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August 1 Analysis
The Caravan was, as usual, “instructive.” The first home was the luxury home on Engelmann Oak – a beautiful home of 4,142 square feet on 1.14 acres, built in 2000. Stunning home, and well worth the price. Whether it will pass bank muster for a loan at that price is the question – and no one has an answer. Banks are really flaky these days. The second home on Lake Meadow Lane is 2,543 square feet and is listed at $495,000. It has a lot of updating to do – it still has popcorn, tile…etc. I like the home at 10541 Meadow Glen Way. It is 2,595 square feet, white, light and bright – for $499,000 -- $550,000. It is right on the golf course and, built in 2003 it is already upgraded. This one will sell quickly. There were 27 new listings this past week in 92026, and three of them were in the Meadows – Lake Meadow (above), 28540 Meadow Glen Way West and 10381 Oak Ranch Lane. There were four homes in the Meadows that went into Pending last week (19 in the Zip Code) – a good week in ANY market! 9635 Meadow Mesa, 10295 Spruce Woodlands Way, 10541 Meadow Glen Way East, and 28683 Mountain Meadow Road. We had four homes in the Meadows Close escrow this past week – again a HOT week. The most expensive one closed at $650,100 at 9609 Meadow Mesa Drive, a terrific home sold at 10605 Cerveza Dr for $420,000. A home at 28325 Glenmeade sold for $400,000, and 10573 Meadow Glen Way E sold for $385,000. The market is strong EXCEPT for executive and luxury homes – those above $800,000. Some of the short sale homes are bringing more than the list price through multiple offers – the home on Cerveza Drive, for example sold for $420,000 although it was listed for $400,000.
June 27 Analysis There were 20 new listings in the Zip Code, but only one from The Meadows – a HUGE buy on Cavalier Court. Cavalier Court is a short sale and more than 4,500 s.f. on 2.16 acres for $539,000. That might be a steal! Executive and Luxury level homes at prices this low are jumping off the market in less than a week! There were 21 homes in the Zip Code that went into Pending, and four of them were in The Meadows. That is a high sales week for any market, at any time of year. A home on Fallen Tree closed escrow at $309,900. That was the only closing in the Meadows, of the nine that closed in the Zip Code this past week. The sales prices are low – but there are a large number of sales taking place. I can now announce that I have finished the website for the Meadows Homes Association. It is live and running normally. I did it and will maintain it as a volunteer, because this community runs on volunteer work The website is www.themeadowshomesassociation.org, and it has the By-laws of the association, architectural guidelines, and the CC&Rs, as well as contact information for the association. The website also has the Agenda for the upcoming Board Meetings and the Minutes for the previous Board Meeting. One of the useful e-mail alerts available in the Meadows is Tom Francl’s newsletter. It provides news like lost dogs, vandalism, and the occasional crime. It also alerts Meadows residents as to planned events. This is a real benefit to the community, and if you are interested please send him an e-mail and subscribe. Subscribe at: dynamite@pacbell.net The monthly newspaper, The Meadowlark, is a terrific newspaper, edited by Sally Langpap a talented and hard-working Editor. It takes a HUGE amount of volunteer work to put this newspaper out, and it is worth reading – every issue. It is mailed to every resident in The Meadows by the Association of Resident Owners (ARO) whether people are members of ARO or not. But at $20 a year, EVERYONE should be a member. The e-mails from Tom fill in where there is “Breaking News” that cannot await the next edition of a monthly newspaper. And, of course my Real Estate blog gives daily information on items related to living in The Meadows, but concentrating on real estate matters. If I do not cover information you need, send me an e-mail at allen@allenhemphill.com June 20 Analysis The numbers for the Zip Code again look good for the past week. It is obvious from the list of homes available in the Meadows. Notice that we do not even have a full page, whereas just a few weeks ago we went over to this page – and substantially. This past week we had 19 new listings in the Zip Code, 23 homes went into Pending, and 11 homes closed escrow. Those are the kinds of numbers that decrease inventories, just as has been demonstrated with only 29 homes available today in Hidden Meadows. The home we had on Caravan on Oak Ranch was one that went off the market last week – it was on the market just 8 days. I am running the Meadows Realtors Caravan this month, and it is interesting. We have sufficient new listings every week to have a caravan every week, but people often list their homes prematurely and they are really not quite ready. We will have a new Realtors Caravan this next week. I am particularly interested in seeing the home at the corner of High Mountain and High Vista. The market appears to be changing. This is just an anecdote to be sure but it is instructive. My son (who incidentally has owned Dolphin Realty for more than a decade), just sold a home