"Fingers Crossed for Local 'Traffic'"
Jim Wasserman starts a weekly housing market column. From the Sacramento Bee:
Here's a silver lining most of us may not have considered: If the thought of paying $3.35 a gallon keeps you from traveling this weekend, why not just stay home and shop for a house?
That's at least a fervent hope of Sacramento-area real estate agents and home builders as the Memorial Day holiday weekend begins. With many open houses scheduled across a region that has 14,000 existing homes for sale, they have their fingers crossed for local "traffic."
"Who knows? With gas prices, they might be out looking instead of camping," says Faye Roediger of Coldwell Banker in Elk Grove. She has three open houses in the works for this weekend.
No doubt it's been tough out there for agents, sellers and builders with would-be homebuyers weighing their options and sitting on the fence. And Memorial Day weekend has never been the traditional big summer kickoff for home shopping, says the California Association of Realtors.
10 comments:
Funny I missed that part of the article - I was too busy looking at the headline that new home prices had dropped (because sales in the south below $150K had increased hugely).
Do people pay attention to their commute? Yes, look at the chart @ Average Buyer on # months inventory by zip code (about a week old) and you will see that the lowest # months are in close, east sac, arden, carmichael, fair oaks and folsom (davis likely too). The toughest places are those loaded with a lot of new tract homes coupled with no doc/no down loans.
So this "realtor" says because gas prices are so extremely high, people will stay home this holiday weekend and buy an overpriced home instead. Anyone understand this logic? I must have been out sick that day my economics professor talked about this. I sure hope this lady doesn't also give financial advice to her clients. And full service realtors get mad at those cut rate realtors saying their the embarrassment to their profession. Well, Miss Roediger might just take the cake.
If any of the homes I am tracking are holding open house this weekend, I'll go.
Of course, I won't be making any offers unless a miracle happens and someone drops their asking price by 100k. If anyone asks me what my target price is, I'll tell them, though.
I haven't been keeping track of the new home prices in Woodland's Springlake lately, but someon correct me if I'm wrong: KB Homes are now selling for $150ish/sqft for their new homes. Centex is selling at $220ish/sqft for theirs. Did KB Homes discount their homes big time or have they always been that much cheaper than the Centex homes in Springlake? Anyone hear of the builders buying the mello roos from potential buyers yet? That's pretty much what turned us off from buying in Springlake, the high and ever increasing mello roos. However, I did notice that Dixon and Vacaville homes are now cheaper than Davis.
Springlake is still being worked on. Here is a link to a map showing how it relates to the rest of Woodland.
http://www.woodlandcommunity.com/
Now Centex has 3 developments going, KB two, and there is the Heritage development that I wrote about on my blog.
From looking at the map of the whole Springlake additions, they are currently only working on on about 2/5 of the entire plan. I drove the whole thing on 5/26 and there were lots of lots that had utilities put in with Coldwell Banker signs. These didn't seem to be part of a plan like Heritage. It looked more like the original builder was trying to unload them.
Today I heard a radio commercial for a Centex Norcal sale but I can't find a link to it. It was for 6/2 only. Anyone have more info on this?
KB has always been a lot cheaper then Centex but I still get prices at approx 170/180 sqft. You may be able to get some better prices if you walk in.
Mello Roos and HOA is running about 285 a month there- ouch.
I drove by a few new housing developments, which just 18 months ago had lines out front, and didn't see more than the sales reps cars out front. Slow weekend for home sales.
Gwynster: norcalcentex.net That's the url on the postcard I got in the mail last week. Check this link out: http://www.centexsac.net/0-down.html
10yr interest only. Hey, buy now and don't worry about resets for 10 years! Also, chances are, the house won't depreciate in value in 10 years! With the USD at its all time lows, your home is guaranteed to have appreciated in whole USD!
10 yr interest only and I get to be locked into that inflated property tax bill?
Oh whoop. Someone alert the media >; )
springlake community mello roos is escalating annually up until the 2049/2050 tax year from $2,500 a year to $12,000+ a year.
Even though in late 2007 homes were selling for $140/sq ft, even the centex ones, the tax is just not worth it, no thanks.
KB homes are cheaper because of the sub-par construction and worthless warranty as well as the smaller lots.
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