Real Estate Market???

Joined
Nov 5, 2007
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City & State/Province
Dallas, TX
There have been a few threads about opening up the economy, jobs and whatnot, related to the Covid-19.

But how is the real estate market in your area? Around here, I see a few houses which are being completely gutted and re-modeled. BUT, those houses were started before all this.

There are three houses for sale on my street. Which is unusual. The last few years, nobody has moved. But they are sitting, unsold. One in fact got taken off the market, it was for sale for a year. But that house is different, they remodeled it, and want a pretty large fortune for it now. And it's ugly. The other two? One is just down a couple houses away and I don't think anyone has even taken a look at it.

I know this isn't a large sample. And honestly, I don't know what the rest of the Dallas market looks like. Thankfully, I haven't seen anything related to the market slowing down. But how is your town? Are real estate agents still working?
 
We aren't allowed to buy or sell houses in PA....

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/04/real-estate-shutdown-in-pa-wreaks-havoc-some-face-two-mortgages-others-have-no-home.html
 
Captain America said:
We aren't allowed to buy or sell houses in PA....

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/04/real-estate-shutdown-in-pa-wreaks-havoc-some-face-two-mortgages-others-have-no-home.html

Quite the tyrant y'all have up there. Maybe folks should do something about that. :wink:
 
My neighborhood is not an area to judge by. Last home for sale was early last year. That was only because the owner passed.

However, I did sell one rental property in another area last March. It was more difficult due to the current situation. Not as much for me as the agents, escrow folks, and buyer. Most of my end was done with phone calls, texts, and emails. Documents were all with DocuSign.

Similarly, I did most of the search and purchase of my new truck electronically.

I think any slowdown is due to the depressed economy, not inability to do the deal.
 
Real estate buying and selling/ prices going up or down is really a regional or area thing. Here homes are on market and selling. ID where I just bought is seeing all time boom in building.
I got full offer after 3 days on market end of April. 1st week of May spend 2 days looking at new homes near OR/ID border and had to wait on 1 due to buyers/agent in the home.
At some point if many loose their home than all that will change. I was going to list July and agent said sooner was better due to predictions of many may loose homes. Interest rates are great now and if anyone is in the market it is a good time to buy.
The way CA government is treating it's citizens, I would think the mass exit of working and retired Californians will continue.
 
The number of realty inspections I was doing pretty much dried up for the last month or so ... but now it's started to pick up.... I think folks ability to stay in line is limited and now it seems more and more folks are starting to go out and about.... and try to get back to the real world.
 
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The housing market around here is still having prices go up. Houses I looked at
four years ago are at double the price. I've seen speculation that the prices will go
down, but I'm not holding my breath.

I would love to trade with the guy that has the place just behind my daughter. That
would be very convenient and save me a little bit of money. I'll bet my SIL would not
want that, because he would not have any excuses for not getting things done. :roll:

:D
 
I can't imagine enough people will lose their houses here for the price of homes to go down in general. They haven't been able to keep up with building them. Problem is, in many cases the prices are creeping up fast enough you can't sell your home because it's very difficult to find a replacement. Prices <$400k are still selling at a pretty good clip and prices up to $300k are going fairly fast. I don't think most last a month if priced right and in descent condition. People want move in ready, it's not like it was years ago where people are willing to do some work to build some sweat equity. I had an agent sell my mothers' house in NM and there were so few homes on the market the buyers pretty much bought off of pictures and knowing they'd have to do a little work to it, like replacing flooring and interior doors. Wasn't on the market for more than 3 days as I recall, and closed in less than 30. Cash deal. I had the agent raise the price $15k over what she thought, and there was no negotiations at all. Full price. Commonly called a sellers market. Guessing it's that way in many places.
 
In these parts I know land been selling well signs go up and come down quick.
I'm considering selling some not sure if I'm ready yet! Got to decide soon or
wait till next year.
 
Oh great! This is all good to hear. Well, except for PA. We did buy some land at the beginning of last year. Eventually we will build a house (it’s out of town in the country.) But all this is nice to hear. It just seems like if the real estate market goes down, it will drag everything else down with it.

And just the opposite too. As the housing market goes up, everything else goes up with it. Home Depot Stock does well when people like remodeling their homes. And right now HD is almost $240, right up around their 52 week high.

Thanks!
 
houses are like guns, tit for tat.
old collectibles only appeal to old clients who know how to own it.
new ones appeal to the young who cant afford it, don't know the first thing about it, but want it anyway.
and once they get it, they complain about it on forums. :lol:
 
In my neighborhood a nice rancher sells quick. A new family moving in today!
We bought our brick rancher on a nice large corner lot back in 1984. With a large 2 bay garage and now solar power..it would bring some bucks.
 
bobski said:
houses are like guns, tit for tat.
old collectibles only appeal to old clients who know how to own it.
new ones appeal to the young who cant afford it, don't know the first thing about it, but want it anyway.
and once they get it, they complain about it on forums. :lol:

I don't quite follow your train of thought. I think I agree with you. The newer houses around here, all being sold to young families are usually, brick, painted white with black trim. It's kind of modern, only yesterday on my bike ride, I saw about half a dozen houses all the same color scheme.

Then its just ugly.

The first apartment my wife and I rented was built in the 1890's. In Boise there in the North End. The two houses together were originally some sort of Ice House. I'm not sure what exactly. Then the first house we bought was a 1913 Farm House. Out in the country outside of Seattle. It was pretty nice actually.

