by neil kearney | Sep 5, 2007 | Statistics
Who’s Hot and Who’s Not
I want to follow up more on the OFHEO report on real estate appreciation in the United States. As I mentioned last time our area is improving compared to many other areas in the country. So this begs the question; what are the hottest and slowest markets in the country?
First the top 20 areas for real estate 
appreciation during the past year:
- Wenatchee, Washington 23.54%
- Provo – Orem, Utah 18.21%
- Salt Lake City, Utah 16.03%
- Ogden-Clearfield, Utah 15.22%
- Grand Junction, Colorado 14.3%
- Longview, Washington 13.6%
- El Paso, Texas 12.49%
- Salem, Oregon 11.98%
- Mobile, Alabama 11.26%
- Asheville, North Carolina 10.90%
- Austin -Round Rock, Texas 10.76%
- Lynchburg, Virginia 10.65%
- Beaumont -Port Arthur, TX 10.62%
- Gulfport-Biloxi, Mississippi 10.05%
- Myrtle Beach, South Carolina 9.98%
- Scranton-Wilkes Barre, PA 9.92%
- Seattle, Washington 9.89%
- San Antonio, Texas 9.63%
- Tacoma, Washington 9.34%
- Spokane, Washington 9.3%
The 20 worst performing markets for the past year are:
- Merced, California -8.65%
- Santa Barbara, California -8.10%
- Stockton, California -7.20%
- Punta Gorda, Florida -7.12%
- Salinas, California -6.95%
- Modesto, California -6.51%
- Yuba City, California -6.29%
- Sarasota, Florida -6.19%
- Sacramento, California -6.07%
- Reno, Nevada -5.37%
- Santa Rosa, California -5.35%
- Fort Meyers, Florida -5.33%
- Palm Bay, Florida -4.64%
- Port St. Lucie, Florida -4.59%
- Santa Cruz, California -4.58%
- West Palm Beach, FL -4.51%
- San Luis Obispo, California -4.40%
- Ventura, California -4.31%
- Vallejo, California -4.24%
- Bay City, Michigan -4.21%
On the map above the top performing areas are marked in yellow and the poor performing areas are marked in red. 19 of the 20 worst markets over the past year have been in California and Florida. The top performing areas have been a bit more spread out.
by neil kearney | Aug 30, 2007 | Boulder County Housing Trends, Statistics
National Appreciation at 13 year low
Boulder Appreciation Improves
The Housing Price Index (HPI) for the second quarter of 2007 was released today by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO). The report shows a meager .1% increase in home prices nationwide between the 1st quarter and 2nd quarter. This is the lowest quarterly increase since 4th quarter 1994. The yearly appreciation was just 3.2%, the lowest increase since 1996-1997.
The report says that “House prices were basically flat in the second quarter despite tightening credit policies, rising foreclosure rates, and weakening buyer sentiment,” said Lockhart. “Significant price declines appear localized in areas with weak economies or where price increases were particularly dramatic during the housing boom.”
The states that have been most affected by price depreciation are: Nevada (-1.5%), Michigan (-1.4%), California (-1.4%), Massachusetts (-1.0%), and Rhode Island (-1.0%). The states that are still seeing good appreciation are: Utah (15.3%), Wyoming (12.8%), Washington (9.1%), Montana (9.1%), and New Mexico (8.8%). Colorado is ranked 37th (up from 38th in q1) nationally with an annual appreciation rate of 2.95%.
Locally our very own MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) Boulder/Longmont is ranked 185th out of 272 with 2.25% appreciation for the year. Comparatively, this is a great gain for us. During the 1st quarter of this year we were ranked 210th with a yearly appreciation of 1.55%.
Things get even better when you look at the most recent quarter alone. Colorado had an appreciation rate of .65% which was 24th highest and Boulder/Longmont had an appreciation rate of 1.66% for the quarter which was ranked us 46th nationally. It looks like we are holding steady while the rest of the field is falling back a bit.
The unfortunate news is that other parts of the country are suffering. In a separate post I will detail the overall picture in more detail.
