Feeds:
Posts
Comments

January is National Radon Action Month

January 24, 2012 by Stan Suther

OK, how about a show of hands-  how many of you know what Radon is?……. That’s what I thought.  Not many people know about radon unless they’ve bought a house in the last 10 years.  Radon- sounds like the name of a sci-fy robot or something, doesn’t it.  In fact, it’s a colorless, odorless gas that occurs naturally all over the country in varying degrees of concentration.  In low concentration, it’s pretty much harmless.  In higher concentrations it can cause lung cancer. 

Nowadays home buyers frequently choose to get the home they want to buy tested for radon.  The test is provided by all home inspectors with results back within a couple of days of the test.  If you’re not buying a home and getting a home inspection, you can buy do-it-yourself kits from home centers for less than $15.  Right now, the NC Radon Program website hosted by the NC Department of Health and Human Services is offering FREE radon test kits.  I love the word FREE, don’t you?  The link to get the free kits is a bit slow, so just have patience for it to open up.

The good news is that if your home has a too-high concentration of radon,  there are plenty of ways to clear it up that don’t cost too much.  The idea is to have an air handling system that sucks up the problem air, often in a crawlspace or basement, and blow it outside so that the gas doesn’t have a chance to concentrate in the house.  Outside, it is dissipated so that it’s not a problem.

The NC Radon Program site has lots of information about radon, the effects of different levels, and how to get rid of it.  It even has a NC zone map to give you a bit of an idea of how often this is a problem.  The fact is, though, that your neighbors house can test just fine and yours show concentrations about a safe limit, so doing the test is the best approach.  I’ve ordered my free kit and will run the test as soon as I get it.

If you’re outside of North Carolina, check your state health department for radon info, or you can go to a comprehensive site run by the EPA here.

Posted in Real Estate | Leave a Comment »

I’m Often Asked “How’s the Real Estate Market?”

January 14, 2012 by Stan Suther

Having gone through the recent holiday season and the social gatherings the holidays bring, I once again got asked a particular question very frequently.  Fortunately for me, lots of folks know I’m a Realtor, so they ask me how’s the market.  Of course, most don’t plan to move anytime soon, but like lots of people, they view the health of the real estate market as a bellweather for the health of the overall market.  My standard response lately has been, “Houses are selling, buyers are buying.  My buyers are quite happy.  My sellers are not happy.”  The reasons are that in fact, our sales volume has been going up over the last six or seven months.  However, that has been accomplished at the expense of overall pricing.  Look at the chart below which shows average per square foot prices (including land) for our local multiple listing service area based on a 12 month moving average.  Prices have been going down in each price category.

Ave price per sq. ft. CMLS 12-11

Fortunately, our inventory is also going down from 12.5 months of inventory in December of 2010 (at then current sales rates) to 9.1 months of inventory in December of 2011.  As inventory goes down, we will eventually get to an equilibrium point where there is balance between buyers’ market and sellers’ market.  Historically that has been at 5-6 months of inventory. Only then will we likely see an overall increase in prices.  Another question for which there’s no easy answer is that of how many foreclosure homes will be added to the market over the next few years.  Lenders don’t want to dump all of their inventory on the market at once since that would dilute the prices of all homes on the market.  Foreclosures are currently down to 2007 levels according to a report on MSN Real Estate HERE, but the article explains that there are underlying issues that could change the rate of foreclosure in the future.

One reason for encouragement here in the Lake Norman NC area is that according to recent reports, North Carolina is one of the top five destinations for people moving from other, largely northern, areas.  See the article about this HERE.  Real estate agents in our area can attest that many of the buyers they are working with are from northern states, and many of them have come at the recommendation of friends who’ve already made the move.  As they move to our area, they will help to reduce the excess inventory and finally see some increase in home prices.

I keep an eye on expert opinion on the economy from many sources.  We don’t yet have full agreement that things are turning around, but I certainly see more positive than negative outlooks now, and that’s encouraging.  For homebuyers, that positive sentiment and confidence in the future is key to their willingness to sign on the dotted line.

Posted in General Real Estate Market, Huntersville, Iredell County, Lake Norman, Lincoln County, Mecklenburg County, Real Estate | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Stan Suther Named a Five Star Real Estate Agent by Charlotte Magazine

January 6, 2012 by Stan Suther

Charlotte Magazine recently named me as one of their Five Star Realtors for 2011.  According to the information I got from them, “Charlotte magazine asked Five Star Professional to conduct research with clients, peers and industry experts to determine the real estate agents in the Charlotte area who rated highest in overall satisfaction.”  They say that only 7% of area agents qualify for this recognition.  I have not had time to think about this much because I’ve been busy with my clients, but I appreciate the recognition.

