Is It Business as Usual for Our 2017 Market?

Lack of inventory continues to be the story for our market. As you’ll see, whether you’re buying or selling, the time to act is now.

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Welcome to our first real estate market update of 2017!

2016 was a phenomenal year for us in Colorado Springs. Overall sales were up about 12%, and our sales price for December rose about 7.9% compared to December of 2015. The good news is if you did not get your home sold last year, you are in great shape to sell it this year, and you will probably see an improvement in your home value.

As far as market statistics go, if you’ve been following my blog the last couple of years, you know that the story has been all about our lack of inventory. That number has not changed much lately. We’re down again about 28% for active inventory and have about 1,500 active listings currently on the market. We sold 1,200 last month, and we have 1,700 that are currently pending. If you do the math on that, we don’t have enough active listings to keep up with the sales volume that we’ve been experiencing in the last couple of years. Pending inventory is at 0.8%, and that’s another indication of our lack of overall inventory.

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If you did not get your home sold last year, you are in great shape to sell it this year.

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How long will this trend last? When are we going to see things slow down? The truth is, I don’t think we will until we see interest rates rise. I do believe that this is the year we will see a rate hike, but what happened in the past and should happen again after a rate hike is that some of our first-time home buyers get forced out of the market. This segment of buyers creates a trickle-up effect because the homes that they’re buying are from move-up buyers who are moving into more expensive homes.

If you are interested in selling your home, I wouldn’t wait until spring. We’re seeing the same trend this year that we’ve seen the last few years, with really heavy volume happening in January, February, and March. In fact, just yesterday, we saw a six-offer situation involving a home in the upper $200,000 price point, and we’re seeing the same effect in the higher price points, as well.

If you’re a buyer, you shouldn’t wait to jump into the game either. Interest rates are still hovering around 4%, which is phenomenal. While home values are up, your overall purchase power will be much stronger than next year after the expected rate hike.

If you have any questions about our market or have a topic in mind you’d like to see me discuss in a future video, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I look forward to hearing from you!

Why Didn’t Your Home Sell?

A home usually fails to sell either because of its price, condition, or marketing. Most agents will emphasize price and condition, but marketing is equally as important.

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So you listed your home and it failed to sell. What happened?

It can be frustrating hearing about how hot the market is and watching your own home sit idly on the MLS. The good news is, you’re not alone—close to 50% of homes that are listed fail to sell the first time around. The answer to why it failed to sell comes down to one of three things: price, condition, and marketing.

Many agents will tell their sellers that it’s price and condition, and it often is. But it’s important to also look at the marketing to make sure that your home is being shown in the best possible light. A great example of this is a home we listed two weeks ago. This home had been on the market about six months, through the height of the spring and summer selling seasons, and it failed to sell. The sellers reported that they had a few showings, but no offers.

When we visited the home, we discovered that it needed some staging. It was in excellent condition and showed well, but some of the rooms were not utilized as well as they could have been with staging. We restaged the home, then, and because it had such a unique layout, we used a new marketing tool called Matterport. This takes a full video of the home so that buyers can take a walking tour from behind their computer screen and get a first-person view of what each room looks like.

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Don’t forget about marketing when selling your home.

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Within two weeks, the house was scheduled to close by the end of the month. What this tells me is that because the buyers were closing so quickly, they were probably in the market when the home was marketed originally. We did make a price reduction, but only at 2%. I believe, therefore, that the house was not being shown well enough to draw in the buyer activity it needed.

This constitutes a very happy ending for the sellers, and we would like to do the same thing for you. The fall and winter months are great times to be on the market. Inventory is down, but that means less competition and buyers are still out there.

If you’re interested in buying or selling, please give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!

Checking in on the Colorado Springs Market

I wanted to provide an update on the Colorado Springs real estate market. We've had a great year so far, and fall is shaping up to be a healthy, balanced market once again.

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I wanted to stop by today with a quick update on the Colorado Springs real estate market for September 2016.

We've had a great year so far and fall is shaping up to be the same. I do think we're going to continue to see strong conditions in and around Colorado Springs for the foreseeable future. There are some whispers of a shift coming; I say the fastest way to create a shift is to talk about a shift, but we're not seeing any increase in inventory right now and we're not seeing values dropping.

We've actually had a pretty stable increase in values for the last couple of years, so I think that if we do see any correction, it's going to be fairly minor, and I don't think it's coming in the near future.

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We've had a great year so far and fall is shaping up to be the same.

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Coming into September, our average sales price is $295,000, which is up 8% from 2015. We currently have 2,655 active listings at the beginning of the month, which is actually down 4% from August, and is down a whopping 21% from 2015. As I said, we do have a shortage of available inventory.

In Colorado Springs we sold 1,465 homes in August, which is down 2% from July, but is up 5% from 2015. Our average days on market is only running 28, which is down 61% from 2015, so we have strong selling conditions. I think fall is one of the best times we have to list because we see homes coming off the market from our less motivated sellers who feel like they may have missed the market. I emphatically disagree with that, because buyers don't believe in that.

If you're looking at buying, this is a great time to jump in because we're not seeing quite the multiple offer situations that we were before. All in all, we're getting back to more of a healthy, stable market than what we had the past couple months.

If you have any questions or you're wondering what your home is worth, give us a call or send us an email. We'd be happy to help you out.