Older houses have more charm. And if you keep them maintained, they can be worth more than "new" houses.
 
I don't see any remodeling going on around here, since building material prices jumped during the Obama regime it doesn't pay. The folks who own the local lumber yard say the same thing. House prices seem to be on a steady increase, in 5 years we've watched a nearby house sell for $87K, a couple years later sell again for $115K & now up yet again for $129K...
 
Don't know what's going on here. Beginning of the year I kept getting post cards asking if I wanted to sell and at least a half dozen phone calls. Today, crickets. Kind of tells me things might be stalled here.
Paul B.
 
My wife and I own 2 homes: a large 4-bedroom home on 19 acres and a small 2-bedroom home on 65 acres. Both are 100% paid off. Our plan is to sell the big house, quit my job and retire to the small one. We have been moving stuff up to our smaller house for months now. We should list the large house in a couple weeks. Just trying to decide between two realtors.

I'm 56. Will collect Army retirement at age 59. The sale of the large house will carry us over till Army retirement starts.

My current job is tearing me up. I need to get out of the rat race before it kills me.
 
Paul B said:
Don't know what's going on here. Beginning of the year I kept getting post cards asking if I wanted to sell and at least a half dozen phone calls. Today, crickets. Kind of tells me things might be stalled here.
Paul B.

Some of the real estate associations, have told the realtors to back off, stay out of the houses, shelter in place. If you are really looking to sell, l would contact a couple of those agents and ask for a CMA (Competitive Market Analysis). Talking to them some will give you an idea who can do the best job for you. When I put my mothers house on the market I interviewed 4 agents. Of the 4 one wasn't listening to what I wanted, but any of the other three could have done a great job. I also talked to the Brokers of 3 agencies and asked which one was the best. Of course they said, they couldn't answer that, so I said have the one you'd use call me. I got a call in less than 5 minutes. That's the one I ended up going with.
 
It really IS a regional thing

Locally in the Far West Valley of the Phoenix area, market is booming, prices climbing
Fair priced homes go up and down fast (unless WAY overpriced)

Have more work than can handle, never did slow down or let up even
(Licensed Electrical Contractor)
 
Wife is an escrow officer. No real slowing. She's working from home (I'm retired and we're both high risk). Her office is open with social distancing in place. Her bosses are cool and business is keeping head above water. Several lender friends are working from home also. One's talking about retiring (She's upper 60's and her husband owns a few rentals.

Wife walked by and I just asked her and she said the market is "STRONG"!

Just hired a roofer and he said business is good for "repairs".
 
To find out the average real estate prices in your area, look at how much different real estate companies sell houses. Now appeared a lot of companies that work in real estate, and it is not surprising. Real estate is an asset that is in constant demand. Last spring, I decided to buy a house in Costa Rica. I looked at many offers from real estate agents, but what I liked most was the offer from Grupo EcoQuintas. These guys helped me choose the right house, and most importantly, they fully financed the purchase. I did not want to spend a lot of money right away because it is better to pay a small amount each month.
 
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I don't know who is buying, but there have been four houses in my neighborhood in the past year that were on the market. Two because the owners passed and the others were upgrading. One was remodeled and flipped, took a couple months. Two were sold as in and in less than a month and needed some remodeling, carpets and paint type stuff. The fourth was unsold for about 6 months, it had been remodeled and flipped, then put back up for sale, and some Rehab people bought it with gubmint funding to use as a halfway house. Makes me want to move but I'm stuck. I've had an older house on the market in a different larger city for 4 months with no offers yet.
IMHO I think the market is getting soft. Still a sellers market but about to turn down, and probably quite dramatically.
 
There have been a few threads about opening up the economy, jobs and whatnot, related to the Covid-19.

But how is the real estate market in your area? Around here, I see a few houses which are being completely gutted and re-modeled. BUT, those houses were started before all this.

There are three houses for sale on my street. Which is unusual. The last few years, nobody has moved. But they are sitting, unsold. One in fact got taken off the market, it was for sale for a year. But that house is different, they remodeled it, and want a pretty large fortune for it now. And it's ugly. The other two? One is just down a couple houses away and I don't think anyone has even taken a look at it.

I know this isn't a large sample. And honestly, I don't know what the rest of the Dallas market looks like. Thankfully, I haven't seen anything related to the market slowing down. But how is your town? Are real estate agents still working?
I only know whats been reported in local & state news, but prices are goin up. In part the claim is that there's been an influx of people moving here from NY & CA. Many of whom can work from home without a decrease in earnings. So real estate increases are going after the money. Big surprise eh? One thing leads to another & because housing is scarce in some areas. property values go up. But it's just obvious that with more people moving in housing prices will increase. Supply & demand economics.
 
The prices in my neighborhood have gone up. There is one house. I should take a picture. They remodeled it, just a flip. But it took almost a year of work.

They redid the front grass, and they put down sod in some places. But get this. They just threw the sod down on top of everything so it’s lumpy.

Needless to say it is VERY slipshod work, and makes me think what else they cut corners on inside the house.

But overall, I don’t see a lot of houses for sale in our area. But I know it isn’t the season yet. Give it about two or three more months.
 
It's slowed down slightly, very slightly, here. Prices are still ridiculously high and they're still building. I wish it would slow down a little more for a while. We've already outpaced the infrastructure considerably.
 
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