I’m up for any recognition I can get.  The best recognition though, is when I get a call from someone who asks me to work with them based on the recommendation of one of my prior clients.  Word of mouth advertising is the most highly favored and most productive advertising for any business.  It’s especially important for people who want to buy or sell real estate because it involves such a large part of their assets and is not something people generally do often enough to feel comfortable on their own.

I work very hard to give my clients the confidence that their real estate transaction will be completed to their best advantage with as few bumps in the road as possible.  When there are bumps in the road, I’ll do everything I can to smooth them out.  I’ve been doing this for quite a few years now, and have lots of experience and resources to help me help my clients.

Posted in Charlotte, General Real Estate Market | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

Charlotte Area Tops for Quality of Life

December 29, 2011 by Stan Suther

People and companies continue to move to the Charlotte area, including Mooresville and surrounding communities.  There are many reasons for their choosing our area.  Kiplinger has a great article that explains why Charlotte is among 10 of the best cities to live in the US, including business climate, quality of education, and cost of living.

Lots of people like to live right in the city or a close suburb, and that’s great (I’ve done both).  Others like to live close enough to the city to enjoy the amenities of a metropolitan area without having to live in the city full-time and battle traffic and other irritations unless they do it by choice to visit the city.  Mooresville is close enough for one to drive to most parts of Charlotte within 30-45 minutes on the weekends.   Daily commutes to downtown are not too bad unless someone makes an “oops” up ahead and slows traffic, but you’ll find that anywhere.  I talk with and work with a lot of people moving to our area, and most find it a great place to live.  They like the Mooresville area’s slower pace and the recreational benefits of Lake Norman.  They also like being a only a couple of hours from our mountains and four or so hours to our coast.  Life is good here in the Charlotte/Lake Norman area!  If you want to find out more about it, check out the Relocation link on the right side of this page.

Take a look at the Kiplinger article HERE.

Posted in Real Estate | Leave a Comment »

Holiday Apologies

December 21, 2011 by Stan Suther

I have to apologize.  I’ve concluded that I don’t fit the Christmas plan.  It seems that when people ask me what I want for Christmas- you know, something reasonably priced and small enough to wrap, I just come up with nothing.  Don’t get me wrong.  I do want things, like new windows for my house, paying down my credit card balance, help on replacing my locked up heat pump compressor (revelation from yesterday), or maybe a couple of slabs of cherry wood to use in my shop.  I even like books and music, but now mostly I like to get them digitally, so that means a gift card from Amazon or iTunes.  I’m just not able to give my family a good traditional idea.  I think I’m lucky to be at a point in my life where things and stuff just don’t occupy a lot of my mind.  When I do want some hardware, it is usually pretty pricey and peculiar- not the kind of things to suggest to relatives and friends.  I really don’t mean to be difficult, and I still manage to appreciate the holidays for the food and fellowship they bring.  I read something the other day on the subject of happiness.   It was trying to identify why Americans seem to have more stuff than most any other country, but don’t rate very high on an international happiness scale.  The writer said that to be truly happy, we need to focus more on using our resources to have positive, memorable experiences.  Good memories that can be called up time and again can bring real happiness.

I’m too much of a gearhead/gadget guy to think that I’ll stop appreciating well-designed gizmos, but the older I get, the more I just enjoy a good meal with friends.  I’ll still happily rip open a Christmas package containing pajamas, a tie, a sweater, or other traditional goodies.  I’ll really appreciate them, and my bride will enjoy me looking a little less out-of-style. But just understand that if you’re looking for  the really unique gadget that will make me feel all twelve years old again, apart from going nuts in the Brookstone store/catalog, it’s going to be tough, but good luck!

Merry Christmas, everyone.  Hope you get what YOU want.

Posted in Quality of Life, Real Estate | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

Realtors Hear from Children’s Homes of Iredell County

December 15, 2011 by Stan Suther

Sonya Leonard

Last week, Realtors from the Charlotte Regional Realtor’s Association’s Northern Region (Iredell and N. Mecklenburg) enjoyed a holiday luncheon at the Statesville Civic Center.  Along with our usual fundraising activities for the Housing Opportunity Foundation and bringing toys for donation to the Salvation Army, we had very special guests as speakers after lunch.  Sonya Leonard, an Iredell area Realtor, introduced Brenda Speece of Children’s Homes of Iredell County.  Earlier in the year, Sonya nominated Children’s Homes of Iredell County for one of the HOF’s Community Grants Awards, and they later became a recipient of a sizeable contribution from HOF.  Brenda was asked to speak to the group about the work of her organization.

Brenda described how they provide a stable home-like situation for local foster children, but the surprising thing is that they also have a remarkable transitional program.

