It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. Last night I thought it would be fun to put the boots away and round up the assorted winter shovels, ice choppers and snow brooms and put them all way in the back of the tool shed.
What could possibly go wrong? I’ll hold off on bringing the winter coats to the dry cleaners and putting the ice scrapper and snow brush that is on the floor in the back seat of my car in the trunk. Enjoy the weekend!
For a couple of months, one of my listings was the only unit on the market in the building. My client was concerned when a lower priced unit came on the market. The lower priced unit brought lots of traffic to the building and as a result my clients condo sold about a week later.
If a home that is similar to yours comes on the market it can help attract more buyers to your home. If it is priced lower it may sell quickly and buyers will look at your home as an alternative. If the similar or close by home is priced higher than yours it may attract buyers who will consider your home a lower priced alternative.
In most cases nearby homes for sale will attract more buyers to the area. Consider car dealerships and how they are often located next to other car dealerships.
Occasionally condo buyers will express concern if they think there are too many units in one building that are on the market. There is rarely a reason for concern. In most larger condo buildings, with a dozen or more units there are always units for sale.
I am not an expert on homeowner’s insurance but I am a home owner and have been paying for the insurance on my home for decades. Homeowner’s insurance isn’t required but if you have a mortgage on your home the lender will require it.
Our homeowner’s comes due every June. I like to read the policy and I keep a copy in the cloud incase the house burns to the ground. The amount a home is insured for should be enough to rebuild the same home on the same lot. We would still own the lot. My friends in construction tell me that lumber is up this year, which impacts construction costs.
I have used some calculators to figure get some approximate construction costs and the amount listed on the insurance policy and estimates of constructions costs are pretty close. It would cost less to buy an existing home like mine than it would to build a new one, even considering that construction costs do not include the cost of the lot my home is on.
People who are buying a home and looking for homeowners’s insurance should start with their car insurance company. Most insurance companies offer discounts on multiple lines of insurance. Our discount is $599 and we have a $429 discount for not having had any insurance claims.
There is a list of coverage that I don’t have right on the front of the policy. I am not considering earth quake insurance at this time but it is available if I want it and we may actually need it at some point.
If I were to create a pie chart that shows my yearly expenses taxes would be first and insurance would be second.
As the real estate market heats up I can not help but remember the foreclosures. The foreclosure peak and tsunami passed some time ago but the great recession has left vacant lots and condemned houses all over the city. The hardest hit neighborhoods were the neighborhoods with the lowest home values.
The number of registered vacant buildings in St. Paul has gone way down and is now a 3 digit number: 738., at one point there were more than 2000. Most of the buildings on the list are residential. I noticed that the city raised the registration fee. As fewer buildings are registered there is less revenue for the city but more shoveled sidewalks for the rest of us in the winter.
The march home sales numbers have some ups and downs. Average and median home sale prices are up. The number of new listings is up from last month but lower than last year by more than 10%. Pending home sales were up from February and up slightly from March 2016.
I have highlight the neighborhoods in yellow where sellers on average are getting more than the asking price. When the inventory of homes is as low as it is now and the demand is high there are multiple offers and prices are bid up by buyers. I dislike the drama of the phrase “bidding war”, but that is how the media describes the situation.
As I wrote last week not all houses are getting offers the first day on the market. The average days on market is still over 50 and the median is over 25. Some of the houses selling the first day on the market are being “pre-sold” during a separate listing period before the listing period. These coming soon listings help real estate agents capture more buyer and seller leads.
The data used to create the chart was gently extracted from the NorthstarMLS and then sorted but never shaken or stirred. The data is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. There are few guarantees in life.
For more local real estate numbers please see Local market conditions and home prices.
If you are planing to sell your home, consider the front door. Clean it up, paint it or replace it. Your front door matters, If the lock is hard to work and the door knob wobbles that may give potential buyers the impression that your home isn’t well maintained.
Nothing says I don’t care like a beat up front door.