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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
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31 comments:
Haha I don't if any of you, but the brothel lowered its price another 30k. Its starting to look like a more profitable business :)
housebuyer,
I haven't followed the "brothel" discussion - is it the house on 1st Pl S in Arlington?
http://franklymls.com/AR6990161
It is the last one remaining of my email updates from Frankly from when I was looking last year. What a bizarre price history.
Two shorts came back out from UC today in my neighborhood (could have been anytime in the past few days). One with a new higher price:
http://franklymls.com/FX7192268
No way to know if the bank actually agreed to that new higher price (closer to what the most recent REO sold for, which is currently being flipped) and the buyer baulked at more than a 10% increase or if the LA put this new price on after it fell out for other reasons. Well, other than to call and ask.
On CR, there's an ad for mortgages from AIG.
yup, that'll save them... Originating cheap ARMs. Ah the irony level if it DOES save them.
Fred-
We were joking that this house should be a brothel house in Falls Church
What else would you do with a 7 bedroom 6000 sq. ft. house that has malls all around it. We figured the women would go shopping at the mall and the guys would go to the brothel :)
That's a heck of a buy at that price Fred but it is a short sale. From the price history you point out, I would suspect major complications with the bank. Perhaps multiple liens and/or an uncooperative second mortgage holder?
That location is right beside the Foreign Service Institute and a new Army training center that has been under construction for at least the past year. Lots of construction noise in addition to being located beside two major high-density trafficked roads.
No new listings where I watch & no new Contract since April 30
Things have come to a screeching halt in LoCo & Northern PWC...
Things do appear to have slowed down my way too. Some new inventory still trickling onto the market, but it's pretty undesirable stuff, IMO. One nice enough place changed the listing to drop the price. Lots of stuff still showing as under contract. I think we'll know more when those finalize one way or the other.
HB
Wow, The new price means you could have one less girl working, or the girls could all have sundays off and the biz could still make money.
Hey, maybe it could be a christian brothel, we are closed on sundays to let the girls go to church :-)
CRT, I'll say more.
Arlington has relatively high inventories compared to all other counties. This is a supply and demand equation. More analysis is needed.
I know that I am generalizing in my conclusions. I said that in my comments. That is why it would be good to do the analysis of the past say 5 months to see the trend. As I recall, median price was lower in Arlington.
I do not agree with you that all other counties have to see new lows for Arlington to go down in price. All other counties already saw their lows. Arlington may just be catching up, which is in agreement with the theory of outer suburbs being affected first and inner suburbs last.
Fred, c,
AR6990161 will be auctioned off on May 28, 2010.
buyer's beware :)
MM -
Frequently, short sales have notices of foreclosure sales published. If everyone is on top of things, the agent or lawyer representing the seller will make sure that the foreclosure gets canceled. My short sale contract had a similar series of foreclosure notices, which sent me into something of a panic, but the LA's lawyer handling the agent's shorts managed to get the bank to cancel the foreclosure sale in the nick of time. What I've read is that foreclosure and short sale departments don't coordinate their work. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. So, that house may or may not go into foreclosure.
The Anonymous,
Why does "everybody" periodically forget dc2 has been on the blog since well before that time. (he/she'd have to remind me when, but before me).
I agree with dc2 that the inventory levels in Arlington make it worth watching, and that the exact timing of the bottoms in various localities do not a priori have to coincide even though the beginnings of the slide did.
In this particular case I couldn't find any decrease in the prices of comps to substantiate the idea that the median being down this month reflects any true price weakness. But that doesn't mean it won't or can't happen, and isn't worth looking for. Unfortunately it's a lot of work.
The thing is though? This month's slide downwards in the median in that zip code, just freed up 5 more condo owners to buy TH's or SFHs. So it's not clear that the existance of demand at the sub-$400k price point during the tax credit really means anything in the long run.
For prices to fall, inventory has to grow. Distress sales have to increase. Discretionary seller's are a wild card. It depends on how much they want to relocate. I would guess most in the middle to upper ranges have settled in for the long term.
