Statesville $50,000-$125,000

Tonight I attended the monthly Statesville Landlord Association meeting.  This is an investor club.  We meet the third Tuesday of each month at the King of the Sea restaurant.  During the meeting I shared market stats for Statesville properties from the $50,000-$125,000 range and the $125,000-$250,000 range.  This is typically the investment range for this group.  What we are seeing seems counter to what we are hearing in the press.  The properties priced $50k-$125k are shrinking in inventory.  During the time of the year we usually see a rise of inventory.  We are seeing a rise of buyer activity.  We are down to about 4.5 months of inventory on the market which is a fairly low number.

One thing I was happy to find is how appreciative this group of active investors were of the information I share with them.  Tonight there was a group of about 15 people at the meeting that I know conservatively own close to 500 properties.  It strikes me that either Real Estate agent who work with these investors don’t know what is happening in the market or they just aren’t sharing the information. 

If you are an investor and have a real estate agent working for you that you believe to be a good agent, but they are not sharing information such as this with you, have them call me.  If you believe they are a good agent I probably will as well.  I’ll probably hire them to work for my office, give them all the tools to provide the right statistical information to you, and train them how to use the information to benefit your portfolio.

Todd Long

Broker-In-Charge

Century 21 Hecht Realty

Mooresville, NC

704-664-3165

Operation High touch

Century 21 Agents are highly trained.  Beyond the standard and very modestly required 8 hours of Continuing Education required by the North Carolina Real Estate Commission, our Century 21 agents have a vast array of training available to them.  This ranges from in house office training, computer simulator training, interactive web training, National Convention and events such as Operation High Touch.  July 15th is a “Pocket Rally” for the North Carolina region of Century 21 offices and brokers.  The training will be focused on Working with Foreclosures, REO’s and Short Sales, How to build your web presence through a blog, and exploring the new Century 21 website and 21 online.  If you are considering joining a real estate office or you are looking to make a change during these changing market conditions you owe it to yourself to look into your local Century 21 Franchise.

T. Boone Pickens

You’ve got to read this!  If you haven’t heard about T. Boone Pickens yet, you will soon.  His publicist promises you will see him on TV this fall as much as John McCain and Barack Obama.  Today he kicked off a public policy campaign to stop our dependence on foreign oil by using natural resources we have here in the USA such as wind and solar.  He has a plan!  He says we spend over $700,000,000,000 a year on foreign oil.  That’s $700 billion!  That is 4 times the cost of the Iraq war (which we all know is over …… OIL!)  Mr. Perkins knows a little about oil.  He has been a Texas oil man for over 50 years.  At the end of his video in front of Congress he starts talking about the amount of barrels of water brought up in relation to the barrels of oil in oil fields in Texas and the middle east and how that proves we are nearing the end of the reserve.  I don’t know about you, but I didn’t understand a lot of that, but I believe he understands the problem fully. 

USA TODAY: Critics could easily accuse Pickens of advocating a major new public policy initiative that will line his own pockets. He is, after all, a big player in both the wind power and natural gas businesses. Pickens says while his hedge fund will earn money for its investors, earning more money personally is meaningless: “I’m 80 years old and have $4 billion. I don’t need any more money.”

Now with $4,000,000,000 of his own money, don’t you think this is going to get some public attention!  I’m looking forward to this!  I like his spirit.

So how does wind and solar help gas prices?  We obviously can’t drive around in solar cars yet.  His plan is to reduce the use of Natural Gas usage for power generation by the use of wind and solar which will shift natural gas usage to automobiles.  We have a ton of natual gas reserves here in the USA.  I encourage you to check out his website www.pickensplan.com which launched a few days ago.  Sign up and get on board with this revolution.

Let’s recap what we know about the real estate market:  Homes for sale are on the rise and buyers are reluctant to buy.  Homes for sale are on the rise largely in part to foreclosures being on the rise.  If the only people selling in this market were sellers who are moving to another home, which they often buy, the inventory would not be on the rise at record speed. 

Buyers are reluctant to buy because they want a good deal and want something they can move into without a lot of fix up cost or hassle.  A “good deal” is perception!  If the market were appreciating in price, nearly everything would be a good deal looking into the future.  But that is not necessarily the case right now so a “good deal” is hard to recognize.  Foreclosures don’t often offer a buyer an opportunity to buy a home with little fix up.  Let’s face it, when an individual is getting foreclosed on by a lender they often abuse the home and rarely, if ever, keep up with routine maintenance.

Here’s a novel idea; create incentives for investors to buy the foreclosures.  They want to fix them up and either rent them or flip them back into the market.  This is an investor’s specialty.  Let them do their job!  They can provide a needed turn key home to buyers who want to buy and move in!  For those that are waiting on the sidelines or have fallen on hard luck and have been foreclosed and need a rental, an investor can provide this service.  The government has been providing investment incentive for years such as 1031 tax deferred exchanges (another subject for another time) to investors.  That particular program won’t help us in this case. 

Now we need an incentive to move investors into the market and buy up foreclosed inventory.  Specifically, the ones that are in need of repair.  Ideas you say: 1)  A loan for 100% of fix up value.  The purchase price is a fixed cost at a fixed market interest rate but the loan on the fix up is forgiven at a rate of say 10% per year.  That way if the investor fixes up the property and flips it into the market within a year they owe 100% of what was loaned.  If they keep the property for say 5 years as a rental property, to provide suitable housing for someone in need, then 50% of the fix up loan is forgiven.  Idea number 2, a 100% loan on purchase price plus fix up with the fix up cost being interest only for 2-3 years.  This will provide an incentive of a little more cash flow from the rental income. 