in Lakeside BEFORE it was listed. He had 10 offers in one day of Open Houses, and sold the home for more than the list price. It closes in 21 days, and sold for $360,000: Because our agency has Property Management, and therefore we have a stable of painters, carpenters, plumbers, cabinetmakers, tile setters, etc. They are used usually for maintenance for the many homes we have in management, but now we are using them to rehab homes prior to resale. My son tells me that there are a lot of “First Time” Buyers in the market today, and they have joined with investors in buying low-priced homes – but the investors are primarily into short-sale and foreclosures while First Time home buyers want turn-key homes at prices almost competitive prices to short sale and foreclosures. The Meadows is just a bit too upscale to participate in the frenzy that is going on in those markets, but when a good value comes on in The Meadows it jumps off the market quickly. In the past two weeks we have had sales in three days, eight days, and again, eight days. Those sales, and others have helped reduce our Meadows inventory – and our current inventory is about what we would historically see over a long period of time during a “normal” market.Prices at the low end appear to have solidified in The Meadows, but recent sales have put pressure on high end properties. When there is one short sale or foreclosure at the high end, Appraisers can mark that off as an anomaly, but when several take place virtually simultaneously then it becomes “the market.” That then becomes a problem even when a high end home sells at a high price – Lenders simply use all of the distress sales to determine the loan. In the case of the home my son rehabbed in Lakeside, he told potential Buyers that the home was NOT going to comp at the sales price and that all Buyers would have to bring sufficient cash to make up the difference, if they really wanted it. They did – lots of them: Enough to sell the home for more than the asking price. This situation may not last. It may be a situation that cannot transfer to The Meadows, but sales ANYWHERE in San Diego County provide eventual Buyers for The Meadows. It is all a question of time.
Mid-June Comments An interesting Realtor Caravan. We had ALL interesting homes – two on short-sale, one regular home so well priced it might just as well be a short sale, and one terrific luxury home. The first home was a nice, single-level home on Oak Ranch, in short-sale. ($369,900) This home must have all offers in by June 16. Its main advantage is that it is right in the center of the community with an easy walk to the Deli, is on sewer, on half an acre, and has RV parking. That has to interest someone. The second home on Spruce Woodland was vacant, and another short-sale. ($450,000) The price is right. It is a large home (2,700 s.f.) and has a nice golf course view. The third home was on Glenmeade, is well priced at $400,000 (minimum), has a nice view and is a nice home. This is a well-priced, move-in ready home listed at a short-sale competitive price without the hassle of a short-sale. The fourth home is one of my favorites in the Meadows. ($835,000) It is a single-level Executive home (3,126 s.f.) on more than 2.5 gated acres with terrific views and real privacy. This home has so many advantages that it is hard to describe, but I have always loved the home. It is single-level, and that is a good start. It is move-in ready. The views are unmatched. It has a fully approved guest house with three separate entries just perfect for an in-law or independent child. It has room for a pool, and a separate road already in to get to the part of the property to build a pool. I could live in this home, so I guess that tells you how much I like it. The Short Sale and Foreclosure has struck the Executive and Luxury markets in Hidden Meadows. Previously, we had an occasional sale that caused lower “Comps” for actual sales, but just in the past week we have had several substantial homes that were really beautiful and sold for crazy low prices. The Mountain Meadow Road home that went into Pending at $540,000 was unbelievable, and was on the market for only 3 days. The Adobe home on Cerveza Dr. has a working offer on it, and at a list price of $450,000 it was a terrific buy. The short sale of the home on Cerveza Baja went into Pending in eight days at an astonishing price at $775,000 was well under what I believed to be the market was for that home. The good news is that there is still an Executive and Luxury market. The bad news is that it is at a lower value than we had believed. Any one of these sales would have been surprising, but all happening in a week or 10 days is surprising. Executive and luxury homes on the market and awaiting a market to list into will have to respond with lower prices under this onslaught – or sit on the market, unsold. Previously, the few low priced Executive and Luxury sales would have been excluded as “distress sales” and discarded as not properly representing “the market” – now they must be accepted as ‘the market.” It is so much “the market” that these well-priced high-level homes generated multiple offers! There are people out there for Executive and Luxury homes, but only at Sale Prices.
