Englewood Edge - Englewood Florida's own online daily newspaper

So it going better — it won’t last

Monday, January 30th, 2012 by Mark Chapman

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

Real Estate

Fixed mort­gage rates ticked up this week as the hous­ing mar­ket ended 2011 on a high note. New con­struc­tion of one-family homes rose 4.4 per­cent in Decem­ber to an annu­al­ized rate of 470,000, the most since April 2010. Exist­ing home sales increased 5 per­cent at the end of the year to 4.61 mil­lion houses, the largest amount since May 2010. Fur­ther­more, pend­ing home sales in Novem­ber and Decem­ber aver­aged the high­est read­ing since the March and April 2010 period.

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Affordable?

Monday, January 23rd, 2012 by Mark Chapman

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

Real Estate

Houses around Engle­wood are get­ting more afford­able. I have focused on  “afford­abil­ity” in the past, and think that it’s worth look­ing at again in light of the cur­rent con­di­tions. The National Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors keeps a ton of data on sales and deter­mines what regions of the coun­try have homes that are the most affordable.

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Picture this

Sunday, January 15th, 2012 by Mark Chapman

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

Real Estate

The data we see every day from both the National Asso­ci­a­tion and the Florida Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors always stresses that buy­ers start their real estate hunt online. And, with that in mind, it’s crit­i­cal that our list­ings have excel­lent pho­tos. Because, as they say, you only get one chance to make a good first impression.

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Prognostications

Monday, January 9th, 2012 by Mark Chapman

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

Real Estate

I always like to read what the other pun­dits are guess­ing before I come up with my own fore­cast for the new year, so two weeks into 2012, I can say with cer­tainty that my crys­tal ball is still a lit­tle cloudy.

Nonethe­less, I am ready to guess what the new year will bring — real estate-wise.

I’m pretty sure that nation­ally there will be an uptick in the rate of home repos­ses­sions in 2012. The good news here is that Florida is pretty well drained of this stock, and as the vacant inven­tory begins to dry up, we should be in a bet­ter than aver­age posi­tion for new sales and the returnof very mod­est infla­tion in the prices of used homes.

There are many rea­sons for the mas­sive back­log in the fore­clo­sure pipeline. Banks are tak­ing months, maybe even years, to actu­ally fore­close on mort­gages in default.

The admin­is­tra­tion is focus­ing on the back­log of home sout there and are mak­ing some wild and crazy pro­pos­als that may or may not work. But the fact that real estate remains a hot topic is help­ful to those who homes are in limbo and to buy­ers and investors who would pur­chase a home, but had been stymied with the red tape and delays.

It’spretty clear that in 2012 and beyond, the banks will work through those back­logs, which will increase the actual fore­clo­sure rate, but should get new fam­i­lies in the vacant homes over the next few months.

Accord­ing to the folks at Cold­well Banker here in Engle­wood, short sales rep­re­sent more than 40 per­cent of their busi­ness. In the com­ing year, dis­tressed home sales will con­tinue to rep­re­sent an increas­ing share of homes on the mar­ket. Buy­ers will shift from con­sid­er­ing whether to buy a short sale to under­stand­ing that they must be edu­cated and pre­pared to do a deal with a seller, a bank or both to access the full selec­tion of homes on the market.

To make smart deci­sions about what to offer and what toex­pect on any list­ing they like, buy­ers will need this infor­ma­tion and be will­ing to nego­ti­ate in good faith with patience as well as to set smart pri­or­i­ties and make real­is­tic com­par­isons between list­ings based on their per­sonal pri­or­i­ties around tim­ing, cer­tainty and seller flexibility.

We’ve all been “dope-slapped” by the dips in home val­ues. In Sara­sota, I have shown con­dos that, in ear­lier times, would have sold for more than $1 mil­lion, but today the ask­ing price is in the $400’s. In Engle­wood, water­fron­thomes once in the $500,000 range are sell­ing for under $250,000. Still, the “afford­abil­ity index” often dis­cussed by the econ­o­mists at the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors and the­Florida Asso­ci­a­tion of Real­tors is show­ing that buy­ing a home has never been cheaper.

