However, it also appears that the last few weeks have seen a few more homes come on to the market, which is not unusual for spring time, so we will have to keep an eye out and see if the increase in inventory levels puts a damper on recently rising prices.
To read more about this subject, please visit our website at www.DCRealEstateMarketplace.com
If you are interested in the Potomac real estate market, you might want to read a new blog post at our main blog, here: http://dcrealestatemarketplace.com/potomac-real-estate-market-update-for-march-2012.
In that blog post, we discuss the median asking price of homes currently for sale in Potomac, as well as how many homes are for sale now, and inventory levels over the past three years. But we ran out of room, and didn't talk at all about how long homes are staying on the market, on average.
Sadly, for home sellers in Potomac, according to the graph above, it seems to be taking longer and longer for homes to leave the market. This graph covers two years, but in March of 2010, it took an average of 140 days, and now that number is closer to 170 or 180, depending upon whether you are looking at weekly data points, or the rolling trend line.
That post looks at a composite metric for the area, but I wanted to include one graph here that wasn't included on that posting. The graph above is for the past three years and tracks the median asking price of homes for sale. It appears that over the past few months we have seen a bit of a reboun in asking prices as they have been heading up for awhile now. Perhaps that is just a spring bump, but if it helps put our local market into a bit stronger position, then I am all for it.
With a few more months of continued rise in prices, we might actually get back to where we were three years ago. If you read the article I referenced above, it appears that the Bethesda real estate market may be actually preparing itself for little run here, so I would be surprised to see asking prices continue to rise, perhaps even surpassing the highest levesl we have seen since 2009.
But here is one extra graph that we didn't include, and it's a bit difficult to explain, especially the very far right side. Basically, if you read the blog post, at the same time as prices were falling this past year, and inventory was soaring, it appears that Days On Market measurements were falling, which in itself is puzzling.
But then add in our latest measurement, which makes it look like the most recent DOM has just been cut in half, and it gets really difficult to explain. My guess is that this is simply an outlier or anomoly, and that in the next week or so, we will see the numbers level back out.
For more information on Bethesda real estate or any other community in and around the greater DC area, please don't hesitate to visit our website at www.DCRealEstate Marketplace.com.
The federal government has exhausted their options for trying to help the real estate market rebound. Low interest rates, loan company bail-outs and mortgage refinancing deals have gone nowhere fast. “There isn’t a lot the government can do to prevent foreclosures,” says Paul Willen, a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. “And we’ve just been banging our heads against the wall now for four years, trying.” Laurie Goodman of Amherst Securities forecasts that 1 in 5 homeowners will have trouble with their mortgages in the coming years.
The Feds understand all too well that America’s prosperity is closely linked to what’s going on in real estate. Americans need jobs to buy homes. More importantly, Americans need jobs and homes to feel confident enough to spend in other places. In a typical expansion, Goldman Sachs says that housing contributes half a percentage point to growth in GDP. Over the past year, housing has actually subtracted 0.15 of a percentage point from our GDP in a negative feedback loop.
So here's a third graph to see if we can't really figure out what is going on...
This graph shows how long homes in the area have been staying on the market over the past two years. Sadly, this graph isn't very helpful either! Our measurements today are a bit higher than they were two full years ago, which makes it seem like a bad number. But at the same time, today's homes are on the market a shorter time today than they were last year, which makes it seem like we are making progress!
Most markets are either clearly improving, or clearly declining. But not here in Gaithersburg, it's all up in the air here, it all depends upon each specific home.
For more information on Gaithersburg, or any other area in and around DC, please visit http://dcrealestatemarketplace.com
Over the past 14 years, neighborhoods with thriving small businesses saw an increase in local homes values by 50 percent over non-small business areas or poorly performing small business areas, according to the American Express OPEN Independent Retail Index. The study found that communities with a robust small business scene were likely to see a 4 percent annual increase in homes prices, along with the infusion of 1,800 jobs into their communities.
