Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Holding Out for the 'Uninformed Bay Area Buyer'

From the Stockton Record:

Neidra Orosco, a real estate agent in the Stockton office of PMZ Real Estate, said affordability is the biggest home-sales issue in the marketplace.

"When it comes to purchasing a home, affordability is always first and foremost," she said. "It's always about price. I would say affordability is definitely is a bigger issue than it was three years ago, with the uncertainty of the economy and interest rates. I think affordability is now even more of an issue because home prices are at their highest."

Her biggest challenge is getting home sellers to reduce their selling price in order to compete with the many homes now on the market, she said. "I tell them, 'Look at your house as if it's in a beauty contest,' " Orosco said. "You try to be the cheapest on the block and get it in great condition."

Many hold out hope that an uninformed Bay Area buyer will arrive, amazed at how much house they can get here for, say, $630,000 and snap it right up. "Good luck with that," she said. "That's very unrealistic because right now we have an ultimate high number of listings and fewer buyers out there looking for homes."

Today's buyers are much more knowledgeable because of the Internet, Orosco said, and they take their time looking at lots of listings in hopes of finding the biggest home they can for as little as they can.
...
A recent survey by the California Building Industry Association found that San Joaquin ranked as the sixth least-affordable among 203 U.S. metropolitan areas in the third quarter. That compares with 12th place in the second quarter. The analysis concluded that in the third quarter, a family earning the median household income of $57,100 per year could afford to buy fewer than 5 percent of the San Joaquin County homes on the market.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, are we finally running out of Greater Fools? It is about time.

Well, maybe not. The latest alliteration seems to be mortgage fraud. It will not help the seller, who must drop his price 25% to get his place sold. However, the buyer over finances, using bogus appraisals and gets $200,000 cash back at closing. Five houses sold that way in Lincoln in the last several weeks. There are $550,000 homes selling for $765,000 to $785,000, using 100% financing (80/20). Hello! Can you spell felony? And the homebuilders, who sign the escrow papers stating state a false purchase price may be putting their company at risk. Can they spell FBI, DRE? How about DOA? That is where all this fraud will end. Desperate sellers calls for desperate measures, but why risk prison time. This market is getting to be a bit more than everyone envisioned in 2005. The F'd Borrowers may soon be the F'd Sellers and F'd Builders.

Max said...

Looks like Saca is at it again:

Towers project facing hurdles

Anonymous said...

Re: Max

LOL...

what a promoter
what a BS artist
what a hypster
what a con man
what a showman

You just gotta hope "Daddy" Saca got some more refrigerators in the back...

THERE IS NO FREAKING AGREEMENT with CASPERS or anybody else until Saca reaches a certain stage, which will NEVER occur....

LOL...

Turner, a big name, ditched Saca...why? MONEY...or lack thereof...

but that's just

"Living Urban in Sacramento"

Anonymous said...

If you can wait for an infinite amount of time, then you can hope to find an uninformed buyer at some point. If you're burning cash like crazy, it becomes a lot harder waiting for a sucker to come your way...

The condos in the Towers need to be purchased by people with funny money who are buying it only for status. The economics make absolutely no sense for the common person. One can rent that much apartment for the HOA dues alone!

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.