Boulder County Real Estate according to The National Association of Realtors

by Neil Kearney | Jun 17, 2010 | Boulder County Housing Trends, Statistics

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has just released a local market report for Boulder County.  It is quite thorough and I’d thought I would pass it along.  If you don’t want to wade through the details here are some highlights.  All data and conclusions drawn are based upon data ending March 31, 2010.

Sales Data:

• 1 year appreciation in Boulder County +2.3%.  (US -.5%)
• 3 year appreciation in Boulder County -9.4%  (US -22.1%)
• 3 year housing equity gain -$34,900 (US -$47,333)
• 7 year housing equity gain $31,400  (US -$467)
• 9 year housing equity gain $41,400  (US $22,733)

Local Financial Fundamentals:

• 12-month job change -3,300
• 36-month job change -7,800
• Current unemployment rate  6.4%
• Year ago unemployment rate 6.8%
• Commentary – Job losses are a problem and will weigh on demand, but layoffs are declining which could help buyer confidence.  Unemployment in Boulder is better than the national average and improving.
• The current level of construction (as measured by new permits) is 82% below the long-term average.
• Single family housing permits are down 16.3% lower from last year but they may have bottomed.
• Local affordability is improved.  Locally 16.5% of income goes towards mortgage payments.  Our historical average is 20.6%.  Houses are more affordable (lower prices, low interest rates).

Foreclosures:

• 92.3% of local mortgages are prime (not sub-prime or no-doc, interest only, etc.).  The national average is 88.5%.  This stability in type of loan has allowed us to have been less affected by foreclosures.
• The percentage of prime loans in foreclosure at the end of February was .9% (US 2.7%)
• The percentage of subprime loans in foreclosure at the end of February was 11.9% (US 17.9%)
• The percentage of Alt-A loans in foreclosure at the end of February was 4.9% (US 14.8%)
• The number of 60 day and 90 day delinquencies continues to rise both locally and nationally.

The report is filled with reports and graphs and has additional commentary.  It is quite robust and it supports my overall view of the market.  In my view we are plugging along but not out of the woods.  Overall we are doing much better than the nation as a whole.

Click here to view and or download the NAR report on Boulder County.

Boulder May Real Estate Statistics

by neil kearney | Jun 11, 2010 | Boulder County Housing Trends, Statistics

The numbers are in for real estate sales in Boulder County.  Sales during May showed continued strength and were a result of the good sales activity in March and April.  Sales of all residential property in Boulder County are up 32% year-to-date and May sales were up 27.6% compared to May 2009. Sales of single family homes are up 34% year-to-date and 32% from last March.  The sales activity was mostly due to carryovers from past months.  New activity fell with the expiration of the tax credit. Interest rates and move-up buyers continue to fuel growth.

Lately the activity has waned a bit but it seems that the baseline of the market has increased even without the tax credit.  Interest rates are still outstanding and being early summer there are great new properties coming on the market often.

May Real Estate Activity – The Post Tax Credit Slowdown

by neil kearney | Jun 4, 2010 | Boulder County Housing Trends, Statistics

The first four months of 2010 were just what we needed in the Boulder area real estate market.  The federal homebuyer tax credit, low interest rates and an uptick in overall economic optimism led to a surge in activity.  The likes we had not seen for a number of years.  It wasn’t record breaking stuff but it certainly got us out of the spiral of declining activity which started in August of 2007 and continued until sales on a monthly basis were consistently 40% below what they had been back in 2004.

Through May (numbers not quite final), sales of residential property in Boulder County were up 32% compared to the first five months of 2009.  A good result of healthy activity.

As I mentioned before, our market so far this year has stood on three pillar: tax credit, low interest rates and increased economic fundamentals and optimism.  Well, the tax credit has now expired and we are now seeing how strong the two remaining pillars really are.

First for my unquantifiable testimony.  I have been busy, quite busy in fact.  But I would be fibbing if all of my time has been spent writing and negotiating contracts.  I have been meeting with potential sellers, signing up listings, preparing marketing materials, updating and creating websites, showing houses, counseling buyers, etc.  Generally doing the activities that lead to future contracts and closings.  My listings have been getting fewer showings lately and the volume of the general buzz has decreased.  We are finding our new, post tax credit baseline and this level I believe is above where we were but still not back to where we would like to be.