The entire report can be viewed at http://www.ofheo.gov/HPI.asp
by neil kearney | Aug 27, 2007 | Boulder County Housing Trends, Statistics
Market Strength
Again I opened the local paper to find the top story in the Business section about the “Mortgage Mess” and how it is affecting real estate and the foreclosure market. The article, which can be found at
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/business/ went on to say that the local market was not affected as severely as other parts of the country. So, how are we doing? Here are a few market stats that may clear it up a bit.
Percentage of Active listings under contract:
In order to have a healthy market you need active buyers. It is healthy to have plenty of listings on the market but without buyers you have a big problem. In order to gauge the number of active buyers in the market I look at a few statistics. One is the number of showings. Better is the number of listings that are currently on the market. The chart below shows the percentage of homes on market that are currently under contract. I have done this search three times in recent months and show all for comparison.
On average there are fewer homes under contract now than there were in both May and June. Louisville and Boulder have the highest percentage of homes under contract and Weld County and Longmont have the slowest market.
For condos and townhomes (attached dwellings) the story is much the same but the gross percentages are higher. A greater percentage of condos are under contract than homes. Boulder is the strongest market for condos in our area.
Current Inventory:
How long is it going to take to sell my home? This is the $64,000 (before inflation) question. The worst case scenario is to look at it like this; how long would it take to sell all of the homes on the market. If you were the least desirable home in the category yours would go last. This next chart shows how long it would take for that “last” home to sell if no other homes were to come on the market. Again in many areas condos are doing a bit better than their single family home counterparts. Still on average it would take about 8 months to sell all of the inventory in Boulder County given the current sales pace. The areas with the least amount of inventory are Superior homes and Louisville condos. The areas with the largest inventory are mountain homes and Longmont condos.
Can you tell by the color of my graphs that it is almost football season?
by neil kearney | Aug 17, 2007 | Boulder County Housing Trends, Statistics, Uncategorized
Showings Down in August and the Mortgage Fiasco
The news about the real estate market has not been good these past few weeks. Every time you read a paper, turn on your computer or watch TV news you will hear about the sub-prime mortgage crisis and how that is affecting an already depressed housing market. The number of sales are down about 11% in our local market. Showings have been fairly strong all summer but the latest two week period was down 18% from the last two weeks in July. has been down this year in the number. Here is a chart showing the trend.
Now on to the mortgage situation. For a number of months it has become clear that the easy mortgage standards that have been fueling the market over the past few years were resulting in a large number of foreclosures (bad loans). As the losses added up, the loans became harder to sell on the secondary market. When the mortgage companies are unable to sell their mortgages they don’t have money to lend to new borrowers. When there is limited money available, only the best borrowers get the money. Jumbo mortgages (loans over $417,000) are now priced higher than conventional loans. Second mortgages, which are used when the borrower doesn’t have a 20% down payment, are now hard to get. It is going to be very interesting how this all plays out. Sales and closings are still happening daily, the world goes on we just have to adapt to a tighter market.
by neil kearney | Aug 9, 2007 | Statistics
July Market Report
I just compiled the sales figures for July and found that the total number of sales were down again for single family residential homes in Boulder County. The trend is very ingrained and each month has been lower than the same month the previous year since September 2005. So far this year total sales are down almost 11% from last year and down almost 19% from 2005.
Median sales price for the same area and time frame was down for the month. The longterm trend in prices has been a modest rise and I think this will continue. It is interesting to note that there is no seasonality in prices the way that there is in the number of sales.
by neil kearney | Aug 6, 2007 | Statistics
Inventory Report
The total volume of sales is down roughly 12% from last year. We are still having a reasonable year, especially when compared to other parts of the country where prices are falling by the month. Another result of the slower market are increased inventories. I measure inventory by how long it will take to sell a home in a market given its historical sales rate. The chart below shows the inventory in months in some local communities across time. I have compared the most recent data to figures I have from end of year 2005 and 2006. You can see that in each community the inventory has increased, sometimes substantially. For
instance, the inventory for single family homes in the City of Boulder has more than doubled since December 2005. Currently there is 7.03 months of inventory. Even more surprising is the suburban mountains, where there is currently a 17.2 month supply of homes on the market.
The story is much the same for attached dwellings. In fact, the only area that has shown an improvement is Louisville. Other than Louisville, all areas have increased inventory with Longmont being the weakest area.
