Market, Jan 2011

I am sitting in the office on this snow day waiting for a buyer to come and make an offer. They are late, so I have some extra time. Hence a long delayed blog finally gets written.

How is the market? In the small world of Bunch Real Estate Group, we had 2 closings in Jan. We may have 3 if all go well rest of the day today.

We also have 2 scheduled for Feb.

In Columbia MO as a whole, we have 114 properties under contract. Often you may hear people say nobody is buying houses, or you hear nobody is able to get mortgage. That is not true when we have 114 under contract.

Of the 114, 13 are foreclosures, 2 are short sales. This is higher percentage than Boone county has ever seen. However, since the lending rules are so tight now, foreclosure number will have to go down eventually. Most real estate professional estimate the process will take 2 years.

As for price, the new construction price is really attractive, they are making the pre-owned houses harder to sell, or making pre-owned properties have to sell for less.

I have a nice 2900 sq ft home listed around $240,000 in a great location, but we are competing with new homes of similar size for $$259900. Tough competition.

In my neighborhood, a 3200 sq ft newer home was sold for $257900, which is higher than I expected. So there is hope. It is not as bad as the news portraits.