Susan Sobbott, president of American Express OPEN, issued a statement that said: "This research validates what we know intuitively -- that small businesses are the lifeblood of our communities. There is concrete evidence that thriving independent neighborhoods lead to higher real estate values and more local jobs."Not surprisingly, large urban areas like New York City, San Francisco, and Washington DC (and in my opinion, Bethesda real estate would be no different) fared the best. The most ideal businesses were restaurants and flower shops, rather than law offices or insurance agencies, when it came to influencing the values of homes in an area, the report also said. Unfortunately, what Amex found is that the majority of urban areas have seen the number of bars and restaurants decline by 7 percent and other small retailers by 11 percent over the last two decades. If that trend continues, we can expect the values of our homes to continue to fall. So report analysts say perhaps the best thing you can do for homes in your community is to go out and support those local entrepreneurs who add so much to your bottom line.For more information on Bethesda MD real estate and other communities in and around the Washington DC marketplace, please visit http://dcrealestatemarketplace.com
The Federal Government is desperate to improve the situation of joblessness and a tanked real estate market… but what can they do about it? Doesn’t the market have to simply run its course? Don’t prices simply have to drop? Don’t investors need to snap up as many properties as they can to rebuild neighborhoods? Doesn’t the average American need to buy when they have a job again? There is a new proposal on the table – a Bipartisan Bill that would allow foreigners who spend $500,000+ on US real estate to obtain Visas to live in the United States.
Advocates of the plan say it could really boost the California market, which is attractive to Chinese real estate buyers. Nationwide, sales to foreigners and new immigrants reached $82 billion, up from $66 billion last year, said the National Association of Realtors. Florida and California led these real estate transactions, but Colorado, New York, Hawaii, and Texas will also see huge increases in demand. Sandra Miller, a Santa Monica realtor, said 10 percent of the luxury market is comprised of foreign investors, but offering them US visas to live here could easily triple that figure.
It’s the Government’s hope that these international tourists would take advantage of another offer once here – to get on the fast track for a green card if they invest at least $500,000 in an American business that creates at least 10 jobs.
According to New York Senator Chuck Schumer who introduced the legislation, “Many people want to come and live in the United States. They will be here spending money and paying taxes, and the most important thing is they'll sop up the extra supply of homes we have right now compared to demand, and that's what's dragging our economy down."What do you think? Will this help our real estate market and unemployment rates?To check out what is happening in the Bethesa real estate market, make sure to visit http://dcrealestatemarketplace.com/
This graph shows the Median Action Index, which is a compilation stat assembled by Altos Research out of California for most major metro areas, and which purports to show whether or not a market is in a Buyer's or Seller's market, and how strongly.
A score of 30 on this graph would indicate a neutral market, with anythig below 30 belonging to a Buyer's market. Clearly, that's where Bethesda is, with the most expensive group of homes, shown in black, even further in a Buyer's market than the overall pool of available properties.
But if you want to read about one other aspect of the community, feel free to hang out here for another few seconds. The graph above follows the number of homes for sale in the Rockville MD community, of which Fallsgrove is just one small piece. Over the past two years, we have seen a few ups and downs, but most of it seems to have washed out with our current levels almost exactly where they were in September of 2009.
Back then, there were almost 300 homes actively trying to find a buyer. That number fell through most of 2010, but early this year, that number started climbing again, and now we are right back at 300 units on the market.
Yesterday, I wrote an article on our blog at http://dcrealestatemarketplace.com/avenel-homes-for-sale-market-update discussing the state of the Avenel MD homes for sale market, as how it relates to the greater Potomac MD real estate market.
As always, I ended up with too many graphs to shove into one single blog post, so I have come here to share the extra chart. This one is about the DOM, or Days On Market, of homes in Potomac MD, of which Avenel is one sub-group.
Even though median asking prices are dropping, over $200,000 in the past two years and inventory levels are pretty high, it appears that homes are staying on the market about the same amount of time today as they were in September of 2009. Which I find surprising. I certainly would have expected homes to be on the market longer than before.
