Jim Hitcher's Real Estate Blog

Image via Wikipedia

WOW! I ran a few calculations of the real estate activity so far since Thanksgiving Day and I was a little surprised.

110 Properties went pending collectively in the 11 days since Thanksgiving 2011 in the cities of Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon and Danville.

In the same period after the Thanksgiving Day holiday in 2010, 83 properties had gone pending.

This year we’ve seen 27  more homes than last year go pending in the first 11 days, which equates to a 32% increase in PENDING SALES over 2010′s numbers. That’s a large number and is difficult to ignore.

Why has this happened?

There can be various reasons as to why this is happening. Among them would be :

People are feeling better about their financial condition

People feel we’re getting closer to the bottom of the real estate market.

People may feel like we have hit the bottom of this tough real estate market.

Investors are finding good value.

Sellers are willing to discount their asking prices to make a sale happen.

You might be wondering what is the break down of these pending sales. How many are the old fashion regular sale and how many are not.

Type of Transaction   2010      2011

Regular Sale                36%        36%

Short Sale                    35%        43%

Bank Owned                29%        21%

Ironically, the regular sales are pending at the same pace as in 2010, but you can see that the number of homes that are classified as a “Short Sale”, or where the home seller owes more than the offer, has increased, while the Bank Owned properties has decreased. Overall, it is some good news for home owners and their single largest asset.

Where do we go from here?

Now this is great news, but will they turn into closed transactions.? That’s the bar that all things in real estate are compared to. All of them will not close, of course, but a foundation for 2012 may be forming with buyers making offers. Like I’ve mentioned before, the holiday months are not the best time to be a seller, but there are still buyers out there, and they’re  making offers. And, from these numbers, there are more serious buyers this year than last year! This should be good news as we go into the spring buying season of 2012.

If you would like some additional information about homes available in the area, email me or give me a call.

Here’s the latest news on the state of the real estate market from the UCLA Anderson economists. While this is encouraging news I have to temper these expectations a bit. While I certainly don’t have all the data they have I am more conservative with my expectations for the recovery of real estate prices. Nonetheless, this is just another indication that we are getting closer to the bottom of the real estate price trough.

Take a look at the video and let me know what you think.

Remember, this is a great time to be a buyer. Sellers that currently have their home on the market during this time of the year are selling because they really need to sell. There are deals to be made. Let me know if you need some help identifying those deals either as an owner occpied home or as an investment property that creates great cash flow.

Have a great day,

JIM