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Archive for October, 2010

Thinking Like Warren Buffett

Posted in Finance, General Real Estate Market, tagged , on October 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

One of Warren Buffett’s most quoted sayings is, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”  Since there is still lots of fear out there, you might want to take advantage of Mr. Buffett’s advice and apply it to housing recovery related stocks.  I saw an interesting article today that pointed out 4 real estate related stocks that might be worth considering as we pull out of the housing mess- provided you’ve got any money left to invest.  They are:

Lowe’s

Home Depot

D. R. Horton (builder who’s buying up land around here)

Digital Realty Trust (commercial real estate investment trust)

HERE is a link to the article that gives some basis for these recommendations.

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Recent Housing Stats

Posted in Catawba County, General Real Estate Market, Iredell County, Mecklenburg County, Real Estate, Rowan County, tagged , , , , , , on October 27, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Since the Case-Shiller housing price report came out this week showing that home prices for August fell in 15 cities of a 20 city market sample, I thought I’d give you an update of the local market activity.  My numbers are for September.

  Closed Units Closed Volume Average Closed Price
  2009 / 2010 2009 / 2010 2009 / 2010
       
Iredell 108 / 117  $26,807,159 / $25,298,735  $248,214 / $216,229
       
Mecklenburg 895 / 699  $180,202,289 / $154,605,232   $201,343 / $221,181 
       
Catawba 38 / 50  $8,266,420 / $8,926,681   $217,537 / $178,534 
       
Cabarrus 127 / 142  $20,870,374 / $24,791,646   $164,333 / $174,589 
       
Rowan 66 / 59  $8,523,240 / $5,359,978   $129,140 / $90,847 

Just like the Case-Shiller report, our area results vary from county to county, but overall, I think you can see that sales are not as good this year as last and prices are still coming down over all.  In each of these county’s results, you can propose reasons why they are what they are.  For example, in Mecklenburg the average closing price went up.  That may be because more expensive houses are selling as short sales or foreclosures.  Averages can be influenced like that.

The point here is that we can draw broad-based conclusions about the health of the housing market from such statistics, but one shouldn’t try to apply them specifically to a particular piece of property.  That can only be done by comparing similar properties in terms of size, location, age, etc., looking at recent sales and what the prices of competitors are.  Don’t get all caught up in these stats that are splattered around the news media.  The key to their value is knowing how to use them.

If you’re thinking of selling, always remember that most buyers have to have mortgages and lenders use appraisers to determine the market value of the property.  Pricing so that an appraiser will agree with the contract price is the only way to get to closing.

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Congrats to Our Great Lake Norman Area Schools!

Posted in Iredell County, Lake Norman, Mooresville, Quality of Life, tagged , , on October 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

When people with children plan to move to the Lake Norman area, the conversation always gets around to quality of schools.  That’s understandable since everyone wants their kids to have a good education.  My general response is always that for the south Iredell County area, you can’t go wrong with either the local Iredell-Statesville schools or the Mooresville Graded School System schools.  That advice has recently been supported by the fact that both Lake Norman High School and Mooresville High School received awards from the NC Department of Public Instruction for their high graduation rates relative to schools of similar size in the state.  HERE’s an article on the details from the Statesville Record & Landmark.

Statistics like these are wonderful for school systems and are a rough measure of what you can expect in overall student performance.  If you want to look at lots of performance stats for area schools, I have plenty of links on this site to both local and state reports.  However, I always caution my clients to understand that at the individual student level, the school is important, but what the student and parents put into the process is more so.  I’ve been around teaching all my life, with a mother who taught high school subjects her whole career, a brother who is an award-winning history teacher, and a spouse who is viewed as one of the top Kindergarten teachers in the Mooresville system.  I’ve spent a lot of time talking about kids and learning.  One conclusion I’ve drawn is that any child in most any classroom can get a very good education IF they learn to make the most of what’s provided by the school and the teacher, and IF the parents provide the necessary support, encouragement and discipline at home.  I believe that all of the schools in our area surrounding Lake Norman can provide children with a great education.  You’ve just got to pay attention to the IFs.

In other words, the smart kids with supportive parents will do fine in any area school.

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Quick Advice for Success

Posted in Quality of Life, tagged on October 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

TED.com is a web site that shows videos of some pretty smart people making  presentations related to Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED).  It’s produced  by a small nonprofit that is focused on ideas worth spreading. TED logo Yesterday I ran across one of the presentations on the TED site that really caught my eye.  It is billed as a 3 minute presentation on the elements of success.  It’s nothing fancy, but is full of things most of us know but need to be reminded of from time to time.  There are gobs of books written on the subject, but this guy does a good job of boiling it down to 3 minutes.  Here’s your inspiration for today. 

Might be worth a trip back every now and then to see what other gems you can find.

