Steve Norris Keller Williams Realty West

I'm looking at this years sales statistics for resale homes around Nampa, Caldwell, Meridian and Boise and can't help but think about the Daytona 500.

43 cars started the race. This year they called the race short due to rain, so it was really the Daytona 380, but the wininnig car lead by .532 seconds over the second place car. 380 miles. Half of a second.

How many places along the race could a car or driver or team lose a half second? Lots.

What does this have to do with selling a house here in the Treasure Valley? Lots.

Here's the thing:

Over the last 30 days 1 home sold for every 15 to 35 homes available, depending on where you live. One homeowner got a contract. The other 14 (or 34!) got nothing.

What this means to you, as a seller, is that your house has to be better than every single one of the homes with which it competes. Every one. It has to look better. It has to be priced better. It has to feel better, smell better and offer better terms. If your house isn't the absolute best value available for the buyers that are out there, you are wasting your time.

To win a race you need a driver, a car, a pit crew and a mangement team that are all focused on winning. To sell a house you need an agent, a support team, a properly prepared product and an owner who know what it takes to win and who will do what is necessary to get the job done.

So, you need to decide: Do you want to be Matt Kenseth (who won the race) or one of the 42 others that started the race but didn't win? And in the race to get your house sold, there are no prizes for second place.

If you'd like to talk about how to get your Caldwell, Nampa, Meridian or Boise home in the winners circle, call me at (208) 455-2499.

We'll talk about the dozens of things you can do to give yourself the edge in this market.

I know that bad news sells better than good news. Everywhere you turn lately you hear the screams of doom and despair about the collapse of the real estate market. Well, I’m here to tell you that here in Caldwell, Nampa and the rest of Canyon County, Idaho, the real estate market is doing pretty well, thank you.

The Idaho Statesman ran an article headlined “Canyon County Home Prices Drop”. They include a chart with an ominous downward trend line depicting a reduction of the median price in Canyon County. The article describes a 12% reduction in price from January ’07 to January ’08.

That is accurate. Except that they did not slice the data to look at what impact this is having on my clients, all of whom are selling existing homes. When you do that, you find that new construction is getting hammered, but existing home prices are down just 5.1% year to year. The article also ignores that existing home prices are still up 3.8% from January 2006 and – get this – 43.6% from January 2005. Hmm. That’s a little different.

Are those existing home sellers desperate? Not so much. We are still enjoying a 97.2% list price to sell price ratio. The buying pace certainly isn't frantic, but there's not a lot of price slashing going on there, either.

So aren't houses taking a lot longer to sell? Nope. Average days on market (DOM) were 84 for existing homes closed in January of 2008 compared to 83 days in 2007. Even 2006, when houses were supposedly selling overnight, had an average DOM of 64. By way of comparison, the average for January from 2002 to 2008 was 94 days.

So while I wouldn’t want to be one of the larger builders right now, I’m pleased as punch to be selling houses for folks who still have equity from 2003 or 2004 or even 2005. Yes, we’re selling at prices that are lower than they were last year, but we’re still selling at a profit and that’s what matters.

Then, we’re taking that money and buying bigger homes from builders (who do need to sell) so we’re doing pretty well on the buy. (Remember, these are the houses that are down a bunch from last year!). When things turn around (and they always do) we’re going to make even more. Not bad for a "down" market.