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The Crossland Team
Sylvia Crossland, Broker Steve Crossland, MPM (512) 301-5811 |
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Texas Real Estate Market Update April 2008
May 31, 2008
TEXAS (Real Estate Center, MarketWatch) – A total of 21,638 existing homes were sold in Texas last month, a 10.3 percent decline from April 2007 according to MLS data compiled by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. The median price rose 0.6 percent to $147,300 during the same period, and the state finished the month with a 6.5-month inventory on existing homes.
Here is how select Texas cities fared in April:
Amarillo
* 299 homes sold (4.9 percent increase over previous year)
* Median price of $124,900 (5.5 percent increase)
* Five-month inventory
Austin
* 2,217 homes sold (13.6 percent decrease)
* Median price of $186,900 (2.7 percent increase)
* 5.3-month inventory
(Steve’s notes: Austin is technically still in a Seller’s market with inventory of 5.3 months, however, the reality on the ground is that many areas of Austin, and the upper price ranges (over $400K), are in a buyer’s market.)
Beaumont
* 210 homes sold (2.9 percent increase)
* Median price of $126,700 (7.6 percent increase)
* 7.1-month inventory
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My New Truck (2008 Chevy Silverado Crew Cab) Buying Experience
May 29, 2008
I’ve just emerged from the murky and bizarre world of the new vehicle shop-and-purchase experience. I am happy to claim 100% satisfaction with the final outcome, but most of my interaction with Austin new car dealerships and salespeople gets a thumbs down.
I’ve only bought 4 new vehicles in my life. I generally think new vehicles are a poor investment, but I also drove my previous 2001 Chevy Silverado (which I bought new in 2000) 130,000 miles and feel like, having only ever spent money for oil changes and new tires, it served me well and I got my money’s worth even though I bought it new.
That older 2001 Silverado has the rear swing extended cab doors though, which isn’t client friendly for getting in and out of the back seat, so I normally drive Sylvia’s minivan with clients. Lately it’s become a hassle trying to coordinate with Sylvia to swap out for the minivan when I have buyers. With gas prices the way they are and car dealers having a hard time selling trucks, this is an extremely good time to buy a new truck, for those of us who are going to drive one no matter what, so I made the decision to move up to a new crew cab 4 door truck. More about the great deal I got later.
I decided that a crew cab truck would be a good next vehicle. Something nice enough to drive clients in (like a Tahoe from the back seat forward) but which also works for hauling stuff and towing, which I need to do often enough to make a truck mandatory in my life.
That brings me to the process of buying a new vehicle. I do it in two steps. First, I go tire kicking and test driving and internet researching until I determine exactly what I want and exactly what I’m willing to pay. Second, I look for the dealer who has the vehicle I want and will sell it for the price I’m willing to pay. The research and test drive part is the most time consuming. I drove the Toyota, Ford, Dodge, GMC and Chevy trucks which is what brought me by necessity into contact with multiple dealerships and salespeople.
What would it be like if homes were sold like cars?
What sort of scripts would you hear when attending an open house or visiting a new home builder? Let’s take a look.
First of all, when you pull up in front of the open house, there would be 3 or 4 Realtors standing in the yard smoking. They would eye you like vultures as you search for a parking spot. When you step out of your vehicle, a Realtor would be standing 5ft from you, having just stamped out his cigarette under his shoe, and you would be greeted with a friendly ‘hello’ and a “what brings you here today?”
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Three Austin High Schools in Newsweek top 100 list
May 23, 2008
NEW YORK (Newsweek) – Fourteen Texas public schools were among the top 100 on Newsweek’s list of top U.S. high schools.
The schools were ranked according by the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2007 divided by the number of graduating seniors. All of the schools on the list have an index of at least 1.000.
* Talented and Gifted (Dallas) ranked second with an index of 15.953.
* Science/Engineering Magnet (Dallas) ranked fourth with an index of 10.245.
* Highland Park (Dallas) ranked 15th with an index of 6.035.
* North Hills Prep (Irving) ranked 18th with an index of 5.563.
* Communications Arts (San Antonio) ranked 26th with an index of 5.245.
* South Texas High School for Health Professions (Mercedes) ranked 44th with an index of 4.551.
