9519 DAMASCUS DR
MANASSAS, VA 20109
List Price: $133,500
Prior Sale: $430,000 6/23/2006
Listing Date: 04/27/08
-69.0%
7515 BOSBURY CT
MANASSAS, VA 20111
List Price: $90,900
Prior Sale: $290,000 10/4/2005
Listing Date: 04/26/08
-68.7%
7895 MEADOW CT
MANASSAS, VA 20109
List Price: $88,500
Prior Sale: $270,000 11/9/2005
Listing Date: 04/24/08
-67.2%
7939 COMMUNITY DR
MANASSAS, VA 20109
List Price: $99,900
Prior Sale: $290,000 8/1/2005
Listing Date: 04/24/08
-65.6%
13605 CHARLES CT
WOODBRIDGE, VA 22191
List Price: $131,900
Prior Sale: $370,000 1/5/2006
Listing Date: 04/30/08
-64.4%
14310 FERNDALE RD
WOODBRIDGE, VA 22193
List Price: $124,900
Prior Sale: $350,000 2/17/2006
Listing Date: 04/28/08
-64.3%
See Prince William County 5/3/2008 for more comparisons from this week's listings.
(Links by FranklyMLS.com)
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Prince William County -- On the Market
Posted by Harriet at 12:47 AM
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9 comments:
Harriet,
Forgive me for troubling you, but could you point me to the web site that has the most up-to-date numbers for total listings/inventory? I know you have mentioned it in the past.
We just put an offer on another house, which has been for sale for two straight years. It is in the neighborhood we love, but it looks exactly like it did when it was built in 1979. I am sick to my stomach that we are offering way too much for it, which we are doing solely for the sake of location, but we are still offering $74K less than their current asking price (they started at $750K two years ago, which was its assessed value then).
Our realtor was clearly very unhappy with our lowball offer, saying that it is the most desireable neighborhood in Manassas, and every update we did, we would get back if we ever had to sell. Then he said that inventory is down to 5-6 months now, so it is not really a buyer's market anymore.
I am quite certain that is total baloney, but I want to get the hard numbers to prove it. I have the MRIS site, but I am looking for a summary site.
One house has sold in this neighborhood since 2006, a foreclosure that was falling apart. The six houses currently for sale have been for sale for two or three years each.
The location of this house is best for our family, but after negotiating on houses twice as big, just a few years old, with every possible luxury upgrade, for the same price as we are offering for dark wood paneling, linoleum, particle board, and baby blue, black, and pink bathroom fixtures, I am just beside myself. I need to get these inventory numbers so I can go back to our realtor with them.
Thank you so much.
Tabitha,
I am very concerned about that realtor. This is your life, not his, and I wouldn't feel any obligation. (But obviously I don't know all, so it's your judgment call). It seems like he's not doing the best for you.
Here's inventory at VirginiaMLS:
Prince William County has 5,217 available listings as of April 23rd. (It's a week out of date). Adding up today's inventory from ZipRealty gives me 5,267 properties (SFH + Condo) in PWC and an additional 643 in Manassas and 289 in Manassas Park. (6,199 total). March sales for all those areas totalled 579. Unless April sales are magnificent, it's still a buyer's market.
I used to put up Merv Forney's numbers (very helpful), but he stopped publishing them in December and doesn't have direct MLS access anymore. :-(
I think Spring is a difficult time not to get anxious when you're buying. Most sales in any given year will occur this time of year so I think it creates an illusion of haste. In one more week, the April numbers will be put out and we'll see how accurate your agent is on the "months of inventory" number.
If you do love the neighborhood, that is important, but I do hope you can be happy about something about the house, too.
This is about a month old (it should be updated in a week), but I'm getting 12.5 months of sales for 20111:
http://www.mris.com/reports/stats/zip_stats.cfm
e.g. 577/46 = 12.5 months.
Harriet,
As always, thank you so much.
I think our realtor is a great guy, and we have asked a great deal of him the past several months. I am sure we must be some of his most exasperating clients, ever. Consistently, he has pushed us to make our offers more aggressive, more so every time, but it is hard to blame him...and now he knows that if we don't have a ratified contract with a closing date before June 15 by the end of this week, we are going to rent, and then all of his efforts on our behalf will have been in vain. I feel terrible about this. But I am troubled by his statements this morning.
