Been down so long

Posted by Mark Chapman on February 20th, 2012 at 12:57 am

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

Real Estate

I’ve always wanted to find a one-handed lawyer. Not that I want a lawyer with only one arm. But when­ever I ask my lawyer a ques­tion, he answers me by say­ing, “Well, Dane, on the one hand you could do this, and then on the other hand you could do that.” I think if he only had one hand, I might get a straight answer.

And so it is that I find myself mim­ic­k­ing my lawyer, say­ing that on the one hand, the bad real estate mar­ket seems to be over. At least in Engle­wood and envi­rons, the inven­tory of resale homes is shrink­ing and the inven­tory of new homes is grow­ing. All the while rates are still low (albeit mort­gages are hard to qual­ify for just now).

On the other hand, prices remain low, lower, low­est. And so while this is awful news for sell­ers  — with no cer­tain date of a recov­ery, it could not be bet­ter news for investors and new res­i­dents in the area, who are pick­ing up nice homes for a song and find­ing hon­est to good­ness man­sions for some­thing less than a symphony.

A great friend who is about to retire called the other day ask­ing me to send her list­ings of homes for sale on a golf course, with a pool, for under $400,000. She is a Real­tor from Maine, want­ing to retire here, and so she hon­estly under­stands res­i­dence value. And so you will smile to hear that there are dozens of homes that would ful­fill her list of “must-have” needs, but most are closer to $250,000 than to $400,000. I told her, “on the one hand there are lots of homes you will like, but on the other hand you may not have to go all the way up to $400K.”

A new client wants a house with every bell and whis­tle. Salt­wa­ter front with a dock, plus a pool, plus high ceil­ings, plus gran­ite, plus mul­ti­ple garage stalls, plus, plus, plus. The houses I first found all seemed to lack one or more of his “touch­stones.” Then I found among the expired batch of homes in the “once for sale for almost $2 mil­lion” group, one that looks now like it will be per­fect for him and his fam­ily — and is for sale by a bank for about one fourth of the orig­i­nal ask­ing. So on the one hand these spe­cial houses are out there, but on the other hand, they’re hard to find.

In the good news col­umn, I closed on two houses one day last week. It seemed like old times again. I had almost for­got­ten the excite­ment of bring­ing two con­tracts to the table the same day. And since that day last week it has occurred to me that Richard Farina’s book title, “Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up To Me,” applies to most of us in the real estate busi­ness. To wit: any good news just seems spec­tac­u­lar, while bad news is expected. Nonethe­less, I am hear­ing more good news than bad right now, and hop­ing that the mar­gin­ally good news regard­ing a gen­eral increase in employ­ment will con­tinue to boost the real estate market.

On a sad note, Richard Farina, the author of “Been Down So Long …” never lived to expe­ri­ence his own wild lit­er­ary suc­cess. He fell off the back of a motor­cy­cle on the way home from the pub­li­ca­tion party for this book, and was killed instantly. So on the one hand, his life was just get­ting good, and on the other — well, you get it.

Dane Hahn is areal estate pro­fes­sional prac­tic­ing in Engle­wood, Florida. You can reach him at dane.hahn@gmail.com or by phone at941-681‑0312. See him on the web at http://www.danesellsflorida.com

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