* Science Academy of South Texas (Mercedes) ranked 46th with an index of 4.543.
* Westlake (Austin) ranked 52nd with an index of 4.331.
* Diamond Hill-Jarvis (Fort Worth) ranked 53rd with an index of 4.317.
* Westwood (Austin) ranked 77th with an index of 3.864.
* Paschal (Fort Worth) ranked 88th with an index of 3.705.
* Colleyville Heritage (Colleyville) ranked 94th with an index of 3.675.
* LBJ (Austin) ranked 95th with an index of 3.667.
* Bellaire (Bellaire) ranked 100th with an index of 3.608.
Downtown Austin Condos
May 22, 2008
The 360 Condonimiums in downtown Austin is completely sold out of all 430 units and has a waiting list of over 200 people. New residents start moving in next week. Today’s Austin Statesman has an article about the project and downtown condos in general (link below). The outlook among those quoted in the article remains about the same as it has been for the past year or more.
Some say there can’t possibly be enough demand to absorb the new condos and apartments coming on line in downtown Austin. Others say that demand is underestimated and that many of the projects will be placed on hold (as has already happened with some) and that a balance between supply and demand will be maintained. I’d venture to say that those are two sides of a coin that have been discussed in many metro areas before Austin, from Miami to Las Vegas to Denver, and that the outcome is not always easy to predict. But as we like to believe, “Austin is different”, and so it may be that.
No doubt, it takes a different mindset and set of needs to buy into downtown Austin living. From a strictly dollars and cents perspective, it’s hard to justify the high cost of being downtown compared to what your money will but in Circle C, for example. From a lifestyle and situational standpoint, for some people, it’s a no-brainier decision to live in the heart of downtown Austin.
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Austin Real Estate Market - April 2008 Sales Update
May 21, 2008
The Austin real estate market average sales values fell in April 2008 compared to the year before, yet there remain many areas in Austin with strong sales. The average sales price of an Austin home in April 2008 is $245,483. Last year in April it was $254,846. That’s a price drop of 3.67% overall, but further below I’ll explain how this is misleading and that 75% of the MLS areas in Austin have appreciating values, many over 10%.
Median sold price is up 0.53% from $188,000 a year ago to $189,000 this year. See the chart below and a further rundown on what’s happening in the Austin real estate market below.
Austin Real Estate Market Update for April 2008
All Austin / Central TX MLS Areas – Houses Only
# Sold
Avg List
Med List
Avg Sold
Med Sold
List/Sold %
Avg SQFT
Med SQFT
Avg $ SQFT
Avg DOM
Median DOM
# Expired
# Withdrawn
Not Sold
Not Sold %
On the Market as of May 19 2008:
12,066 = Active Res Listings in Austin MLS (11,522 last month)
9942 = Total Single Family Homes listed (9410 last month)
2026 = Condo/Townhome/Loft/Garden Homes listed (1845 last mo.)
97 = Mobile/Manufactured Homes (267 last month)
The Austin real estate market continues to be sluggish for April 2008 overall, according to our stats, but with many well performing pockets. Number of sales dropped 18% from the same month a year ago. Average list price is down 2.54%. Average sold price, as noted above, dropped 3.67% year over year for April. This is the second month in a row with a 3% drop in average sold price. Median Sold price is up half a percent.
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Latest in Staging Tips for your Austin Home
May 16, 2008
There is a big difference between decorating your home and staging your home to sell.
To start, stand at the street in front of your house and look. What do you see? Is your home inviting? Is the landscaping fresh and well groomed? Is there maintenance that needs to be done? I can’t tell you how many times I have looked at a house where the gutters were so crammed with dirt and leaves that plants were growing up out of them! This is definitely time to get your gutters cleaned!
As far as the shrubbery, the best age for shrubs and plants in landscaping is 2-3 years. Anything older starts looking bedraggled, so add some younger plants in front of older ones to give a tiered or layered effect. Lantana and Mexican Heather are good for this for this.
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Scorpions in Austin Hill Country
May 16, 2008
I was stung by a scorpion in my sleep the other night. This was the 5th or 6th time since 1999 I have been stung in my sleep by a scorpion crawling in the sheets. There are many upsides and positive aspects to living in Austin, but the scorpions might be viewed as a negative by most people.
