Wasilla Real Estate News, Valley Market Real Estate

Monday Market Memo for 4/7/08 April 7th, 2008

Categories: Monday Market Memo

Wasilla Real Estate Statistics

 for the week of 3–31–2008 through 4–7–2008. 
Stats for Wasilla, Palmer, Houston, Big Lake, Sutton, Chickaloon, Willow, Talkeetna, Trapper Creek and all the rest of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

This past week has been humming along at about the same rate as the month of March.  The market activity is better than the winter months have been, but it is significantly less than this time last year.   We seem to have a lot of people looking at homes, but not as many actually buying.

As you can deduce by looking at the chart above, the houses that are selling are the ones in the lower price ranges.  The average house on the market is price a lot higher than the houses that are selling. 

That means that the competition in the higher price ranges is fierce.  In fact for year so far, houses over $300,000 have been only 8% of  the total sales while they consist of 30% of the total inventory.  The only houses over $300,000 that are selling are the ones priced very competitively and that are presented very effectively. 

Click on the chart to the right to see the MLS stats for the last 2 years.  Notice especially the bottom line.  this is the line showing total sales for every month.  We are still waiting for a significant bump in sales for this spring.  I believe it will come…but it’s not here yet.

Kristan Cole has some good stats over on her site here.  She shows that the total sales are down almost 30% from last year.    Total volume is also down, as is the average sales price.  The only thing that I might disagree on is her number of a -3% appreciation.  I don’t have enough information to say that yet. 

Even though the average sales price per home is down, that doesn’t say that the average value of each home sold is down.  It just shows that we are selling more homes in the lower price ranges and fewer in the higher price ranges.  We still don’t have enough real data to tell if values are going up or down.  But my opinion is that the lower price homes are appreciating slightly and the higher priced homes are doing the opposite.

If you would like help buying or selling…give a call.  My cell number is 907 232–7900. 

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Monday Morning Market Memo 3-31-2008 March 31st, 2008

Categories: Monday Market Memo

Wasilla Real Estate News market statistics for Wasilla, Palmer, Big Lake, Houston, Sutton, Talkeetna, Willow and every other little community in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

This update is for the week of March 24–31, 2008.

Although the statistics include the whole borough, about 80% of the real estate activity occurs in the Palmer-Wasilla Core area.  This is the area that is driving the market for the Mat-Su Valley

There were 60 new listings this week.  That is the largest amount so far this year.  We should continue to have a high volume of new listings come on the market throughout the spring.

The market has definitely picked up.  While the pendings and sales are a little higher than they were last month, the activity on showings and offers seems to be quite a bit higher. 

Right now, there still seems to be a reality gap between buyers and sellers.  I think that many on both sides are not understanding the reality of the market.  

Many sellers are not pricing their home to sell.  They are still in the mentality of a sellers market where a rising tide lifts all ships and even if you are overpriced, the market will eventually catch up.  Read yesterday’s post here.

But there are a lot of buyers that are also out in never-never land.  Remember…this is Alaska and you know how the bumper sticker goes.  Just because prices are free-falling in other parts of the country doesn’t mean that is happening here.  Take a look at this Fortune Magazine article about how much they are expected to continue falling in some places.

But prices are not falling here.  In fact at this point the average price is still raising, slowly.  The borough and others feel that the prices rose last year by 2%.  I think this is about right.   So just because prices are dropping dramatically in other parts of the country, it doesn’t mean they are dropping here.  In fact, at this point it appears as if prices will continue to hold steady or raise slightly in the future.

So, between sellers listing their homes at too high a price, and buyers offering too low of a price we are seeing a lot of paperwork flying around before we get the contracts signed off.  Buyers need to shop enough to know the market, and if a house is priced right…just buy it.  If you don’t, someone else will.  

I’m working on the Motivated Sellers list for the week.  It should be out tomorrow. Drop me a line if you want it.

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Monday Market Memo for 3-24-2008 March 24th, 2008

Categories: Monday Market Memo

Wasilla Real Estate News market statistics for the week of March 17–24, 2008.  These statistics are for Palmer, Wasilla and the rest of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

We are watching the spring inventory rise. If everything remains normal the inventory will continue to rise through April and into May when it will level out.  This is the time people are selling their homes to make changes in the summer. 

It is a great time for buyers because they have more choices of properties. 

So far, the market seems similar to last year.  There are a few changes however. 

It is taking longer to sell a house.  Last year the average days on the market was about 100 days for the Total Active and about 80 or so for the houses that sold.   This indicates that we still have an oversupply on the market.

