A blog reader sent in a tip about a large percentage of bank sales in December in Prince William County. I decided the best way to follow up would be to create a spreadsheet in order to determine the percentage of bank purchases that took place. I also included the name of the mortgage lenders with the transactions.
The spreadsheet can be viewed here.
I used Prince William County's Real Property Assessment database to compile the spreadsheet. I looked up only property sales up to $400K, and I performed four separate searches as the PWC database only allows 100K increments. (That explains the numbers on the left side of the spreadsheet).
These were the results for property sales in PWC up to $400K:
The bank with the largest number of transactions was Deutsche Bank, with 166 foreclosures and 37 sales.
This might explain the dramatic pricing pressure in Prince William County on bank listings. They appear to be taking in a lot more property than they can sell.
15 comments:
Those are pretty amazing numbers. Have you run them for the higher priced homes?
It would be interesting to see if that trend holds true across the whole price range.
Sooo...banks are taking in 4 times as many properties as they are selling off?
Do sales statistics include foreclosures being "bought" by their banks as sale activity?
We are thinking about putting an offer in on a foreclosure in Bristow. Three of the six houses on the culdesac are foreclosures, and they are all asking about $250K less than they sold for new in 2005. One of the three remaining houses is an obvious multi-family situation, the other two appear to be "normal" households. All paid in the upper $700s for their homes in 2005/6. The neighborhood is only 1/3 built, or so, and has about a dozen other foreclosures among its other houses for sale.
Is this too risky a situation to buy into?
As in, our resale chances are very slim, even if we get a great price?
(And wouldn't the neighbors automatically hate our guts?)
Could we play the banks off each other, saying, "We have X to spend, but if you don't bite, we just move to the next house?"
And I think your numbers would hold pretty steady for resales in upper $ ranges, Harriet.
Tabitha-
Just my 2 cent-
Dont buy in that "foreclosure" hood- it will just get worse as time goes on, plus, the 'hood is not even finished? One house already has a herd of people living in it?
hello crack houses - yes, I have seen it happen before.
Empty, striped & vandalised with squatters living in them.
You have kids right?
Oh yeah - on the other house you made on offer on last week- never deal with a Realtor owned property.
They'd rather give it to the Bank than to give you a discount! They will wait for years (if they have the $$)so they can tell all their fellow RE folks that they sold it for THIS much & look smart!! They are waiting for someone from out-of-State to swoop in & pay their price
Good luck with that one!
Spunky, as always, thank you so much.
I think the three foreclosures were all multi-family situations gone bad, though they seem to be in good shape. And the neighborhood is so pretty--at least, the houses that have been built so far. I am wondering if there is any proportion of "houses built" to "houses that still need to be built" that is a safe number in one of these new neighborhoods? Throwing in the third variable of "foreclosures everywhere"?
I know you are looking out in that area--the neighborhood is called New Bristow Village.
And we put the rejected offer to rest. We only made it because it is right across from where we are renting, and it's been for sale for so long, we thought there was a vague chance the seller was desperate. It's OK. It's an ugly McMansion that's the "nicest house on the block." We were saved from ourselves. Now we have the fun of watching it never sell ;) (I am not normally mean like that, but the sellers are not nice.)
Leroy,
Yes, I think it will be interesting to compare higher-priced properties.
I'll run them for 400-800K and group those together. There definitely aren't as many total sales for that price range anyway. It may take a few days, though. (I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome from cutting and pasting 1000 times for the first spreadsheet :-)
Harriet, I am so impressed with your handiwork ;)
Tabitha,
What is the MLS # of the house you are interested in. I live in Bristow as well, and my family loves it.
It really depends on how bad you want to move and how much you like the house/neighborhood. Prices in Bristow will continue to fall probably for at least another year (10% or so) then will probably be flat for another 2 years. Remember a house is not an investment it's a place to live, investment buying got us into this mess in the first place.
It's like buying stocks, if the company/house has good long term potenial and you hold for the long term you will be fine.
With the job growth, new shopping areas in gainesville/bristow, and the nicer new developments, I think Bristow has good long term prospects. There are plenty of great looking houses, with 2 car garages, backing to trees and under 500k in Bristow.
Good Luck.
Steve,
PW6649793
It is still out of our price range right now.
Harriet,
Thanks for the spreadsheet, it's a wealth of information and I appreciate the effort you put into it. This is ugly, and I think we can safely assume it's going to continue to get uglier until late this summer at the earliest.
I know some here don't consider PWC to be all that interesting, but since I live t/here, it's damned interesting to me.
Tabitha,
That's a nice looking house, however take a look at these. If I was in the market these would get a look.
All under 500 k
PW6593559
PW6648839
PW6586393
PW6575554
PW6631974
PW6342705 - (409 k base model in victory lakes, I live in this model, and they have dropped the price over 100 k in the last year, lucky thing I made a money on my last sale. Better lots available now too)
Steve, bless you, I will check all those out. I think some of them are on my "list" already.
In general, we are agonizing over two choices: do we buy under our budget and hope to move again sometime vs. do we buy at the outer reaches of our budget for a house our grandchildren could come home to, and: do we go all out to stay in our current neighborhood in Manassas, which means settling for a smaller, older house for the sake of staying by church/friends versus just trying to get the biggest, nicest house for our buck anywhere within driving distance of the VRE?
Decisions, decisions...
Years of having the military tell you where to live makes such self-motivated decisions that much harder...
T, Xpovos,
You're very welcome. I only wish county governments would go the extra step and provide these statistics monthly. That would be very helpful for consumers.
Tabitha,
I've been going down your route for a while (on the exact same thought process) and I think these are all important:
1) Family and friends close by. When a mother needs a trip to the doctor, somebody will be there to help;
2) Street safety and the ability to get out for a walk, skating, bike-rides;
3) Good yard w/ easy view/access from the house;
4) A house that can be fixed up over time, but with good space;
5) Spending as little as possible. That leaves money left over for family trips to warm, sunny places in the winter :-)
Tabitha, Steve,
Frank from Frankly Realty offered that I link to his MLS system in the "Top Discounts" column, which I did.
Just wanted to mention it because it makes looking MLS numbers up easy. Just type in, for example:
http://www.franklymls.com/PW6593559.html
(For now you have to remember to add the ".html" at the end of the MLS number).
Bristow is wonderful, but stay away from Bristow Village if you have kids as the elementary school it feeds into (Ellis) is the lowest elementary in AYP in the entire county. Many people who bought into New Bristow Village were told during the buying process that their children would attend Nokesville Elementary, which is a high performing school, when the sales people were well aware that the children would be attending Ellis instead. People felt deceived but there was nothing they could do once they'd moved in.
Bristow Run and Cedar Point are at the top of their game (Bristow neighborhoods: Braemar, Kingsbrooke, Saybrooke). Victory is brand new but did not make AYP or School of Excellence which isn't good.
Thank you so much, Kathy. We homeschool, so we avoid worrying about school district issues, but it is good information.
Harriet--just noticed this listing today:
15952 SPYGLASS HILL LOOP
GAINESVILLE, VA 20155
Price: $649,900
Feb 11, 2005 $1,169,900
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