Finally, A Busy Open House

I held my townhouse listing open yesterday afternoon and expected to have plenty of time to blog because, let's face it, open houses have been REALLY SLOW the last couple of years. Needless to say, I was pretty pleased to have a nice turnout. And real buyers to boot. The $8000 first time home buyer tax credit is definitely moving the under $300,000 housing market. Hopefully it won't all fall apart when the credit ends next April.

I thought I'd crunch some numbers for housing sales in area communities. Below are the active vs. pending sales percentages. I derived these percentages by dividing the number of active listings into the number of pending listings (homes with offers accepted). For example, if a community has 200 actives and 25 pendings, that equals 12.5%. Here's what the percentages mean:

0%-45% is a buyer's market
45%-55% is a neutral market
55%-100% is a seller's market

What does that mean for local communities? Here are the percentages for some:

Gig Harbor 19%
North Tacoma 21%
Lakewood 29%
University Place 20%
Spanaway 55%

Basically, this is telling me that houses are selling. With the exception of Spanaway, it's still a buyer's market but the buyer's are buying when they see a good deal. Spanaway is a borderline seller's market and I'm not surprised because it's median home price is perfect for first time home buyers.

A funny thing happened on the way to Hollywood...

My real estate career got busy again. Go figure. It turns out that it's next to impossible to get a film financed right now. The banks have stopped lending, just like they've stopped everywhere else. Meanwhile the first time home buyer tax credit has been doing wonders for the real estate industry. It's not exactly gang buster business, but it's a good start.

Last weekend the National Association of Realtors held their annual convention and Lawrence Yun, the NAR economist (and one of the most respected economists in the country), gave a talk on the state of the real estate market. He feels that the pendulum has swung too far and that many homes are selling greatly under value. I love this news simply because it means we have nowhere to go but up. Not that I don't expect plenty of hiccups along the way, but I think we may have made the turn. I'll crunch some numbers for Pierce County and post them tomorrow. Expect to see good news for the under $300,000 range.