I like Coach Fox and I think he did a good job here. I wish him well at Georgia. But unless he did some major improvements after he took ownership, I think his house is overpriced. Can anybody refer me to a house in Reno that today is worth what it was worth in December of 04?

Talus Point..the whole rest of the unsold units where foreclosed on last month

If you take a look at the virtual tour you will see the changes to the Dant listing, major, major renovations!

I too would like to see the comps for the Dant house. I am hard pressed to know of a house that has has gone up in value, not down, since the end of 2004. What supports a 10% increase in value for this house when every other house in Reno has lost value in the same time period?

It really doesn’t matter what Mr. Fox paid, what he put into the house in improvements, what he owes against the house, or what he “feels” it’s worth. The market really has no interest in those things. What matters is what are comparable houses selling for now. And I think that means selling, not what other asking prices are. So I await with interest the comps that are relied upon to support this pricing.
Also thanks.

Reno personality NOD? I need another clue?

Hello blog!

After looking at houses for OVER 2 years I have finally put an offer in on a property my wife and I fell in love with. I won’t mention the property but will say we offered $82/sqft, the go e has incredible views and is located in wingfield springs. Our offer is BELOW all the comps as well as what is currently listed.

Wish us luck!

Smarten, do you mean change in the sense of sellers in the higher priced properties starting to get realistic and dropping the price? Delacroix certainly represents a big price reduction. A $279K price reduction sounds substantial,unless it is on a multi-million dollar house.

Take a look at days on the market in Incline..some of the agents in town are still pricing properties way higher then they should..Why? The know the next agent down the street will take the listing hoping the sellers will lower the price back in line..

Of course there are people out there with cash and who have the financing in place who can jump on a property priced right..

I look at a property the other day in IV but the agents where too out there on the pricing to make anything work..

I strong suspect this property will soon be on the nod sheet

Depression does hurt, and unfortunately our offer on the house wasn’t the only one. It looks as though we won’t get the house. very sad indeed… especially after considering I have been looking for almost 3 years…. only to have the house I love taken..

oh well such is life…

Party Bathroom, LOL. My friends have one of those - I’ll ask them if they’ve had any parties in there. Probably just a party of dirty dogs.

I did see a couple of “carwash” showers - in one door and out another.

I visited Reno 2 weeks ago and saw some open houses in Arrowcreek - and took a look at Toll Bros. Montelena up there. They are offering at $200k less than a year ago and offering 3.99% financing. The new model is gorgeous. Sigh.

I’m still not able to move due to business constraints here in Cali but I feel like Atlas is going to shrug any moment. I am being chased out of here by personal and corporate taxes. AND the new 9+ sales tax.

I feel that the spigot of refugees from Cali will turn back on as soon as people here can sell their homes again. California is not giving us many reasons to stay.

RI

Tonight there are 121 listings on the MLS in Somersett. 97 of them are under $500,000.

How many total houses in Somersett?

Um, more ethnic restaurants and markets? I can’t think of anything else right about now Sully, LOL! If I move to Reno I’m sure I can get ethnic groceries once in awhile in Sacramento. I’ll miss my friends but they can visit me.

You had me at CA beach girls.

What Salmon..Salmon season has been closed for almost all of last year..minus a small season on the Upper Sacramento River last year

Looks like another closure this year..

Steelhead runs where the lowest since the mid 70’s drought

Thank you Arnold for sending all the water down south

Waldo,
Our price range is $250-$300K, but we’re trying to get the most bang for our buck since this will be a long-term home. Location/land is key. We want good schools for our 4 kids, a short commute to downtown, and an actual yard with at least a quarter acre or more of usable land. This would have been impossible a year or two ago in our price range, but now is starting to look doable.

As far as an auction-type scenario, that might have been the case with the first house that went pending in 3 days, but not really with the other one that had been on for 180 days, just dumb luck.

We’re going to lay low and wait for the right place at the right price to come along again. I guess we’ll have to be ready to jump quickly though.

This blog was built (even has thrived) upon the ability of the poster’s to read the RE economy downturn accurately. I consider many of your posts very insightful. Many sound like you buy into what’s made this blog popular; namely the ability to put down Real Estate as an investment.

Maybe when you buy a house at market value, live in it for a while, then sell it, you have no right to expect a profit, or consider it an investment.

