04/real_estate/bidding-wars/index.html?source=linkedin
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Thanks for reading – Sabrina
New App for Home Maintenance… BrightNest
Hello Readers!
I just got wind of a new computer site and mobile app for home maintenance. I just signed up this morning to give it a spin. Easy to use, free and so far reminds me a Pintrest.
You input which systems you have in your home and it gives you tips on maintenance and you can select to get tips on safety, being green or DIY protects and updating. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
Got Questions? – The Caton Team is here to help.
Email Sabrina & Susan at: Info@TheCatonTeam.com
Visit our Website at: http://thecatonteam.com/
Visit us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabrina-Susan-The-Caton-Team-Realtors/294970377834
Yelp us at: http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-caton-team-realtors-sabrina-caton-and-susan-caton-redwood-city
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Please enjoy my personal journey through homeownership at:
http://ajourneythroughhomeownership.wordpress.com
Thanks for reading – Sabrina
The Reality of Real Estate Reality TV – by Sabrina Caton
Aside from my passion in real estate, I love writing and learning about movie and TV production. A while back, a high-school friend of mine, Robin, was on one of the popular Real Estate Reality shows that so many of us are addicted too. As soon as I finished her episode I was online asking her questions about her experience and how it all worked out.
The truth behind “real estate reality” TV was as enlightening as it was awesome. Why? Because the truth set me free! It confirmed it’s an entertainment show and not a true reflection on how buying a home really works.
Robin told me the episode is shot backwards. They had already purchased their condo, they had spent plenty of weekdays and weekends house-hunting with their agent and doing the real work. However, after they closed escrow on their new home, the production of the show started. They walked through their future home and pretended to shop it. Then the producers found two other properties, ones they may or may not have seen prior to buying and they walked through those too – pretending to pick it apart or discuss their likes and dislikes.
Then at the end of the show, they reveal which unit they bought and it’s all smiles and a shot of signing a one-page contract. So not a true picture of what it takes to buy a home!
The relief spilled over me. Of course, I knew these shows were for entertainment. Going on 10 years as a Realtor myself, I’ve rarely showed a home, drew up a contract, got the contract accepted and closed escrow in 30 minutes, minus the commercial spots. But the people, the real buyers, are watching the show and not thinking about it as entertainment as much as following a buyer’s journey.
That’s where the hard part starts for us Realtors! Get a new client in the car, ready to show some homes and they tell you – we only want to do this for about a month. Scrape my jaw off the floor and break the truth to them. In today’s real estate market, at least here on the SF Peninsula – you’ll be house hunting for months! Some people can handle it some cannot. I guess it’s one of those moments where you separate the men from the boys.
So I thought I would write a blog about it and share my ‘Ah-Ha’ moment. Because we, (myself included before I became a licensed Realtor), would sit down and enjoy these shows and in the back of our minds we believed it was that easy.
In the last year or so, the SF Peninsula has switched from a buyers market, with plenty of inventory in various price ranges and condition, to a sellers market, with limited inventory and even the trashy properties receiving multiple offers and over bidding.
Real estate, as all things are, is cyclical. What goes up, goes down, then up again. That’s when I remind my buying clients that life is not like those TV shows, not even close to the ones branded as Reality TV. If you truly want to own a piece of the Silicon Valley, it is going to take work, patience, and flexibility. And the view from my drivers seat is fantastic. There are opportunities out there for each buyer, they just have to open their eyes and their mind – and drop the ‘reality’ from those TV shows.
So get off the couch and in my car – we’ll take you on a real Real Estate journey – just a bit longer than 30 minutes.