Our broker, Chase International, has just released the Mid Year Stats for the housing markets in Reno-Sparks, the Carson Valley and various points around Lake Tahoe (click on the .PDFs below).
This Mid Year Review captures sales from January 1 through June 30 and then compares them to the same time frame in 2007. In a word, the change can be described as Down. In the Reno-Sparks single family house market, for example: sales volume down 28%; units sold down 15%; median sales price down 14%. But wait, the numbers are worse for condos: sales volume down 65%; units sold down 58%; median sales price down 28%.
11 comments
umm.. so how are those monthly numbers coming along? tick tock tick tock…….
How’s that bet on $90/barrel oil coming along, T. Boone?
This may get really ugly at the higher end. Consumer sentiment has completely tanked and I suspect we’ll see more foreclosures at the high end. As lenders dump inventory into a market where buyers are few and far between, prices may decline significantly. My guess is that people who would like to sell aren’t going to be able to stomach the losses and will either not list their propoerties or will list them at prices that won’t move them. This is a recipe for a bad market.
Which is not to say that the price declines have not been significant to date. A 20% drop at $1.5M involves a much bigger loss than the same drop from $400,000. To some extent the percentages are misleading.
Check at Forclosurepoint.com (I got this website from the WSJ) and put in 89511 to see how many over 1 million dollar homes are already in foreclosure–I found this to be an eye opening experience! It is the foreclosures that are keeping the educated buyers out of the market, because they are going to cause property values to tank which is going to cause more foreclosures! It is a mess out there!
Our corporate broker just posted her summary and thoughts on these charts. Check it out…
To summarize my take-away from the “blog”:
It’s a great time to buy!
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
Smart buyers are buying now!
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
Don’t miss the great opportunities!
I’m not a fan of regurgitating a whole lot of meaningless statistics. “Truckee seems immune to the national downtrend” doesn’t strike me as much of an analysis. I’d be interested in why Truckee seems different from everywhere else and how you can have increasing prices in an area with so many foreclosures. Questions like these weren’t addressed at all.
My conclusion is that blogs may require a different personality than the one most real estate agents possess.
DonC -
Sue Lowe has demonstrated to me she’s nothing more than a bean counter. Furthermore, I doubt she’s ever been to Truckee. The only reason sales of >$1M properties in Truckee are “bucking the trend” is because of what’s going on at Northstar. It’s an anomaly and if you know anything about local real estate, a Ritz Carlton does not make a Truckee [besides many of these Northstar sales are really fractionalized interests so individual sales are really 1/17 of >$1M].
Furthermore, I question how Sue can make some of the conclusions she does. For instance, she states “we’re definitely seeing an increased interest and activity from buyers.” Funny; I didn’t see a statistic for “buyer interest.”
She states “investors and first-time home buyers…are re-entering the market in hordes.” Maybe in Sparks, but I can guaranty you the exact opposite is happening in Truckee and Incline Village. In fact, there are no first-time home buyers in Incline Village and investors have all but abandoned the market!
Finally Sue concludes, “this is the best time to get the deals.” But if she examined her own historical statistics, she’d realize July is probably the WORST time for buyers to negotiate SFR deals. October’s going to be the best time.
You know, Sue’s starting to sound a heck of a lot like Lawrence Yun. Could she be ChaseNation’s version of johnny-come-lately cat litter?
Smarten - thanks so much for the info about how the Truckee numbers are being influenced by Northstar.
This is exactly what her blog should have — some insights into what is actually happening on the ground. Then again perhaps this just shows that a group of non-experts may be able to come up with better information than a single expert.
Thanks again for the explanation.
I think smarten is a realtor–are you? If not–you should be! There was an S. Marten who just got rid of the house on the corner of Plateau and Caughlin Parkway to some other realtor. If that is you–congratulations I don’t think that house is ever going to sell.
Future Buyer, I’m no realtor. And I don’t own real property in Nevada [although I’m looking to purchase when the time is right].
I think this blog proves you don’t need to be a real estate licensee to know an awful lot about real estate. That’s why Diane, Guy, I and others think it’s so valuable.
Well you just have a common name and you do know a lot about real estate. Not owning real estate in Nevada is a nice place to be right now–we are in the same boat. I’m sure the other realtor Marten was excited to get rid of the Caughlin Ranch listing whoever she is!