market update

Walter Bond, Kathy O’Neal…what a great day of speakers!

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Walter bond
Today’s speaker at our exclusive business development group Accelerent was Walter Bond who amazed the crowd with his personality, flair and common business sense to help us “sell” our way out of the recession.  Here are a few of his tips:  strive to be the top in your business – whatever your chosen field may be; connect with people – don’t just communicate; execute the principals of the of your business – be fundamentally sound; differentiate yourself and most importantly be likable!  As we know, people buy from people they know, like and trust.  They know you by branding yourself, they like you because they you “connect”/build rapport with them and the trust you through your knowledge, skill and expertise you display in your business.  Also, to be the best, carve out your niche!

Our Top Producer Panelist in today’s training was Kathy O’NealKathyo
 

Team of 3 plus Kathy

Unlicensed assistant – visual tours, schedules appointments, client coordinator

Part time IT guy – does videos, website design, blogs

Husband – writes blog, works internet stuff, but they don’t do twitter or Facebook or Linkedin

Kathy – the face of the team

Videos are of testimonials, interview Kathy, buyer process – people know you before you meet them – think about

Incorporate video into your program – financing, seeing properties, writing contracts, settlement, foreclosures, short sales

Now send video emails introducing yourself

Keep up with past clients – know market area – newsletter – client party (cut down Christmas Trees nic– birthday cakes about

Podbeam – podcasts that are hosted by another

Blog a few times a week – interview clients, potential buyers

Thoughts on the market – under $400 is hot – people who would put house on the market don’t know they can sell their house in today’s market – not enough houses for sale – lots of buyers out there – not enough move up buyers – not too many appraisal problems – think prices are coming down, sell now – foreclosures are coming so not sure how this will affect values, we know where it is now – appreciate agents who answer phones

Keys to success – do the basics, good service, keep up with your client base, figure out what you do well and keep doing it, keep up with the market, connect with people, be a real person, look for new trends. 

Here are the numbers!

 Active inventory is down 56% from 2008 with onluy 5,850 active listings on the market. The vacancy rate is holding steady at 28% of the market leaving us with a 1.7 months supply of houses for sale.

The rental market has a 1.9 month supply of rentals on the market with 3,004 properties currently for rent.

Now, go sell something!

 

We’ve caught the 500 pound elephant…

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Fuller 001

The economy isn’t as bad as we think it is or as the media portrays it to be…especially in our Washington Metro Area.  Dr. Stephen Fuller from GMU’s Center for Regional Analysis spoke to our office today regarding the current economy in our area including unemployment and the state of the housing market…and of course his forecasts for the future.

The future is uncertain. It always has been and as it should be. We can only predict so much. So Dr. Fuller believes that in 2010 and 2011 the housing market in the Washington Metro area is going to be out of control good or in his words it’ll go “gangbutsters”!  That’s pretty optimistic considering the last batch of Alt-A loans (5/1 and 7/1 ARMS) are due to adjust in 2011, but he did say to that end that the majority of those loans have already gone into foreclosure.

Unemployment in our area is down. It’s up around the rest of the nation and according to Dr. Fuller will go up to 10.2 nationally by April of next year before we see it start to come down again.  As of this last month, there is a 3.5 point gap between the national unemployment figure and the figure in our region. He noted that as a country we are losing 200,000 jobs per month and in order to keep employment where it is currently, we would have to accrue 100,000 jobs per month – again, we are losing 200,000 per month.  Employment won’t return to pre-recession numbers until 2014. That’s a heck of a lot of jobs! And half of those job losses are in the retail sector.  Thanks to amazon.com and all of the other internet retailers that offer goods for discounted prices. Store front retailers can’t keep up, end up in bankruptcy and leave buildings and strip malls vacant along with any customer service that might have been associated with it.  Big box retail shopping centers may get rezoned to accommodate housing short fall – stay tuned.

Dr. Fuller did comment on inflation and whether or not it will happen in the near future due to all of the spending our government has been doing lately. Will we have to endure a hard inflation period to “pay it all back”? His answer is not likely.  Unemployment is a major factor affecting our economy, but it’s not enough to put pressure on the economy to spark inflation. He noted that manufacturers are not struggling as hard as they would be during an inflationary period. This is in large part because of all the products you can purchase online. They costs of  not having a physical store, employees, etc. allows for the lower cost product and thus more profit in the long run. Therefore, if they continue to produce the goods, they continue to sell, then inflation shouldn’t occur…but that doesn’t mean another recession won’t occur. Dr. Fuller said another recession is inevitable, but when is the question.