But I’d suggest that for most of us our house is something more than that; we leverage overall cost by putting up a smaller percentage for a down payment, we raise our families in it, do improvements upon it, parlay it into a bigger investment(via collateral on all kinds of things, in my case a business), ultimately pay it off and retire when we haven’t a payment on it anymore. The psychological effect of home ownership is understated.

So if you spend a year or two looking into buying a house at that bottom line price that apparently has yet to be found, will the wait be factored in to the price you pay for where you’ll call home?

Or put another way, will you know the bottom when you see it?

, what value does that energy and lost time have?

Does anyone else feel this way? I’ve stopped
posting here recently because my views haven’t been widely (or narrowly) accepted. But since I see many people buying out there, we seem to be

Moved here almost 3 years ago from boomtown Elko. Jaw hit the ground when we saw dumps selling for $300,000 over near Traner Middle School. Rented ever since in spite of really wanting our own home like we always had with good old fashioned financing.

Followed this blog and the smart folk who write it and those who comment on it for 3 years. It’s been a wild slide down.

Maybe we will be purchasing by the end of the year when our current lease is up.

Cheers.

“With your budget woes, the pain and suffering are only just beginning”.

Talking about Nevada no doubt. Nevada’s budget deficit is every bit as bad as California’s.

I could easy make a similar list of drawbacks and negatives… I just assert that are many good things to like about CA, along with others to dislike. The real decision is balancing the two, which wasn’t what Sully was asking in the first place.

DBNO,
Many on this blog, having seen this correction some time ago, are milking the correction for as long as it remains profitable to do so. Is there anyone on this blog who feels home prices are going to be rebounding thru 2009? Then why should a buyer not continue to sit and wait a few more months? Has this Marcus poster been richly rewarded for waiting nearly 3 years to buy? Seriously, DBNO, his waiting has been perhaps the best thing he could ever have done or ever will do.

You posted: “The psychological effect of home ownership is understated.” Unlike virtually all the people I knew before 2006, I defined your ‘effect’ as a potential huge negative one, not the traditional positive one you seem to suggest. That was just my point when I sold my primraily in 2005 and began renting. I thought: saddled with stiffling debt? Illiquid investment? Unsustainable rise in housing prices? Pressure to keep up with the Jones’? Forcing my wife to work to make ends meet instead of having a more family centered, less pressured lifestyle with her at home with the kids? See, its not having an overpriced home (you implied by “leveraging overall costs”) that equates to my family’s quality of life.

Sure, I was a bit ahead of the curve evidenced by the fact that all of my friends/family thought I was crazy at the time to sell my primary residence and rent, but now I can’t tell you how many of my friends are doing the same or wishing they could. One of my friends who bought and rehabbed is now struggling and can’t afford a family vacation. Another is losing his job after having already lost his 2nd home. That’s some “psychological effect of homeownership” to me.

This blog’s posters are not prophetic market-timers, but I feel some of us felt strongly our fellow man was walking off a cliff. I and others wrote over the months/years about this mess as much as a way to warn others as anything.

Now, in retrospect, it will take many years for people to look at the ownership of homes in the former positive light. This ‘pschological effect’ will continue to pressure home values downward, in my opinion, and will reinfornce the coming U versus V shaped recovery.

You seem to bemoan us renters as market timing investors who think their home is an investment. Well, it is, in fact the largest ‘investment’ many of us will ever make. So why not read some tea leaves to make an educated decision? For now, I for one enjoy not being tied down, paying only 1/3rd of what I would normally be paying to own, and face very little risk in doing so and having tremendous buying power (cash and no existing home contingency). (Out of disclosure, I’ve said here before one can’t market time as their primary investment strategy.)

****

Finally, DBNO, did I read you correctly that you put your house up for collateral for a business? You said … “parlay it into a bigger investment(via collateral on all kinds of things, in my case a business)”. If so, you may want to consult a financial advisor. There may be cases where sometimes that would be advisable, but only in very limited, rare occurances. If I read you correctly, you just treated your very home you suggest is not an investment into an investment. By placing your home as collateral against a business, you are putting your family in tremendous financial risk. Again, your situation might be different and if so, please share if you can.

CL - I’ll get back to you when I clear up my laptop mouse problems. Sorry about the above.

marcus asked,
Is it just me or are 95% of all the houses for sale in reno between 250-300k JUNK?

A: It’s not you.

on a positive note my house received 2 offers after being listed for only 2 days? Yes?thats right 2 days?

what happens next is even crazier?I found a house that was absoultely goreous and it was only on the market for 1 day??
YES 1 day?

and guess what it already had an offer for full list price and I lost out on it?

