Millennials Buying Homes in SD

by | Feb 10, 2023 | Market Conditions | 6 comments

Ten Best Markets For Buyers, 2023

by | Feb 9, 2023 | Where to Move

According to the Knock Buyer Seller Market Index report, continuing shifts in the U.S. housing market will increase the number of buyers’ markets from 13 to 34 by the end of 2023.

It’s still early days in 2023, and going by the latest data from the Knock Buyer-Seller Market Index, 44 of the 100 largest housing markets favored (or strongly favored) sellers, 44 were neutral, and 13 favored buyers.

That’s actually good news for buyers. A year ago, all 100 of those markets favored sellers.

But over the past 12 months, the slowdown in home sales and home price growth have been shifting the market in buyers’ favor.

According to the Knock Buyer-Seller Market Index, which measures the degree to which each of the 100 largest markets favors home buyers or sellers, based on key housing market metrics, the market has shifted over the past 12 months to change the number of markets favoring buyers from zero to 13. And by the end of 2023, that number is expected to reach 34.

Using data from the Knock index, here are the 10 best markets for buying a home in 2023. The index uses the following six equally-weighted housing metrics, each representing six years of monthly data, to analyze each market:

  • Average sale-to-ask price ratio—Average calculation of the ratio of final home sale price to asking price.
  • Number of Homes Sold
  • Inventory—Number of active listings
  • Median Days on Market—Median number of days between a property’s listing date and the day it’s removed from the market (when it goes pending).
  • Median Sale Price—Middle of the home sale price distribution
  • Months’ Supply—Calculation: number of active listings / months’ supply using a six-month moving average inventory estimate as the denominator (starting June 2017)

THE TOP 10 MARKETS FOR BUYING A HOME IN 2023

Here are the ten best markets for buying a home in 2023, based on those six key housing market metrics:

  1. Salt Lake City, UT
  2. Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington, TX
  3. Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO
  4. Charlotte–Concord–Gastonia, NC-SC
  5. Memphis, TN-MS-AR
  6. Las Vegas–Henderson–Paradise, NV
  7. Charleston–North Charleston, SC
  8. Colorado Springs, CO
  9. St. Louis, MO
  10. New Orleans–Metairie, LA

WHAT TO EXPECT THIS YEAR: SEASONAL SHIFTS IN KEY HOUSING METRICS

Based on seasonal trends and data for the Knock Index, home buyers are expected to return to the market in greater numbers this spring, creating a window of opportunity for sellers.

Seasonal patterns typically bring an increase in buyer activity in the spring, and with what we’ve seen in January, the market is likely to shift in sellers’ favor in the months ahead before moving decisively in favor of buyers by summer and staying in that direction for the rest of 2023.

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Judge Stops Junipers

by | Feb 9, 2023 | Builders, Local Government | 9 comments

Golf-course redevelopment is a terrific solution to providing new housing in the middle of town. They will work out the kinks like building enough roads.

A judge’s ruling halted construction this week of the 536-unit Junipers development in Rancho Peñasquitos — and could complicate and delay approvals of other dense housing projects across San Diego.

Superior Court Judge Ronald Frazier nullified an analysis of how the Junipers would affect nearby traffic, noise and wildfire threats, saying it had failed to account for two large nearby housing projects. In a ruling that made final a tentative ruling he issued last week, Frazier halted construction of the Junipers, where 36 units are complete, and said it can’t resume until the analysis is redone to account for the long-term presence of the 331-unit Millennium PQ and 826-unit Trails at Carmel Mountain Ranch.

The resident group that had sued to stop the Junipers called the ruling a victory for San Diego’s neighborhoods because it will require developers to provide more robust mitigation when they build impactful, dense projects.

In particular, the residents want Junipers developer Lennar Homes to pay for building more evacuation routes for their wildfire-prone area.

“Our goal in bringing this lawsuit forward is to require the city of San Diego to perform environmental review to address wildfire impacts on redevelopment in our area,” the PQ-NE Action Group said in a statement. “We are very pleased with the final ruling.”

The city and Lennar, which declined to comment Tuesday, could appeal to a higher court.

Or Lennar could settle with the residents, for instance by agreeing to construct additional evacuation routes.

If the ruling isn’t overturned on appeal, attorneys for Lennar and the city say it could have far-reaching impacts on how government agencies must analyze the effects dense housing projects might have on traffic, noise and wildfire threats.

“It would potentially grind development to a halt,” Deputy City Attorney Ben Syz told Judge Frazier in court last Thursday. “The city needs certainty as to what it’s looking at and what it’s analyzing.”

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/story/2023-02-07/junipers-rancho-penasquitos-impact-review-ruling

Your Listing Agent Matters

by | Feb 8, 2023 | 2023, Why You Should List With Jim | 1 comment

There isn’t one standard way to sell a house – every agent does it differently, mostly based on their skill set and ambition in life.  My new listing in Spinnaker Hill is a good example!

It’s a tract neighborhood of one-story houses from the 1970s, and most of them haven’t added square footage so comparing the recent sales is fairly simple.

