Gregg’s Real Estate Blog

First-time military buyers can get a $5000 grant from the government. Details can be found at www.pentagonfoundation.org. Click on the Dream Makers program.

In good times, sellers took pride in calculating the annual return on a real estate investment when they sold it.  It was something frequently bragged about over cocktails.  That’s all well and good but, calculating an acceptable sale price based on what you purchased a property for, say 5 years ago, is backward thinking, especially in today’s market conditions.  If current market value is going to result in a lower than acceptable return on investment (ROI) or even a net loss, your rearward looking analysis determines nothing but that you made a poor investment decision 5 years ago.  Don’t let that lead you into making another poor decision today.  Your sell or hold decision should be made based on CURRENT market value and your best predictions of FUTURE appreciation compared to alternative investments available today which should also be evaluated on potential ROI vs risk.  What happened in the past is done.  Do yourself a favor.  Get over it and look to the future.

Total sales were about even with Q1 of 2010 (double that of 2009).  Avg price was up slightly from $250k in Q1 2010 to $270k but median price slipped from $200k to $175k.  What this tells me is there were some large sales that skewed the avg sale figure but, for the most part, prices are still soft.

I recently read where 2.9 million homes in the US got foreclosure notices in 2010 with 20% more than that total expected to be in trouble in 2011.  The source of that information was RealtyTrac. 

I also received the 1st quarter newsletter from Equator a few days ago.  Equator is an online clearing house for bank foreclosures and short sales.  They stated that “2011 has been their busiest year to date, and shows no signs of slowing”.  They said that 4.3 million mortgages are in foreclosure or 90+ days delinquent.  They also said that “while the number of loans that are 90 or more days delinquent has begun to decline, a significantly larger proportion has been delinquent for more than a year, thus creating a very large shadow over the foreclosure rates”.

I recently looked back at our local MLS sales stats thru recent years to determine when our local market peaked and when/if it bottomed out.  I found that peak annual sales volume was achieved in 2006 but average and median prices didn’t peak until 2007.  The lowest annual sales volume was in 2009 at roughly a third of that in 2006!  Average and median prices were still slipping in 2010 but annual sales volume was up about 12% from 2009.