A recession is defined as a period of an economic contraction, sometimes limited in scope or duration or as Wikipedia says it’s when the GDP falls or when we have negative growth. We have experienced this negative growth for the past 18 months and things are finally looking upward.  As is the housing market!

The real estate market in the Washington Metro area is hot and soon to get hotter! At Gateway our sales are up 4% over last year, but our volume is down by 5%, thus showing that prices have come down quite a bit from last year. Dr. Fuller predicted that builders will start building more spec homes about springtime of next year. He commented that we need to have 25,000 new homes (not resales) to accommodate just the new residents in the Northern Virginia area, compared to 1 million nationally. Currently in our Northern Virginia market, inventory is slowing decreasing. This week we see 5,984 active listings on the market…that’s down 56% from this time last year. Just goes to show it’s a great time to sell and with the $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit and low interest rates, it’s also a great time to buy.

Interesting market update

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It is an interesting time in the market right now. For the first time in a long time, there are not a lot of changes in our market to report – it is the same ole story – which is kind of nice.   Over the last several weeks, we have reported shifts which were affecting our industry and we were on top of for our clients and agents alike.  Last month we talked about short sales, foreclosures and those trials and tribulations. Right now everything is flat in terms of news. The inventory levels are down, buyers are still out looking for homes, the hot price ranges remain hot and we are ready to help!

What makes me wonder is, is now the calm before the storm?  As we’ve been speaking about over the last several weeks, many questions have been raised that we cannot answer – yet.  Many of our questions include the short sale process, inventory levels, release of foreclosures by banks, and other concerns over distressed properties still have not been answered.  Additionally, we have impending issues we are dealing with such as the first times tax buyer credit coming to an end on November 30, …will that be extended with all of the billions of dollars being spent by the government?  When will interest rates rise…is looming on our horizon – how soon will that happen? Foreclosures are slowing being released…will they be released all at once and will that have an impact on our values?  How much can the government spend to buy mortgage backed securities against the Federal Reserve’s advice and how will this impact us going forward.  There are a lot of questions that need to be answered and only time will tell what the outcome will be for the housing market.  So, for now, there is nothing turbulent to write or speak about today.  All’s well that ends well I guess will be the theme of this month’s update.  Mortgage rates are great, buyers are buying, houses are selling, and we are still working to make it all happen for our clients.  Let’s hope we get more of the same going forward!

Converstations on Shorts sales, HERA with Ed Dean with Potomac Mortgage Group

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The shorts sales continue to rear their ugly head. Our agents continue to have problems with the time spent working on them, the energy devoted to them and the lack of results they are getting out of them.  It appears now that many of the banks have gone to call centers handling the shorts sale calls for the banks and these people have no training no experience, but more importantly no authority to make decisions on whether or not to approve or disapprove a short sale. 

Enough of short sales, now onto the mortgage news…

This week the head of FHA, Dave Stevens, made the announcement that FHA will not be going the way of HVCC because he is a wise man and recognizes the inherent problem associated with the HVCC.  Great news for all of us in this regard!

In a recent conversation with Ed Dean, we were further educated on the new TIL reforms and told us that 10 days is a reasonable amount of time to get a loan to close, you would have to move heaven and earth to get a loan done in 7 days (it can be done, but it’s not recommended), but his belief is that it is not going to have as much of an impact as many people are indicating. Check out his notes on the subject from our conversation.  Ed did a review of 5,000 loans that his former mortgage company had done and noted that only 30 of those loans would have needed re-disclosure. A majority of those 30 needed re-disclosure as a result of people failing to lock in their interest rate or it was initially a pre-qualification and it went to contract several months later. You’ll note at the bottom of page 3 of his notes, how significantly the numbers need to change to get a re-disclosure.

Other mortgage news included guidelines continue to get tougher on condos with more restrictions imposed. In addition it has become virtually standard operating procedure for every lender to pull the Form 4506 from the IRS to request the borrower’s tax returns to make sure they match the ones they provided in the loan application process. Basically with the way the loans are going today, you have to fit inside the box. There is no thinking outside, underwriting or loans being approved outside the box. And lastly, second trusts continue to have no future or part of the mortgage or sales landscape.

As is always we strive to keep you educated in the real estate world.  Get it? Got it? Good!