It's time to do a little catch-up on the week that was in real estate, given that some interesting national statistics were released this week.

According to the US Commerce Department the median price of a single family home was down 2.5% from September 2005 to $219,800, the largest year-over-year price decline in records going back four decades.(from the National Association of Realtors).  Even more staggering was the news for new home sales, which saw a decline of 9.7% on the median price to $217,000 (also the largest year-over-year decline since 1970).  The number of new homes sold did rise 5.3% in September but new home sales are down 14.2% in the past year.  Nationally there was a 6.4 month inventory/supply of homes, given the sales rate in September.  Mortgage rates inched up to a 6.40% average for the week of October 26.  I read recently that rates were thought to be headed to 7% by the end of the year but now the thought is that it won't get to that point, at least not yet.  The Federal Reserve's decision Wednesday not to raise rates was at least part based on the housing market slowdown.

September in Austin looked like this:

Current Market Summary
September 2006

All Single Family Sales

2006 2005

2,341 2,280

+  3%

All Active Single Family Listings

2006 2005

8,203 7,835

-  5%

Single Family Median Price

2006 2005

$167,000 $161,750

+  3%

Single Family Pending Sales

2006 2005

2,332 2,030

+ 15%

The average home price in Austin was up 6.5% year-over-year to $227,948 from $213,946.  These are all certainly respectable numbers in light of the sharp declines in national numbers.  Of course, as I always say, all real estate is local.  It is interesting however to keep track of how the national averages shake out.  It will also be interesting to see how long this downturn in the national numbers will continue.

If you've been to a football game at The University of Texas this year, it's hard to miss the advertisement for the new Texas Gameday  Center coming over godzillatron.  For those longhorn fans who don't know, or <i>somehow</i> missed the ad, the Texas Gameday Center project includes the renovation of the 51 units in the Windsong Apartments to luxury condominiums as well as a 136 unit luxury condominium hotel located at Dean Keaton and Red Rive, just across from the practice fields.  The units at Texas Gameday Center will range from studios to 3 bedrooms, from 350 square feet to 2,000 square feet and the pricing is expected to be from $160,000 to $1,000,000.  The renovation of the Windsong should be complete by the start of the 2007 season.  The new building is expected to be ready by Fall 2008.  I read that it will include a clubroom for 'tailgating' before games (although I'm not sure how they are going to fit all of those grills and pop-up tents in the there - kidding, of course).  Two more smaller projects are planned for Lubbock and College Station.

If you are interested in more information on the Texas Gameday Center or would like buyer's representation, please email me or call me at 512.698.3525 and I will be happy to assist you.

Speaking of The University of Texas, it looks like Augie Garrido has put his condominium in the Nokonah up for sale.  The asking price?  $1.15 million.  The interior was designed by Dick Clark and the furnishings are included. 

I've been working recently on my Neighborhood Guide so that the West Elm Properties website can help people get to know the neighborhoods in Austin a little better as they try to decide which neighborhood feels 'right' to them.  Many factors go into that thought process, including schools, area amenities, geographic considerations, pricing, home styles, tax rates and utilities, among other things so this is what I have attempted to capture on each neighborhood page in a clear, concise manner.  The first MLS area I undertook was area 1N, which, geographically runs between 2222, 360, Parmer and McNeil/Spicewood Springs (basically).  Within this MLS area I found 30 distinct neighborhoods.  Many of these neighborhoods are typically grouped in with the larger neighborhood - say, Sierra Vista with Great Hills or Walnut Crossing with Milwood - but I found that there are enough distinct differences that each deserved its own page, so that buyers can really hone in on what specific neighborhoods they really prefer.

It's quite been quite the undertaking working up the statistics and information for these pages, and I still have to add some 'representative home' photos for several of the neighborhoods, but it has actually been a good exercise in understanding as well.  My hope is that you, as buyers and sellers and homeowners in the Austin area, will find them very useful.  If you live in one of these neighborhoods and would like to add any information, or you see something that is no longer accurate, please feel free to email me and I would be happy to make the change.

My next venture with the Neighborhood section will be to write-up some of the larger neighborhoods in other MLS areas.  If there is a neighborhood you would like to see more information regarding please feel free to contact me on that as well and I would be happy to work up that information.  I'm guessing that if someone emails me asking me for information on a neighborhood, there are probably 10 others who are interested who didn't email, so it helps me meet my mission statement goals.  Eventually I this site will have a cross reference ability where if you want to see what neighborhoods feed to a certain elementary school you can click on the school link.  For example, when the Laurel Mountain Elementary page is there you will be able to see that Barrington Oaks, Canyon Mesa, The Dominion at Great Hills, Great Hills, Spicewood Hills, Westhill Estates and Yaupon Terrace feed to Laurel Mountain Elementary in MLS area 1N (Additionally you would see that The Bend and sections of Spicewood Estates go to Laurel Mountain Elementary as well).