In the post-frenzy environment, appraisers are reluctant to go back more than the standard six months for comparisons, and they will place the most weight on those in the same tract (see above).

The different ways that listing agents sell houses can be broken into three categories:

1. Listing agents who make a deal with the first buyer who calls, and shuts out everyone else.

This is what happened when an out-of-town agent listed the home on Daisy that’s pending, which is the identical house to what I’m selling, with less ocean view.  It is 100 yards away from my listing, and many people at my open houses asked how I could expect to get $1,600,000 when an identical match was $400,000 less (that buyer lives in the neighborhood and has told everyone about his good fortune).

2. Listing agents who practice the 3P marketing plan (Put a sign in the yard, Put it in the MLS, and Pray).

You can see the varying results in the four recent sales in the post-frenzy era. Nobody knows how long it will take to find a buyer, and what they might be willing to pay – and three out of four took quite a bit less.

3. How Jim the Realtor sells his listings.

I thought the house needed to much work to bother with staging. But it didn’t stop me from recommending a list price that was full retail, or retail-plus – ESPECIALLY with the model match at $400,000 less.

After a vigorous open house extravaganza that 230+ people attended, I received five offers, and four were over the list price. You can tell from the comps that we had a real concern about the appraisal, and it would play a vital role in the decision made by the sellers.

After giving all five of the buyers three chances yesterday to improve their offer, the sellers decided that it boiled down to two contenders:

$1,755,000 cash and no appraisal contingency.

$1,776,000 with a $1,000,000 down payment and no appraisal contingency.

We took the cash deal initially, but the buyer got the yips the next day so we sold to #2.

How much would any other realtor have gotten?

Are you thinking of selling your house? Let’s talk!

Bubbleinfo Subscribers

by | Feb 7, 2023 | Bubbleinfo Readers

Thank you everyone who signed up to receive an email alert when a new bubbleinfo post happens.

I think we have it working now – this is a test!

For those who haven’t signed up but would want each blog post emailed to you……please register your email address in the box in the right-hand column, under the mortgage-rate update >>>>

(or if you are reading this on a mobile device, the box will be at the bottom of your feed)

UPDATE: It doesn’t appear to be working yet, but hang in there. The tech who works on my blog lives in South Africa so I have to wait until he is back to work..

Will There Be Others?

by | Feb 7, 2023 | 2023, Market Buzz, Sales and Price Check | 4 comments

Realtors are known to comfort buyers who have lost a bidding war by saying, “There will be others”.

But will there be?

Especially for those at the entry level of every market….where the action is the hottest.

Above are the NINE houses that sold under a million dollars between La Jolla and Carlsbad in 2022. Those on the list with a street name that starts with Don are mobile homes in Rancho Carlsbad – which by itself might make you scratch your head when you see mobiles selling for as much as $830,000!

It’s early in the new year, and of course everyone thinks that home prices are coming down fast so this problem will be cured shortly (NOT!).

So far in 2023, this is the ONLY listing of a NSDCC detached-home priced under $1,000,000:

Oh, you want a decent home too? It’s even worse for the picky buyers.

Buyers can expect that pricing of decent entry-level homes this spring will start around these numbers:

Carlsbad: $1,250,000

Encinitas: $1,350,000

Carmel Valley: $1,800,000

RSF, Solana Beach, Del Mar, La Jolla: $2,000,000+

And good luck getting your hands on one!

MLS Shenanigans

by | Feb 7, 2023 | Realtor, Realtor Post-Frenzy Playbook, Realtors Talking Shop, Why You Should List With Jim

We’ve covered the ways that buyers and buyer-agents are getting battered by listing agents.

Making homes tough to show, no transparency about offers and bidding-war process (if any), below-market commissions, sandbagging listings in-house for days or weeks before exposing to general public, etc.

Some can be chalked up to inexperience or clerical errors, but most are a deliberate attempt by the listing agents to box out other agents, and limit the number of offers.

Here’s another one: MyStateMLS.com.

Agents input their listings onto this website only, which gets the property onto Zillow and Realtor.com where waiting buyers might see it. Typically, the buyer-agents are using their local MLS to track the new listings, so they’re not watching Zillow or Realtor.com (and certainly not some unknown MLS website).

It has to be a deliberate attempt by the listing agents to limit the exposure to fellow agents, with the intent to reach buyers directly and double-end the commission.

New-Listing Update

by | Feb 6, 2023 | Jim's Take on the Market, Why You Should List With Jim

The action on the new listing has been good so far. The hot listings usually have a views-to-saves ratio of 10:1, and mine is 29:1 above. Even though the house has a fantastic view, buyers don’t want a project, and it emphasizes how important staging is today. Because this house needs everything, I didn’t think staging was worth it here, but it will be a rare exception.

I have two written offers in hand now, and 2-3 more expected.

I don’t think the eventual sales price will be way over list either.  Though there has been sales in the neighborhood as high as $2,100,000, everyone has agreed that we’re at full retail. This isn’t helping either:

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