November sales data from MRIS will be posted here today. H/T 'The Anonymous' who provided us with this link to sales numbers from NVAR in the bits section.
Update: Most counties are in the black this month, both for number of sales and for median prices. Arlington County and Alexandria City had a huge upswing in sales over last November. The potential expiration of the first-time buyer tax credit likely spurred sales in November, as the former deadline for the tax credit was December 1st.
Source: MRIS
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Northern Virginia November Housing Sales
Posted by Harriet at 9:10 AM
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43 comments:
Looks to me like for FFX Cnty my estimates for a 10% increase in the median will be proven a little too conservative.
medians/units sold
Condos up 6% 259 sold in 09
vs 177 sold in 08
SF attached up 9% 341 sold in 09
vs 318 sold in 08
SF detached up 17% 483 sold in 09
vs 398 sold in 08
While the mix did shift towards condos, it moved away from townhomes... People are buying for the long haul, and stretching for that house.
Is this amount of enthusiasm for buying a single family home really indicative of a market that's teetering on the brink of another leg down? Or one where the REO inventories to come will be easily met with more demand for inexpensive homes? Time will tell.
I don't believe we ever settled the discrepancy between Active listings put out by MRIS and NVAR compared to the inventory numbers from Sawbuck or VirginiaMLS Inventory Numbers
In this NVAR report it clearly states that the definition of active is: (1) ACTIVE, (2) CNTG/KO, and (3) CNTG/NO KO.
So, this should now be a settled issue. And now my question is: why would NVAR and MRIS publish data saying CNTG stuff is Active?
Robert,
This just confirms our understanding that we had decided on before. The MRIS and NVAR has made the decision to report total inventory. Why they call it "active" and not just "inventory"? Who knows. Could be happenstance, could be intentional spin, could be they felt it was less distortionary in that it was less dependent on things like length of contract time and percentage of contracts that fall out.
Given the number of short sales, and the number of "contract fell through back on the market!" I've seen, I find the MRIS numbers more meaningful in terms of what's really potentially available to be bought.
Then again, I've switched over entirely to the through-put argument and am just following new listings versus closed sales to see if inventory is getting swallowed up. Which so far it isn't lately in FFX cnty. Yes people are taking listings down, but presumably those were overpriced or in bad shape, otherwise someone would have bought them.
Robert-
On contingent properties you can definitely still put bids if there is a KO clause. Also by no means do all contingent properties close. I don't know what percent fail to close, but I assume it is probably 1/4 or higher (either do to financing or home inspections).
I do think think they should differentiate the categories though.
I was so close this month
actual:
1113 sales
prediction: 1000
actual
$350k median
prediction: $340k (wouldn't be surprised by $355k)
So close. That'll never happen again.
12/7 bits bucket:
Cara's november predictions (note that Cara is always wrong, or mostly wrong, but that won't stop me from trying).
FFX Cnty only. Anything else and I'm out of my area of "expertise".
1000 sales, median price $340k,
This would translate into sales volume up 14% YoY, Median price up 6% YoY, mostly due to the mix away from REOs. MoM, sales will be down 20%, prices down 1.5%
This prediction is based on absolutely nothing other than my sense of how important the $8k has been as an incentive, and how quickly things were going under contract in October/September. In fact a median of $355k wouldn't surprise me based on how high recent sold comps on Frankly have been relative to this summer. But FFX county as a whole hasn't been doing quite as "well" as the areas I follow, so I'm downgrading my predictions to be a bit more conservative.
(we can also see the effects of Cara's leaky sieve of a memory since this morning I was claiming to have predicted a 10% YoY median gain.)
Wow, for the inner counties especially, that's quite the cash-for-clunkers sized bump in "seasonally adjusted" (YoY) number of sales.
December and January will clearly be down in number of sales (MoM), the question is how far will they go down in price (MoM)?
From now until March, it'll be hard not to be up YoY in price. (Unless spider's right and this winter goes lower than last winter of course).
Truly a devastating report for the housing bears.
Hey, Zillow, looks as if my house really hasn't gone down 5% in the past month, as you claim!
(Seriously, that's the problem with a mix of estate sale - condition properties and super duper upgraded properties in the neighborhood and that months' sales vary in this mix. The month (?) after the former sell, your house appears to plummet in value, but the month after the latter sell, you're skyrocketing, which is a problem with relying on Zillow.)
Robert said...
Truly a devastating report for the housing bears.
wait till you see Dec #s. it's amazing how many high-end homes have sold in the first 10 days of Dec.
but bears hibernate in the winter months. you know that already.
Ace-
That is obviously an issue for wealthy areas. The bigger issue for most of the country is what percent of the local sales were distressed inventory. Nationally the percentage of sales that were distressed went from 52% in Jan 09 down to 33% last month. I am curious if this is actually the reason that CS has shown prices rising.
