Our Carmel Valley sale closed yesterday, with two notable lessons for me.
Note #1 – We had seven offers, but couldn’t get anyone to pay 1% over list – the list price was $729,000, and it closed for $735,000. Usually when there are multiple offers, one or two of them will break out and pay 5% to 10% above the list price because they gotta have it.
But the willingness to pay over list was subdued. It was probably a function of it being a two-bedroom, 1,410sf two-story home, so the demand is specific, but these are the least-expensive detached homes in Carmel Valley!
It has been the trend in the neighborhood though. There have been 6 sales over the last six months, and they have all closed right around list price.
Note #2 – When homes are selling for a record prices, buyers expect more.
We’ve seen it all year now. The lists of repair requests have grown longer, and more detailed – and buyers are checking to make sure the work was done to their satisfaction.
Yesterday, I was over there installing a new door knob myself!
In our hot seller’s market, listing agents were able to blow off any buyer requests, and the deal closed anyway. Not any more.
We’ll see the same in 2017 – buyers are going to be more reluctant on price, and they will expect a house in better condition.
Get Good Help!
Jim, thank you for the candid market assessment. Personally I believe interest rates going up are playing more of a role with buyers than is being reported.
My hope is that Trump turns on the foreclosure faucet again. Then we’ll see who actually has $$$ and who was simply living on credit.
Here they called Mnuchin the ‘foreclosure king’, like it was a bad thing. It’s a compliment!
Mnuchin, a former executive at Goldman Sachs and the former chairman of OneWest Bank, is Trump’s choice to lead the Department of the Treasury, but is already in the hot seat with Senate Democrats.
Earlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., took to Twitter to urge people to come forward who may have been “impacted” by OneWest’s practices.
Warren’s tweets included a link to a post on the official website of the Senate Democrats, inviting people to submit complaints about Mnuchin for his role in the “foreclosure machine.”
It appears that the Democrats will seek to use Mnuchin’s time at OneWest as part of their case against approving him as Treasury secretary, calling Mnuchin the “foreclosure king.
Brown, the ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over Mnuchin’s nomination, is asking the potential secretary to give his views on the oversight of Wall Street, the housing finance system, fair-lending laws and economic sanctions.
“Working people need a Treasury Secretary who will work for them, not Wall Street,” Brown said. “The American public deserves to know where Mnuchin stands on the important housing and finance issues that he will oversee. While he made a fortune from the financial crisis, far too many Ohioans have yet to recover from it.”
Mnuchin is still waiting to be confirmed by the Senate.
http://www.housingwire.com/articles/38809-senate-to-treasury-secretary-mnuchin-where-do-you-stand-on-major-housing-issues
@Shadash – how will “turning on the foreclosure faucet” make any difference at all? According to RealtyTrak there are about 30k houses > 125% LTV underwater in Q2 2016 in the entire county, and 33% of SD is “equity rich” aka >50% equity aka “no reason to fire sale.” Just because you’re underwater doesn’t mean you’ve been getting a free ride – and at least in Jim’s area coastal basically no one is underwater.
Is there really a ton of “stopped paying the mortgage in 2008 and have had a free ride since then” still going on? Seems basically impossible to me to believe.
There is a real conflict here because they have virtually outlawed foreclosures, at least in California. You have to really not want your house to get foreclosed today.
Did you see that they are converting HAMP/HARP/whatever to a permanent foreclosure-prevention device nation-wide?
Saw one in CV that they are trying to short-sell now – been in foreclosure since 2011. Those are ones that need to be cleaned up.
There is a lot of new construction in CV now compared to a few years ago. Is that impacting the ability to get more money for a cv property including the one you sold? Now that they are going full blast on new construction, how long do you think before they run out of land for tracts?
Not really, Pardee and Taylor Morrison have been selling entry-level million-dollar homes. Any existing detached homes closer in are better.
1-2 years and Pardee will be done, and in the meantime will only be selling the mambo-multi-gen homes to rich people.
Buy anything you can get your hands on in CV under $1M.