Joe Woutersz

The purpose of this blog is to hopefully enlighten, inspire and encourage people to visit , explore and enjoy the Greater Glens Falls Region.

Glens Falls is located about 200 miles north of New York City and 150 miles South of Montreal. It is about 20 miles North of Saratoga Springs, famous for it's horse racing, and 10 miles south of one of the most splendid lakes in the east, Lake George.

Glens Falls could also be considered the southern gateway to the Adirondack Mountains, something like 6 million acres of forests, mountains , lakes and streams protected for the enjoyment of the world.

In future posts , I will be discussing resturants, Museums, industry and a great lifetyle. As a Realtor, I will be talking about the housing market, affordable homes and plugging my own homes from time to time.

Until next time

I am currently representing a couple from out of the area moving to Glens Falls. We found a 2 family that would be perfect for their needs as the couple would also like to bring along one of their parents. We wrote an offer , and it was accepted , but immediately there were concerns over the pending appraisal. The seller was concerned that the appraisal figure may not be high enough to cover the sellers concessions requested by the buyers. the buyers actually agreed to forfeit the seller concession if the house did not appraise for the amount they were requesting, which I felt was a pretty stand up thing to do.

As it turned out, the house actually appraised for $9000 less than contract price. The buyers again agreed to compromise and offered $4500 over appraisal, which was essentially half of the difference. The seller refused, evidentally feeling that he didn't care what the banks felt his home was worth or that any would be buyer would have to pay cash for every nickel over appraisal value.

The end result of this is the buyers are entitiled to their deposit back, but they lost $400 on the inspection and paid another $450 for an appraisal. The seller just got a FREE inspection and appraisal. He also got FREE advise from the real estate brokerage and the attorneys.

Is the listing agent responsible? I don't think so. Realtors work to do the best job they can do for their clients. The last thing a Realtor is trying to do is give away the seller's property. The reason for this opinion is Realtors make a living on service, loyalty and long term relationships and regardless of any buzz out there, 99% of Realtors want to do a great job for their clients. In this particular case, the listing agent had obviously discussed the issue of appraisals with the seller or else it would not have been a factor in negotiations.

What is left for the selling agent? In this case I was able to retain the buyers and we are continuing to evaluate property but now with the new danger that if the new property does not appraise and the seller will not compromise , more money will be lost to inspections and appraisals.

And what of the seller? Aside from my carving an image of the seller with his name on it , and dropping it in a deep hole in my back yard, he will sit with this house for a year or two and my prediction is that he will eventually sell it for less than what my buyers offered.

Perhaps the new real estate contracts should require sellers to reimburse buyers when the house fails to appraise. What are your thoughts?

It's easy to imagine that Warren County's real estate market is depressed and suffering; after all, the evening news is loaded with negative soundbites from around the country and our local reporters are really no better.

This morning , the president of our Waren County Association of Realtors , Mark Bergman, told a room of Realtors about his experiences with reporters this year. On 7 out of 10 interviews given this year, the reporter led with questions designed to support his story on our suffering real estate economy. " I understand that our foreclosure rate in the county has increased dramatically, could you elaborate a bit on that? BERGMAN: In 2007 1% of our listed properties were in foreclosure and in 2008 the rate is 1.25%. This is a non story. Yes , we have more houses on the market than last year, but it is hardly a story.

Are we suffering? Is real estate in the tank? Have our home prices fallen dramatically? No! No! No!, Statistics in the county show a dip in median home prices of somewhere around 3 to 7%.

Can people still borrow money to buy houses? The answer is yes! Folks with good credit can buy whatever they can afford. The real estate mortgage market is actually quite similar to what it was 10 years ago. Once again the consumer has to prove that they can actually afford to buy a home. What a weird idea? Huh? Consumers whose debt to income ratios are too high and people without strong employment histories are going to have difficulty purchasing.

All in all, my opinion is that during the first half of 2009 inventories will begin to shrink and by the fall, prices will begin rising again and we will be very close to having a balanced market. Interest rates will gradually rise and people will be wishing they bought earlier.

In December of 2007, I was telling my clients that our region was not affected by the housing crisis, as I have not been aware of any speculative investing during the past 5 years and 99% of the buyers I have served, utilized 30 year fixed mortgages for their financing. I felt that the sluggishness of our market and our bloated inventory was a direct result of the constant barrage of negative news articles fed to our population on the Nightly News, which left consumers staring into the heavens waiting for the sky to fall -- hundreds of houses going into foreclosure and being sold on the auction block --, "but lo! It's not going to happen". Because we have very little speculative buying and almost no high risk loans occuring, What is there to fear?

The error to my thinking is this: Although real estate is local, the mortgage business is not; so although we have very few foreclosures, the banking industry,in response to the huge number of defaults in other areas, has revamped thier mortgage guidelines, making homes more difficult to purchase and eliminating hordes of people from the marketplace, who under normal conditions would be qualified to purchase. " Why don't we just punish everyone, it's just too hard to identify the bad guys"

My current thinking is that the mortgage mess, coupled with negative media, and sellers still thinking it's 2005, are creating a tough market.

The silver lining I see is that our infrastructure is still sound. We are not going to have a rash of foreclosures and our region should be one of the first to recover.