Comments on: Sales slow, foreclosures up, but prices leveling off

By: John

John — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:41:32 +0000

The majority of loans qualified for the foreclosure moratorium during much of the Jan & Feb of 2009 time frame, therefore it’s not a good comparison to 2010. Foreclosure filings were down during that period in 09 and surged upward for several months after the moratorium expired.

By: Selena K

Selena K — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:12:09 +0000

Understood. Thanks for letting me make my points.

Everything is skewed toward sellers in the RE world, which is a hold-out of the old-school RE mentality. Buyers are often ignored, but it takes both sides for the market to operate at all. We should not forget it’s the buyers who make it happen–anyone can list their home for sale, realistically-priced or not…ably or not. But not everyone can buy.

Overall, the market is getting better all the time!

By: Russ Lay

Russ Lay — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:56:34 +0000

Writer’s note: The use of assessed value vs. FMV has nothing to do with the fact that assessed value is out of whack due to the timing at the market peak. What is mathematically important is that assessed value is a constant, so measuring sale price vs. assessed value gives one an idea of where prices are going and provides a tool in determining if a house is over or under priced in a market relative to the mean or average. Since market value moves up and down, one needs a constant value to assess trends. The article did not comment on whether property taxes were high or low here.

By: Selena K

Selena K — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:32:38 +0000

Lastly, the tax value vs. FMV is obviously going to be skewed because both counties assessed in the peak of the boom and they both waited so many years between assessments. We are lucky the value differences are not greater, IMO.

By: Selena K

Selena K — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:30:07 +0000

Oh, and if you ask 95% of the buyer demographic whether they care if our tax assessed values are X-amount higher than our FMVs, they might laugh.

The vast majority of our buyer clientele come from places with such higher taxes than ours, it would make your jaw drop.

We have a good thing here…don’t gripe about our property taxes.

By: Selena K

Selena K — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:12:51 +0000

Anonymous experienced local Realtor here (I make a decent living at it full-time with no second job). I have a few thoughts that might anger some people, but here goes:

1) Buyer demand is higher than most people think, therefore sales are better and better all the time;

2) I would urge every seller who is either unreasonable, unable or unwilling to sell for fair market value to get out of the market so our supply and demand could correct. There are far too many overpriced listings in the MLS and this is still not the proper time to “test” the market;

3) Which leads us to short sale attempts. They are a tease to the general public and brokerage firms who advertise “see us for short sale deals” are only harming the entire market. Buyers have the misconception that short sales are a “deal” and they feel they’ve been victim to an old-fashioned con artist “bait & switch” when they see some of these unrealistic, non-approved asking prices on short sales. They come to look and realize that short sale asking prices are not doable prices. It makes us all look bad, IMO.

Thanks for letting me vent!

By: Mico

Mico — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:33:04 +0000

I look forward to the addendum with Hatteras Island figures.