I am glad to continue renting if sellers are unwilling to lower their prices to account for the fact that the market has changed and real estate prices are unlikely to appreciate much in the near future (see, for example, the recent New York Times aricle entitled “A Word of Advice During a Housing Slump: Rent”)…. I realize that most sellers are probably not going to accept an offer well below their asking price all at once; rather, they are probably going to reduce their asking prices gradually until someone makes an offer reasonably close to what they are asking…. More on assessments at cvillenews.A brief analysis of homes sold in the MLS between $$500k and $600k since the first of the year comparing their sold price to their asking price and the assessed value found, unfortunately, very little consistentcorrelation.Right now, when searching for buyers, I tend to search prices 15%-25% higher than their “comfortable” price range (not the maximum they are pre-approved for, but comfortable) because often, price is not the greatest determinant when sellers are considering offers.The decision of whether to buy now is one that should be made with (far) more consideration than was necessary in the past five to seven years…. With input from our parents, the state of the market right now, the small time frame that we’ll be here in Charlottesville, etc, we just don’t think it’s the best move for us right now.I feel bad because I know that you put in a lot of time and effort for us and we appreciate it very much.
you searched for appreciation
Market cap on Charlottesville prices?
Is population growth of people on the upper end of the socioeconoic strata expected to rise that much here?I merely ask because of the amount of new construction and the current prices well over the $350,000 range for most detached homes…. Buying smart will come into fashion again.From last November’s HooK:”In the last several years, people had gotten away from the ‘buying smart’ mentality and were just buying,” he says…. “If you don’t do anything to the house to hurt or improve it, you’ll probably make money when you sell.”This is a particularly relevant letter to the editor in this week’s WSJ, referencing Japan’s housing price decline:…… We contRelated reading:Has the market hit bottom?Who is buying urban condominiums?: a tale of four cities.Goldman Sachs Housing Conference (Hat tip: Paper Money)My previous writings on appreciationcaveat: I am not an economist, fortune teller or nor sooth sayer.
Albemarle County tax assessments rise (2007 edition)
Albemarle County Assessments from 2007.
Housing numbers are down
And inventory is up. Rates are low. Home price appreciation is slowing. Inventory is up. Significantly. note: as soon as I figure out how to upload an image via coding, rather than depending on my…
Blogging’s expectations (it’s local)
So much so, that after more than a year of regular blogging, she and her partner were losing their zeal as daily contributors to the real estate blogosphere …Read Jim’s post. It is excellent.Second was a post at Mike’s site, a request for opinions on the national real estate “web 2.0” sites that led to this comment response:The business is, and will always remain, local and relationship based. I could come up with a list of dozens of sites that I think do a much better job of providing a good consumer experience at a local level than any national site.The same can be said for real estate blogs. Many provide an extraordinary top-level view of the real estate industry, with the occasional (not yet rare) post focusing on their local trends. Some of these blogs have moved the real estate conversation forward faster and more intelligently than anybody (at least I) could have imagined.I have noticed a recent shift in the real estate blogosphere to a more broad-based focus on national and industry-wide trends rather than local real estate trends…. As more and more information comes online, the best real estate information may be somewhat self-selecting – readers will visit because somebody else told them to…. I have found that local clients do not care so much about one’s prominence nation-wide, but they do care about how much you know about planning, infrastructure, tax bases, employment centers, schools, a property’s potential appreciation rate …… I’d bet that if 500 real estate bloggers were surveyed as to whey they continue to blog (not why they started), that they enjoy it and are passionate about what they do would be in the top two responses.
Always fearful
The time between being asked for a quote in the press and reading what I said is always a time of nervous anticipation…. Because unless I am the author, I am never 100% certain that what I say will be said in context. The risk of contributing to the culture of fear being propagated by the media is quite significant. After speaking with Jason Jacks with the DP on Friday, all I could think about was whether he would print my initial, flippant response to his first question…. Would have been either a substantial gaffe or a great headline – or both.The morals of the story? For me – think before I speak/act. 1) For everybody else – Expecting 10-20% appreciation year over year is a wholly unreasonable expectation.2) Read lots of news. Come to your own conclusions rather than forming an opinion based on one quote or one story is irresponsible.
Friday links 1 September 2006
The end of the housing boom might not be a bad thing.Property rights -v- human rights – Rick Sincere takes a letter-to-the-editor writer to taskTim Kaine on the upcoming Transportation Session – aside from the interesting interview with Governor Kaine – this is an example of the power of the blogosphere (we really need to work on a new name for this) – a conference call with bloggers!?Free books!Option ARMs are the single most frightening loan product I have ever seen. Depending solely on a property’s appreciation combined with a lack of a commensurate rise in pay … Who is going to be left holding the bag on these things? Because clearly it’s not the consumer’s fault … Clustering is mandatory? Thanks to Channel 29 for the heads-upA mini-milestone: just over 15,000 hits to this blog last month – made less significant because tabbed browsing has made this stats somewhat irrelevant/obsolete.