Charlottesville's Real Estate Blog. Buyer &/or Seller Representation, Real Estate News
If they take this statement to heart, we’ll have a more dense and more walkable/bikeable/liveable City in the next 10-20 years.
“By maintaining over 40 acres of cracked asphalt along a growth corridor such as Preston Avenue, we essentially … had five times less revenue produced from that corridor,†Galvin noted. “There is a price to pay for not redeveloping aggressively.â€
J. Tobias Beard looks at Belmont in an excellent , in-depth story titled “The wonder years: How real estate and gentrification changed Belmont for good” … an awful has changed in Belmont.
– Gentrification and Charlottesville – C-Ville – My favorite line of the week: “If Austin is fighting to stay weird, let’s us fight to stay a little bit country.”
– Charlottesville Chamber of Commerce Releases 2012 Jobs Report – NBC29 (and here’s the actual report)
– VDOT releases draft environmental assessment for Western Bypass – Charlottesville Tomorrow
– Latest trend in house design: “A home within a home” – Treehugger – for the boomerang kids or returning parents.
– Dear Internet – where should I live? — None of these are particularly accurate to Charlottesville, although WalkScore is accurate enough to ballpark walkability.
– How Young Homeowners Lost Out by Buying – The Atlantic – This is but another reason that I think a true “recovery” won’t be seen for at least 3-5 years.
– Why Home Prices Are Rising: The ‘Distressed Share’ – We’re definitely seeing this emerging in Charlottesville
Looking at some real estate data the other day, I came to a conclusion: for some segments of the Charlottesville real estate market, we might actually be in the “bottom” – bottom meaning that prices are either not declining anymore or are in fact, wait for it … rising.
This belief was bolstered further when I looked at some of the numbers –
May, June, July – for the Charlottesville MSA, Year over Year:
– 777 homes (condo, single family, town home) sold this year versus 709 last year – an increase in volume of nearly 9%
– Median Price was up about 5% to $261,645
For the County of Albemarle:
– 418 homes sold versus 375 in this period last year; an increase of about 10%
– Median price was up nearly 12%
For the City of Charlottesville:
– 230 homes sold this year versus 146 last May, June, July; an increase of ~15%
– Median price in the City of Charlottesville rose nearly 8%.
BUT
There are still a lot of people in this market who cannot sell and not lose money – and I think this is going to remain the case for several years. Yes, the above news and data are very positive, and if you’re looking to buy and know you’re going to be here for several years, now could be a tremendous time to buy – you might lament your delay. But … every real estate market is local – down to the individual – and specific.
He makes Crozet sound like such a great place to live. I’m betting that the suggestions from Crozetians led to his having a more productive (and fun) day.
C-Ville discovers Wordpress, and the result is pretty slick. Simple, clean design, great font, disqus commenting …
I love that they kept things local:
Ryan DeRose and his company Vibethink—a one-man team when we signed them up, and a five-person shop on the Downtown Mall now—built the new version of c-ville.com. Ryan and Matt Clark, who also worked closely with us, attended Western Albemarle and Nelson County high schools, respectively, so we kept things local. What really sold us on their team was that they shared our ideas about what makes a good local media site, and they cared about our paper’s role in the community. We wanted to make something that was easy to use (for us and for you); we wanted to strip away unnecessary distractions from the content; and we wanted to create a platform that we could constantly modify and improve as things changed. We wanted a site that would show up well on all your devices, that integrated social media seamlessly, and that showcased our photographers and writers.
It’s been a while since I’ve written about the National Association of Realtors and their sometimes mis-guided, self-serving ad campaigns* and lamentably, today is one of those days where I feel I need to say, “I’m a Realtor, but I reject their current ad campaign.”
Renters are positive contributors to society, too, and just like homeowners, some are great, some aren’t. Making renters feel bad about themselves is the best way to try to build favor for the Realtor brand. Alienating a segment of the population, many of who do aspire to be homeowners, is, in a word, stupid.
So, thanks, NAR, for the opportunity to defend myself and use you as the object of derision. I’m glad to work with clients who will be homeowners one day, and while I don’t typically work with renters, I do fins myself in the position frequently where I help them find rentals … for a year, as they are in fact, homebuyers on a delayed timeline.