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Prices for new homes have shifted, downward

February 21, 2012 in Lake Chelan Real Estate, Lake Chelan Real Estate Market, The Real Estate Market

Buyers are looking for affordability in their homes today.  Homes priced in the range from $200,000 to $300,000 are the new “normal” for the market according to Rick Palacios Jr., a senior research analyst at Irvine, Calif.-based John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

The shift away from high priced homes has been dramatic.

Since new home prices peaked in 2007, new single-family sales of over $500K have been more than cut in half, dropping from 13% to just 6% of all new home transactions. During this time, sales of under $200K have risen from 33% to 42% of transactions. In fact, sales of homes priced under $300K now account for roughly 75% of all new single-family transactions. – realestateconsulting.com

In the western region of the United States, the shift is even more dramatic.  In 2007, 23% of home sales were for over $500k.  By 2011, only 8% of all sales were for over $500k.  The percentage of home sales under $300k has increased from 42% if sales in 2007 to 65% in 2011 in the western U.S.

 

 

 

 

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Markets are anticipating a Housing Recovery

February 21, 2012 in Buying your Lake Chelan home, Lake Chelan Real Estate, Lake Chelan Real Estate Market

Home Depot stock is up, way up.

Home Depot stock has been trading at levels not seen since before the recession and housing crisis. Anticipation of a housing recovery has driven up shares of Home Depot and—to a lesser extent—Lowe’s recently, analysts say. – WSJ

Builders’ confidence is up according the National Association of Home Builders whose confidence index climbed to 29 from 25 in January. The increase, the fifth in a row, lifted the index to its highest since May 2007.  An economists’ poll had predicted an index rate at 26 for January.

The share values of builders are also up a bit.  Beazer Homes USA and Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. have recently risen nearly 5%. KB Home and Standard Pacific rose more than 3%.

The stock market is supposed to value future expectations.  If so, these future expectations are something the housing market has been looking forward to for years.  People also look forward in the housing market.  Currently, housing inventories have been shrinking.  One reason is that some sellers have begun to anticipate that the market could shift to where time is on their side if values start to rise again.

As a potential home buyer, this might also signal that now is the time that people will look back upon, remembering low interest rates and prices, with regret that they did not buy when they had the chance.  In a year or three, we will know for sure!

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Don Morse Park is going to get a restored beach!

February 15, 2012 in Chelan What's Happening, Criterion Properties Lake Chelan Real Estate, Fun Stuff, Government, Lake Chelan Happenings, Lake Chelan Real Estate

The City Council authorized the acceptance of a construction bid at last Thursday’s council meeting that will provide the beach restoration and marina expansion shown above.  Construction costs came in well below estimates, which let them accept a plan that accomplishes a complete restoration of the beach rather than leaving a portion of it undone for later.

GoLakeChelan.com has a posting on the goings on at the council meeting.

Construction is scheduled to start this spring.  It is being paid for in large part by a grant that the City of Chelan received.  This will be a welcome upgrade to Don Morse Park.  With some restroom upgrades, the park will really be nice.  One thing I have not heard is whether the City of Wenatchee has volunteered to raise their sales tax to contribute to this regional facility…

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City Council to hear Aquatic/Parks District and Library Grant tonight

February 9, 2012 in Chelan What's Happening

The Chelan City Council will hear a presentation on forming a Metropolitan Parks District (taxing district) and have a public hearing on the Community Development Block Grant tonight. The meeting starts at 6:00 pm.

Chelan appears to be heading down the path Wenatchee took with its arena. Here is the tally of projects:

Library – $1.5 million
Aquatic Center – $10 Million

This in a town with one tenth the population of Wenatchee. Add in the desire of the doctors to build a new hospital with a big rehab center and to expand their services like cosmetic surgery and local taxpayers will even have an untenable $41 million project.

When will some reality creep into any of these plans? Before or after we find ourselves in the same position as Wenatchee? I suspect Wwenatchee won’t tax themselves to pay off any of these projects.

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The toughest home selling market in years

February 9, 2012 in Lake Chelan Real Estate, Lake Chelan Real Estate Market, Selling your Lake Chelan home, Staging your Lake Chelan home, The Real Estate Market

There is a good article on the wire services about selling a home in the current real estate market.  The challenge is getting folks to let the past be the past, and deal with what they are facing today.

Welcome to the toughest selling conditions in years.

The bright side of selling a home in a down market is you get to seek your own bargain if you’re going to buy after you’re done. Closing a sale, however, can be teeth-grindingly slow if you don’t do everything right — and maybe even if you do.

“We’re in a price war and a beauty contest,” says – Read more at the Seattle Times

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Prognosticators push out the bottom of the Housing Market; Again!

