The Popularity Contest

The refrain this summer and spring has been no inventory, no inventory, where is all the inventory?  New buyers entering the market may have a hard time wrapping their heads around the necessary strategies to compete for properties, and I've been lamenting the accelerated way I've had to bring clients through the process lately.  Your first home-buying experience should be exciting and educational, not the nail-biting, crazy race to offer we're dealing with this year.

With a little planning, the anxiety can be taken down a couple of notches.  Starting a conversation with a lender to know exactly how much home you can afford will keep you from wasting time looking at houses over your budget.  Sharing your financial situation with an experienced professional can alert you to, and potentially resolve, any issues with your credit to prevent them from rearing their ugly heads during the underwriting process later.  Contacting a Realtor who can outline the entire process and begin to set expectations is an important part of conducting a smooth transaction, and getting to know the local market early will allow you to recognize a good value.

Louisville has a range of properties from condos just over $100,000 to single family homes over $1,000,000.  Like most places, some neighborhoods are more popular than others, and it's crucial to know how the individual areas are behaving when it comes to finally being ready to purchase.

Source:  IRESis

Since January 1, 2013, 119 detached and attached dwellings have sold in the city (excluding empty lots and new construction).  Of these, 46 of them, almost 39%, sold at or over the listing price.  The chart to the right shows the breakdown of the locations of those properties.

This data does not reflect any monetary concessions that a seller may give to a buyer at the time of closing.  These are usually granted as compensation for unexpected inspection items that have not been repaired, but they can be included for other reasons from time to time.  Seller concessions affect the net amount that the seller walks away from the transaction with, and are a consideration for any buyers studying sales data in order to come up with a reasonable offer price.  However, I've not included them today since my primary focus here is a snapshot view of the competitive offer situation.

Source:  IRESis

The chart on the left presents the distribution of all of the properties sold in Louisville since the beginning of the year, again excluding land and new construction.  Keeping in mind that the data set doesn't reflect the homes that were for sale and taken off of the market, we can still see some trends.  For instance, we can see that the properties that sold in Parkwood and Saratoga all sold for at least asking price, if not more.  The Heritage and Hillsborough West neighborhoods boasted 50% or better.

Obviously, I can't summarize every single neighborhood in this post, but if you have narrowed down your areas of interest I highly recommend doing a targeted analysis.  An area may not have made these charts because perhaps they only offer up one house a year, but that house may be scooped up immediately by a savvy buyer who knows there is little turnover there.  Give me a call, and I'll be happy to pull the data you'll need to start feeling confident about your decisions.  Besides, I like making the colorful charts.

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I would love to help you with your real estate journey. 

Please contact me at 303-917-7143 or robbin@stauferteam.com

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Heritage Neighborhood, Louisville

 

I recently took a client through some houses in the Heritage neighborhood of Louisville.  Built in the early 80s, the homes are at various levels of updating and have sold from the $240,000s to the $390,000s in the past few years.

The Louisville area has quickly turned into a seller's market, and properties that are priced well and show decently are going under contract within a week or two.  Inventory is low, and some sellers are happily dealing in multiple offer situations.  The second quarter of 2012 shows a sharp incline in the number of closings in that neighborhood alone, as the chart below indicates:

The average percentage off the asking price hasn't been lower than 97% since before 2008, although beware that this number can be misleading.  If the seller gave the buyer money toward closing costs, they actually walked away with less money that the selling price would indicate.  Also, the percentage off asking only takes into consideration the amount discounted off of the final asking price - not necessarily the original asking price.  In other words, if the property had several price reductions before an offer was made, that would not be reflected.  That may or may not be indicative of the market, however, if a particular seller just had unrealistic expectations of what his property could sell for.  That's another reason it's a good idea to hire a Realtor who has access to all of the data regarding a property and, more importantly, can help interpret that data to get you the best value.

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I would love to help you with your real estate journey. 

Please contact me at 303-917-7143 or robbin@stauferteam.com

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