The Westin Verasa Napa Residences achieved an impressive first phase sell-out recently when $60 million worth of downtown condos sold in 5 hours. I guess the Bay Area economy (their primary feeder market) is picking up, and those Northern Californians do love their wine. Looks like another Intrawest success story in the making. visit
Pulte Homes sent me an email recently with pictures of newspaper clippings proclaiming that we’ve hit bottom and that now is the time to buy. An array of incentives were offered, though I’m not sure if this applies to our local Del Webb and Vue projects as it seemed to be promoting Pulte home projects nationwide. But to their credit, they’re using video testimonials to spread the word on how wonderful you’ll feel after purchasing one of their products, so kudos to their marketing department for their creativity. see
From the Northern Nevada Business Weekly: "An EDAWN survey of 79 companies in the advanced manufacturing and advanced
logistics sectors finds they plan to add 1,334 jobs, build 1.56 million square
feet and invest $179.8 million in Washoe County in the next three years." (Hopefully they’ll pay more than $15 per hour.)
Trammell Crow reports that its first release of homes in The District at
Victorian Square in downtown Sparks, has sold out.
Arrowcreek is offering a 10% discount on Unit 27 Lots if escrow closes by February 28, 2007.
Increased Risk for Home Price Declines
Appraisers Under Pressure to Fudge Values
Fears Mount Over Possible Collapse
And beware the geeks: a client recently asked me to conduct a property history search on a home he was interested in after inspecting the PDF metadata on a flyer posted online that showed Anne had updated the price on October 6, 2006… truly the clients are smarter than I am!
Chris
Re: Geeks and PDF metadata. That’s absolutely hilarious. Made me laugh!
Good for him, though. Knowledge is power, and he should make the most of that.
Reno Ignoramus
Diane,
I see that about 200 “new” listings came on the MLS this past week. Can you check your closed version of the MLS and see if 200 listings went pending in the same time period?
Just trying to keep track of that pendings:listings ratio.
Diane Cohn
RI, I found 402 pendings as of now (including pending, active/pending loan, active/pending call and active/pending house). 107 of them have occurred in the last seven days.
Reno Ignoramus
Consider this as of tonight:
In the $250K-$300K price range, for all of Reno-Sparks, there are 541 houses listed on the MLS (this is SFR, not condos). 72 of those listings have a pending offer. That is 13% of listings with an offer. That is 7.5 MONTHS OF INVENTORY.
In the $500K-$550K price range, there are 142 listings. 7 of those listings have an offer. That is 5% of listings with an offer. That is ONE YEAR AND EIGHT MONTHS OF INVENTORY.
In the $800K-$850K price range, there are 56 listings. 1 of those listings has a pending offer. That is less than 5% of listings with an offer. That is FOUR YEARS AND SIX MONTHS OF INVENTORY. (Although if only one more listing had an offer, the inventory would drop to a mere 2.5 years).
In the summer of 2004, there were basically no decent houses in Reno under $300K. For under $300K you had to go to Fernley.You could find them in Reno, but they had cracked windows and the cabinet drawers were falling off the hinges. Today, the under $300K price range is by far the most active segment of the market.
These numbers are in accord with the sentiments of many who have posted here over the past many months that Reno has a major affordability problem.