Wasilla Real Estate News, Valley Market Real Estate

Monday Market Memo For Feb 17-23, 2009 February 23rd, 2009

Categories: Wasilla Real Estate News

Wasilla Real Estate News presents the statistics for single family residential homes for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. These statistics are for the last week and include Wasiia, Palmer, and all the communities from Talkeetna to Sutton.

The vast majority of the properties are in the Wasilla area, for example, 10 of the 15 closed sales for this week label Wasilla as the address.

There are twice as many closed sales this week as last. That is a good sign, but the median price of these sales is only $139,900. That is not good news for the 712 homes on the market with a median price of $237,500. It does indicate where the market activity is strongest however.

The news is not as bad if we look at the year to date. For the first 8 weeks of the year there have been 103 sales for an average of about 13 sales per week. The median price for these 103 sales is an even $200,000. Twenty six of these were new construction homes that had been started in 2008 and finished this years.

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Real Estate Future?? February 21st, 2009

Categories: Wasilla Real Estate News

Almost every day I am asked what is going to happen in the future. If I buy a house today will it go up or down in price.

So, I study the local real estate market. I read a lot about the state, national, and local economy. I talk to lots of people and listen to their opinions and news about the economy.

Here are a few of the places I go to get an overview:

I also get the weekly mortgage update courtesy of Alice Roe of US Bank, and the weekly E Letter from John Mauldin of Frontline Thoughts.

After reading all these reports from people who make a living predicting the future economy, and listening to many opinions from people “in the know” my conclusion is this: I don’t have a clue what is going to happen.

Some people think the “stimulus package” put forward by the government is going to cause inflation which will increase interest rates and also decrease the value of money which will inflate the price of homes.

Others think this will be a short term increase which will crash in about 2 years. Then I read other reports which indicate that demand world wide is decreasing which will hold down inflation and perhaps even cause a depression. That will tend to deflate the value of homes. When I read those reports they make sense…until I read the next one with a differing opinion.

What they all seem to agree on is that things will turn around, in a year, two years, maybe 5 or 10 years. So thats the good news. Its just a matter of when.

I recently had someone purchase a home and ask me the question that started this post. I asked them how long they planned to stay in their home and they said probably 10-15 years at least. That makes me comfortable. Over that long a time the chances are that the home will be a very good investment.

In the short run all I can say is that the interest rates are at historic lows, Alaska’s real estate market is still relatively stable as shown by this recent Alaska Journal article, and housing provides one of our basic needs…shelter. We all need a place to stay warm and dry. You can rent your shelter or you can buy your shelter, its your choice. There are good reasons to do both and the decision will ultimately be based on what best fits the needs of you and your family.

If you would like more specifics on this subject or have specific real estate questions contact me by filling out this form: :

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Monday Market Memo February 16th, 2009

Categories: Wasilla Real Estate News

Wasilla Real Estate News presents the residential real estate statistics for the week of February 10-17, 2009. These are single family homes in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

It is interesting to see that there were only 7 closings this week. Of those, two were new construction and one was a foreclosure. The strength of new construction continues to be surprising. We pended one new construction home this week and have one more on the market.

This 4 bedroom house for $239,900 just got sheetrocked and is a great value.

The inventory increased by 35 again this week. That is an increase of 70 homes in just two weeks. I expect the inventory to continue to increase until spring.

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Monday Market Memo Feb 3-Feb 9, 2009 February 9th, 2009

Categories: Monday Market Memo

This is the new market memo for the week of Feb 3-Feb 9, 2009. These include all the single family homes listed with the Alaska MLS system this week.

The total inventory increased by 18 this week. It will likely continue to increase as we go into spring and early summer at which time it should level off if this is a typical year.

There were 39 new listings this week. To view the new listings for the week just click on the link at the bottom of this post. This will be a new feature of the Monday Market Memo. I will also include a link to the foreclosed homes on the MLS every week.

The real estate market in Alaska remains relatively healthy in spite of all the doom and gloom coming down from Washington DC. They will say anything to get another trillion dollars to spend.

The truth is that Alaska is an oil enonomy and we are dependent on the income that our state and the oil workers in our state bring in. Without oil, we would be a much smaller state in population. The price of oil is around $40 a barrel. That is not a high enough price to make anyone feel confident.

While other states have a real problem in foreclosures our area hasn’t seen the same level of foreclosures yet. Currently there are only 25 foreclosed homes on the market in our MLS system.
If you would like to see any of these new listings just give Jay or I a call at 907 373-0999.

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Monday Market Memo for Jan 26-Feb 2, 2009 February 3rd, 2009

Categories: Wasilla Real Estate News

These are the statistics for the week of Jan 26-Feb 2, 2009. These stats are for all the single family residential listings in the Mat-Su borough.

This week there were 26 pendings and 22 closings. This indicates a reasonably strong market. In fact there were more pendings and as many closings as there were new listings. That is surprising for this time of year. The total inventory actually dropped this week. This is the time of year when inventory generally rises steadily until summer.

Two of the twenty two new listings and only one of the twenty two closings were foreclosures. While the foreclosure market is pretty much the only market in many parts of the country, it is still not driving the market here. If it were to increase from 10% to become 25%-30% of the total market then we would see a significant impact.

Six of the closed listings were new construction. That is especially high for this time of year. This is an additional indicator of the health of the current market. Buyers generally review everything on the market before deciding to build. The fact that builders can continue to compete with the existing inventory shows although prices are soft, they are still high enough that building a new house is a viable alternative.

Two anecdotal pieces of news this week. I talked to a manager of a building supply store that believes construction will pick up in the spring. He has done several recent bids for large projects in the south central area. That’s the good news. Then I recieved second hand info from someone who is in the know about oil company plans. He thinks that oil companies will begin to lay off some long time workers this spring. That would send a negative ripple across the market.

So choose your news and act accordingly.

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