Ralph Nudi

This heart-warming property is quietly secluded on 723 Imperial Drive. Just taking photos of this house inspires appreciation for the arrangement of rooms and well-utilized square footage. Take notice of the freely flowing floorplan (now that's a tongue twister!) as you observe the slides in our tour below!

It is a generously spaced three-bedroom (woodfloored) all brick Ranch home located on Racine's Northside in a quiet community. Great layout with a formal living room and family room. Enjoy the upcoming fall and winter with a natural fireplace to stay warm. What are you waiting for, schedule your private showing today!

For More Information on Must-See Homes in Racine, see out website: www.MyWeichertHomeSearch.com

In todays WALL STREET JOURNAL the article Housing Imperils Recovery states that nationally home prices have sunk to 2002 levels "effectively wiping out almost a decade's worth of home equity across the U.S. and imperiling the fragile economic recovery as Americans confront the falling value of their biggest investment"

Whenever reports come out about national housing trends, I research Kenosha housing trends to see if we are in fact moving with the rest of the country and at the same rate. Often times when I meet with sellers and talk about national housing trends, I find that they are living in denial, and use excuses such as... "those are the national trends, things are different in every market".

I figure that is a fair enough rebuttal, so here are some statistics about the City of Kenosha and the entire County of Kenosha real estate price trends:

In 2002 the average sale price for a Single Family home in the City of Kenosha was $131,523 and the average home price for Kenosha County was $153,993. The chart above shows that those prices trended upward and peaked between 2006 and 2007. Since 2007 prices have trended downward, and the patterns have not "formed a bottom" yet. This years YTD averages are at $152,957 for the entire county and $124,476 for the City of Kenosha, which are LOWER than 2002 already.

What does this mean for homeowners in the Kenosha Area that need to sell? If you are in a position where you want to sell or NEED to sell, the time to get your home on the market is now, and you MUST price your property based on the current downward trend lines and average days on market or you will end up with a home on the market for longer, and ultimately cost yourself thousands of dollars.

Until the market has actually bottomed out and started to change direction for a long enough period of time to create a patters, time is not on your side.

Many clients ask me: When will the market turn? The truth is that nobody can predict the future, but we can forecast based on trends, and the trends show that the market will not turn for 2-3 additional years or in 2014.

As a seller this may be a difficult time, but as a potential buyer, there has never been a better time to find a deal on a home or investment property. The data below shows a table of statistics from the Multiple Listing Service showing the date used for our charts.

If you are interested in finding out what your home is worth with no hassle. Feel free to use our free online Kenosha Home Value Tool. Of course if you are interested in seeing what is available on the market today our home search site shows ALL properties for sale in Southeastern Wisconsin and is a great resource to search Kenosha Homes for Sale including zeroing in on Foreclosure or Short Sale properties.

The New Normal in the Kenosha Real Estate Market

In 2006 I began selling Kenosha, WI properties as short sales. When I first started listing these homes they “flew off the shelves” faster than the iPad 2 because there was a shortage of good priced properties.

That year the average sale price of the 2,158 single family homes sold in the Kenosha County MLS was $202,538 and our town as well as the entire country was sitting on a real estate bubble.

I remember an agent from another office calling me that year regarding one of my listings. The listing had been published in the MLS as being subject to short sale approval by the sellers lender, and the agent wasn’t sure what that meant. He wanted to write a full price cash offer. I explained to him that the sellers lender would still have to approve the sale, and that would take 6-8 weeks. I will never forget the conversation we had…

“Ralph, you don’t understand. We are willing to offer FULL PRICE” he said to me.

I answered him, “I heard you”

“And IT’S A CASH OFFER” he continued

“I understand that,” I replied “But the lender still has to approve it. The seller owes more money than the list price”

There was a pause and a deep breath on the other end of the phone, “You CAN’T list a house for less than what you seller owes… that’s unethical!”