I talked to a neighbor yesterday--he inherited his house from his parents, has been fixing it up and is about to put it on the market. When I first talked to him back in the winter, he was going to ask $500K. Now he is going to ask $450K. It is a 2000 sqft home built in 1964 on a tiny sloping lot with a carport, at the entrance of our neighborhood, with creaky floors and tiny tiny bedrooms. As a former realtor, his words: "You should buy this house. It will sell the first day it's listed. I feel bad for the neighbors, who will be so mad at me for pricing it so low, but I want to unload it fast, since I live down in Charlottesville now."
Its current assessed value is $371K.
I didn't press him. I think realtors truly can't help themselves. It's like defense counsel who fall in love with their defense strategies--they can't see things from the outside in.
I asked our agent to hold onto the offer we filled out this morning. I need to think about this more.
We're going to list the top five houses we'd still consider, then fill out offers for each, and submit them one after the next over the next week. We'll give each one our best shot, and if none of them work out, my husband swears he'll concede defeat and we'll rent.
Bless you for your help. We owe you so much.
For old times' sake:
Here's a new listing with a fearsome history:
12870 GENTLE SHADE Dr
BRISTOW, VA 20136
Asking $339,000
Sale history:
$348,190 3/3/2003
$559,000 6/3/2005
$610,000 8/2/2006
$470,000 5/8/2007 DEUTSCHE BANK
So they're asking less than the original purchase price in 2003.
As for the househunt, I think it is about to be put on hold. We put in one last lowball offer today--not on the 1979 house, but a different, very lovely house in our same neighborhood that is way out of our price range, but has been for sale for well over two years. We assume there will be a very swift, very strongly worded rejection, and we have filled out a lease application for a tidy little house at the edge of our neighborhood that we found on a military-by-owner website. Looks like another year of saving and looking and begging everyone here for their best wisdom and advice.
"The six houses currently for sale have been for sale for two or three years each."
That should tell you all you need to know about your "advantage disappearing."
It sounds like in this neighborhood the sellers haven't yet admitted that their houses aren't worth what they wish they were.
Similar behavior is being seen in a lot of neighborhoods in the area. Nothing is selling at all so people are able to convince themselves that values haven't dropped... but if nobody is buying then values have dropped. Prices will eventually follow...
Tabitha,
I use realtor.com. I select the zip codes in a given area and for an entire look of the area, make the Min-Max$ 0. Also select minimum bed/bath. You can save and label this search and it’ll give you the total number of listings at the top of the page. I do the same for rental numbers and keep a running tab for both. These MLS sites are supposed to be updated often (some more than others it seems) and you can keep a running tab of the number of listings in excel. Check it daily, every other day or weekly, either way it’ll give you a good idea of what the numbers are until the MRIS numbers on the 10th.
Caveat-My realtor.com searches are showing more homes on the market than the MRIS numbers. Hummmm. I’ve double checked my zips and they are in accord. More funny business with the numbers I suppose….
“Our realtor was clearly very unhappy with our lowball offer, saying that it is the most desireable neighborhood in Manassas, and every update we did, we would get back if we ever had to sell. Then he said that inventory is down to 5-6 months now, so it is not really a buyer's market anymore.”
What the heck Tabitha? If this is “the most desirable neighborhood in Manassas” why has it been sitting for two years? Ask your REA that when he scoffs at your lowball. Sounds like your run of the mill sleaze ball realtor.
Furthermore, it has yet to be a “buyers market”. At best, a stagnate market maybe. If home prices are still priced above fundamentals, it’s not a buyers market.
Thanks, Robert...
I guess you can spin the numbers any way that suits you. I looked at March MRIS numbers for 20110, and only one house over $400K sold out of 68. Average sold price was down 39%, average list price for solds down 33%. But 60 units sold this March, versus 45 last March, so that's an increase of 33%. And average DOM is down 11% to 129--though as I've said a million times, people tinker with the reset clock ALL the time here.
So there are 764 units available, and 60 sold. What months' supply is that?
Curious to note that most of the sale activity is at the very very bottom--see NVAR stats for PWC. So perhaps that is why the houses in our "super-desirable" neighborhood can't sell for years.
And then there is the fact that if you have half a million dollars to drop on a house in PWC, are you going to buy the 30 year old dated house close to Old Town, or the brand-new, twice as big, totally loaded McMansion on the edge of town or in Bristow?
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