With inventory scarce and buyers aplenty, there really shouldn’t be any reason a house doesn’t sell these days.
Yet, they’re not all selling.
In 2009 and 2010, buyers couldn’t go wrong – all you needed was guts. But as our market hits a maturing stage, the risks are higher that buyers can pay too much, and/or buy a money pit.
How do you know? Let the days on market be your guide.
A. If a new NSDCC listing under $1.5 million doesn’t have offers in the first 7-10 days, then something is wrong with it (and it might not be price).
B. If any listing has been on the market for more than 30 days, or has been refreshed, it confirms that something isn’t right.
It’s a buyer’s job is to figure out why it’s not selling, and in most cases it is just price. The most common marketing plan for sellers is to wait until the market catches up, or until they just get lucky. Buyers decide the rest.
But if the price seems close enough and a house still isn’t selling, how can buyers protect themselves from getting stuck with a house with undesirables?
The sniff test is when you know others buyers have considered the house, and passed on it. If you hear a listing agent say they’ve had lots of showings or you see a number of agent business cards left at the house, you have to wonder why it hasn’t sold.
Be rigorous during your tour of the house. Once you have enjoyed the positives, find the negatives and determine if they can be remedied and at what cost.
Be listening for road noise and dogs barking – the two most annoying sounds to avoid. Visit at different times of the day.
Are the grounds wet? Compare to neighbors to see if it is just over-watering or a bigger problem.
Listen for aircraft – is the house under a flight path?
Talk to neighbors about house defects and neighborhood concerns.
When in backyard, are neighbors looking in?
Does it have a pool? They are usually a neutral value at best, due to risk.
Once inside the house, are the upgrades current? Or were they done 5-10 years ago, and now getting the dated look?
Is there enough natural light inside? Turn lights off to test.
Is the ceiling height acceptable?
Does the floor plan make sense? Larger rooms?
Is there separation between the master and kids bedrooms?
If homes are close together, are there smokers or noise-makers around?
Check crime statistics and sex offenders’ website.
These are items that may not get divulged on the seller disclosures, nor the home-inspection report – because these items are more concerned with personal taste and tolerance, and not about things that are broke. But you want to factor them into your decision – because if buyers aren’t buying this house today and you can’t fix it, you will have the same problem when you re-sell it.
Divide defects into curable and non-curable categories, and determine what you can’t live with, and assess a value to those you can. Many buyers throw homes out with the bath water, so this could be an opportunity, for those willing to tackle a fixer.
There is a difference between fixes and improvements too. You can fix just about everything for $5,000 or less – things like roof repair, new furnace, removing a cottage-cheese ceiling, etc. – those are fixes. Major improvements such as kitchen or bathroom remodels are more extensive but there are several online estimators to get ballpark ideas on costs.
It is easy to get caught up in the moment and relish the positives when seeing a house the first time. To keep it all in perspective, remember one question. If it is such a great house, how come it’s still for sale? Doing your own head-scratching might save you a few home-inspection fees – or more!
Every association of realtors has a board of directors made up of volunteers – a handful of agents who, out of the goodness in their heart, feel like giving back to the community.
Nobody is out to change the world, so you never hear much about them.
But something went haywire recently, and the largest of three associations in San Diego County is now suing the other two plus Sandicor.
“Although Plaintiff (GSDAR) owns a supermajority of Sandicor’s outstanding shares and contributes most of Sandicor’s funding, Sandicor’s board is controlled by PSAR and NSDCAR.”
“They have used this position of power to wield Sandicor as an anticompetitive weapon, milked its resources for their own enrichment, and frustrated its purpose, all while actively preventing Plaintiff from participating in corporate decisions.”
The defendants are also accused of trying to make a deal to merge Sandicor with CRMLS, the MLS company that serves 80,000+ agents throughout the rest of Southern California. The plaintiff says such a move will dramatically impact operation revenue, which sounds like it would be cheaper for agents to merge.
The GSDAR is suing for at least $1,500,000 in damages, and a jury trial.
It’s doubtful such action will do anything but pay out attorney fees, but in the end, let’s hope this causes Sandicor to disband and we can join CRMLS. It is run like a real business, has a sharp-looking consumer portal, and its MLS is more agent-friendly.
The 2015 annual sales and median SPs looked pretty good – we know that declining sales are the precursor of a downturn, but only Carmel Valley has a noticeable drop.
