Preparing Your Home For A Spring Sale

Maybe you simply need to clean up the yard and trim your hedges. Maybe you need a new paint job and to clean up a cluttered room or two. Or maybe, you need to bring in the team from Extreme Makeover: The Home Edition.

No matter what you’re facing, you may want to consult a professional stager (we can refer one to you) to ensure that you’re doing the right things in the right order to get your home prepped for the best results.

That said, there is some good general advice from our friends at the National Association of Realtors® that you can rely on to get you started. Here’s a link to this great article that you can use to see what you need to do, if anything, to ensure your home sells fast and for top dollar.

Enjoy: http://www.realtor.com/Basics/Sell/PrepHome/GetReady.asp?source=web

How Did February Only Get 28 Days?

As you may know, there are lots of groups that claimed their own calendars for use in their daily lives. The Romans, Mayans, Aztecs, and Hindi all relied on their own version of how the days, weeks and months of the year should pass.

The gold standard used today is the Gregorian calendar and it is the “gold standard” used for civil purposes almost everywhere.

How the calendar we use today ended up the way it is as we know it is explained very well in this article from Slate online magazine.

Enjoy:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/02/28_days.html

Is The Housing Market Actually Recovering?

Everyone wants to know if the housing market is truly showing signs of a recovery. There are conflicting headlines every day. One day, we hear sales are up. The next day it is reported that prices are down. Is the real estate market coming back? The answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

There are two aspects that must be evaluated: house sales and house prices. They will not recover at the same time. Sales are already increasing rather nicely while prices will still soften in many markets through 2012.

Home Sales

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) issues a Pending Home Sales Report each month. We can see by the graph below that sales have been increasing nicely over the last twelve months. Real estate professionals across the country are reporting that activity has increased compared to last year. The sales side of the recovery is starting to show great promise.

Home Prices

Many price indices have shown that national home prices are continuing to stumble. Even with demand increasing, we must look at where the supply of housing stock stands. Though ‘visible’ inventory (homes currently on the market) is shrinking, there is still a large overhang of ‘shadow’ inventory (Foreclosures about to come on the market as a result of the National Mortgage Settlement). This increase in inventory will outpace the increase in demand and thereby cause prices to continue to soften in many parts of the country.

Bottom Line

Housing is coming back. However, sales will come back before prices. We will not see prices appreciate until we work through the oversupply of homes on the market.

House Prices: Window of Opportunity is Closing!

There have been conflicting opinions as to where housing prices are headed. We want to give our opinion on this subject for the short term. We believe sellers have a window of opportunity for the next 90-120 days in most parts of the country in which to sell their homes for maximum price. We believe there will be increased downward pressure on home prices throughout the rest of the year.

Why renewed downward pressure?

Any item’s price is determined by ‘supply and demand’. In many parts of the country, existing housing inventory has dropped to historic norms in the last few months. However, an inventory of distressed properties (foreclosures and short sales) will be coming to market this year. This inventory has been delayed for over a year as the Federal and state governments crafted an agreement with the five largest banks and mortgage servicers to establish a roadmap for how a foreclosure must be properly completed. That agreement, the National Mortgage Settlement, was reached two weeks ago.

What Impact Will the Agreement Have on Foreclosures?

Brandon Moore, chief executive of RealtyTrac, explains:

“The settlement sets forth clear guidelines for lenders and servicers to follow when foreclosing, which should allow them to push through some of the delayed foreclosures from last year.”

How Many Foreclosures Could We Be Talking About?

Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities tells us:

“The settlement helps the housing market in the long run because it allows banks to proceed with millions of foreclosures that have been stalled.”

What will this mean to home prices?

As this inventory comes to market, it will impact prices in two ways:

1. It will bring to market discounted competition for buyers
2. It will impact the appraisal values of all homes in the area

Which States Will Be Impacted the Most?

The states that have the largest backlog of properties currently in the foreclosure process will be the states that will see the greatest price depreciation.

Bottom Line

There is a window of opportunity currently which sellers should take advantage of. Waiting until later this year will not guarantee a higher sales price. If anything, in many regions of the country, it probably guarantees the exact opposite.

Courtesy of Keeping Current Matters 2/27/12