FYI both my house and the one I wanted both received FULL price offers??

now what to do ????????

marcus - My advice is free and I’m sure it’s worth every penny! It’s also simple: keep looking.

Unlike many here I’ve been suggesting that we are in the process of putting in a bottom. But that doesn’t mean the world is going to change immediately. My guess is that prices, at least in some price bands, will still trend lower for some time. No need for panic buying.

In this regard, the WSJ had a front page story yesterday about a new wave of foreclosures. Banks have been holding back waiting for the details of the Obama Administration’s home owner aid plan. Now that is out and foreclosures are accelerating. That will put downward pressure on prices. It’s not like you’ve missed a narrow window of opportunity. From personal experience there is always another house, no matter how “perfect” you think the one you didn’t get was.

CL & DBNO - Both you guys have perfectly reasonable positions, it’s just personal preference.

CL, you had some good sized cahoonas when selling. I thought that course of action was a pretty good one but I don’t think I would have had the courage to pull the trigger. Then again I’m more in line with DBNO in the way I look at housing — I think we’ve disagreed before about whether a home is really an investment.

In CA it’s also complicated by prop 13 since housing is more likely to just go sideways for years than it is to drop (maybe what we’re seeing in IV?). With Prop 13, if you buy at $100K and sell at $300K and then buy again at $200K you may end up with higher property taxes for the rest of the time you own the home.

Diane- I noticed your house went back on the market today at 545k. What made you decide to try to sell it? I assume that is a short sale price? I thought you were going to keep it?

DBNO,
Great post, and you had me smiling especially at the last paragraph. I certainly meant no intrusion.

Since I’m barely past the family-formation stage and you have already raised your kids, we’ve both offered 2 different perspectives, neither wrong of course. My point of view even now is that there remains more risk in buying a house today than the average buyer today recognizes. As you point out, if one is sure of their income and wish to settle in the home for the long term, great deals and cheap financing can be had.

DonC,
Your point on CA’s prop 13 is quite relevant for move-up buyers. On another front, I ran some calculations on a hypothetical buy in CA and found that AMT significantly and negatively impacted the tax-advantaged impact of ownership, for me at least, particularly with regard to deductability of r.e. taxes. Essentially, the Fed taxes I’d owe were much higher than I thought they’d be, which of course would drive down my comfortable range of housing price. I did not run a CA estimate, but can only imagine. Since current tax rates across the land are suspect, tax increases and loss of deductions would serve to further impact housing prices in the recovery.

John, those higher-priced homes in that community to which you refer may be high-end in construction, but for our taste, they are too close together, generally have small backyards pushed up against the golf course, and the living rooms are too small. This seems true no matter what one would be willing to pay, they are still fancy houses with small rooms, all pretty densely packed-in among the pines. We have concluded that this community is essentially for golf-lovers (not us), although the setting and views are terrific. Looks like we would have to build somewhere, as we have found nothing “exciting” for us sufficient to justify a move.

btw he bought the home from a bank.

it’s news to me that prices have gone UP in the last 6 months!

John, we looked at the floorplans for those. They use the Great Room concept, which generally includes a small living room and not-so-large dining room. Not for us, we would fill those little living rooms with “stuff” with no room left for humans. We don’t want to down-size on common area rooms that much.

Someone on this blog said that we are looking for a classic home from a different era, maybe not available in Reno-Tahoe. Perhaps that is true. But we know those houses do exist, but in Los Angeles in Hancock Park, Holmby Hills, Hidden Hills, and Brentwood. We wish we could pick-up our house and move it to the Mount Rose corridor (!).

Thanks, though, for your tips.

CL - I’m not following why the AMT would affect your real estate purchase in CA. Do you mean if you lived in CA so that there would be a sufficient nexus to tax your income? Or something else?

BB - There is evidence out there if you’re willing to keep an open mind. Here’s an article today I just saw (should be in tomorrow’s paper). If you look at the graph of new housing starts it looks like what you’d expect at a bottom. Now it might be a local minimum but what normally happens as you put in a bottom is that there are conflicting signals for awhile and sales or starts go flat rather than showing relentless declines.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/business/economy/17econ.html?ref=business

Note that I’m not alone in reading the data this way. Here is a chief economist for High Frequency Economics — I have no idea who he is BTW but hey, he agrees with me and he predicted the housing crash — who states the view in the same article as follows:

“It does look to me like we’re hitting a bottom,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief United States economist at High Frequency Economics, about building permits. “We’re now seeing a restabilization at a much lower level. It doesn’t mean they’re about to rebound.”