There are more new homes for sale than ever in Carmel Valley, and those aren’t all reported as closed sales on the MLS. They have to be soaking up some of the demand for resales:
Annual Number of Sales/Median Sales Price
Town or Area
Zip Code
2013
2014
2015
Cardiff
92007
88/$961,250
80/$1,180,000
83/$1,200,000
Carlsbad NW
92008
211/$680,000
213/$740,000
196/$767,777
Carlsbad SE
92009
586/$782,125
525/$825,000
576/$875,000
Carlsbad NE
92010
144/$596,000
132/$650,000
161/$662,000
Carlsbad SW
92011
261/$789,900
209/$850,000
240/$887,500
Carmel Vly
92130
515/$1,015,000
470/$1,090,000
452/$1,150,000
Del Mar
92014
188/$1,495,645
193/$1,625,000
161/$1,680,000
Encinitas
92024
466/$870,000
405/$955,000
462/$1,082,500
La Jolla
92037
365/$1,598,000
321/$1,640,000
372/$1,807,500
RSF
92067
240/$2,300,000
181/$2,476,596
196/$2,500,000
Solana Bch
92075
114/$1,100,000
82/$1,326,000
87/$1,440,000
All NSDCC
All
3,218/$952,250
2,849/$1,025,000
3,017/$1,095,000
The reason I think we’ll have fewer sales in 2016 is because 2015 was so dang good – it will be hard to keep up!
On Sunday, we lost one of the greatest rock and roll icons of all-time.
David Bowie was known as a trend-setter with virtually everything he did – including his final departure. Keeping his battle with cancer completely quiet for the last 18 months, he then released a new album with video just two days before his death – a final gift. Thank you David!
Videos from the early 1970s are rare but these two clips give a good sense of his unique style for the era. The first video is Space Oddity with David’s good friend Mick Ronson on guitar (the song was released five days before Apollo 11 was launched!). The second video is the song ‘1984’ (off the Diamond Dogs album) from a Dick Cavett show in 1974:
They based their ‘hotness’ on a combination of employment, recent income growth, and the expected increase in the Zillow Home Value Index.
They expect that the San Diego HVI will rise 2.7% this year, and I think our employment and income numbers should at least be steady:
Zillow isn’t considering retirees into their algorithms – especially the rich folks who want great weather to live out their life. Any of them who have grandkids in the Southwest will give us a look, and when they compare to Los Angeles or the Bay Area, they will like our prices much better.
The towns in the Zillow Top Ten have expected HVI increases of 4% to 5%.
At the end of 2016, let’s see how San Diego compared to their list of ten. I say that we beat at least half of them – in spite of fewer sales than we had in 2015.
Architect Bill Poss, together with the current owner, designed this home in Telluride, Colorado, that is located above a cliff on a private peninsula, with amazing views of the surrounding mountains. Listed for sale at $32,500,000.
“The West, which has largely outpaced the rest of the nation in terms of growth in the last several years, is beginning to see market slowing across some of its major metropolitan statistical areas,” the report said.
The Clear Capital report said that Western markets began to slow in the latter half of 2015, with San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego currently seeing QoQ growth rates under 1%.
Meanwhile, other cities like San Jose and Denver are hovering slightly higher at around 1.3% and 1.5% QoQ, respectively, the report said.
If Clear Capital is right in its annualized predictions, these current levels would project to roughly half of the performance seen in 2015.
Since my Sandicor vs. Zillow post on Wednesday, I’ve had a few conversations with agents around town – including the guy who is the chair of the Sandicor committee charged with handling the negotiations with Zillow.
Every opinion was similar to this comment left over the weekend, including the standard zinger that I don’t know anything:
Jim, you were not on the committee dealing with Zillow’s demands. The demands were highly unreasonable. Sandicor is leading the way nationwide on holding its ground against giving away data to Zillow, and no agents have gone out of business because listings are not flowing automatically to Zillow. It’s not a big deal nor is it the end of the world. It’s a relief.
You’d be surprised how many people I have talked to, highly successful agents and brokers, who love that we aren’t tied to Zillow. Your comments are very uninformed and to me your opinions are in the tiny minority. Brush up on how Sandicor works and why it’s here.
All I said was that Sandicor should make the deal with Zillow so every listing agent could choose Yes or No to auto-uploading each listing. The system is already set up that way for all other portals, why exclude Zillow?
But the Zillow Haters aren’t interested in discussing, they just want to hate.
For the record, I wish Sandicor and others would have mounted a credible challenge to Zillow years ago. But we did nothing, and now we’re on the defensive – just hoping to slow them down a bit.
The hate is short-sided, and probably understandable for those who already have one foot in the tar pit. But for those of us who are long-termers and want to hand off the business to the next generation, Zillow and other outsiders are creating the future.
Last year it was well-documented that the #1 problem in the industry are the masses of marginal agents. But free enterprise is solving the problem.
Zillow is educating consumers on how to find quality agents by using reviews and recent sales histories – which favors the agents who use Zillow as a marketing platform.
In the beginning, I was a Zillow hater too. But they have evolved into one of the best resources available for both consumers and agents. Ignore them at your own peril.
P.S. Haters – have you seen those Redfin TV ads? All that Zillow is doing is giving consumers a great portal, and suggesting a conduit to other agents – Redfin is spending millions on TV ads to directly take your business away.