If it is that is obviously bad news for housing prices if the 8K and low interest rates are not really stabilizing housing prices.
Hey Robert,
You might want to take a look at my agent's blog
ourfairfax.com
He covers the NoVa data monthly too, and this month he points out that incidentally the MRIS inventory number is actually the total number of listings that were "active" at any point in time in November. So that 4500, is how many homes over the course of November a buyer might have been able to bid on, and not just the average number of homes for sale on any given day. Which for today was only 2424 for FFX Cnty.
Another source of the discrepancy.
I find it awkward altogether that we compare November closed deals with November for sales, as opposed to say September/October averaged for sales which reflects the pool of homes they were actually taken from.
housebuyer and MM, do you think that another factor could be that people had tax reasons or something else for selling before year end, realized if the prices right now are as good as they are going to be (due to the buyer bribe and low interest rates), and dropped their asking prices?
Ace-
That is definitely possible, but I think that people generally are not very worried about taxes when selling there houses. Most people do not have enough gains that they would have to pay taxes unless they have houses that are both big an in areas that have not correct a lot post bubble.
This may be relevant for some estate sales, but I assume that is true every year.
Am I missing a different group of people that you were specifically thinking of?
Ace,
I dunno....
230 sales in Arl, 3.5 MOI. we're back to 2005.
I need a drink.
Ace,
Investors might want to book a loss or, in the alternative, cash-in on the current capital gains treatment before the rate goes up.
Va_investor,
Which reminds me of Adam Rappaport's case, where he's moved closings until January because sometime next year is when he expects to get some losses in his flipping escapade. So he wants to minimize this year's gains, pushing them to 2010.
There's always some possible tax reason for one year or another for investors.
Cara,
Interesting blog post over at Jeff's site. Seems he was trying to do something similar to what I was trying to do a few days back - determine the "true" inventory. He subtracted short sales, something I hadn't thought of. If you remember, I was trying to eliminate the WTF sellers, or those listed 10+% over recent comps by calculating a days-on-market number. When I looked Burke, VA earlier, there were 17 homes with over 100 DOM, out of 65. There would be some overlap with short sales, but in this market to have a house 100 DOM or above indicates something is wrong and most likely it is over priced. The only other possibility is that the homes are trashed, but even trashed properties are getting bids if they are priced right.
Agree with comparing closed deals with actives or UC's during the month. Closed represent contracts that were signed 30, 60, or more days previously.
The silence from the bears is deafening.
Robert,
maybe they're nocturnal, or hibernatory...
I actually think that in their defense there's not alot one can say. It's the November to December post $8k hangover that's "important".
Cara,
But seasonally wouldn't we expect December and January to be slower anyways? How do we determine if it is "slower than normal"?
My $0.02
Yes, VA_investor, that's what I was thinking too. I think there are a lot more 1031s etc. and properties converted from owner-occupied to rental (voluntarily or not) around here than in many other places. For these properties the owner-occupied exclusion doesn't apply, so the owners as you say may have a good reason for trying to get out this year. Housebuyer - agreed?
MM, go ahead and have that drink, but take heart - I think Cara has pointed out why we don't know what to make of the #s just yet.
Ace-
Yeah I wasn't thinking about that, although you are definitely right.
Robert, your post led me to check out the proportion of 100+ DOM(p) sellers in Arlington, per frankly. It appears to be about one third of the listings. (I didn't take the time to toss out the ones that came up under the search term "Arlington" but are actually in Baltimore or elsewhere but since that was consistent for both the numerator and the denominator, the number may not be too far off.)
Some of these of course are under contract.
But it still indicates a pretty high level of WTF delusionality, at least compared to Burke's 17/65.
I still wish there were an easy way for Frank to show the properties taken off the market after they failed to sell, reflecting the highest level of WTF delusionality and/or resources to enable the seller to wait for a better time to sell.
As a housing bear, I'll take a crack at this.
These November gains are in large part the result of the perceived expiration of the first time homebuyer's tax credit. In Alexandria which I follow, condo sales rose by 30% compared to a year earlier; the average sales price rose by 17%. That's clearly an unsustainable bump unless you think the glorious days of the bubble are back again.
Over the last year, Uncle Sam has spent literally trillions to prop up the housing market. A partial list of current programs includes the Fed's continuing purchases of mortgage backed securities (which the Fed estimates has reduced interest rates by up to 1%), the homebuyers' tax credit, the foreclosure moratorium, and shaky lending practices by FHA guaranteed lenders which will almost certainly require a taxpayer funded bailout of the agency.