Today’s news in my CA county newspaper (population 500,000?)was interesting. It falls under the heading of ‘it is was it is’.

Headlines - ‘In some areas , economic decline slowing’ Next feature story ‘Home sales keep surging’ with a buyline ‘for the first time in a year housing prices ticked upward from the previous month’. The median price in this County is $320,00, and probably will be one of the first to rebound. Now I’m not suggesting this is the bottom, a trend, a reason to rush out. But it’s the first time I’ve read this.

Most of us probably agree ( maybe not who knows with this diverse group)other areas will rebound quicker than Reno, so when they do we might be able to better predict when the Reno area levels out.

I know, nothing is going up until jobs get created, but jobs don’t get created without consumer confidence rising, and that means somewhere there has to be good news.

IMO the Baltic Dry Index and Manpower are two indicators that will precede the decline of the unemployment rate.

DonC - You are truly reaching at straws to reach the conclusion as to which you desire.

1’st - That graph of “the bottom” is not clear, and it was announced today. “housing construction unexpectedly plunged to its second-lowest level on record — fresh evidence that the recession is far from over.” — So this evidence is defunct.

2′nd - What does the national “housing starts” have to do with Washoe County real estate? Nothing.

This market is crashed and it will fall even further than ever imagined. Period. The government has not stepped in, locals are far past the 5% underwater. The backlog of foreclosures of 300+ per month will completely destroy the market by the fall. Remember we have just finished the 1’st half of the Housing correction[subprime] and have just started the 2′nd half [Alt-A’s]. This has been well documented by the economists (and noted on this blog many times) and nothing has happened to change these numbers except for the worse. Worse because the % default is higher, becuase people are further under water and the economy job loss is higher. The job problem most definately includes Reno, who’s #1 (casino’s) and #2 (Contruction) markets have been hit hard [they may never recover].

DBNO - your justification for the positive physcological effect on one’s being, by owning a home, is completely defunct and immoral. This may have been the case if one could actually buy a home and gain equity. That use to be the case. Unfortunately, this does not exist and therefore one cannot have that feeling. The only feeling they will get is extreme stress. Knowing that everyday after they purchse the house they are more & more in debt and that any slip, such as job loss, health or accident could put them on a path of losing it all, going bankrupt nad inable to purchase for the next 7 years.

MLS# 90005144 Is there anything wrong with this listing?

http://prusierra.com/default.cfm/Page=/ForSale/Cat=/ShowPropertyInfo/PropertyType=/Residential/ML_Number=/90005144/Title=/Property%20Details%20For%20MLS:%2090005144.htm#

jim, since the house was built in 2006, you might want to check into the source of the drywall used in the construction if at all possible (re: toxic Chinese drywall)
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090218/ARTICLE/902180349?Title=Scope-widens-in-Chinese-drywall-case

An adder to adingo8myeconomy comment. Any thing from China is either toxic, don’t last or don’t work. Wal-Mart is Chinas’ biggest trading partner, thats why I avoid it like the plague!

Good point, Sully. We even looked at high schools, visited school websites and looked at club and activities pictures, drove around and watched the students leaving after school– and our kids are grown! Reason: the culture of the local high school and the teens in the neighborhood reflect the nature of the community in many respects, not just in the classroom. We thought the Galena High group was a great bunch of kids, for whatever it is worth.

DBNO - The comment was not to describe my situation. My situation is very advantageous. Just wanted to take the fantasy out of the “home purchase” that you were trying to rationalize. I do agree this satisfaction of Home Ownership could be true, its actually something I seek, however I strongly disagree someone could purchase a house as a decreasing asset and feel the same way.

GD420 - The article included the numbers you’re referencing. In fact that was the starting point for the article. If it matters, March wasn’t the worst, it was the second worst. But the low numbers were part of the reason that the quoted economists were concluding the market was hitting bottom.

You have a point about Reno housing not being necessarily tied to national trends, but the reality is that it is part of a western housing market, and what happens nationally will generally be reflected in Reno.

FYI, I do want things to get better. Having so many people unemployed is a terrible thing. However, as a buyer rather than a seller, lower prices for real estate in Reno wouldn’t hurt my feelings in the least.