What this tells me is that the good homes, the homes people are willing to buy, are probably on the market for only a short amount of time. And the other homes, well, they are staying on for a long time before the sellers get tired and then simply take their home off the market without a contract.
The graph above shows the three areas I am most interested in, for today at least, and how long homes for sale in each community are staying for sale, on average. Interestingly, each area now shows that homes are staying active for a shorter time than they were two years ago. This is surprising because their prices have been falling, and there are now more homes availalbe than before. Normally, when we see dropping prices and rising inventory, we would normally expect to see rising DOM, but not so. Interesting.
I am here to correct that oversight. This graph shows, over the past two years, just how many homes have been for sale each week in the larger Rockville community, with the assumption that if there are more homes for sale in these four zip codes, there are likely more homes for sale in King Farm as well. And the opposite would be true, according to my assumptions, that if there are fewer homes for sale on this graph, there are likely to be fewer for sale in King Farm.
As you can clearly see from the graph above, we are close to seeing highs in inventory levels over the past two years. But it also appears that perhaps we have turned a corner as the last few weeks have seen the number of homes for sale dropping a bit. Maybe we've seen the worst of it? For this year at least? Stay tuned and we will figure it out together.
For more information about the real estate market in and around Washington DC, please visit http://dcrealestatemarketplace.com
This chart shows how long homes for sale in the larger community of Gaithersburg are staying on the market, as mapped out over the past two years. In late August of 2009, it appears that 120 days was the norm, which shot up to 150 earlier this year, before settling out a bit at our current levels of almost exactly where we started, 120 days! The trend line, shown in gold, is a bit lower, but the weekly data points are almost exactly the same!
For more information on Kentlands MD homes please visit our website at http://dcrealestatemarketplace.com
Here is one more graph that really didn't fit into that article, this one is of how long homes are taking to sell, or least how long until the leave the market. I suppose if an owner got tired of trying to sell their home and simply gave up and took their home off the market, that would also register in this graph.
For more information on homes in and around the Washington DC market, including Fallsgrove MD, please visit www.DCRealEstateMarketplace.com
A lot has changed since the late nineties, particularly for people in the homes selling business, such as Chevy Chase homes for sale. A realtor of the nineties would be equipped with a few modest tools – a car, an office phone, a fax machine, a mobile phone, and a simple website with a couple of the prominent homes featured. It took a lot of driving and legwork to make home sales happen back then. It could be 10 showings before a buyer found a place he or she liked.
Today’s buyer does extensive research before the realtor even gets a phone call. Using the local Multiple Listing Service, a buyer can read all the details of homes on the market, look at photos, watch YouTube videos, take virtual tours, and search the surrounding area using Google Maps. To keep up with the demand for knowledge, realtors need to adopt the tools of the trade and update their technology so their home sales remain steady.
For instance, the best realtors have blogs – which are the #1 referral tool these days. Realtors might write about area schools, new communities being built, local architectural styles, first time home buyer credits, area entertainment – anything that buyers can use to make more informed purchases. The average realtor spends 1-2 hours a day blogging and posts 4-5 times per week. The more content a realtor has, the more search engines love the blog… and the more search engines love the blog, the more referrals and home sales the realtor gets. The blog acts as a central hub for linking to and from social media pages like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Readers can comment, share the blog, subscribe to an RSS feed, download pamphlets, and directly contact a realtor through a successful blog.
Smartphones are an essential part of home sales these days too. There are GPS-enabled mobile apps where buyers can find out the list price of the homes for sale they drive past. Realtors can stay connected with their sites in real-time, responding to inquiries immediately via their web-surfing phones. They can add photos and videos, update social media pages, or chat with clients in real-time. For many modern realtors, there is never a moment’s rest… but at least home sales are steady.
For more information about home sales in or around the Washington DC area, including Bethesda, Potomac and Chevy Chase, please visit www.DCRealEstateMarketplace.com