The thing is you need to provide ever increasing amounts of stimulus to produce the same effect. (For example, when you renew a first time homebuyer's credit, you must expand it to all borrowers.) As a country, we can stimulate the real estate market above its natural level for only so long - and then we go bankrupt. When the stimulus ends, then the market begins its descent once again.
There was definitely some doom-aid glug, glug, glugged one year ago on this very same decade of sales post
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=4787878578920468587&postID=1524944540603230586
Here are a few choice blurbs:
"CRT said...
Initial comments – well it looks like something big happened this month close in, far out, really everywhere – it looks like high end buyers just sorta disappeared."
Yes but not the big deal you thought ehh CRT? One "glug" for this post. Next:
"Anon412 said...
I think this shows that the correction is moving in...
Arl/Alex/DC is now in the stage where the glut of inventory is forming. This glut will continue to swell, and at some point some sellers will give in and lower prices. Then sales will pick up, and prices will continue to decline. In 1-2 years Arl/Alex/DC will be at the point in the process where PW is now."
Ahh yes -- "its moving in". Anon 412 was normally a good poster, but definately whiffed on this entry. Three glugs for this post. Next:
"Terminator-X said...
Credit Suisse is predicting increased prime defaults, and B of A is reporting an enormous jump in Jumbo Prime delinquencies. More from implode-0-meter:
http://tinyurl.com/5cwezh
But N. Arlington will be immune, because all of the peak buyers there could afford their mortgage, even after it adjusts. Right."
Given that inventory in Dec 2009 just keeps disappearing, we'll award 1/2 glug to Credit Suisse and 2 glugs to Terminator X in thinking this was an Arlington issue.
Later on, as CRT is taking a wrecking ball to all the bearish
"its moving in" arguments by posting high end/low end MOI, he redeems himself a bit with this one:
"CRT said...
The case shiller piece this summer suggested places like Arlington will fall the least and be the among the first to recover. Are they right, or is it all a bunch of BS?"
DING DING DING! Nicely done -- yes places like arlington will be the least hit and first to recover. One gold star for Case Shiller and one gold star for CRT.
Finally we have this one from Cara really getting on board with CRT's posting of the high/low numbers:
"Cara said...
This is good. Health, health is returning to the FFX Cnty market. Others are willing to buy and provide the comps, and sellers are willing to price to sell. It's not just in my head. I predict that the bottom of the market for the low end in FFX County will come this spring/summer."
DING DING DING!!! Beautifully done Cara!!! Correctly predicting the bottom right at the peak of pessimism in the general economy. Gutsy call and right on the money (thus far :) 3 gold stars for you!!!
Hey VA_Investor, the Wall Street Journal has an article on Courthouse Step home buying.
Investors compete mostly with other full–time professionals who monitor foreclosure auctions at county courthouses across the country. The bidders often haven't had a chance to inspect the property or determine whether it's occupied by tenants, who may be hard to evict.
Sometimes "you have half an hour to make a half–million–dollar decision," says Damon Lines, an executive at PostedProperties.com, a Phoenix firm that provides information to foreclosure investors and bids on their behalf. "That's something most people can't or aren't willing to do."
It takes folding money close at hand at a tame bank and steel nerves. This is not for the retail home buyer.
The Anonymous said...
"glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug"
Anonymous, I'm curious how much glugging came from you a year ago.
waiting too said
We had many friends living in older houses in Arlington and really liked the area near Crystal City because it is close to Metro and has parks, restaurants and is near Pentagon City and the big Costco!
Well first I was going to be the bearer of bad news because yesterday this article in Washington Business Journal said the Pentagon City Costco is closing in two years. Now it's been updated with a cryptic addendum saying it had inaccurate information regarding the Pentagon City location. Which either means it's not closing at all or perhaps closing later than two years from now.
I could not understand why it would be closing. It's supposed to be a very successful location. Maybe enough people wrote outraged letters to the company yesterday upon hearing the news. Although I don't think that many people read the Washington Business Journal.
FWIW, here are US News's latest high school rankings. I would recommend many schools not on the list.
George C. Marshall High School
Fairfax County, Falls Church, VA
Silver
George Mason High School
Fairfax County, Falls Church, VA
Honorable Mention
James Madison High School
Fairfax County, Vienna, VA
Silver
Lake Braddock Secondary School
Fairfax County, Burke, VA
Honorable Mention
Langley High School
Fairfax County, McLean, VA
Gold: #47 of 100
McLean High School
Fairfax County, McLean, VA
Honorable Mention
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology
Fairfax County, Alexandria, VA
Gold: #1 of 100
W.T. Woodson High School
Fairfax County, Fairfax, VA
Honorable Mention
What's weird to me is one year Woodson is in the top 100 and now it's barely ranking. Oakton also was in the top 100 another year and now is not even an honorable mention.
