Archive for the 'For Buyers' Category
Just the other day I was pulling comps for a seller in a specific neighborhood. Normally, this shouldn’t be like pulling teeth, but a trend that I have been noticing has been accelerating. Half of the listings in this neighborhood failed to mention the name neighborhood in either agent remarks or pubic description. This forced me to search by zip code. Since the neighborhood in question straddled two zip codes – I ended up digging through mountains of actives and solds – not to mention contracts/pendings as well as expireds.
Since the neighborhood I was researching straddled two zip codes – I had to go through a mountain of actives, contracts, pendings and solds, expireds and cancelled listings to fish out the relevant information.
So I have to ask the moronic question – Whatever happened to including the name of the neighborhood on the listing?
I don’t mean to sound snarky – but this is NOT rocket science. HEY! LISTING AGENTS!!!! Include the $#%!ing neighborhood in the listing!! This is quite literally the LEAST you can do. How hard can that possibly be?
Not local? It’s your job to find out for God’s sake. If you don’t have enough knowledge of the area you are listing in to find this information – then you have no business listing there. Do yourself and the seller a favor and decline the listing.
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It’s been said that numbers don’t lie – or do they? I love statistics. Heck, I worked as a molecular biologist in mammalian genetics. I defy anyone to find a scientific discipline that is more reliant on solid statistical analysis than that!
But…. as anyone in the sciences will tell you – statistics are only as valid as the data they are measuring. I saw more than my share of deceptive creative uses of statistical models. In the science/engineering disciplines “peer review” holds these “creative types” accountable and by and large it does an excellent job. In fact this is often where the rubber meets the road for most of the junk popular pseudo-scientists who whine that they can’t get published.
Sadly – I haven’t run into the real estate watch-dog equivalent of peer review.
Phil Faranda wrote a blog about REALTOR stats being open to the public. He sighted a post from Agent Genius about how when the Houston Association of Realtors started disclosing these stats – agent protest caused the program to be discontinued.
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20 North Broadway #C313 – White Plains, NY 10601
This Listing is Courtesy of Carolyn Schoemer of Keller Williams Realty NY.
Welcome home to a one-of-a-kind unit in a a one-of-a-kind cooperative.
The Broadlawn is truly unique. Located in the heart of downtown White Plains – it seems a world away from the hustle and bustle of the downtown. Once you walk through the entry – you find yourself in a mature English garden with mature plantings. This is the most unique cooperative complex in the city of White Plains NY and perhaps the most unique of Westchester coops overall.
For more information on the Broadlawn click here.
This elegant 2BR/1BA duplex has unique pine paneling throughout the living area which makes this unit unlike any other. A working fireplace and elegant French doors opening onto to a balcony that overlooks the gardens completes the effect. The modern kitchen with granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances has been opened up into the formal dining room creating a wonderfully unique and open space. Upstairs the unique beamed ceilings continue the theme. A beautiful welcoming environment.
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First time buyers looking for homes for sale in Westchester NY face a variety of choices. There are a lot of homes on the market right now and many find themselves like kids in a candy store. But that doesn’t negate the fact that houses for sale in Westchester NY are still very expensive and many of the things on that wish list – including the “must haves” often have to to be reconsidered and scaled back.
For example, the entry level buyer that wants a pre-war charmer with 2 full baths and and open floor plan with central AC for under $500k is looking for a product that does not exist in this market.
Many buyers initially turn their noses up when they see a cookie cutter:
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Consumers who have been searching for homes have been discovering something new and different when they do an address search on Google. They are suddenly swamped with web pages which amount to “listing sheets” of each address the punch into the search engine. The result is the mess seen on the right. A long list of web pages for a single address.
At first this might seem like real estate heaven for buyers and sellers a like. However, the number of these sites have been propagating like bunnies and the elation turns to confusion when the consumer picks up the phone to call the agent who listed the home.
Where is the Listing Agent?
You see, these listings are being sponsored by agents and brokerages that for the most part have nothing to do with the listing. Some may have no idea about the listing whatsoever. They engaged a service that covers several counties, and know nothing about the home in question. In fact their working territory might be 30-50 miles away or more – but they are eager to help the buyer or seller with their real estate needs no matter how little they know about the area.
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This could also be entitled – “How to steal a house.”
First, the inspiration for this post belongs to C.Tann-Starr. She wrote a tremendously refreshing and honest post - Momentum After The Tax Credit Expires? Seriously? Suffering From Lookie-Lou-Itis?