That’s when I KNEW that I was on to something that was going to take my career to the next level. Virtually nobody understood what a short sale was, or how to do one. After a little further discussion with that agent, he has his broker call me and give me the same lecture. My response to her was very simple. Not only was what I was doing NOT unethical. It was more ethical that what most agents were doing, which was to simply overprice listings based on what their sellers needed or wanted to get out of them with no regard for market conditions. I also explained to her that there was going to be many more of these short sales to come, and that she might want to learn what they were, because they were going to become a very normal part of the real estate business, and that there was going to be a NEW NORMAL.

In MY market, I practically invented the short sale, but it was not my invention at all. I simply read things written by people smarter and more experienced in this area, and implemented them in my market first.

Fast forward to 2011 where short sales are common place and where 2/3 of my personal business are REO properties that I list for national and local lenders and the statistics are quite different. There were a total of 1,237 homes sold last year which is a 43% decrease in sold properties and an average sales price of $160,674 which is a 20% decrease.

What is more TELLING is that when you focus on the city of of Kenosha and look at 2-unit properties the average sales price dropped from $146,858 to $54,712 which is a STAGGERING 63% drop in value. The AVERAGE price is lower than the LOWEST sale of 5 years earlier of $70,000. Landlords and more importantly amateur investors bid up the price of investment properties to unsustainable levels similar to the way tech sector stocks drove up the NASDAQ in 2000 to the all time high of 5132.

I think the story of the NASDAQ run up helps tell the story of the NEW NORMAL in the real estate industry and can help people to understand. Just as real estate prices were higher than market rents were able to support, tech sector stock prices were unrealistically high with no regard to the actual value of assets or profitability of tech sector companies.

After reaching its all time high on March 10th 2010 the exchange lost 62% of its value over the following two years. Just as we have never returned to the highs experienced in 2000 in the tech sector in 11 years, it will be a very long time before we reach prices in investment properties anywhere near the highs of 5 years ago.

As more time goes on, sellers will accept the NEW NORMAL and the real estate market will return to more normal levels of volume, but with the new lower prices and possibly a rate of growth based on common sense instead of raw speculation. Once the rest of the sellers in the market GET REAL about the value of their properties, the market can continue on the path of slow steady recovery.

Is Blogging a waste of time? If you ask Mrs. Nudi (the one I am married to!) the answer would probably be YES!

Than again all of our spouses whish we would spend a little less time at the office and a little more time at home.

When I first started selling real estate in Kenosha I had no idea how important online marketing was going to become in my business. My first year as a realtor I sold over $10 Million in real estate in a town where the average sales price was shy of $150,000. Most of these sales were not internet based leads. Instead I focused my efforts on distressed properties in Kenosha and Racine counties. I would find people who were in foreclosure and send out letters letting them know that there were alternatives to foreclosure.

About the same time, I started getting involved with Active Rain and found that there were some advantages to Blogging. I learned about things I had never heard of such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and backlinks. I learned that a post written properly could drive traffic to your website even if NOBODY EVER READS YOUR ARTICLE.

Of course we all have ego's as well and want to believe that someone actually WANTS to read the stuff we have to write, but often times that is NOT the case. When I wrote my post: How I Got Over 600 Comments on My AR Blog Post in 3 DAYS, lots of people read (and commented) on my post and it created a self fulfilling prophecy. That being said, most of my blogs went on largely UNREAD.

Then... something started to happen. After about 2 years, I started getting inquiries VIA active rain from complete strangers. Most of them in response to articles I wrote regarding avoiding foreclosure in Kenosha, WI

I also noticed my PAGE RANK in Google rise to the FIRST PAGE. So... I would have to say that it HAS NOT been a waste of my time.

Weichert, Realtors® - Precision does more to generate leads for our agents than ANY OTHER real estate company in our market. From the Weichert Lead Network to our local call center, to our innovative WEB and Direct Mail Strategies we generate an average of 1.8 ADDITIONAL CLOSED TRANSACTIONS per month PER AGENT.

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