I thought these tidbits were pretty interesting… 86% of home buyers find their real estate agent online. 78% of home buyers use search engines to find properties. 78% of home sellers use search engines to find properties (presumably to check out the competition). And 75% of home buyers find a home online and ask an agent to show it to them. The point? Be sure your agent is 100% plugged in.
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Rebecca
Diane, I like your attitude 🙂 My husband and I are both web developers in north tahoe, and we’re looking for our first house in Reno. the agent we’re working with now (by chance) takes 3-4 days to e-mail me back and I just can’t deal with it anymore… we haven’t signed any contracts with her, so shoot me an e-mail (my preferred method of contact) and let’s get acquanted. 🙂
Thanks!
~Rebecca
Reno Ignoramus
I was wondering if you have the median sales figures for the past year?
Reno Ignoramus
So here are some listings and pendings numbers for this beautiful evening, April 6, 2006.
There are, for all of Reno and Sparks, a total of 3,247 listings in the $200K to $1.5 million price range. There are 332 pending sales. That means 10.5% of all houses listed for sale have a pending offer. There is NO CATEGORY where a seller has a 20% chance of selling his or her house. In fact, except for the bottom category, a seller has not better than a 10% chance. (And it is really worse than that, as explained below.) Here are the numbers:
$200K-$300K there are 732 listings and 114 pendings. Pendings are 15.5% of listings. This is as good as it gets. Let’s go on.
$300K-$400K there are 1073 listings and 111 pendings. Pendings are 10.3% of listings.
$400K-$500K there are 563 listings and 42 pendings. Pendings are 7.4% of listings.
$500K-$600K there are 342 listings and 20 pendings. Pendings are 5.8% of listings. (OUCH!)
$600K-$700K there are 177 listings and 15 pendings. Pendings are 8.4% of listings.
$700K-$800K there are 125 listings and 9 pendings. Pendings are 7.2% of listings.
$800K-$900K there are 76 listings and 9 pendings. Pendings are 11.8% of listings.
$900K-$1 million there are 56 listings and 3 pendings. Pendings are 5.3% of listings. (OUCH again, but in this price category, who cares?)
$1 million-$1.5 million there are 103 listings and 9 pendings. Pendings are 8.7 % of listings.
So, as I posted a couple days of ago, the hottest segment of the market is the bottom. (That 5.8% in the $500-$600K segment sure looks ugly.)And it seems “hot” is relative, no? I mean the “hottest” segment of the market is selling at a whopping 15.5% of listings.
Now these numbers do not include all the new house inventory currently offered for sale at the approximately 76 new housing developments in Reno and Sparks. There are hundreds of new houses for sale in addition to the 3,247 listed in the MLS. And we won’t even mention FSBOs because they don’t count, right?
So, in fact, the chances that a seller has of snagging a buyer are WORSE than the 10% chance reflected in the current listings/pendings numbers. Now I am just an Ignoramus, but it seems to me that when one contemplates these numbers, one might say that the real chance a seller has of closing a sale today are, uh, well, the word DISMAL comes to mind.
And yet I continue to see realtor ads saying that there has never been a better time to buy. Now, again, I am just an Ignoramus, so can you explain that to me? It seems to me that with only 10.5% of all listed homes having a pending sale and hundreds of new homes being more and more aggressively marketed by the builders, that the chances are pretty darn good that prices are going down. So has it never been a better time to buy a house if you want’t to get in on the way down? Is that what those ads mean?
Diane Cohn
My Dearest Ignoramus, I am not sure where you are getting your figures, but if you are pulling them from my website, I believe I know why yours differ so wildly from mine.
Within the “Active” category in our MLS, there are several subcategories. Three of these are pendings in disguise. They are “Active/Pending Call” (meaning, in contract, but not sure the deal will close, call the agent), “Active/Pending House” (meaning this sale is contingent upon the sale of the buyer’s house which may never happen), and “Active/Pending Loan” (meaning, the deal looks good, we just need the bank to approve, but we’ll still show the house, just in case).