Second, I don’t have a crystal ball. I can only use common sense to look ahead. The only thing I know is this: What goes up, must come down – and what goes down, eventually goes back up. We can also look to the past in order to better see the future.
How I stole a house in 1996:
The year was 1996 and willy nilly I found myself thrown into the housing market. There were no incentives out there, no $8000 tax credits, interest rates were hovering between 7-8%. The country was MIRED in a real estate recession that seemingly had no end. Few were buying – and those that were – were offering low ball after low ball. Homes languished on the market for months if not years.
But I needed to move. I moved back in with my mother when she became ill and now she had passed on. It was time to sell the big family home that had housed three generations of my family.
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The Westchester real estate market is now truly a buyer’s market. In most communities, the number of westchester ny homes for sale is in excess of six months inventory. This is not universal throughout the county. But for the most part, the county is in a buyer’s market. A few days ago, I wrote a blog about seller’s stuck on unrealistic prices (Dear Seller, About that number in your head…) But this is one of those markets where unrealistic expectations are not limited to one side of the transaction. Fueled in part by media reports filled with sturm und drang (storm and stress) many buyers have confused a buyer’s market with a fire sale.
Unfortunately, unrealistic expectations can set buyers up for unnecessary disappointment and frustration. There are several flavors of unrealistic buyers out there.
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The housing market in White Plains has taken a drubbing since the stock market crash of 2008. Although some adjacent areas are showing small signs of stabilization, the same can not be said for the city of White Plains. This is ironic because White Plains was at the epicenter of the housing boom for Westchester County.
White Plains NY Cooperatives:
Cooperative prices were actually up slightly over the same period in 2008. However, this slight uptick might be do to an increase in the proportion of 2 BR units in the sales statistics. The previous quarter showed a grim 17% price reduction and recent sales in specific complexes indicates that this downward trend is continuing. Since 2 BR units are suddenly far more affordable, buyers are finding that they can afford a larger unit. Sales volume is down 17% over the previous year and the current inventory of 9 months indicates a buyer’s market undergoing a price correction bordering on double digits.
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It is very interesting that just as consumers are demanding ever more hyper-local content and knowledge from agents that we are also seeing another distinct trend in the opposite direction: the tendency to list and sell to larger and larger geographic areas.
The contrast between old-school hyper-local agents and the newer nomad agnet was driven home to me while I was working with two listing agents who still work exclusively in small niche markets. I was at a closing with one of them and she implied that since I had the entire city of White Plains to cover, why didn’t I simply refer out the client who finally bought in Scarsdale?
Can a real estate agent be too local?
I knew that the attitude about staying hyper-local is alive and well though it appears to be a staple of old-school real estate. Still, I was more than a tad surprised. Scarsdale is not the moon. It is the town directly adjacent to the west side of White Plains and about a whopping six miles from my front door to the center of the village. If we followed this line of thinking to its most extreme would mean that a buyer potentially moving from New York City to Westchester NY would have to have as many as five or six agents to explore all the possibilities open to them that were within about 30 minute commute. For the consumer this seems most unwieldy if not highly impractical. Could you imagine the mountain of agents all crawling over each other for the buyer’s attention? What a mess. Not to mention a monster of coordination.
From the agent’s perspective, there could also be a danger to being too local. What if something happens to that small segment of the market you represent? If your geography/price range are razor thin – you are setting yourself up for trouble. This was clearly seen this year when agents who specialized in small high-end markets got creamed because jumbo loan issues bit them in the backside. Another listing agent I encountered was used to selling about 10 major properties a year – but this year had only managed a single sale.
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Scarsdale NY housing has been in the cross hairs of the housing recession for a while now. Initially, it was resistant to the correction taking place in other parts of the country. Eventually the forces that had hit other parts of the country so dramatically, came home to roost even in the most resilient areas of Westchester. Real estate values in Scarsdale NY came under prssure as inventories swelled. The drop was severe. However, some of the numbers show signs of a bottom being at hand.
Cooperatives:
The number of co-ops sold are down 15% over the previous year. This is a trend that has been seen in other parts of the county and reflects the difficulties in obtaining financing. Currently there is a nearly 8 month inventory on the market. However, prices remain slightly higher than the previous year, (5.4%) indicating a market that is stabilizing. There are some mixed signals here. the inventory is still high however, the pricing is surprisingly robust.
Single Family Homes – Scarsdale:
After a “pop” during the 2nd quarter prices have once again fallen and are down 27% over the 3rd quarter of 2008. Swollen inventories are going down. Right now inventories are approaching th 6 month mark.
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