Mid April Comments Certainly that is better than having sales down and foreclosures up, but as long as there are short sales and foreclosures competing for Buyers’ dollars, prices will not rise. Until prices rise, the public will not recognize that the crises is finally over. Of course it might be argued that if prices no longer drop, the crises is over but in some Zip Codes and in some neighborhoods, prices do still continue to drop. While we are accustomed to thinking of markets as we do the New York Stock exchange – but real estate is not national, it is neighborhood specific. Foreclosures are continuing, even increasing in California, Nevada, Arizona, Illinois and Florida, but not necessarily nationally – and within those states it varies by NSEW, and within that by Zip Code, and finally by neighborhood. There is no way to discuss this as a national market. Certainly Hidden Meadows is site specific – it is an enclave, a non-gated gated community, unknown to the general public and purposely so. That was no by design. Republic Development, who laid out the community wanted everyone to know we were here. While we think of the community as a pretty staid community, Republic introduced The Meadows to the public with youg girls in short-shorts twirling signs on Old .Highway 395! In the Zip Code in the past week, there were 17 new listings, 17 homes were sold and placed in “Pending” awaiting closure, and 14 homes actually closed escrow. The actual closing number is a lagging indicator because those homes came off the market many weeks ago. In The Meadows for the past week, there was only one new listing on Rocky Point Way, and one home on Meadow Glen Way East closed escrow.
April Comments There is SOME movement in the market in the normal ($450,000 and up) market. While there has been good movement in the "investment market" (below $350,000) the normal market has lagged -- and although there are not a lot of short-sales and foreclosures in the normal market, those few still set the price range. Consequently, it is hard to sell "normal" homes because they must compete with homes offered at distress prices. Nevertheless, a well-priced home WILL sell. I have sold on home, listed at $729,900, TWICE in the past month. All agents report more people looking, because it is obvious that we have reached, if not the bottom at least close to it. We see more and more homes that have failed to sell in the past coming back on the market, and while that complicates the market by increasing the inventory, it also demonstrates that Sellers believe their homes might sell this time.
February Comments The “median prices” for detached homes in North County declined a mere 3.7% in 2008, while outside North County detached homes declined almost 7.5% last year. First, that is interesting, but the whole concept of “median price” of sales in statistically inconsequential as I have discussed before because only low-cost homes are selling, and therefore there is no broad expanse of homes, low, medium and high, being measured. Overall, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that the time on market for a sale increased from January 2008 through January 2009 from 48 days to 54 days – but on the other hand the number of sales of single-family dwellings rose 58% from January 2008 (365) to January 2009 (576). Interest rates are LOW, but the major activity is in refinancing, not in purchasing new homes. ALL markets depend upon confidence, and job confidence is sorely lacking in this economy – but with low interest rates and the entire real estate market down simultaneously, people who sell low get the buy low and the Delta remains virtually constant. As noted today in the North County Times, a “healthy” inventory is 4-6 months, and currently the North County inventory stands at 7 months. It is the general economic climate that now holds back the real estate market. Two new listings in The Meadows last week, two went into Pending, and two closed Escrow. Not a bad Winter week in Hidden Meadows even in good times!
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