There is only one true Pending status, “Pending/No Show”. Realtors rarely use it because we are rarely 100% sure any deal will close. I think these are the dismal pending numbers you are coming up with in your results.
Many Realtors classify their listings as “Active/Insert Blank” throughout escrow until the deals close.
Unfortunately, my crude IDX web solution does not allow Joe Public to make this distinction. The Reno-Sparks MLS is still a private, professional organization, and not all data it collects is available to non-licensed, non-members. Though I may not be an MD, JD, MBA, PhD or whatever, I am still a licensed professional trained to assist people specifically in the buying and selling of residential real estate in this region, and I belong to a private organization that collects data for the benefit of its members. Though I may use “realtorspeak” as any industry uses its own jargon, math is math, and I do not sugarcoat the statistics I pull.
However, I am not infallable. So Ignoramus and any of his Doubting Thomas cohorts are welcome to join me for lunch at my office, anytime (my treat), and I will give them a tour of my “MLS Thingy” and pull whatever data they so desperately require.
I always learn from every encounter, and quite honestly, my clients are often smarter than I am on many fronts.
Reno Ignoramus
Thank you for your response. But you know, when I review the MLS link on your website, it DOES indicate “pending/loan” and “pending/call” and “pending/house”. And I included all of those in my calculation. And it came out to 332 pendings. Out of 3,247 listings. Which is 10.5% of all listings.
But you are indeed right that the realtorindustry collects this data “for the benefit of its members.” Your industry owns these numbers and your industry lets them out on its own terms and for its own purposes. Makes it hard for an Ignoramus like me to try to figure out what’s going on. But then, maybe that is the whole point?
Reno is still a small town in many regards, and people like me have to rely on the realtorindustry for info. There are few, if any, truly independent sources of information. The RGJ earns hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in advertsing revenue from the realtorindustry. Whenever it does a story on the Reno-Sparks market, it goes to realtors for information. I’m sorry, but that is like writing a story about Enron and going to Ken Lay for information.
I just look around and see the Homes section in the Saturday paper THICK with builder ads. I see builders offering “weekend sales” and “buyer incentives” and, in some cases, just flat out price reductions. And I think that has to impact the resales of houses.
I look in the Homes insert and see that there were about 300 open houses this weekend. A year ago at this time there were, how many? None?
I see the interest rate on the ten year T Note at 5% and mortgage rates about to hit 7%.
I see the MLS inventory rising by about 15 houses a day.
I see sales volume declining every month since last June, when the local market (and markets everywhere) started to turn.
I see longer and longer days on the market.
I see median sales prices dropping for several months in a row now, but the realtorindustry still clinging to the YoY numbers. Even an Ignoramus can see that the YoY median is going to be positive until at least July or August.
In the spirit of a marketplace of ideas, I have tried to blog here in a contrarian fashion. In an attempt to offer something more than just unsupported and unsubstantiated opinion, I have tried to rely on the only source of info available to me, the MLS link of your website.
And so, what does it say about your industry when you all put out an MLS link on your website, and with it some implicit representation that it can be relied upon, only to be told, well, what is there isn’t really what is there. The real numbers, which are only available “for the benefit of our members” are different?
So maybe this blog is not a place for any real debate.
And so, in closing, I will attempt to get with the program.
Yes indeed, it has never been a better time to buy!! Ignore all of the above information. The fact that inventory has quadrupled in two years means nothing. (It’s true but I can’t prove it because that is information “for the benefit of its members”). Ignore it.
The fact that sales volume is down for 8 months in a row means nothing.(Again, “for the benefit of its members”.) Ignore it.
The fact that days on the market are expanding means nothing. (Even the RGJ reports this).Ignore it.
The fact that the yield on the 10 year note is rising and with it will come higher mortgage rates means nothing. (This one anybody can discover at the WSJ). Ignore it.
The fact that the median is dropping month to month means nothing. Ignore it. Focus on the YoY. Price are still rising in the Truckee Meadows!! Buy now before you get priced out!!
None of these things is putting downward pressure on prices. The National Association of Realtors predicts prices will rise 7-9% this year. Believe it!!