A look at inventory (ex. N. Arl and certain other areas) show a sharp decline. My contention remains the same; only really motivated/distressed seller's are serious.
Absent financial distress, why would anyone sell? It's home, the kids are in school, the mortgage is affordable...where would they go and why?
Absent financial windfall, why would anyone buy? It's home, the kids are in school, the rent is affordable...where would they go and why?
Thanks MM but I bought already.
As to why, in my case I exchanging my apartment rental in a dicey noisy area for a larger, nicer SFH with a garden in a quieter area. I am saving over $500 a month by paying my 80% mortgage over what I was paying in rent, not counting what I was paying in storage too. I don't have kids so that's not a factor.
MM,
Lots of reasons. You may have a one year lease; then what? Move? Not fun, especially when kids may be switching schools or moving away from friends.
If you have no kids, moving may be easier. It's still a major pain.
Maybe you have a long-term LL with no plans to sell. I'd want my own place still the same. For me, it's always been about cost as well as having our own place. But I've always tried to get a price that would allow us to get out "even" if necessary.
i was just only joking...
i want to buy, just can't afford the ones i like.
Va,
I'm pretty sure the point of the joke was that there are always many reasons to sell as well as many reasons to buy. Ace and I came up with a long list of them the other day just for the subset who would be selling but not buying again in the same locality. One can look at the average turnover time for a neighborhood or median length of ownership to see how frequently people in a given place feel the need to move or sell.
You can follow the links on neighborhood statistics in redfin (absolute bottom of the page on a given listing) if you don't need a perfectly definitive answer.
22207
for instance shows a 4.97 year median residency and an annual turnover of 16%, with 50% in residence more than 5 years.
(this is just a randomly chosen Cara point in what looks like N. Arlington to me, for a real in depth look use your own local knowledge to pick an area that you think would have less turnover)
That number doesn't really look any different than the numbers out here in Springfield/Burke. But I may not have chosen well.
for instance the SFH neighborhood of Country Club Manor has a 86% ownership rate and a 7.45 year median residency, with 59% in residence 5+ years.
Is that meaningfully different than my neighborhood with 56% over 5+ years, 6.71 median residency and 85% owner-occupancy? Statistically, probably not with only 400 residents in Country Club Manor.
I should have picked a higher priced home to get my N. Arlington neighborhood...
There we go:
BELLEVUE FOREST
chosen house in the 900k+ range.
median residency 8 years
owner-occupoed 89.6%
over 5+ years ownership 63%
Strangely enough similar percentage of households with kids, and only a 4 year increase in median age.
Cara,
I guess Anonymous deleted some comment about me I did not see. I guess that is good. Thanks, Cara for your comments.
dc2,
Strange. It was actually a very nice summary of the bubble burst to date, just out of place to aim it at you. I could pull an immitation and repost it for him/her, but I'll refrain.
Cara,
FWIW - some Realtors joke about Country Club that if you want to buy a house there, you have to wait until someone dies. Then plan to spend a ton on updates as most owners are, er, advanced in years.
There are very few condos and townhouses in 22205 or 22207. So these zips are quite different in housing mix from the other zips in Arl. Probably not much rental housing in either of these zips either, and most parts of these zips are farther from metro (as are most parts of 22204 and 22206).
Cara, maybe Contrarian saved The Anon's deleted post.
Just a lame attempt at humor from me.
Ace,
I was trying to put numbers and concrete examples to Va_investor's claim that people in N. Arlington or other high-priced areas will just sit tight. So, a neighborhood where realtor's make that joke is a pretty good test case. The fact that more than 40% of the residents have lived there under 5 years even somewhere that realtors make that comment is actual good evidence that the claim is exaggerated. (as most jokes and stereotypes are...)
But the 8 year median time frame for the $900k neighborhood was pretty impressive.
