This morning’s Springfield Sunday Republican has a feature story in their Outlook 2008 section on Real Estate in the Pioneer Valley. Here is a link to the full story that basically captures the similar thoughts that have appeared in this blog.
To summarize:
- The real estate situation for many towns in the Pioneer Valley is quite different from Eastern Massachusetts and other parts of the country. One local exception may be portions of the City of Springfield which has been hit pretty hard with foreclosures- some of which may be a result of rental property speculation and others related to the problems in sub-prime mortgages.
- While the number of homes sold in the Pioneer Valley dropped in 2007 (4891) as compared to 2005 (5865) – a 16.6% drop, median home sales prices have been pretty stable over the past couple of years.
[As summarized in a previous "Buzz" blog article, the number of sales in Longmeadow actually increased in 2007 (198) vs. 2006 (189) – a 4.8% increase.] - One reason for the more stable prices in our local real estate market vs. turmoil (large price drops) in the rest of the country may be the lower level of housing speculation for the Springfield area.
- Prices are relatively soft, the inventory of unsold homes is relatively high and fixed rate mortgage rates are dropping making for a “buyers market”. For those people with good credit and an interest in purchasing a home for the long term, now may be a great time to find that dream home. It is very difficult to time the purchase of a home at the exact bottom of the real estate slump.
The article is worth taking the time to read.
1 comment:
I agree that Western Massachusetts has fared much better than other areas of the state during the real estate slow down. The media plays a strong role in public perception vs. reality.
I was talking with a local real estate investor this morning who has been looking at several residences that are now bank-owned. He was surprised that in this "buyers market" lenders were still asking full retail on their foreclosures. Many needed substantial rehabbing to bring them back to market value and were beginning to fall into further disrepair by being vacant. He's still looking but very interested in getting back into the market.
There is, however, very good "out of area" interest in Western Massachusetts real estate as we have observed by monitoring traffic to our website which features properties that are for sale exclusively by owner. Buyers just need to start seeing more properties for sale. It's the chicken and the egg thing.
If buyers have good credit, lenders are eager to issue them a loan and rates are very attractive. What we need to see now are sellers who have confidence that buyers are out there and ready to buy and who have prepared themselves for a slightly longer time in which to find their buyer. This is not the year to wait for the forsythia bushes to bloom before getting serious about selling.
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