It is the biggest threat to the status quo – companies that spend millions on advertising are going to direct the future of the home-selling business, regardless of what is actually best for the consumer.
Buyers are just as optimistic as sellers about the new year. The ‘picky’ factor is hiked up a notch, with buyers figuring it’s early in the season, and hopefully this will be the year that the inventory busts loose.
At an open house yesterday, the agent on duty (not the listing agent) was telling people that there were four offers on the property. In early January, that doesn’t make attendees want to get in the fight – instead, they are more likely to just move on, and hope for a better deal later.
The listing agent confirmed later that there were no offers in hand, so if the 4-count was a deliberate strategy, it backfired.
Click on the link below for the complete NSDCC active-inventory data:
A 41-story luxury condo building is on the rise. Boasting a screening room, a swimming pool and a boat-share program, its 215 units will soon be going on the market at prices starting at $1.4 million.
The building is downtown San Diego, an area with a seedy past. The median sale price in the neighborhood last year was $741,500, according to real-estate website Trulia.
San Diego has long been a car-centric city, dominated by suburban-style subdivisions and gated communities. Now, that’s changing. Cranes downtown mark where new office towers, luxury condos and hotels will soon join the skyline. Restaurants with upscale comfort-food menus and hidden speakeasy bars line revitalized street fronts. Though downtown’s revitalization has had several waves over the years, the latest is higher-end, and picking up quickly post-recession. The population of downtown is about 30,800 residents—a 76% increase since 2000—and more than 9,000 apartment and condo units are currently in the pipeline for development.
Brad Termini, the co-CEO of Zephyr, a San Diego-based developer of high-end housing, said buyers want to be able to walk to neighborhood amenities. “We’re seeing a real flight out of suburbs like Rancho Santa Fe because of the lack of walkability and the high cost of maintaining those estates,” he said, referring to a wealthy suburban area in north San Diego County full of gated developments and large, luxury estate homes.
A few months ago, Huey and Suzanne Antley sold their home in the northeast edge of San Diego and bought a 1,000-square-foot condominium in the Marina district downtown, a neighborhood known for its high-end condos, parks and touristy Seaport Village. The couple paid about $600,000 for their condo, which is near a park where they can walk their dog.
There is no sign of a slowdown. Ms. Michell, of the Downtown Partnership, says that over the next 30 years, the city’s population is forecast to grow by an additional 1 million residents.
Marsha Sewell, an interior designer and general contractor, moved downtown in 1991 to convert a 100-year-old mixed-use building into a single-family home. Then she purchased another historic building for $600,000, rehabbed it and sold it for $2 million. A few months ago she moved into a 3,200-square-foot condominium she paid $1.075 million for and has just completed renovating.
“The prices are only going to go up, and at the high-end of the market people really want space,” she says.
Jim, you were not on the committee dealing with Zillow’s demands. The demands were highly unreasonable. Sandicor is leading the way nationwide on holding its ground against giving away data to Zillow, and no agents have gone out of business because listings are not flowing automatically to Zillow. It’s not a big deal nor is it the end of the world. It’s a relief.
You’d be surprised how many people I have talked to, highly successful agents and brokers, who love that we aren’t tied to Zillow. Your comments are very uninformed and to me your opinions are in the tiny minority. Brush up on how Sandicor works and why it’s here.
All I said was that Sandicor should make the deal with Zillow so every listing agent could choose Yes or No to auto-uploading each listing. The system is already set up that way for all other portals, why exclude Zillow?
But the Zillow Haters aren’t interested in discussing, they just want to hate.
For the record, I wish Sandicor and others would have mounted a credible challenge to Zillow years ago. But we did nothing, and now we’re on the defensive – just hoping to slow them down a bit.
The hate is short-sided, and probably understandable for those who already have one foot in the tar pit. But for those of us who are long-termers and want to hand off the business to the next generation, Zillow and other outsiders are creating the future.
Last year it was well-documented that the #1 problem in the industry are the masses of marginal agents. But free enterprise is solving the problem.
Zillow is educating consumers on how to find quality agents by using reviews and recent sales histories – which favors the agents who use Zillow as a marketing platform.
In the beginning, I was a Zillow hater too. But they have evolved into one of the best resources available for both consumers and agents. Ignore them at your own peril.
P.S. Haters – have you seen those Redfin TV ads? All that Zillow is doing is giving consumers a great portal, and suggesting a conduit to other agents – Redfin is spending millions on TV ads to directly take your business away.
It is the biggest threat to the status quo – companies that spend millions on advertising are going to direct the future of the home-selling business, regardless of what is actually best for the consumer.
Here’s more on the bigger picture:
http://www.notorious-rob.com/2016/01/the-myth-of-the-irreplaceable-realtor/