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Neighborhood Covenants and HOAs

Posted in Mooresville, Quality of Life, Real Estate on October 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Yesterday I sent a copy of the restrictive covenants for a Mooresville neighborhood to one of my clients who is interested in buying a home in that neighborhood.  The document included 68 pages of definitions, organization, do’s and don’ts associated with that neighborhood and the Homeowner Association (HOA) that administers those covenants and oversees management of the neighborhood.  I’ve worked with clients who value the control of property value that is provided by these restrictive covenants, and I’ve worked with clients who put their desire to control what they do on their property above their concern about the effects on property value of something a neighbor might do.  Different strokes for different folks. clothes line The key of course is to understand the impact of any kind of restrictions on property that you own or are thinking of buying.  The restrictions may be town ordinances, zoning, or restrictive covenants.  There have been some stories in the news lately of homeowners who wanted to do things not in keeping with their subdivision’s restrictive covenants- like maybe put a flagpole in the front yard that is larger than the covenants allow, or maybe install one of those passive solar clothes dryers (clothes line) in the yard.  What they didn’t realize is that the HOA has legal authority to sue and to place a lien on the property if necessary.  If you get in this bind and withhold your dues as a protest, the HOA can in some cases foreclose on your property.  I don’t want to make it sound too scary, but the point is that when you buy a property that is governed by restrictive covenants, you’d best understand what you are agreeing to abide by when you sign the purchase contract.  Many neighborhood covenants are minimal.  Others like the one I sent yesterday have extensive details.  You’ve just got to understand whatever detail is there before you commit to the covenants.

WFAE’s Charlotte Talks had a good program on HOAs recently.  Their focus was on some covenants working against people who want to take “green” actions on their properties, but the discussion goes into more general comments on HOAs and restrictive covenants.  One of the guests was an attorney who specializes in this kind of work.  You can hear the program by clicking HERE.

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Fighting Foreclosures- Good for Real Estate

Posted in Finance, General Real Estate Market, tagged , , , , on October 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

The Housing Opportunity Foundation, the charitable arm of the Charlotte Regional Realtors Association, recently held a workshop for Realtors on foreclosure prevention.  Many might think that is an odd thing for Realtors to pursue, but it really isn’t. It’s true that we won’t have a chance to sell a property that avoids foreclosure, but we Realtors have some very good reasons to help people avoid that calamity.

Years ago, when we were working on a market analysis for a prospective seller or buyer, we would occasionally see foreclosures among the other similar properties that had closed.  They were rare enough that we didn’t put much weight on them to influence our recommendations on market price.  Nowadays, foreclosures are such a large part of the real estate market that we, and lenders’ appraisers, can’t avoid considering them as a substantial part of the market.  That part continues to drag down the overall prices of houses currently on the market.  It also does great damage to neighborhoods that otherwise might be thriving.  Sellers of non-foreclosure homes have great difficulty adjusting to the market that is so heavily influenced by these foreclosures.  In order to compete, they must drop their prices far lower than they’d like.  Foreclosures are so much on the minds of buyers that I’ve had several begin their conversations with me with “find me a foreclosure”, asking me to ignore the rest of the available homes.  This is not a good idea since there are some very good deals to be had from non-foreclosure sellers who know they have to compete with these foreclosures and short sales.

Our industry gurus say that we still have at least another year of heavy foreclosures ahead. Realtors are trying to do everything we can to help people avoid them.  At our workshop we heard from many providers of free guidance for people who might be facing foreclosure.  Of particular interest was the presentation by Tami Hinton, Director of Consumer Affairs of the NC Office of the Commissioner of Banks.  She provided two web sites that have tons of info on how to get help and guidance to avoid foreclosure.  The sites are www.fightncforeclosure.org and www.ncforeclosurehelp.org.  If you or someone you know may be facing this problem, these sites can be of immense help.  If the problem is addressed early, very often it can be worked out for the homeowner to stay in the home.

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Denver Days and Mooresville Cruise-In This Weekend

Posted in Denver, Iredell County, Lake Norman, Lincoln County, Mooresville, Quality of Life, tagged , on October 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

You can’t say there’s nothing to do around Lake Norman this weekend!  The annual Denver Days gathering hosted by the Denver Lake Norman Rotary Club is in progress across the lake.  Friday and Saturday nights they have live bands to entertain you.  The Craig Woolard Band is on stage tonight at 8:00PM and Chairmen of the Board play at the same time on Saturday night.  In the meantime they have rides, food and craft sales ongoing to keep you entertained.  After many years of wet weather, looks like this will be a perfect weekend for this event.  HERE is a link to the Rotary Club site to give you all the details and how to get there.

Also on Saturday afternoon and evening, Mooresville downtown will again host a Cruise-in of some of the area’s most fabulous hot rods, show cars, and other interesting vehicles.  This is the next to last cruise-in of the season, so take advantage of the beautiful fall weather to go check out some shiny cars!  They’ll start lining up in mid-afternoon in downtown Mooresville, so there’s plenty of time to see it all.

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