February 9, 2012 in Lake Chelan Real Estate, Lake Chelan Real Estate Market, The Real Estate Market

For every year since 2007 or so experts, economists, and industry pundits have attempted to call when the bottom of the housing market would occur.  Most of the time, the so called bottom of the market is to occur in that very next year.  As you probably know, they have been wrong virtually every year with the housing market continuing to decline each year.

Here we are again! First, a prediction from Zillow which predicts a smaller drop in home values for 2012:

Zillow’s home-value forecast released on Thursday predicts a drop of 3.7% this year, which only looks like an improvement when measured against the 4.7% drop in 2011. Some markets hammered by the housing bust, such as Phoenix, Los Angeles and Riverside, Calif., should bottom out for home values in 2012, according to Zillow, and might even see a slight increase in values.

But other markets, particularly Atlanta, Chicago, and Seattle, are projected to show significant further home-value declines on a year-over-year basis in December 2012. The forecast from the real-estate company covers the top 25 metro markets. – Wall Street Journal

The folks at Zillow believe the volume of home sales transactions will increase, with low prices and mortgage rates attracting second home buyers and investors.

Meanwhile, at the National Association of Home Builders conference in Florida, the NAHB’s Chief Economist David Crowe admitted to being off in a big way when he called 2011 the bottom of the market for new home sales.  Single family starts and new home sales fell to an all time low in 2011.

The economists this year are predicting a rise in new home sales.  They cite a pent up demand for homes from about 2 million people who are doubled-up in relatives homes or are ready home buyers.  Economic growth, private sector job creation and improved consumer sentiment should all contribute to demand for homes.

But, there are still big issues for the market including still poor consumer confidence, more than 400,000 excess unsold homes at the end of 2011, and a persistently high jobless rate.

This year the experts are being a bit more cautious in their predictions about the housing market.  We all live and learn.

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Consumers expectations on home prices to improve while pricing indexes decline

February 7, 2012 in Lake Chelan Real Estate Market, The Real Estate Market

Respondents in Fannie Mae’s survey grew more optimistic, predicting a 1% increase in housing prices in 2012.  At the same time, final data from sales through November show continuing declines in home prices.

As you can see from the reports above, year over year prices continued their decline in November.  Each index looks at the housing market a different way, but they are consistent in the direction of the result.

Distressed sales are still driving the data on average home prices.  According to Zillow, 20% of home sales were distressed sales in November.  Zillow economist Stan Humphries expects home prices to continue to fall modestly in 2012.

The local nature of real estate markets also shows in the data.  Phoenix and Detroit are actually showing some improvement while the Atlanta area is showing steep declines.

CoreLogic reports without distressed sales, December data actually shows the first monthly gain in home prices since July 2011 (up .2%).

The big change I see from a year ago is that there are some reports that show optimism, and at times information, showing some increases in home prices.

 

 

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Three Fingers Appeal next step is Summary Judgement in April

February 2, 2012 in Chelan What's Happening, Government, Lake Chelan Happenings

According to Tammy Lee Hauge of the Chelan Basin Conservancy, the Goodfellows have asked for a Summary Judgement hearing which is expected to be heard in April.

The Conservancy seeks removal of the fingers and restoration of the shoreline.  Parts of the fingers cover public rights of way and this is part of the basis for their argument to have them removed.

GoLakeChelan.com has an interview with Mr. Hauge of the Chelan Basin Conservancy.

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4 Lake Chelan Homes Sold in January, 2 were Foreclosures

February 2, 2012 in Lake Chelan Real Estate, Lake Chelan Real Estate Market

The Lake Chelan Residential Sales Summary is out that covers January sales.  4 homes sold in the Lake Chelan area in January and 2 of those were foreclosures.

But, that’s not so bad.  Only three homes sold in January of 2011.  This year, at least one of the sales was a waterfront home.  A home waterfront home in Emerson Acres sold for $525,000.

For all the scoop, and historical sales back to 2006, look at the Lake Chelan Residential Real Estate Sales Summary!

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City of Chelan hastily calls meeting on Town Toyota Center Debt

February 1, 2012 in Chelan What's Happening

The City of Chelan called a meeting, with just one day’s notice, for a special meeting of the city council to consider action on the Town Toyota Center debt.  The meeting is tomorrow, February 2, at 6:00 p.m in the council chambers.

I can’t imagine that legal bills to the City of Chelan would be anywhere near the $4.4 million dollars they are asking the citizens to pay to support the TTC.  The TTC has no financial benefit to Chelan.

As quickly as the story keeps changing, it seems horribly premature to make any decisions regarding Wenatchee’s debt.  Concerned citizens should be at that meeting!

It looks like Chelan County and Douglas County already took the vote for a tax increase off the table.  So, I wonder what this meeting is about?

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