Scorpions seem to like me for some reasons, as I’ve been stung 5 or 6 times now, all while sleeping. Sylvia has been stung 2 or 3 times. Our kids have never been stung by a scorpion but my youngest daughter did get stung by a centipede when she was 6 years old, which was a harrowing, nightmarish scene that night. The centipede, which I captured with kitchen tongs, was 8″ long and about 1.5″ thick - the biggest I’d ever seen. It struggled so violently to escape the tongs that I freaked out and flushed it down the commode. Normally I would have released it far from the house.
This is par for the course living in a rural “country” neighborhood as we do in Oak Hill. We have a large wooded acreage lot that backs up to undeveloped land, so we see a lot of wildlife around the house including deer, squirrels, birds, snakes, spiders, scorpions, etc. We constantly find scorpions in the house and toss them outside, especially in the summer.
So, what is it like being stung by a scorpion? In a word, painful. It’s a sharp, piercing burning sting, similar to a wasp or yellow jacket sting, but worse. Imagine a sharp hot needle being poked into your skin and left there as the searing pain slowly spreads outward.
The good news is that the pain does usually goes away within 20 to 30 minutes. Meanwhile, for me at least, it hurts more than a severe burn. I have a friend who claims to have gone into sweats and hallucinations after being stung multiple times while pulling on a pair of jeans with that had a scorpion inside the pant leg. Your pain and reaction may vary.
So what does a groggy Realtor, writhing in pain, say to the scorpion who stung him at 4AM?
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Austin Energy-Efficiency Property Upgrades at Point of Sale
May 6, 2008
Some weeks ago I received an interesting email from the Austin Board of Realtors government affairs committee. It was a scare letter warning us, as Realtors, that we need to take action to oppose a new ordinance, and it has since been making the rounds on Realtor email lists and forums in Austin. What struck me about the letter was that, on face value, a reasonably intelligent person can quickly ascertain that it contains biased and untrue information.
Let’s have a look at the content of the letter, compare it to the truth, and see what the proposed “point of sale” upgrades might mean for Austin home buyers and sellers, and if there is cause for alarm.
From the letter:
Austin homeowners will need your help to understand the reasons single family homeowners will be required to obtain a license from the city of Austin prior to selling their homes.
Uh, actually they need our protection from your blatant misinformation campaign. Nothing has been decided. This will be further explained below.
The City of Austin is introducing an ordinance to mandate energy efficiency retrofits for all types of properties in Austin, including single family owner-occupied homes. This is ordinance is being looked at as part of Mayor Will Wynn’s Climate Protection Plan.
They intend to enforce it at the point of sale. In other words, prior to the sale of any single family owner-occupied home, a certificate of compliance proving the required efficiency retrofits have been done must be done prior to closing.
Again, not true. Not only “not true”, but not true at a level of incompetence that’s hard to comprehend. A task force is working on a plan, but there is no ordinance. There is no proposal. The task force has Realtor representation, so one would think our Board of Realtors would be better informed than this letter suggests.
But then it gets better, and this is where my eyebrows lifted as they lay on the fear tactics and dish up even more inaccurate and false information.
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Is Your Austin Realtor a Beta Test or a Production Version?
May 3, 2008
I was evaluating some Property Management software recently, which was still in the “beta” stages of development. Beta software is commonly thought to be ready enough to function, but is expected to have undiscovered bugs and flaws, and may not be ready or stable enough for production use. I decided against this particular software because it has shortcomings and limitations I cannot live with.
I started thinking of some of the many past encounters we’ve had with what I would call “beta version” Realtors. These are freshly minted, green agents who have passed some testing requirements, such as passing the real estate exam and completing basic training classes, but have not yet been proven as stable and reliable in a “production” environment.
Now all they need are some beta testers. Like beta software, many of these beta agents will never achieve the level of maturity and stability required to move into full production release status. They’ll never become Version 1.0. But they will be tested by some users (clients), with varying results, before the market spits them out. Some will pass the test and become great agents, but they still have to be tested first.
Will that beta tester be you? And is it a good idea to use a Newbie Agent to help buy or sell your home in Austin?
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