Please let me know if there is anything I can do to make this site more useful for you.  My goal is to serve you and make this website a great reference for your home buying, selling and owning needs.

Have a great weekend!

jb

This is really a nice article on making sure you price your home correctly.  As the article discusses, most of us tend to be a little optimistic on our home's value.  As a homeowner, you've put a lot of time and hardwork into your home so it is certainly understandable.  I will admit that I try to get my sellers the highest possible price in a reasonable amount of time, and sometimes this involves stretching to a bit to see if we can eek out a little more than most Realtors would suggest.  Sometimes the strategy works and, because we've set up and staged the property correctly, we are able to get on the high end of the price for the neighborhood.  Sometimes the market just won't absorb the property at that price.  What I do stress with my sellers is that we need to be active in monitoring the market and adapting the price to reflect that market.  The statistics reflect that after the second weekend the amount of buyers viewing a home tends to go down each week from then on out.  It's important to capitalize on the traffic when it occurs.  On top of that, the longer a home stays on the market, the more stigmatized a home becomes.  In other words, buyers begin asking 'why hasn't this home sold?' and the bigger question ' why hasn't anyone else bought the home - what am I missing?'. 

Pricing a home right from the start actually helps you get the most from the home.  Many sellers say, "let's price it high and if a buyer wants to make an offer for lower they always can and we can negotiate it."  In theory it sounds great but over the years I have found that the majority buyers just won't do that.  Most buyers who feel a home is overpriced will feel that the seller won't consider more reasonable offers or, if they do, will not negotiate to a more reasonable price.  By the time the list price is brought down to a more reasonable price most of the buyers for that home are gone meaning many times the seller ends up with less for the home than they would have received if they had priced it fairly to start and gotten an offer in the first few weeks.

It really is a fine line to walk - getting the most for a home but not overpricing the property.  It is my own personal philosophy that much of that 'extra' you can get for your home actually comes into play before you list the home - the staging, the pre-marketing, the prepping of the home, etc.  You need to have everything in place the first day you put the home on the market to make a splash and to capitalize on the bounce you get from being the new home on the market.  If you don't do it this way, if all of the components just trickle into play after you've already entered the home into the MLS, then you end up missing on a good portion of your buyers and missing out on getting top dollar for your home. 

I also believe in my clients, both buyers and sellers, have every bit of information available to help them make their best decision.  For sellers this means a broad spectrum of comparables.  I will also narrow it down using the basics of standard appraisal practices so that I can give my own broker's price opinion.  With all that information, plus information on statistics from the market and their neighborhood I believe that we can find a price and a marketing strategy that will work best for the seller so that we can meet the goal - getting the best price in a reasonable amount of time with a minimum amount of stress.

.....................................

One more article for you tonight -

Can you help me sell my home, St. Joe? - It's not a new practice, but I've seen a few articles on it lately - must be the slowing market for sellers in other parts of the country.  St. Joseph, carpenter and father of Jesus, is also believed to be help sell homes when buried in the seller's yard.  There is more about the history of the practice in the article, but I found the various way that people believe St. Joseph should be buried to be interesting.  The most interesting method appears to be burying the statue upside in a hole in the backyard facing the home with his feet to heaven. 

On this Friday the 13th of October I'm going to venture off the real estate subject matter.

Heather forwarded this video/story on to me from Texas Country Reporter, which is a show in Texas that covers all sorts of human interest and other uniquely Texas type stories.  This particular segment is a great little story about a dog name Skidboot.  There's not much I can say that the story doesn't say itself.  It's just one of those stories that brings a smile to your face.

A friend of mine was asking the, admittedly silly, question as to whether butterflies were overrunning Austin.  I actually haven't noticed them too much but he wrote that he had to roll up his window during lunch to keep them from flying in his car.  During the course of the discussion there were two reasons raised:  1. the smailler, snout-nosed butterflies left their natural habitat in search of water due to the drought;  2. the flight path of the monarch to their wintering site in the transvolcanic range in Mexico.  Apparently these Monarchs migrate 2,500 miles (the only insect that can fly that far) to their destination in Mexico, the Oyamel fir trees.  That's pretty amazing and I guess Austin must be in the flight path.

