Tag Archives: home sales

Home Sales in Highlands Get Mixed (or Mixed-Up) Signals

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As we enter the spring selling season, it’s only natural to look for clues about what to expect for Highlands home sales. Normally, one of the principal barometers comes from the National Association of Realtors®. Their Pending Home Sales Index is a national compendium of hard data that can be useful for predicting home sales in Highlands. It is both “forward-looking” (an indicator of future activity) and part of a long-standing and continuous sample-gathering procedure.

When you take a wide sample of the same data for the better part of a decade (the PHSI has been recorded monthly for nine years now), you can chart the results, note when similar patterns repeat or diverge, and infer meaningful results. Further, when an acknowledged authority like NAR’s Chief Economist Dr. Lawrence Yun provides commentary in plain English that any Highlands homeowner can easily understand, the monthly published reports comprise perhaps the best basis there is to project how our own local market is likely to fare.

Last week’s release of the Pending Home Sales Index and commentary was every bit as authoritative as we have come to expect—backed up by the same rigorously collected data from across the country. As a tool for projecting how upcoming Highlands home sales are likely to fare, however, it’s fair to say its usefulness is…uh…less than usual.

It’s fair to say that because it is possible to read the entire 700-word document and emerge without a clue as to what you just read. It is, in a word, confusing. But in case it’s just me who is confused—and you are a typical Highlands homeowner who would appreciate information about how active our market is likely to be in the next few months—I think I should share a boiled-down version of the report’s key takeaways.

The Report’s headline is “Pending Home Sales Cool Down in January” (January’s data is the most recent). From this, we can gather that home sales activity is trending downward. Then, from the first paragraph: “…pending home sales…remained slightly higher than a year ago.” From this, we can gather that home sales activity is trending upward.

There follows an explanation about the first idea (home sales trending lower): it was partly to blame because of bad weather in January. A little later, there is a buoyant observation about the second idea (home sales trending higher): “Sales are now 11.0% higher than a year ago—the largest year-over-year gain since July 2013!” (exclamation point added by me, which seems appropriate, given that this is such good news).

More good news for Highlands homeowners readying to sell their homes dealt with prices: “Last month’s price increase was the largest since April and marks the 47th consecutive month of year-over-year gains!!” (I added the two exclamation points). This, however, was also miserable news: “Home prices ascending…aren’t healthy” because household incomes didn’t rise as fast. But good news would make that much less of a factor, because fixed-rate mortgage rates were really wonderful: “declining to 3.87%, the lowest since October 2015!!!” (exclamation points—oh, you know).

Because sales cooled down in January for the highest year-over-year gain in years, I think the report tells Highlands homeowners that they might well expect a hot-cold/falling-rising market! Or perhaps prudent homeowners should just forget about this report, get their homes ready to list, and call me…I promise not to share what’s in next month’s report!

Predicting Home Sales: More Quandary Than Certainty

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Even the least vigilant of Highlands’s market-watchers had their antennae out last week, the traditional time of month when real estate statistics are released from the most authoritative sources. National trends in home sales frequently provide clues to the direction the Highlands market is likely to take—and with the spring selling season already under way, this is the time of year when movements can be more volatile than usual.

Last week’s data was less exciting than has been the case in recent years—and what movement there was seemed to leave opinion-makers perplexed. The Associated Press writers put it this way:

“The housing market enters the traditional spring buying season facing a quandary.”

When you are interested in clues to how home sales are likely to fare, words like “quandary” don’t help. It was in fact glass-half-full/glass-half-empty kind of news. You could see what you wanted to see.

If you were a pessimistic type, your predisposition might have been bolstered by The New York Times Headline, “Existing Home Sales Drop More Than Expected.” There it was! Confirmation of a downturn in activity. Though you could have admitted that the trend might not extend to every corner of the country, the possibility that Highlands home sales might now head south couldn’t be denied. The New York Times said so!

On the other hand, if you were among Highlands’s more numerous optimistic observers, reading the same news left you thinking that the very same headline was actually slightly misleading. It was based on the National Association of Realtors® report that talked about home sales prices continuing to rise. The “home sales drop” was only (as the headline actually read) against what had been “expected.” Sales levels had been sizzling for months, so expectations had been high (not among the pessimists, certainly). But the numbers showed that existing home sales were actually 2.2% higher than a year earlier!

Reading the entire NAR report could explain why The New York Times emerged with a quandary. In it, readers learned that U.S. job growth “continues to hum along at a robust pace” which could explain why “overall demand for buying is still solid entering the busy spring season.” But then they learned that “anxiety about the health of the economy is holding back a segment of would-be buyers.” On one hand, there was the 48th consecutive month of “steadfast price growth;” on the other, “unshakably low supply levels.” The share of first time home buyers fell 30%; yet the share of first time home buyers “is up 29% from a year ago.”

The Times’ quandary was certainly understandable. But although not much light may have been shed on the prognosis for home sales in Highlands, a couple of factors could have been deduced. In the coming months, home sales certainly won’t “be affected by the large East Coast blizzard” that had impacted February numbers.

What is likely to affect sales is the continuation of tantalizingly low 30-year, conventional fixed-rate mortgage rates, “the lowest since April 2015.” If that kind of encouragement has you interested in checking out the current crop of great Highlands home offerings, I hope you’ll forego the quandary altogether—just give me a call!

Sapphire Home Sales during the Holidays Happen for a Reason

12-24-holidaysaleOkay, granted: a new family home won’t fit under the tree…

This year, Sapphire TVs have been filled with commercials that mix Santa with new automobiles. If you believe the ads, a number of automakers apparently offer models that will fly like reindeer onto driveways for big boys and girls who are sufficiently nice. One do-gooder is portrayed stitching up Santa’s ripped tunic in an act of selfless un-naughtiness that earns him a new sedan on the big day.

I’m pleased to say we haven’t seen a National Association of Realtors® commercial with Santa and elves flying a new home onto a surprised family’s driveway, but the idea is no more divorced from reality than Santa’s barnful of vintage Mercedes (it looks like he loves the red gullwing best). If you’ve never thought about shopping for a home during the year-end holiday season, you might be surprised to consider that in some cases this is a very fortuitous time of year for home sales. Aside from the few who can actually give such a fantastic gift (it actually happens!), there are a couple of other reasons why holiday Sapphire home sales do take place:

Lower Prices

First of all, nothing typifies the holiday spirit quite like the spirit of generosity—and at this time of year, there are some Sapphire home sellers who are predisposed to be more generous than usual. The possibility of their accepting lower offers doesn’t necessarily owe to holiday altruism decking their halls. Fewer visits and fewer offers are made over the holidays, while at the same time there are a number of circumstances that could materially benefit sellers who can close out the Old and usher in the New before calendar year’s end. In some cases, as Forbes points out, home sales may be a matter of the seller wanting to complete the transaction before year’s end for tax purposes—or simply to get the sale out of the way.

Favorable Rates

When you buy in part determines how much you’ll pay, and the waning days of 2014 still offer historically low home loan interest rates. Whether home sales in Sapphire during the coming year will long be able to boast the same advantage is a matter of conjecture, but certainly this is one year when beneficial rates are in place. Last-minute year-end shoppers may reap a happier holiday if they’ve locked in the kind of rates currently available.

Asking Santa for a new home may sound like a bit of an overreach, but for those who make this year’s holiday buying benefits work in their favor, it can be a most memorable season! And for the rest of us who will be leaving a chocolate chip cookie and milk by the fireplace…it couldn’t hurt, could it?