The average sales price remains about the same as last year, with just a slight increase.  There is about a 2% increase across the board, but the higher priced homes are not seeing any appreciation at all. 

It’s important to watch the new house prices.  There still are a few daring builders building spec homes.  These builders know that they have to build a quality home for the money and it needs to compete very aggressively with the 2–4 year old homes on the market. 

Nick Fonov just finished this very nice home in Heritage Farms Subdivision.  It sold within a week after it was finished.  He produces a very high quality home for the price that competes very well with existing construction.  This 1900 square foot ranch sold for close to the asking price of $285,000. 

He is finishing another similar home in Serendipity Subdivision on Fortune Circle.  It should be done by the end of April. 

Other builders are still building and selling spec homes.  Jess Hall continues to do well in his developments and a few others are also selling new construction homes on speculation. 

But this is not a time when any builder can just throw up a structure and expect to make a large profit on everything they build.  Care must be taken with the quality and the costs.  Buyers have plenty of alternatives with homes that are only 2–3 years old.

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Monday Market Memo for 3/10/08 March 11th, 2008

Categories: Monday Market Memo

Wasilla Real Estate News market statistics for the week of March 3–10, 2008.  These statistics include the whole Matanuska-Susitna Borough, including Wasilla, Palmer,Houston, Sutton, Willow, Talkeetna and the rest of the outlying areas.

However, most of the real estate activity is in Wasilla and Palmer.

As the chart shows, we had more new listings this past week than at any time since the beginning of the year.  The spring rush has started.   We should see many more new listings come on the market in the next couple months.

We also had the most pendings for the year this past week.  For that reason, our total inventory only grew by five.  Our absorption rate remains pretty steady.  In fact if we were to keep the average amount of pendings at 40 per month, we would soon be in a sellers market again.

We only had 18 closings because these are homes that went into contract during the slower month of February.  We should see the closings soon come up close to the pending number.

Buyers should pay attention to the fact that the total inventory is down from last year, sales are steady so I don’t expect to see much of a drop in house prices.  Houses over $300,000 are still selling slower than and they have to be competitively priced to sell.

I attended an Alaska Housing Finance Corporation seminar this past week at the Lake Lucille Inn.  It was an interesting meeting.  The consensus was that values for the past year increased in the Valley by about 2%.  The real estate market was still healthy in Mat-Su with a steady market. 

The outlook for the 2008 appears to be fairly solid, there are several large projects that are bringing more people into the valley.  The Target store, a new 1,500 person prison and other smaller business show that the Valley continues to grow. 

In fact, the vacancy rate for apartments is only 3%.  That means the rental market is basically at capacity.  As the valley continues to grow, it will likely need more places for these renters to stay.

Jess Hall, of Hall Quality Homes, spoke at the seminar.  His business is still running at close to capacity because of his foresight in purchasing land for development in central areas.  He mentioned that housing starts are running at about 50% of what they were in 2005.  He expects that to continue and feels that is a healthy rate of new housing.  Construction costs are increasing and he expects new construction prices to increase by summer to match the cost of cement, copper, and all the other materials. 

Interest rates remain low.  They are as low as they have been for the past 40 years.  We have become used to the rates in the 6% range, but many of us in the industry remember the days of 12% mortgages only too well.  I have a copy of an article somewhere write during those days that said we will never again see single digit mortgage rates. 

If you would like a copy of my motivated sellers list, read this post and drop me a line.

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Monday Market Memo, March 3, 2008 March 3rd, 2008

Categories: Monday Market Memo

Here are the Wasilla Real Estate statistics for the past week.  These numbers include Palmer, Wasilla, Talkeetna, Willow, Sutton and the rest of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

We had a slight increase in inventory but a pretty sharp increase in new pendings.  There are some definite signs that spring is on the way. 

Of the 35 pendings for the week, seven of them were new construction.  That is a sign of continued health in the market.  New construction can still compete with existing homes. 

Although prices do appear to be weaker than they have been in past years, builders are still able to compete in this market.  If prices were to drop dramatically there would be such a large gap between new construction prices and existing ones that builders would not be able to make a profit.  At this time, there is still a profit to be made in new construction.   But, the only builders that can compete are those with very sharp pencils.

There do seem to be a few more foreclosed homes on the market this year.  I have not been keeping close track of them.  I intend to add a feature to this site that will show all the foreclosed listings on the MLS system.  Check back tomorrow for that.

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