I'm sorry you missed it! This was great! Tonight me and a handful of other professionals presented certain important information for home buyers. I was impressed with the presentation skills and the information. I will definitely be promoting the next one with a bigger push to get everyone that may be buying (or even selling) real estate to attend.
A Home Buyer’s Guide in Today’s Market
Our line up included a financial planner, a credit-restoration expert, mortgage lender, real estate agent (me!), insurance agent and home inspector. Great information all around, even for someone who already knows it all (me, again!).
Be looking for us in February, just before the next big buying season. If you're not in the Vancouver, Washington area, then look for one where you live. There is so much information out there, plus you'll be getting information from all sorts of people with different views and experiences of the real estate and financial world. And, this is helpful, you'll meet other interesting professionals that could help you make better decisions with your money or time. Oh, better yet, these events are usually free.
Whether you're looking for your first home, or possibly your last, or selling either of them, I have the patience and experience to help you make the best choice in Vancouver Washington. The Natural Choice in real estate is working with a professional real estate agent (me!) at Krogseng Real Estate who listens to your needs and works as a trusted advisor to get the best solution to your housing needs. We will give you a new attitude about real estate. If you are concerned about living a more sustainable lifestyle, Vancouver Washington may be the city for you. I specialize in knowing the neighborhoods in Vancouver Washington that have great walkscore ratings. Whether you want the low-maintenance condo lifestyle, a home that gets you off the grid, or a home that is something in between in Clark County, the natural choice in real estate will be someone that can help you find just the right home and neighborhood. If you're looking for homes that have been certified as green, you'll want to know I keep informed of the newly constructed homes and their various green certifications. Visit Krogseng Real Estate for more information.
Summer is pulling to a close, and the market is starting to shift into the "slow season". That's just home buying and selling patterns. Truth is, I'm waiting to see something else happen with the market. We have 2857 homes available in greater-Vancouver and 3899 in Clark County. Not exactly declining numbers. The Clark County count bumped a little more last week and appears this week a little lower, but this week is still higher than two weeks ago.
The number of homes under contract is increasing for greater-Vancouver with 843 and for Clark at 1097. That trend has been going on all year.
And solds? Seventy-four for the week in greater-Vancouver and 99 for Clark County. Not actually higher than last week's numbers of 84 and 99, respectively, but higher than two weeks ago.
Market movement still is heavily weighted below the $250,000 price tag. Better reporting data on our multiple-listing system will allow better tracking of the mix of bank-owned and short-sale in the numbers. That will be interesting. I think it will show that there is a strong supply of both of those, even with the slender number of homes available. That would support the continued drop in home values, don't you agree?
Whether you're looking for your first home, or possibly your last, or selling either of them, I have the patience and experience to help you make the best choice in Vancouver Washington. The Natural Choice in real estate is working with a professional real estate agent (me!) at Krogseng Real Estate who listens to your needs and works as a trusted advisor to get the best solution to your housing needs. We will give you a new attitude about real estate. If you are concerned about living a more sustainable lifestyle, Vancouver Washington may be the city for you. I specialize in knowing the neighborhoods in Vancouver Washington that have great walkscore ratings. Whether you want the low-maintenance condo lifestyle, a home that gets you off the grid, or a home that is something in between in Clark County, the natural choice in real estate will be someone that can help you find just the right home and neighborhood. If you're looking for homes that have been certified as green, you'll want to know I keep informed of the newly constructed homes and their various green certifications. Visit Krogseng Real Estate for more information.
Watching the numbers and checking them weeks later I've learned that I'm relying on a very inaccuarate system of data. 
The MLS is where I get my data and I guess I'm getting it a bit too fresh. The data here is from agents - straight from the streets as it were. But I've not given thought to the fact that some agents don't update the system very quickly. So, for instance, a home sale completes successfully on 8/1/2009. There is nothing to show me that maybe the agent didn't change the status of the property in the system until 8/30/2009. So, I counted that transaction in the wrong category - assuming it was even updated to pending status from active status.
That's all to say that even though the actual numbers appear to be inaccurate for the time period I report, the trends, I believe, are still indicated in the weekly numbers. I'm sure with a little effort I could find the statistical average of the number of transactions that aren't entered timely and adjust, but that's not what I'm going to do. I'm going to stick to the trends.
And what are the trends? The declining number of homes available is a trend. I'm seeing that in the 2854 active in the system today. The same data shows 3853 for the county. Roughly what's available now is less than what was recorded last week. I'm also seeing it when I'm helping homebuyers find a home. Not so much available to look at. What is looked at tends to get bought - although my numbers are showing that there tends to be fewer homes in pending status - 831 in major Vancouver, and 1039 for Clark County. Both counts were a noticeable bit higher around June.
Of the 79 homes that so far have been recorded as selling in the last week, 48 were at $250,000 or below. So, market is still weighted to that price range. This is in keeping with the MLS reports about average and median price movements.
Whether you're looking for your first home, or possibly your last, or selling either of them, I have the patience and experience to help you make the best choice in Vancouver Washington. The Natural Choice in real estate is working with a professional real estate agent (me!) at Krogseng Real Estate who listens to your needs and works as a trusted advisor to get the best solution to your housing needs. We will give you a new attitude about real estate. If you are concerned about living a more sustainable lifestyle, Vancouver Washington may be the city for you. I specialize in knowing the neighborhoods in Vancouver Washington that have great walkscore ratings. Whether you want the low-maintenance condo lifestyle, a home that gets you off the grid, or a home that is something in between in Clark County, the natural choice in real estate will be someone that can help you find just the right home and neighborhood. If you're looking for homes that have been certified as green, you'll want to know I keep informed of the newly constructed homes and their various green certifications. Visit Krogseng Real Estate for more information.
