You’ve heard friends and family say it, and you may have said it yourself.
“Oh, I’m going to sell!”
It’s said casually, without a real commitment or timeline, with blame placed on politics, taxes, traffic, etc.
With home prices this high, it’s a real temptation because virtually every homeowner can cash out with six or seven figures and leave California for good – which I encourage!
We know you aren’t desperate, you don’t need the money, and you’re not going to give it away. We’ve covered that – heck, I even have a t-shirt!
If making a move is getting to be more than just a temptation, then what should a casual seller focus on?
Know where you are going to move.
Without knowing for sure where they are going to go, people just never get around to selling.
Let me help you – check out my collection here, and take a road trip:
Once you know where, then the next question is when – and look what’s coming in 2020.
We sold houses during Clinton, Bush, Obama, and a couple of years of Trump, so the real estate market won’t come to a halt. But this election cycle is shaping up to be an all-timer!
As we get closer to the election, more people will decide to wait, causing fewer buyers and sellers.
Let’s work it backwards.
Election Day is November 3, 2020, so we should just take October off, and focus on the World Series…..which should include the Padres.
September won’t be any better, and August and July could slow down too, so It would probably be smart to move by May/June – or wait until Selling Season 2021.
Or just get cracking now, while rates are in the mid-3s!
If Ivy said it, it must be so! P.S. 10-yr bond yield down to 1.54%:
While Wall Street panics about falling rates, Main Street is benefiting, especially in the housing market, according to housing guru Ivy Zelman.
She says every quarter-point cut in mortgage rates is equivalent to a 3 percent drop in the price of a home.
“Right now housing prices are down for the consumer more than 10%, so it makes it much more affordable,” Zelman, told CNBC’s Diana Olick on Wednesday. “We are seeing very good activity, especially in the low end of the market.”
Zelman is known for predicting the 2005 housing peak and the 2012 housing bottom. She is the founder or Zelman & Associates, a research firm that surveys housing market experts for institutional investors and corporate executives.
Interest rates have been falling in the U.S. and abroad as worries about a trade war and a global slowdown cause investors to ditch riskier plays and buy into bonds, a historically safer trade. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was at 1.623% on Wednesday, below the 2-year yield at 1.634%, causing a key yield curve inversion that sent markets tanking.
Although stock market investors are worried tumbling rates and an inverted yield curve mean recession, Zelman said home buyers are not as “laser focused” on market headlines.
Aisling Swindell was paying so much for rent last year—$2,100 per month to live in a studio in Downtown LA—she figured she might as well buy a place.
“The house I ended up buying was $440,000, which is insane, right?” says Swindell, who works for an online fashion company.
That price tag, which is $178,000 below the median in LA County, sounds unbelievable, especially for what she bought: 870 square feet in the city, plus a little yard, lots of natural light, some stylish updates, and charming, 1930s-era details, like wainscoting and solid wood doors.
But while she’s no longer a renter, she still doesn’t, technically, own a house.
Her $440,000 bought her a share of a larger property: a triplex on an 8,344-square-foot lot in Jefferson Park. Her right to occupy the unit, and her responsibility for maintaining it, are spelled out in a contract with her neighbors, who live in the triplex and, with her, are its joint owners.
Though there has been a lot of noise and commotion in the real estate business lately, our local market has been relatively solid, given how unaffordable homes are for the masses:
NSDCC Between June 1 – July 31
Year
Number of Listings
Number of Closings
Listings/Closings Ratio
Median Sales Price
2014
937
593
1.58
$1,045,000
2015
1,056
663
1.59
$1,050,000
2016
1,008
583
1.73
$1,165,000
2017
856
624
1.37
$1,255,000
2018
925
572
1.62
$1,302,500
2019
894
553
1.62
$1,289,500
Of these six years, the mortgage rates were the lowest in the summer of 2016, so there doesn’t seem to be a direct connection between rates and sales – the L/C ratio was the worst then.
The number of sales were the lowest this year, and you could blame it on the lack of opportunity – there hasn’t been that many new listings. It’s surprising we had that many sales.
Look how close we have been hugging the median L/C ratio of 1.6 lately!
As long as the supply remains in check, our market conditions probably won’t change much.
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