One last item - not Austin or Texas related but something I want to note.  CBGB in NYC will have it's last show in the current famed location on Sunday, October 15.  The last time I was in New York I was able to visit the club and now I'm especially glad I did.  It kind of brings similar feelings as passing of local music landmarks such as Liberty  Lunch and Steamboat  1874.  I hate seeing any of these places become a part of 'history' and victims of what comes under the label of 'progress'.  If I remember correctly, both CBGB and Steamboat were a result of landlord/rent increse issues.  CBGB has stated that they will reopen in a new location and might even also open in another city (cities) but the musical history of the place is in the Bowery (can they take the walls with them?).  Steamboat tried to make a go of it when they got kicked out by the higher rental offer from the carpetbaggers, errrr, new tenant, by setting up in a location off of Riverside Drive, but it just wasn't the same.  I actually played the 'new' Steamboat a couple weeks before it closed for good.  Liberty Lunch was kicked out by so that the city could build a new city hall.  In the spirit of Halloween I'll end this paragraph with this thought - boooooooooooo.

Here is the latest information as to month on month comparison for the Austin real estate market.  As I mentioned in the review of July's statistics, we are still seeing a slight leveling on pricing (compared to the 15% month on month we saw in the Spring months) which I would project will continue through the remainder of the year.  This provides an optimal time for buyers to buy a home before the run-up in pricing I expect once we get to 2007. 

Current Market Summary
August 2006

All Single Family Sales

2006 2005

2,805 2,634

+  6%

All Active Single Family Listings

2006 2005

8,137 8,302

-  2%

Single Family Median Price

2006 2005

$182,500 $169,400

+  8%

Single Family Pending Sales

2006 2005

2,891 2,549

+ 13%

The average sales price in Austin for August 2006 was $243,684. 

I recently read in the September/October 2006 issue of Texas Realtor magazine that Texas' average credit score ranks 50th among U.S. states.  The average credit score in Texas is 648.  In South Dakota, the highest ranked state, the average credit score is 711.  The 'brief' in the Texas Realtor magazine states that a person with a top credit score might pay $231 less per month than a person with a poot credit score based on a $216,000 mortgage.  I don't know why they chose $216,000 but it certainly demonstrates how important credit scores are to the lending process and how much these scores can impact the real estate market in Texas. 

If you are keeping track, the $231 per month is equivalent to $2,772 per year or, over the life of a 30 years mortgage, $83,160.  It's also said that an extra $6/month in mortgage payment buys you approximately $1,000 more house.  That's $38,500 more of a home that would be available to someone with a better credit score at the same payment. 

Texas Realtor magazine cited Experian and "myFico savings example using a 30 year mortgage with prevailing national rates in August 2006"

Time to catch up a little on recent articles.

First is on Allandale.  The article writes on how Allandale is becoming increasingly popular for "young families and professionals".  A good percentage of my clients over the past few years have bought in that general area and I have actually noticed that as well.  When areas closer in to town, such as Hyde Park, became cost prohibitive for many younger buyers, neighborhoods such as Allandale provided the right combination of affordability and the older home charm/funkiness that many of those buyers sought (and still seek).  There are actually several sections of Allandale including Allandale Estates, Allandale North, Allandale Oaks, Allandale Park, Allandale Terrace and Allandale West.  There are over 2,200 homes in these combined areas.  Between October 2005 and October 2006 there were 122 homes sold.  The average size of those homes was 1,680 square feet with an average sales price of $256,797, or $157.20/per square foot.  The average list price was $261,570 and on average it took 29 days to get the home under contract.

Sales in the New Home market remain strong.  Nationally sales of new homes are down 14.4% whereas Austin is up over 18%.  Nationally there is a 6.6 month supply of unsold new homes.  In Austin that number is less than 2 months.  Interestingly enough I still get plenty of broadcast emails from certain builders offering incentives for some of their inventory.  Typically I share any commission incentives above 3% with my clients if they decide to purchase one of the new home builder's home.  It seems appropriate to me.  The article does urge caution as the new home sales might be slightly inflated by investors, which I have seen myself.  I've read a couple of articles quoting out-of-state 'investors' saying that they couldn't believe how low some of the prices were for some of the new homes, mostly bedroom communities outside of Austin.  It would seem common sense but maybe it should be said - just because something would be a 'deal' where you live, doesn't mean it's a deal where it sits.

When staging your home the idea is to make your home the star.  There really is no goal other than that.  Staging is not about being clean or even primping the home but rather about arranging the home so that there is a flow to the home.

For all my real estate listings I work with a professional design consultant who uses the principles of feng shui and energy when staging the home.  He only works with one other real estate company in Austin and I have found his work to be very effective.  Many of the home staging companies that exist arrange the furniture to look nice in the room but do not necessarily take into account the flow of the buyer's eyes through the room.  Good home staging not only takes into account how to maximize the best features of a room, it also helps 'point' the buyers the direction you want them to move.

