I was on the Virginia Association of Realtors’ third quarter conference call this morning. There were very interesting and often divergent outlooks from the different regions of the Commonwealth.
For the purposes of this report, Charlottesville is in the “Central Valley” Region, which includes:
Albemarle, Augusta, Bath, Buena Vista City, Charlottesville City, Fluvanna, Greene, Harrisonburg City, Highland, Lexington City, Nelson, Rockbridge, Rockingham,Staunton City,Waynesboro City
This is the moving median average price for homes in the Charlottesville MLS for the past four years.
– “So for all intents and purposes, the report is somewhat irrelevant as it speaks to such a broad region.”
– “Because Virginia is a non-judicial state, we most likely won’t be affected by the robo-signing issues.”
– “Analysis of past two recessions compared to this one. This recessions’ recovery is stronger than 1991 and 2001, doesn’t feel like it due to in part to consumer confidence.”
– “Three consecutive months of positive job growth in the state.” (Although the Charlottesville area lost 3k jobs last year)
Virginia Association of Realtors 3rd Quarter 2010 Home sales press release (PDF) and I’ll post the podcast when it’s up. Here’s the podcast.
Charlottesville and Albemarle Sales and Inventory history (PDF) — Check out the new graphs at the bottom.
Jim-
As always, great information.
I’m struck by this comment: “Because Virginia is a non-judicial state, we most likely won’t be affected by the robo-signing issues.”
My opinion? It’s too early to tell what the long-term impact of robo-signing will be at all, but I’m not convinced there will be a big difference between judicial and non-judicial foreclosure states. Either it blows over entirely, or the process will bear further scrutiny in all states. Maryland, as an example, allows for non-judicial foreclosures. Two foreclosure law firms have allegedly been doing their own form of “robo-signing” where documents were signed by others. This is in some way impacting how we underwrite these from a title perspective. Will it have long-term market implications? I doubt it, but I would suggest that just because a state can foreclosure outside of the courthouse steps doesn’t mean there won’t be a market effect.
My 2 cents.
I edited the post to add the quotation marks to clarify that that was a note, and not my statement.
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