I don't think Va_investor would argue that the right-next to the metro condos have low/no turnover. That seems just silly. (1) they are condos, (2) they're bought for their convenience, such that when they're no longer convenient or other life-aspects gain a higher precedence, they'll get sold...
But we could check a metro accessible 'hood if you supply me with a neighborhood name (or go look at redfin yourself).
Cara, I'm not trying to argue--just throwing out some info about how Arl. neighborhoods vary.
Whoops -- I thought I posted but I guess I somehow deleted it -- and now im to lazy to recreate it.
Cara, if you still have it, can you please repost?
Reposted for the Anonymous:
"DC2 said...
I do not agree with you that all other counties have to see new lows for Arlington to go down in price. All other counties already saw their lows. Arlington may just be catching up, which is in agreement with the theory of outer suburbs being affected first and inner suburbs last."
DC2 - what you are describing was the central debate in this blog for most of 2007 & 2008. We have 2 potential theories for what we see.
1. Outer suburbs being affected first and inner suburbs last aka "the correction is moving in theory"
OR
2. All counties are affected at roughly the same time, just to varying degrees.
In the past few years, we have discovered several things in favor of theory #2, and very few in favor of #1. Here is a quick summary of what I found in the big 5 nova counties Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun & PWC.
Inventory - peaked in all areas in summer 2006 and is now well off the peak. All now seem to have troughed and are now trending (slightly) higher.
Months of Inventory (MOI) - PWC peaked in Sept 2007. The other 4 areas (Arl, Alx, Ffx & LOU) peaked in Jan 2008. The only difference was (1) severity (PWC peaked at 18 MOI, Arlington at 9 MOI) and (2) duration (PWC posted a MOI higher than eight 17 times - Arl only 2 times). Now all are well off their peaks and have generally settled in at 4-6 MOI.
Price declines - the first area to see a YOY price decline was FFX in May 2006. By Sept 2006, all were showing price declines. The only difference was (a) severity - far out they were big drops, close in, not so much, and (b) consistency (close in areas posted an occasional + number to mitigate the declines).
Peak YOY price declines - PWC posted its worst YOY decline in Oct 2008. By March 2009, all had seen their worst YOY price drops.
First YOY price gains - Arl saw its first YOY price gain in May 2009. By July 2009, all areas started recording YOY price gains.
Days on Market (DOM). Days on Market in all 5 areas have peaked and are now trending down.
New construction inventory. New construction inventory is now far below its 2006 peaks in all 5 areas.
Average sale price as a % of list. All 5 areas troughed in Late 2008 - early 2009 and have since reversed. The only difference was the depths of the trough. PWC sales were at one point only getting 85% (or so) of list price, whereas Arl never dipped below 91-92%. Now all 5 areas are regularly getting 95-96% of list.
Income gains. All 5 areas posted decent income gains (2000-2009). However, Arlington (and Alexandria) income gains outpaced the rest of the metro area by an additional 20%.
Foreclosures. At one point, foreclosures were running 10X as high in PWC as they were in Arl. The number of foreclosures in all 5 areas have since declined.
There are other factors such as demographic shifts, evidence of less flipper activity, and inability to overbuild, all of which are consistently pointing toward a theory that suggests all areas were hit, and at close to the same time, and the difference was just one of severity.
By contrast, if "its moving in" was a legitimate theory, you would expect to see most, or at least some of these metrics continuing to degrade in Arlington. However, that is not what we see. What we see is that all of these metrics hit their peak (or trough as the case may be) at roughly the same point in time, and have since reversed and looked better. Moreover, this is seen not just in hard hit PWC, but also in hardly hit Arlington.
I agree, no single factor above is dispositive, but together they are persuasive and present compelling evidence that Arl has been experiencing the same market forces as the rest of the NOVA area since 2005. Seeing as Arl's fate has been so closely yoked to the fate of the other areas since the bubble burst, I see no reason to believe otherwise now, especially in light of scant evidence of "its moving in" proving correct.
Thanks Cara.
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