Now to a few quantifiable measures of actvity.  The attached charts show three measures of activity: showings, contracts and closings.  The first chart in the presentation (view full screen for best viewing), shows real estate activity in Boulder County on a weekly basis.  The red line shows the number of closings during any given week and the blue line shows the number of properties that went under contract during a weeks time.  You can see that there has definitely been a drop off in contract activity since the April 30th expiration of the tax credit.  Closings are still holding strong and because of the lag time of a typical real estate transaction between contract and close, I expect June’s numbers to be reasonably strong as well.  But we may have already hit our peak for the year.  Time will tell.

The second the third chart present showing activity for my office on a monthly basis.  I track gross showings and the number of showings per active listing on a daily basis and then average it out for the month.  The total number of showings decreased 27% in May (compared to April) and the number of showings per listing decreased from 9 in April to 6 in May.  Some listings got much more than six and some unfortunately had fewer than six buyers take a look.

http://viewer.docstoc.com/
May 2010 Real Estate Trend

FHFA – Boulder Home Values Drop 2.3%

by Neil Kearney | May 26, 2010 | Boulder County Housing Trends, Statistics | 1 comment

Every quarter the FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency) publishes a home value index.  The index includes results for approximately 300 metropolitan statistical areas (MSA’s) around the nation.  Home values are also figured for states and regions.  I prefer this index to the popular Case-Schiller Index because it includes a much broader measure of the real estate markets than the 20 largest metro areas can provide.  It is also nice that the index measures home appreciation in the Boulder area.  The Boulder MSA includes all of Boulder County.  For the 1 year period ending March 31, 2010 home appreciation in Boulder was -2.3%.

Let’s put this number in perspective.  On the negative side -2.3% is the lowest appreciation rate in decades.  At the end of December home appreciation in Boulder County was -1.5%.  Those in the glass half full group (aye) find comfort, despite a loss in home values, in comparison.  So here are some facts that make us locally feel pretty lucky.

• The average home appreciation for every home in the United States was -3.1%.
• Only nine states (including Washington DC) had positive appreciation.
• Only 10 of the 301 MSA’s had positive home appreciation.
• Boulder County, despite a negative 2.3% annual appreciation ranks 50th out of 301 MSA’s.
• The 20 worst areas for appreciation begins with Detroit at -13.49% and ends with Bend, OR at -23.03% in annual appreciation.
• Homes values in Boulder County have increased 6.89% over the past 5 years.
• Home values in Merced CA have decreased 49.3% over the past 5 years.
• Home values for all US homes have decreased 2.85% over the past 5 years.

Yes, our market is not as robust as it once was but, boy, we need to count our blessings.  Our market has not been overrun with foreclosures, supply and demand have been pretty much in line with each other, our job market has remained strong.  We are in relatively good shape.  This does not mean that we are out-of-the-woods yet.  We still have some major challenges to overcome, both locally and nationally, but despite the negative appreciation, I am feeling much better about our market than I was a year ago.

The charts below (hit the four arrows for full screen), show the trends in Boulder’s FHFA ranking as well as compares Boulder County’s home appreciation with the United States’.

http://viewer.docstoc.com/
Boulder Home Appreciation – FHFA

Post Tax Credit Hangover

by neil kearney | May 13, 2010 | Boulder County Housing Trends, Statistics

http://viewer.docstoc.com/
Boulder Real Estate Sales Data

It has been six days since the expiration of the Homebuyer Tax Credit and to be frank the activity this week has been a bit slow.  This is understandable since those buyers who qualified had a big incentive to get something done before the April 30th deadline.  The chart above shows a full year of data that tracks sold and contract activity in Boulder County in one week chunks.  The blue line shows the number of homes that received accepted contracts during any given week and the red line shows the number of homes that actually closed during the week.

You can see that we had a definite upward trend in contracts beginning January 1st and this past week the activity decreased significantly.  Sales are up 35% so far this year and we have been consistently ahead of 2009 numbers.  That is until this week.  If you look to the left you will see that for the week ending May 14 2009 the number of homes that went under contract during that week was greater than the number this past week.

To be fair.  Our market was just starting to get rolling a year ago and we have had a strong year so far.  I’m hoping that this is just a one or two week hiccup and that we will then continue with a strong spring/summer selling season.  From my point of view the stimulus worked.