I could go on all day with ideas like this but the point is the investor needs to be able to qualify for loans that don’t require 10-20% down and perfect credit.  Does it make sense to still be doing FHA loans at 97% with a 3% gift from the seller (Nehemiah and Ameridream) for first time home buyers and single resident owners who have marginal credit?  We are.  How about we put some of these properties in the hands of professional home owners (investors) who are willing and able to buy multiple properties, treat this like a business and will do whatever it takes to make this work because it is how they make a living!

If your home is currently on the market around Mooresville you may want to look at these statistics.

	Up to 100K	100-250K	250-500K	500-1M	1Million Plus
Average showings per month, per property in our office	1.67	4.36	4.28	2.56	1.5
This report excludes Pending, Conditional, Contingent properties and no land is included.
What do you think this report means?
One, there are two market segments with buyers searching for property.  $100-$250k & $250-$500k.  Two, if you are not meeting & beating the Average showings per month for your listings you most likely have a pricing issue that needs to be addressed immediately.  Your property is not being show because buyer’s agents are finding more value in the competition and are showing those first to their buyers.

 

Yeah it’s a tough crowd around here.  Thanks to a Jami Russo for the cartoon drawing of me!  Jami is the 12 year old daughter of Christy Russo, our office Secretary.  Jami drew a few caricatures of me this week, on our office white board, before going to volleyball camp each day this week.  For some reason she has the impression all I do is play golf.  I’ll have to have a conversation with her mom about that! Actually this is a very good caricature; She got my hair style, blue eyes and facial hair correct and of course the Century 21 Gold Jacket is a necessity, even when playing golf.  My wife had a good laugh at the fact that I am wearing a gold jacket and shorts!  She also liked the Century 21 Gold Post as the flag stick.  Nice work Jami!

Terry's 56 Chevy

Terry Giddens is an agent in our Mooresville office and is a member of the Sherrill’s Ford Lions Club who is Hosting a Car Show June 28th  8:00am-3:00pm at Sherrill’s Ford Elementary School on Sherrill’s Ford Rd in, you guessed it, Sherrills Ford.  Terry has a special interest in this event as you can see his ‘56 Chevy pictured above.  The event is sponsored by Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet.  Our Century 21 Hecht Mooresville office is a sponsor for the event and will have a booth setup that day with lots of free give-away items hosted by Dawn Judge.  Also a few agents are Trophy sponsors as well:  Century 21 Hecht- Best Street Rod, Rob Powell- Best of Show, Rob Johnston- Best Import, Warren Greenlee- Best Ford, and Terry Giddens-Best of Show.  Bring your family out and enjoy the event!

 

 

 

 

See a Recent Interview video with President and CEO of CENTURY 21 Tom Kunz on the housing market.

I’ve been digging through the numbers again to keep the agents in my office up to date on current market trends for their clients.  Here’s what I’ve found for the month of April:

In our market area: ’08       ’07          %Differ

(I define our market area as the market that this Mooresville office services most often which is from the South Iredell County Line to just north of I-40 and West to Sherrills Ford to the Eastern Iredell County line with Rowan County.)

 

# homes Listing Inventory 3354      vs.   2630          28

 

#homes Under contract  404         326         24

 

#homes Closed sales     258         297         -14

 

Avg. sales price     $220,650      $209,000      5.22

This is a little bit of a fluke.  April ’07 average price was off for one month that had been averaging $223,000 so realistically the average sales price is off a few percentage points.

 

Days On Market:  6 months (mls market),  53 days (our office)

I attribute our ability to sell our listings quickly to our agents ability to price properties correctly in these changing market conditions and specific efforts by our company & agents to market properties effectivly.

Also, since May of 2007 our local market as described has been trending down just about every month in the number of homes going under contract and number of homes sold.  There is a direct corolation to those two numbers of course.  If it doesn’t go under contract it doesn’t have a chance to sell.  What I am seeing now is for the month of February ‘08 we had 163 homes go under contract locally and 182 sold.  March 256 under contract and 175 sold.  April 404 under contract and 258 sold.  Projecting for May would tell you that we should have about 400 sold homes locally. 

If you are looking to buy or sell in the Lake Norman area, don’t settle for less than a Century 21 Hecht Realty agent.  704-664-3165 www.c21hecht.com

It got just a little more difficult this year to write a proper Real Estate contract when the North Carolina Real Estate Commission and the North Carolina Bar Association got together and changed our standard Offer to Purchase and Contract from 5 pages to 7 pages long.

Our Century 21 Hecht Realty Office got a head of these changes early.  We did our yearly required Continuing Education early this year to get the new contract in front of the agents as well as having several in-house training classes for agents to discuss changes and revisions. 

Each time a Listing agreement, Offer to Purchase or Closing happens in my office with one of my agents I review the file for accuracy.  I am please to say that the agents in my office write some of the best contract that can be written.  And I’m not going to point fingers but I have seen contracts that were written by Buyer’s Agent’s presented to our Listing Agents that were an absolute mess and not in the best interest of the buyer or seller!  Luckily my agents know what things to correct and they are 9 times out of 10 correct by the time I see it.  That is really cool!  I really enjoy working with people who care to get it done right, the first time.  If you need an agent like this just call the office at 704-664-3165.  I’m confident enough to say that anyone that answers the phone can get it done right, the first time!