Rice Park doesn’t get decorated like it used to. There are far fewer lights on the trees in Rice Park and no lights or very few lights in Mears Park.
Cat in bag
Yes it is Friday and Fridays are for fun. Usually this time of year I write about fruit cake. I love fruit cake but only good fruit cake not icky fruit cake.
housing forcast for 2017
This infographic is hot off the press from the National Association of Realtors. I generally agree with it. Home prices will go up in 2017 but at a slower pace and yes interest rates will go up too. I have said it before but there are many times in the last few decades when rates below 5% would have triggered a national home buying spree. Yet if rates go as high as 4.6% in 2017 that may cause a slow down in new home loans.
The outlook also states that people who are under 44 and who have higher incomes are confident. I guess I can understand why they would be. I’ll bet the top 1% are pretty confident too.
The new president may also have an impact on housing. Maybe even on the whole planet but it is unclear at this point how it will all affect the economy for the next four years.
Low supply, high demand
I used to write about absorption rates in the seven county metro area about once a month. For years the rate went up each month as homes languished on the market during the great recession and housing market crash.
There are all kinds of reasons why there are so few houses on the market. It has to do with fewer people wanting to move or relocate and less new construction and the fact that our population is aging and older people do not move as often as younger people move.
My husband and I have not moved for 27 years, mainly because we do not have any reason to move. Our next door neighbor moved in a couple of months after we did and we have one neighbor who has lived on our street for about 38 years.
To add to the perfect storm there are people who really want to sell their houses and move on but they can not find a home to buy.
Right now I can not see anything on the horizon that will cause the trend of high demand and low supply to change. There is some squawking about higher interest rates but those higher interest rates are still very low.
Marketing photos of homes for sale
Nothing says I don’t care like a home with a pile of snow in front of it in mid-July. The homes only have snow in front of them in the pictures but those pictures are seen by buyers when they look on the internet at homes for sale.
It is a good idea to take a new exterior picture of a home that is for sale when the seasons change. No home should be on the market for all four seasons, but it isn’t at all usual to hit two seasons.
We got a lot of snow over the weekend. In a couple of weeks the homes that were put on the market when the grass was green are really going to stand out, but not in a good way.
The best times of day to photograph homes when there is snow in the yard is shortly after sunrise or just before sunset. I got these between 4:00 and 5:00 PM the day after the heavy snow fall. Snow always looks better when it is fresh.