The cost of bor­row­ing money is at an almost all-time low, the cost of pur­chas­ing fine hous­ing is also very low today — mean­ing that as the job num­bers finally cor­rect them­selves, the cost of hous­ing will likely increase dis­pro­por­tion­ately over the next 12 to 18 months. I can’t speak for the other areas of the coun­try that had the same bub­ble we had, and the same burst of their bub­ble — like Las Vegas — but I can speak for Florida, which I see as ready to return to a real estate dri­ven economy.

For years, buy­ers and sell­ers have been wait­ing for that sin­gu­lar event to occur that would cause a quick mar­ket recov­ery. Well, it ain’t gonna hap­pen. Amer­i­cans love instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion. We love to have our cake and eat it too. But the days of get­ting rich quick (legally) are over. Hard work, sac­ri­fice and good real­is­tic ideas equal get­ting rich slowly, and that’s the best we can hope for now.

You don’t make money in the real estate busi­ness when you sell your prop­erty. You make money when you buy. You can’t sell a prop­erty for more than it’s worth, so smart investors buy right, maybe 30 per­cent off the going rate, and then either wait for the mar­ket to grow, or make repairs and cos­met­ics to drive up the likely resale price.

Today the investors will look to acquire rentals that will return 150 per­cent of their monthly costs, and hold these homes as invest­ments. Flip­ping is so yes­ter­day. Ordi­nary cit­i­zens should relook at a refi or remodel and be con­tent where they are for the long haul, or decide their homes no longer fit their lifestyles and their finances, divest of them and move on.

But the good news is, peo­ple will make these deci­sions based on what is or is not sus­tain­able for their lives and their finances, and not based on inflated hopes about what the mar­ket will or will not do.

Dane Hahn is a real estate pro­fes­sional in Engle­wood, you­can con­tact him at 941−681−0312 or by email at dane.hahn@gmail.com.Or see him on the web at http://www.danesellsflorida.com.

Disbursement of escrow

Monday, January 2nd, 2012 by Mark Chapman

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

Real Estate

When the phone rang this week and caller ID said New York, I won­dered who might be call­ing. Turns out it was a gal from Long Island who had entered into a con­tract to have a house built near the (Don­ald) Trump Tow­ers over near Miami. She explained that they had con­tracted to have the house built in a pre-construction deal, and put down $100,000 in escrow as the down payment.

Here her story was a lit­tle sketchy, but in a nut-shell, here was her ques­tion: The con­tract was entered into and the delay to build the house was sup­posed to be about a year. Appar­ently the builder com­pleted the home in time as sched­uled. Some­thing hap­pened when the house was fin­ished and ready which caused them not to close. Although she had answers to most of my ques­tions, she did not seem to know why the builder had not returned her deposit. And, obvi­ously, she wanted to know how to go about get­ting the funds released from the builder’s escrow company.

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Online estimates miss the mark

Monday, December 26th, 2011 by Mark Chapman

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

Real Estate

Just the other day, at our com­pany Christ­mas Party, some of the con­ver­sa­tion turned to Zil­low. That’s the online auto­mated real estate site that esti­mates the value of nearly every house in America.

Right or wrong, mil­lions of con­sumers are clam­or­ing for their data since they pro­vide a no-obligation idea of what your house — and those of your neighbor’s up and down the street — might sell for. In a hous­ing mar­ket that’s been mostly a cause for gloom, so-called home-valuation tech­nol­ogy has become one of the few sources of excitement.

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Secret Santas

Monday, December 19th, 2011 by Mark Chapman

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

Real Estate

Secret San­tas are crop­ping up around the coun­try. These are peo­ple who, usu­ally anony­mously, give money as a Christ­mas gift where it was least expected. A lit­tle old lady tod­dles into a Wal­mart and pays off a dozen or so lay-away accounts, so the folks who were buy­ing a TV or some toys on time all of a sud­den find their final pay­ments have been made, and the goods are their’s. Wow, it’s Christmas!

Some find a way to slip a gold coin into a Sal­va­tion Army bucket, and, qui­etly, more good is done.

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Handkerchiefs

Saturday, December 10th, 2011 by Mark Chapman

Herb “Padre” Agee

By Herb “Padre” Agee

Engle­wood United Methodist Church

A friend called me today. She was on the way to a hos­pi­tal, to the bed­side of a beloved cousin and friend who, due to a car­diac arrest and resus­ci­ta­tion, was on a ven­ti­la­tor in an ICU. She needed to talk to me.

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