Brenda Speece and Rayna

Think about what happens to a kid when he or she ages out of the foster program.  How do they then survive?  Do they even know how to survive without getting into negative circumstances.  The goal of the transitional program is to answer that need by giving them a place to live, help in securing employment, or even help in pursuing further education.  What a great way to improve the odds of these kids growing up to be positive contributors to the community!

At our luncheon, Brenda went into a bit of detail about their work, then invited one of the youth who’s been in program, Rayna, to come up a tell us what it meant to her.  Rayna was clearly very appreciative of the work of Brenda Speece and Children’s Homes of Iredell County and what it has meant to the quality of her life and future prospects.  The Realtors that day left with a greater appreciation for what they, and anyone, can do to put light into the lives of those who need a break.

You can help too, by contacting Brenda Speece at Brenda.speece@chomesofiredell.com, or call her at 704-768.2719.  They operate a thrift store at 224 N. Center St. in Statesville to provide employment for the kids and raise money for the organization.  From the photos I saw on their Facebook page (found HERE), it looks like they’ve got some great, high-quality items for sale.  I’d say it’s worth a trip or two or three, for a variety of reasons!

Posted in Iredell County, Quality of Life, Real Estate, Statesville | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Planning Real Estate Closings

December 6, 2011 by Stan Suther

I was talking with my bride yesterday about the differences in our work schedules.  She’s a teacher in the Mooresville school system and has short-term and long-term lesson plans to follow, and specific things to accomplish.  She works very hard to make all those things happen on time and with great academic results.  Sometimes, it puts a heavy load on her to get it all done by the appointed time, but she gets it done.  I, on the other hand, have long-term plans, short-term plans, intermediate term plans and spur of the moment plans in relation to helping my clients finally either sell a property or buy a property.  When I wake up in the morning, I have some specific things I want to accomplish.  They may have to do with marketing my services, marketing my listings, searching for properties for my buyers, or working on the details of upcoming closings.  As it turns out, it’s a rare day when my morning plans match my end of the day accomplishments.  That’s because the business of real estate has a tendency to be somewhat reactive to unexpected results on inspections, appraisals, repairs, calls from brand new clients, calls from current clients, and a myriad of other things that will throw off the plans for the day, or week or month. 

Real estate agents have to be very flexible, creative and understanding of everyone’s priorities in order to keep from going nuts.  They’ve also got to have those characteristics to keep their clients from going nuts, too!  I’ve often told my clients that one of the unappreciated roles of an effective real estate agent is to act as a “shock absorber” for their clients.  We know that clients, both buyers and sellers, are excited and somewhat anxious about making their plans work.  Good real estate agents put considerable effort into managing all the variables and surprises than can crop up to make the path to a closing a bumpy one.  We do our best to anticipate those bumps, but “stuff” does happen in spite of our best efforts.  That’s when a good understanding of the process and good relationships with our service providers can help smooth out those bumps.

I’ve had 3 buyer closings on the books for several months, and I took special care to spread them out on the calendar.  But “stuff” showed up on two out of three, and now this week I’ll have all three closings within two or three days.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m happy to have these three closings, but that’s not how I’d plan them.  We just have to take a deep breath, and do what needs to be done to make all clients involved happy.  If we do that and remain calm, the visit to the closing table will be a welcome finale to the long transaction process, and there’ll be no last-minute surprises.

Surprises are great for Christmas, but not for closings!

Posted in General Real Estate Market, Iredell County, Mooresville | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

Automated Real Estate Value Estimates

November 16, 2011 by Stan Suther

The Wall Street Journal recently published an article that points out some very useful details about the automated value calculators in several popular real estate sites (see it HERE).  As a Realtor, I often talk with people who have visited these sites to get an idea of the value of their property.  I understand their interest in getting this information conveniently and anonymously.  The problem is that the accuracy of these sites varies considerably, so once a property owner gets a valuation number from the sites, the owner then has to figure out if it is really useful at all.  The real estate sites themselves warn the viewer to not put too much stock in the accuracy of the numbers.  Below is a screen shot of the accuracy chart showing some NC counties, including Iredell County.  The two stars for Iredell mean it is only a “Fair” estimate.  Others can go from one to five stars.  You can see the full chart and explanations of how their system works HERE.

These calculations are done by pulling sold data from county tax sites.  Humans don’t look at it to check for accuracy or reasonableness.  These systems don’t have any idea of the condition of the houses for which they’ve pulled data.  They have no idea of how much updating may have been done.  They don’t know if the landscaping is better or worse than the neighborhood average.  In some cases I’ve seen price calculations for houses include prices for raw land in the neighborhood in addition to house sales which obviously draws down average and median prices of the sold houses.

