Have you been listening to the marketplace? What interpretations are you making as a result of coupling to the media rhetoric? ? What do you think is REALLY going on? There is so much speculation about the market, about the ‘right time’ to buy and sell, should we listen to the media to determine what decisions to make regarding our future? I mean, does the media care to report the truth or are they concerned instead with reporting what will increase ratings and advertising dollars? I’m making a distinction here between media and factual-based news. The majority of what comes out of the media is entertainment, especially if it isn’t grounded in facts. Now, entertainment is fine and has it’s place, but not when it comes to making important financial decisions. When I’m making important financial decisions, I find out the facts, track historical data, and make interpretations in the domains in which I am competent … and hire competent professionals to advise me in every other domain.
As such, I have been compiling monthly housing statistics for Austin, tracking the data over the past 5 years, and making my own interpretations of the current marketplace based on past and current performance. So, what I offer to you every month is factual statistical graphs and my professional interpretations of them. In fact, as a result of studying the statistics, Krisstina and I assess that now is a good time to buy. Therefore, we just closed and moved into our new home last week.What did we assess to determine now is the time to buy? Well, prices are down, interest rates are low and yet overall, Austin is consistent – meaning lower prices and low risk! Here are the facts (and guess what….these are the same facts that have been reported again and again throughout the year): Austin continues to be one of the best places to live in our great nation. Check out the statistics on Austin real estate for sale, the cost of living, low unemployment rates and affordability that are released by independent companies and research firms every week. whether you are listening to Yahoo!, CNBC, Forbes or the Wall Street Journal, you are likely reading the same conclusions that we are: Austin has risen to the top of every list as the best place to live.The following graphs have been created by our team of professional Austin Texas Real Estate Agents to provide you with valuable information and interpretations of the data, which we anticipate you will find equally valuable. Please peruse the following and let us know what you interpret from the data by participating in our blog.
Sales Closed by Month Less homes are selling per month now than they have in the past 4 years. This is actually no different than what we have been tracking since the beginning of the year, and we are in the same curve that we have experienced since 2005. We are experiencing an overall decrease in the average monthly sales, which is consistent with the economy, tightening lending practices, and overall loss of consumer confidence.If you recall from my last article, we anticipated this decrease in sales: “as is typical in late summer, we began tracking a seasonal cycle to bring us to our current situation. If Austin continues to track with the typical cycle, we can anticipate sharp decreases in the number of sales through the winter.â€
What does this mean, and how is it relevant to you? What this means is that we are experiencing a slow-down in our Austin real estate market, homes are staying on the market longer, and we are in a more balanced market than the typical seller’s market of the past 3 years. Buyers are now able to negotiate better deals and terms when buying a home and sellers must be very aggressive about pricing their homes at the market value … not the personal value that they ‘feel’ the home is worth. For more about this, please see Krisstina’s blog “
Are You Still Living in a Bubbleâ€. Bottom line: this is a great market to be acquiring properties: whether it is your first home, a move-up, or investment portfolio, now is the time to buy.
Average Sales Price Indeed … the graph is tracking the average sales price consistently with past performance. You may note, however, that we have not experienced an overall annual increase in the average sales price as we have over the past few years. This is consistent with the increase in homes for sale in Austin and a lack of buyers in the marketplace (see the sales closed by month graph). Following economic fundamentals, with an increase in supply and decrease in demand, we cannot expect a continued increase in price … if we continue to experience an overabundance in inventory and buyers do not absorb the inventory, we can anticipate a decrease in the average sales price. However, given our next graph that tracks the number of active listings, you will note the seasonal decrease in inventory. Early 2009 inventory will help us determine how pricing will be affected by the marketplace, so stay tuned!
What does this mean to you?Sellers must be very competitive in the market with their pricing. It is time to get real about pricing and remove personal feelings, attachment, and value to your home. Price your home in the market like it were a share of Yahoo! stock. It is time to understand that a willing buyer will only pay market value for your home, and in our current market, they are looking for deals. If you are selling your home, put yourself in the buyer’s shoes: what would you REALLY pay for your home in the current climate? REALLY? If you are buying a house, take heed: market value does not mean that you can steal the house from the seller! Be realistic when making offers on homes, and justify your offers with grounded numbers … but there are deals to be had.If you are selling your home in 2008 or 2009, you will need to prepare for greater competition to sell your home, and you will need to create demand for your home by creating a competitive advantage over the other 10,000 homes that are available. To learn how to create demand for your home and sell your home quickly, please study our online document
How to get the most money for your home – by creating demand.
Active Listings Why do I sound like a broken record? We are tracking last year’s graph amazingly closely, yet with more overall homes for sale. If we track the average number of monthly sales with the average number of active listings, what this tells us is what we already know: sellers are competing for a smaller number of buyers. We are coming into the season when a small percentage of sellers remove their homes from the marketplace … the holidays are coming. But, please remember that when you have less competition to sell your home, you have an advantage to capture buyers for your home. Which means the holidays may be exactly the time to be selling.
What does this mean to you?Get really good at asking competent professionals for help … and hire the right team to help you. Pricing your home to sell in this marketplace and preparing it for the market is vital to selling your home. Avoid overpricing your home ‘just to see if you can get it’. If you overprice your home, you will likely be chasing the market, find it difficult to sell your home in a timely fashion, and actually end up getting a lower price than if you had priced it right from the beginning.Buying a house has never been more fun! You have more choices than ever, many sellers have staged their homes to entice you, and prices are at levels that can make you do a double-take (if the seller has removed their Self from the house and priced it like the commodity that it is).To search all the listings on the market and to build a customized search for all of Austin and the surrounding areas, check out the
custom home search tool on our website. If you are interested in the urban Austin corridor, downtown living, and to see all of the downtown Austin high rise condos and developments, be sure to check out our new
interactive maps on our main page.The entire data report provided to create these graphs are available to you by a free subscription-only service. Please subscribe by emailing us at
info@goodlifeteam.com and begin receiving your monthly update.
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