I also find it weird that no schools from Arlington, Loudoun, or PWC made any of the lists this year.
Kev -- a year ago? Not much.
2 years ago? Somewhat.
3+ years ago? Heh -- you should have seen me
glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug
Cara said
maybe they're nocturnal, or hibernatory...
I actually think that in their defense there's not alot one can say. It's the November to December post $8k hangover that's "important".
Well I am posting here (perhaps not as much as I used to but I think that's a good thing :) so I don't think I'm hibernating. But I guess I don't really see much exciting happening until we get higher interest rates. Or if I'm really lucky new FHA rules like 5% dp.
Mortgage rates are up this week but past history has shown the bond market will feel confident in recovery and then become chicken littles a week or two later and bid rates lower. I hope this is the beginning of a sustained drive upward but am not holding my breath.
After five weeks of declines, rates on most mortgages moved higher this week, following long-term bond yields that rose after an upbeat employment report, Freddie Mac's chief economist said Thursday.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.81% for the week ended Dec. 10, up from last week's 4.71% average, according to Freddie Mac's weekly survey of conforming mortgage rates. The mortgage averaged 5.47% a year ago.
If we see a sustained drive up in interest rates and still see stable or increasing home prices then I will feel like there is "devastating" news. Otherwise it's just more of the same -- gov't and skittish global investors putting in a floor via ridiculously low rates that will disappear once the gov't/skittish global investor support ends.
RE: High Schools
They must be doing something right because TJHSST is #1. The rest of them, who knows. To me, I don't understand why race and household income level are even in the calculations.
Look at Langley. There are so few minority or low income students, that if the few they had did really well on the tests, it would vault them higher in the rankings, which is probably what happened. But, is Langley really doing a better job educating minority and low income students? I doubt it.
I suppose I'm a bear since I don't think it will cost me any more next year for the same house as this year. Definitely nocturnal too. I'm excited about the numbers for two reasons:
1. Sales up 27.64% - more comps make me happy. I want comps galore to beat the WTF sellers into submission.
2. As someone noted the mix is moving up. That means more sales (comps) of more expensive homes. See reason 1. This is also why the median price is higher.
Well priced homes sell, period. More comps makes it easier to convince both parties of what "well priced" means. All most of us non-investors want is to pay a fair price for a home we want to live in. 2.5 times what someone paid in 1999 is not a fair price.
Here is the home that got me worked up about the WTF pricing yesterday:
FX7218481
Seriously, they paid 310k in 1998 and now want 829k. It's been on again / off again listed since 2008, which I guess is why it has the 2008 tax assessment info. This house is a bit out of my range - but still the pricing makes me angry.
"What's weird to me is one year Woodson is in the top 100 and now it's barely ranking. Oakton also was in the top 100 another year and now is not even an honorable mention."
This isn't that different from their college rankings... that is to say their primary goal is to sell their publication, not give a true "ranking."
To that end it is advantageous for them to tweak their ranking system every year so that schools move up and down the lists.
Do you really think high-schools or colleges are changing that much on a yearly basis?
Jeremy,
I agree 100% with you on FX7218481
It's overpriced. I bought for 325 in 97 and sold for 550 in 09. Granted, I firmly belive I left about 50,000 in equity but the market is what it is and I have no complaints. That house should sell in a range of 625-725,000 being the very top due to location.
MM,
looking over the report provided by the Anonymous, December is going to be too low statistics and messy to really determine anything from its numbers. My suggestion for these slow months is literally to track houses you like that went under contract and see what percent of list they go for. That'll still be a 30-60 day delay though...
aarlrenter,
I know you were mostly just making a valiant effort, but if you look at the mix the Anonymous's link you'll see what actually happened is that the 17% uptick is predominantly a distribution effect not neccesarily an actual price increase for the same product.
less than 200 up 100%
200-300 up 210%
300-400 up 122%
400-500 up 300%
500-600 up 400%
600-700 up 0%
1mil + (1 this year versus 0 last year)
There were more listings over 300 than under 200. I don't think this is because 200k condos were suddenly worth 400k, just that people buying 400k condos took the plunge.
The Anonymous,
Too bad I was off by a quarter. Spring/Summer, yeah right. Try two months from my post. I did not anticipate the ferocity of the govenment intervention.
Well Arkey,
Here's the situation; you were a motivated seller (not distressed, but motivated). Most people in this RE climate won't try to sell unless they have some motivation.
The "flip side" is that you make-up any "loss" on the purchase side in most cases. So it's a net wash.
Cara Posted a link to my blog above that no longer works because of a hack into my blog. This is the correct link
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