Real estate boom??

[simpsongal]

I was just looking at an article in the real estate section in the Washington Post.  The article mentioned that the real estate market is really heating up in the DC area.  So I pulled up Zillow -- the lowest priced home for sale in our town is $799K!  Our area is expensive but there are usually a few more affordable homes on the market than that. 

Anyone else having a real estate boom in their area?  And dude, it's January!

At least this makes me feel better about putting more money into the house....

[lemondrop]

Oh, wow. That's crazy. I think things are holding pretty steady here, but I could be wrong.

[simpsongal]

Jan 25, 2013 16:10:07 GMT -5 simpsongal said:

 I think I quote myself by mistake.

[my4girls]

we never had a real estate slow down in our area. Houses were and still are going like hot cakes! Our house sold in a week adn the house we bought had two offers in the first weekend

[Susie]

I kind of thought things were holding steady here, but Zillow keeps telling me my home value is increasing. Usually it drops this time of year and goes up in the spring/summer. It's about as high right now (in January, like you point out) as it's been since we've owned it.

I don't know how accurate it is. Generally Zillow's been pretty accurate in my area.

[TBM]

I see the housing prices starting to rise both here in CA and in FL where we are moving. We were hoping to get in on the lower housing prices in FL, but everything we like that is in the price range we are looking is moving fast. We're afraid that by the time we sell and are ready to buy, we won't be able to afford anything like what we are finding in our price range right now. Hopefully our house will sell fast and for a good price. We bought low, so we're in good shape either way, but it would be nice to sell high.

[boiler717]

We have had 5 lots sell in our neighborhood in the past month (there are only 30 open lots).

[munkii]

Houses in my neighborhood sell quickly because of the school district (even though they're not terribly attractive). Zillow is not something I trust--my house is listed twice (a variation in the address). The first variation in the address has a value over $100k greater than the 2nd variation. Also, if I were to trust Zillow, the first value would also indicate a booming market since it's up about $30k since last month. Ahhh, Zillow.

[mrs.jacinthe]

Our housing price is starting to go up because inventory is just SO low. For example, not taking into account condition, type of sale, room/br/ba count, sq footage, or anything ... there are only 5 single family homes for sale in our entire town under $250k.

In the $250k to $500k range, there are ~25 houses. In the $500k-$750k range, there are ~13 houses. In the $750k+ range, there are ~14 houses.

Our town's median HHI is $56k. It's pretty clear why there aren't many lower priced houses on the market and why they're selling so fast.

[sailorgray]

We are casually looking in our town and there is nothing for sale. I shouldn't say that. There is some less than desirable stuff, but 4 bed 2+bath? None unless you want to pay over $400k. Everything is so much more than it was 5 years ago. That's good as a seller, but if we want to buy in our town we love, we will have to up the budget.

[tarheels]

Snort. Not in any of the towns where we own houses. (Ah, what an absurd sentence.)

Nashville was pretty hard hit and the only good news there is that it's finally hit bottom and has come up a tiny fraction, like $5k. But when you're talking about a house that lost 1/4 of its value, $5k is really just sort of like getting the middle finger.

Our big colonial house could sell for what we paid for it, but it's a loss because of high closing costs on that house. Plus all those upgrades. I think our tenants are only 6 months into a 3 year lease, so maybe the house will have appreciated enough by the end to cover our CCs.

We should be able to sell this house for what we paid for it. We put in some upgrades, but we've paid off the mortgage about that same amount, so when we get the cash back at closing, it's like living here for free for 3 years. Pretty cool. We're selling privately, so CCs should be minimal.

[lys]

We have brisk sales in entry level homes and high end homes. 
The middle of the road mones are sitting a L---O--N---G  time.
Prices up ever so slightly.

[goaskalice]

It's getting pretty crazy here in Portland. Not enough homes to sell, and the good ones are selling fast and with multiple offers. It's pretty tough to be a buyer right now.

[SusanBAnthony]

It is picking up here. It increased I think 3% over last summer's season. Now, there is very little on the market, and any nice houses without major issues are selling super fast at list, often with multiple offers. But, I am expecting (hoping, praying) that as soon as there is more inventory in a month or two, things will calm down.

We looked at a house yesterday that was really nicely kept up but nothing special (builder basic) and they are asking about 10% more than the last 6 months comps are supporting. (235 vs 215). They got an offer for 215 and they didn't even respond with a counter. So now we are trying to decide if we think it is worth more since the market is picking up, or if these people are crazy and we should just wait a month or so when things calm down.

[kaylie]

We bought last April and the market was hot then. We were in three bidding wars before getting this house - we were the back up and the cash buyer backed out. Inventory is still pretty low and it seems like only the ugliest of the ugly and the houses that are listed wayyyy too high are staying on the market for any great length of time. I suspect we already have 10% more equity over when we bought.

[starlily]

Yes. My area has been a seller's market since last spring. Prices have been steadily rising for SFHs. Homes bought a few months ago have already been flipped & resold for 75-100k more.

We ended up buying new construction after getting outbid (we were already offering above asking) or passed over for all cash offers on approx 10 homes.

[pitterwoo]

there isn't a boom in my part of town, but prices are holding steady and there aren't many houses for sale the way there was a couple years ago.

[aweilba]

Yeah, when we refinanced in November, the bank said to expect this happening within probably the next six months.  Honestly, good news for us because our house went down $1,000 in value since we bought it and we've done some work to it.  She said that things are starting to turn around and within the next year and a half or so, we should really start to see things pick up in terms of getting more for your house on resale.  Good news since we want to sell in about 2-3 years!  She said you'll notice things picking up on the East Coast first, usually, and then it'll trickle on into the heartland states, which is where I live.  

[magdala]

No. Our house declined 5% in value in the since we bought last January.

[candreco]

I'm in the DC area as well, and we definitely saw this over the summer when we moved.

The house we sold went under contract within 5 days of being listed- we had three offers coming after the first full day on the market, asking people to wait to submit offers until after the open house our realtor had already scheduled.

We offered on the house we bought the first full day it was on the market while the realtor was OOT, and another offer was submitted the day after. Our offer was slightly better anyway (didn't ask for closing costs), but we got it because we were first in.