El Paso, TX

~ Life is Good

I just got our market report for March 09 for our Multiple Listing Service <a href="http://www.teamolivas.com">for homes in El Paso, TX </a> and we were up over Feb 09. In Feb 332 homes were sold and in March 435! And that is for a down economy.

The average sales price for March of 08 was $154,446 and March of 09 was $153,181. Not bad for a tough real estate year. Average days on market is about 114 days and homes are selling at about 96% of list price.

Seller are making more concessions for sure but we are not seeing drastic reductions in price.

Now is the time to buy <a href="http://www.teamolivas.com">real estate in El Paso, TX</a> so now is also the time to call a <a href="http://www.pattisellselpaso.com">Realtor in El Paso, TX</a>.

I attended the Fort Bliss Housing Seminar last week and boy was it informative. Our Congressman Sylvestre Reyes was there as well as people from Freddie Mac and Fannie May and numerous Generals from Ft Bliss and people from the housing office.

We know that we will be short in the number of units that will be available for soldiers to live in once they all arrive unless something can be done and be done very soon.

The city of El Paso is offering incentives to builders and developers by reducing the permits prices required to build and the bigger the complex you build or the number of homes, then the bigger the incentive.

The Army is even looking into renting homes themselves for the going rate and then renting them back to the soldiers. The housing office told us how to put our rentals on thier web site to further enhance advertising. You can go to www.ahrn.com and register your homes and it gets great exposure.

It is a great real estate market in El Paso, Tx right now and if you wait too long then you will miss the opportunity to get a good deal. Prices will go up, buy now.

You know with all the negative news we all hear about the real estate market, I have some positive news about the El Paso, TX real estate market.

Ft Bliss Military Base will be adding about 90,000 more soldiers and their family members by 2103. We already know that we are going to be way short on homes for the soldiers to rent or to buy. The city of El Paso is offering incentives to apartment developers in order for them to start building right away.

It is almost certain that the apartments will rent out very quickly and where can you get incentives to build right now? Investors are needed to start buying rental homes as not all soldiers will live in apartments.

Home buyers are making some great purchases right now and they are getting help from the sellers to buy the homes too and that includes new and resale. For normal buyers(not investors) interest rates are at an all time low and now with the tax credit for 1st time buyers or even for buyers that have not bought a home in the past three years there is some good tax relief. To get all of the up to minute information on that credit please go to http://www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com to get the correct information.

Why wait for prices and interest rates to go up again. El Paso is going to boom again, not only with the Base but with the 4 year medical school that will start its first class this August, the new Children's Hospital being built and the $154 million expansion of the county hospital. All these mean more jobs and more houses being sold so ultimately prices will go up again.

Please feel free to give me a call if you have any questions. My office is 915-584-5430 and ask for Patti Olivas

State of the Economy in El Paso

The El Paso Chamber of Commerce hosted an event this morning at the Univ of Texas at El Paso called State of the El Paso Economy.

It was a two hour session and a question and answer period followed. The speakers were from the local sector and spoke on everything from working in Juarez to the local real estate news.

The speakers were: Allan Russel with the Maquila Industry in Juarez and he spoke about how important it is to keep that industry strong and he also spoke about the violence in Juarez, Mexico.

Dana Vogelmeier-with State Farm and how call centers worked and how they were hiring ( showing that jobs are still available in El Paso).

Dan Olivas(my husband) spoke about the local real estate market and why it is the best time to buy in El Paso and why our home prices are not falling but remaining stable.

Harold Hann from Rocky Mountain Mortgage spoke about local lending and how although it takes a more qualified buyer than in the past and that his company services most of their loans that their foreclosure rate was less than 3%.

Bob Ayoub and Adam Frank spoke about the commercial real estate market and how they have been fairly busy and renting up some of the commercial business spaces that have become vacant.

Larry Patton with Bank of the West spoke about local banking and what is going on there.

The questions were answered by various professor from UTEP and even included a person from the Federal Reserve.

I think that everyone who attended went away with a positive note on the El Paso Economy. Posted by El Paso, TX Real Estate at 12:29 PM 0 comments

Friday, February 13, 2009