The Anna Maria Island Sun Newspaper


Vol. 17 No. 31 - May 17, 2017

REAL ESTATE

Timing the real estate market

 

Is it a good time to buy or is it a bad time to buy? Will my home appreciate in value over the next t10 years or will I sustain a loss? Which neighborhood or city will make me the most profit on my home? These and other home purchasing questions are the most common that buyers have, especially first time buyers, who are inherently nervous. The problem is no one can really answer these questions, and no one should, based on what happened 10 years ago.

Someone recently asked me how can I tell what the trend is in the area I'm interested in. Real estate asking prices will give you a pretty good idea of what the market values look like in your area, but it won't tell you what the appreciation or depreciation rate is from month to month or year to year. But there are a couple of websites available that could help.

First of all, most municipalities in the country have public websites organized within their property tax or property assessor's area of the county you're researching. You can usually sort by sales date and narrow it to subdivision or even street.

For example, here in Manatee County you could ask for all sales from Jan. 1, 2017, to the current date and also narrow the search to a specific subdivision or homeowner association. Once you have this information, just go back within the individual sales to the previous one, and based on the year and the sale price, you can determine the rate of appreciation.

However, what's a lot easier is to go to the local board of realtors' website which publishes sales within their multiple listing service. It's been my experience that this information is updated every month and will give you the average sale prices, rate of appreciation, number of sales and more. I can't guarantee that every board of realtors nationwide is making this information available, but it is the current trend.

On the national level, the housing market is red hot, being pushed up because of a lack of new construction and the lack of available listings with bidding wars not uncommon. The supply of homes for sale in March nationally was down 6.6 percent from a year earlier according to the National Association of Realtors. Certainly, in Manatee County, we are experiencing a similar environment with just over a four-month's supply of homes available for sale.

There are some overheated markets that are headed for a bubble, but at this point, they are confined to cities like San Francisco and Denver. San Francisco is up 97.8 percent from its low point, and Denver is up 59.3 percent from its low. That said, there are few signs of an imminent housing bust that would lead to major national declines in home prices per the economists. With stricter mortgage regulations and larger down payments, home buyers have more invested in their purchase than during the days of easy credit and sometimes zero down payment mortgages.

Economists generally expect prices to continue to go up in most markets for a few more years, assuming the economy keeps expanding. However, the overheated markets could wake up one day and find their market has cooled way down.

Trying to time the real estate market is like trying to time the stock market. There are so many moving parts that any one of them to change the marketplace in a heartbeat. But remember, buying a home is not like buying stock. It's a place you and your family will live in, make memories and, with a little bit of luck, accumulate some appreciation to move on.


AMISUN ~ The Island's Award-Winning Newspaper