The local paper has been alternately gloom and glee in the last months. Recently (maybe today) there was an article declaring the bottom of the housing slump. Well, that might be, but I definitely believe something changed over the last month. It was reflected in the difference in homes that sold last week versus the week before. For the whole county, the closed sales jumped by 38 (from 96 to 134) - that's almost 40% in a week. For the area of Vancouver I watch closest, that jump was 59%, moving from 68 to 108 closed sales. You see the whole county got busy. Certainly, most of these sales were part of the pending count from the weeks before. So - was there a huge drop in pending? Uh, no. Only about 5% change from one week to the next (858 last week and 817 this week).
Has the market hit bottom? Ask me later. What I can tell you is that the number of homes available for sale is less now than last week. And this trend has been going at least the last twelve months. 4159 homes available is what I recorded for 8/10/2008. For 8/03/2009, there are 2875 homes available. That would be about a 31% drop in available homes over the last year. Just in case your calculator isn't handy, there is only about a 1% change from last week.
One thing I've learned from changing markets is that they move quickly from one type of market to the other. Is our market in the trough of the boom-bust cycle? I'd look more at the recent report from the local newspaper that reported we had one of the lowest counts of incoming Clark County residents in many years. Plus, the fact that I don't know if the reporting agencies can say how many people may have left. I dunno - I don't think it's time to call the bottom.
Just in case it is the bottom, you might ought to be out there looking for a home to buy or invest in...
Whether you're looking for your first home, or possibly your last, or selling either of them, I have the patience and experience to help you make the best choice in Vancouver Washington. The Natural Choice in real estate is working with a professional real estate agent (me!) at Krogseng Real Estate who listens to your needs and works as a trusted advisor to get the best solution to your housing needs. We will give you a new attitude about real estate. If you are concerned about living a more sustainable lifestyle, Vancouver Washington may be the city for you. I specialize in knowing the neighborhoods in Vancouver Washington that have great walkscore ratings. Whether you want the low-maintenance condo lifestyle, a home that gets you off the grid, or a home that is something in between in Clark County, the natural choice in real estate will be someone that can help you find just the right home and neighborhood. If you're looking for homes that have been certified as green, you'll want to know I keep informed of the newly constructed homes and their various green certifications. Visit Krogseng Real Estate for more information.
The market I'm most active in continues the nearly 12 month march of declining number of homes available. Tonight, the number available was 2897. A year ago, I recorded 4120 homes available in the same area. Number of homes under contract but not yet sold has continued to increase steadily in the same time period - currently 858 which is up considerably from 675 at this time last year. If you have had any economic lessons, you'll see that we have a diminishing supply and an apparently increasing demand. Basic economics suggest the prices should...increase. Hmmm....not so in this market. I don't actually track average prices myself (good friend Jerry Rollings does though), so I can only report that a recent bit of news in the local paper claimed average home prices had fallen another 15% since January. Go figure. Meanwhile, 68 sales closed in the last week.
The Clark County market as a whole, shows the same pattern of generally fewer homes available for sale, being at 3952 this evening, up just a little from my last measure on July 6. Homes under contract are up to 1099 and the number of homes actually transferring ownership was 96 for the week.
Oh, but that's not all that's up - interest rates are up a little. Moving from under 4 to over 5, really isn't much when you've seen interest rates at 17%, but it does knock a few people out of being able to buy.
Out in the real market, there still continues to be a feeding frenzy when a good home value hits the market. It's wonderful. As a buyer's agent, maybe a bit disconcerting to know that even though the home has been on the market just 48 hours, your buyers will have to make a fast decision about buying it. As a seller's agent of course, there's the mixed feelings of 'great, that was fast' and the second-guessing demon 'was that too low?'.
I think I take comfort in knowing that when a home is priced to the market, it will sell and sell pretty quickly. So sellers, beware - if you haven't gotten a pretty good offer to purchase your home, you need to look at what is preventing the home sale!
Whether you're looking for your first home, or possibly your last, or selling either of them, I have the patience and experience to help you make the best choice in Vancouver Washington. The Natural Choice in real estate is working with a professional real estate agent (me!) at Krogseng Real Estate who listens to your needs and works as a trusted advisor to get the best solution to your housing needs. We will give you a new attitude about real estate. If you are concerned about living a more sustainable lifestyle, Vancouver Washington may be the city for you. I specialize in knowing the neighborhoods in Vancouver Washington that have great walkscore ratings. Whether you want the low-maintenance condo lifestyle, a home that gets you off the grid, or a home that is something in between in Clark County, the natural choice in real estate will be someone that can help you find just the right home and neighborhood. If you're looking for homes that have been certified as green, you'll want to know I keep informed of the newly constructed homes and their various green certifications. Visit Krogseng Real Estate for more information.
Looking for real estate in walkable communities, green-built or energy-efficient homes, and homes that are part of sustainable lifestyles? The natural choice in real estate is right here!
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