With that in mind, here are a few ideas I've picked up when you are looking to stage your home:

> Consider sightlines.  When the buyers walk in your front door do they have any obstructions in their sightline?  Try to remove tall or large objects from this initial view and keep a clear 'pathway' so that the buyer feels drawn in.  Tall or large pieces in the way of this initial sightline can have the effect of 'pushing' the buyers back out.  Having this sightline clear can also lend an impression of more space.

> Straighten the kitchen - The kitchen is a major player in the home buyer's thought process.  You don't have to do a kitchen remodel in order to improve the appeal of this space for a buyer.  Once again the goal is space - specifically, open space.  Clear off the counter as much as possible to create better visual lines.  This includes most, if not all, of your appliances as well as towels, cooking utensil caddies and cookbooks.  A very select use of decorative items may be used, but the focus is on 'very select'.  You might try fresh fruit in a bowl if it fits well into the space.  Clean off the refrigerator and remove items from window sills.  Buyers will look in your cabinets so be sure to keep those clean as well with at least some sightline to the back of the cabinet.

> Pay attention to the 'earth' elements in your house - In Texas there is not a lot of opportunity to use a fireplace and yet a good percentage of homes in Austin have a fireplace.  It is also true that many people ignore the fireplace when arranging their furniture.  Rather humorously (and I was guilty of this myself), the furniture tends to be arranged toward the television and the television tends to be on whatever wall you find the cable outlet.  Arrange your furniture toward the fireplace.  Create a setting - a 'warm' place for gathering and, if need be, move the cable outlet.  However if you are staging your home for sale consider just going without.

> Throw rugs - Throw rugs - I mean literally, throw them!  Actually rolling them up and putting them away will be just fine.  In most situations throw rugs make a space seem smaller.  The first place to remove them is usually the bathroom which, typically, is one of the smallest rooms in the home already.  Pull them from your kitchen as well.  In fact the general rule seems to be if they are not there to specifically define a space they probably need to go.  An example of this is a living and dining room with no other separation designated in the wall or floor features.  Even then it seems it is risky to use a rug if the area is carpeted as the rugs show their best on wood floors.

> Closets and other spaces that go dark - Do not stuff these areas.  Rather, be sure that the floors of the closet are clean and remove whatever you don't absolutely need and start packing it.  This goes for most cabinets and other storage type rooms or areas.  Buyers will feel the space in question does not have enough storage room if the cannot see the back wall.

> Garage - It seems the garage has become the keep-all in today's society.  If you have nowhere else to go with these items put everything you can in boxes and stack them UP rather than out.  The best is to have your garage show as its intended purpose - to house the amount of cars its designed for as well as see the walls of the garage.  The 'good' is to clear enough space to fit the cars and stack and arrange everything vertically up the walls.

Additionally, don't be afraid to pick up recent magazine on home decorating and copy ideas from the pages.  Don't go overboard, but if you see a way to create a space in your home based on similar space in the magazine, don't be afraid to try to arrange your room that way.  Many people suggest that furniture and decorations should match.  I personally don't think that is as important as the items in the room 'going' together.  Matching isn't as important as style.  If the style is identifiable and cohesive then you are probably in good shape.  If it is more of a hodge-podge mix and match situation then you should probably look at taking the room one direction.

More

• No dim bulbs!  Make sure the light bulbs all lighting fixtures are working. 
• You might like your wallpaper but more and more home buyers view it as dated, regardless of when you installed it.
• Your pets are your friends, but that doesn't mean the home buyers will like them.  Keep them out of the way.  If possible, keep as much evidence that they even exist (food bowl, litter boxes, crates) out of sight.
• Use fresh!  Fresh flowers, fresh fruit.  Avoid plastic fruits and silk flowers.  The impression you leave with each is subtle but lasting.
• Keep it clean.  Not only the floors and counters, it's time to get detailed.  Fan blades, light fixures, air vents, window sills - whatever collects dust or dirt, keep it out.
• Leave a light on.  Keep your front porch light on.  It's an invitation to home buyers.

When you are all done walk out of your home, walk to the street and then walk back in and view the home - not as the seller of the home but rather as a buyer.  Try to see the home with buyer eyes rather than seller eyes.  Feel how the home moves you - what directions you feel you should walk.  How does the home look to you?  Don't make excuses or reasons for the faults, don't grant yourself, as the home seller, the benefit of the doubt - the buyer won't.  Remove all the possible negatives you can identify, starting at the beginning.  Remember, the buyer is there looking for a reason to rule out the home - don't give them a reason!