The point here is that these tools can get you roughly in the ballpark, but they are not numbers that you’d want to try to defend in an actual home sale.  Those transactions which involve Realtors and Appraisers who have to put much more time and judgement into property valuation than can be done by a computer are going to be far more in tune with the actual market at the time of sale.  This is not to say that Realtors and Appraisers will always come out with extremely accurate predictions of eventual sale prices.  Real estate properties generally can’t be treated as commodities that all have the save value.  Since value is in the eye of the beholder,  some of that determination is dependent on what buyers happen to be in the market, what sellers (alternative properties) are in the market, and the motivation and experience of each.

Go ahead and pull up you property value to see roughly what it’s worth on one of these sites.  Just do so with your eyes open and understanding the relative accuracy of the valuation.  If you want to get a much more accurate valuation, call a human- like a Realtor or an Appraiser, and have confidence in the information they provide.

Posted in General Real Estate Market, Iredell County, Lake Norman | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

NAR Economist Labels Housing Recovery as “Fragile.”

November 7, 2011 by Stan Suther

Last week the Charlotte Regional Realtors Association hosted the Chief Economist of the National Association of Realtors, Dr. Lawrence Yun.  Dr. Yun came to Charlotte to give us his thoughts on the future of the economy and of the housing industry in terms of both real estate sales and new home construction.  The bottom line of his comments is that things are locally better than they were two years ago and we should start seeing a slow rise in sales prices within a year or so.  Still, it will be a long recovery period.  You can see a news article and video about Dr. Yun’s visit HERE in a link to WCNC.  One interesting comment was that given the pace of sales of previously owned houses and the very slow rate of new construction, we could within a few years see some shortages in some areas and price ranges.  Much depends on how soon lenders will again lend to developers and builders.

The good news is that our Charlotte regional area is still a very attractive place to live with a relatively strong economy.  Many people continue to want to move here to live and work, and low prices and low mortgage rates make it a wonderful time to buy homes.  Even through the winter we expect to see a steady influx of folks who want to make this area their home.  Also, people who need to up-size or down-size will find the current environment very attractive to making the move.

Posted in Economic Development, General Real Estate Market | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Comparing Traditional Sales to Distressed Sales in Mooresville

October 28, 2011 by Stan Suther

I’ve been working with an investor who’s looking at properties around Mooresville for rental purposes.  He’s focused on distressed properties with the idea that he can get a better value on those.  In this case, distressed means that the property has gone into foreclosure and is likely owned by the previous lender, or it is a short sale, meaning the private owner still has title but can’t sell it at market price for enough to pay-off the mortgage balance.  In the case of a short sale, the mortgage holder (lender) must approve any contract price.

We’ve been looking in the Mooresville area in the $120,000 to $180,000 price range.  I ran some numbers for past sales for properties in that area and price range and came up with a few interesting statistics.  For traditional sales, the average $/square foot sales price is around $85 and the Sale Price to List Price ratio is 96%.  For distressed sales, the average $/square foot sales price is around $73 and the Sale Price to List Price ratio is 94%.  In this comparison, $/square foot includes house and land.

So, what conclusions can you draw from this?  Certainly you can see that distressed properties can be purchased for relatively lower prices than non-distressed properties.  What you might not recognize until you actually see a distressed property is why this is so.  Often these properties are left in poor condition by the previous owners.  Considerable money will have to be spent to get them into acceptable condition.  This is not to say that all distressed houses are in bad shape.  If not, you can expect to pay closer to the non-distressed price.  Another situation that’s often seen is that there may be some other characteristic that compared to other similar homes reduces the value of the property.  It could be a location issue- something related to the neighborhood or lay of the land.  I’ve seen houses that had back yards that were level for 15 feet then dropped 30 feet down a slope to the adjoining lot.  This makes it less attractive to a large slice of the buying public.  These value issues become obvious when you visit the property.

If we look at the market history of many distressed properties, we can see that the previous owner may have put the house on the market for an unreasonably high price due to their financial needs or just have the “I won’t give it away” attitude in spite of market conditions.  The result is that they don’t get it sold for a long time, then start chasing the market with price reductions, but with reductions that are too little, too late.  They then get their lender to agree to a short sale, or just get foreclosed on.  It’s a sad but frequent story.

So if you’re in the market for a house, go ahead and look at the distressed houses in search of a great deal.  There are great deals out there, but go in with your eyes open.  Also understand that if it looks like it’s aggressively priced, you are not going to be the only buyer who sees this.  You may need to move quickly to be the lucky buyer, otherwise, the good ones will be snapped up while you’re thinking about it.

If you’d like to see similar statistics for other areas and/or price ranges, let me know.  I can run the numbers quickly for you.

Posted in General Real Estate Market, Iredell County, Lake Norman, Mooresville, Real Estate | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Older Posts »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.