Yesterday I was working on the purchase of a home for a friend in Santa Cruz County, of all places. (I win the Elite Properties “Southernmost Adventure” award this year, I guess). While I was there, my cell phone showed that I’d gotten a call from Bridget Felmley, which I missed because I was in a bad reception area. Can you hear me now? I returned the call and got Bridget’s voice mail in turn, leaving the message that I’d called and I’m sure that whatever it was it was probably good news.

Sure enough, when we touched base today I learned that Bridget had sold another of her listings.

This may not be a big deal to people who don’t know how the market is doing, but as someone who watches it all the time for a living, I was impressed. Many of us who are doing well in this market are working with buyers and selling that 15% or so of the total inventory that sells every month — those homes that are the nicest and best priced. To be honest, this isn’t a great time to be a listing agent no matter how you slice it. But it’s even less of a great time if you’re not Bridget, because her listings are managing to sell.

I ran some quick numbers, and found that Bridget was working on her second listing this year. Not great, right? Well, Bridget would probably agree that she would have liked to do more, but here’s the thing. During the same period that Bridget sold two listings, the average agent in Amador County sold less than one. 0.625, to be exact. Another way to put that is this: In 2007 to date, Bridget Felmley sold three times as many listings in Amador County as the average Amador County real estate agent. Two’s pretty good when you consider that 449 hungry agents were competing for the privilege of selling 281 listings.

But hold on, it gets better. The average agent’s six tenths of a listing took 183 days to sell, on average. The average listing Bridget sold took 136 days, on average (the high was 152, and the low was 120). That means the sellers who used Bridget saved 47 days.

Now bear with me through just a few more statistics, and you’ll see why this is important. The average home sold during that period for $338,877. Let’s make an assumption that the sellers are financing and paying taxes on 50% of the value of their homes, on average, so that works out to about $169,500. We usually estimate carrying costs (Principle, Interest, Tax, and Insurance) at $8.50 per month per thousand borrowed, so if we round off forty-seven days worth of that, the average Amador County seller would have saved $2,257.00 in carrying costs — just by working with Bridget instead of another agent.

Moreover, keep in mind that we’re only talking about the financial carrying cost here. What’s it worth to you to close early and be able to get into that new home you had your heart set on instead of losing it and having to settle for less? Or maybe you’re not doing all that well financially — in that case, what’s it worth to you to get your home sold in time to possibly save your credit, instead of having late payments or maybe even a foreclosure on your record?

Amador County’s numbers for April are a study in contradiction.  Some of the numbers show us clearly in the midst of a clear buyer’s market, while others are little changed from last year.  Of course, maybe this is not that surprising, since we were in a buyer’s market last year as well.

Forty-three residential units sold in Amador County in April, down 10% from last year’s 48 units.  The average home sold for $347,489 in April, down less than 1 per cent from last year’s average of $349,883.  Sold price per square foot only dropped 3.7%, while the median price of $329,000 was only down 1.8% from last year’s median of $335,000.

So far so good, I suppose, but at the same time, the average time a home spent on the market before selling rose 41.7%, from 127 days last year, to 180 days on average this April.  Looking at average monthly sales of Amador County homes for the past year and comparing that to current inventory, we come up with a figure of 15.2 months of inventory.

Turning our attention to active listings, however, once again we do see some more encouraging signs.  First, the average home is listed at $205 per square foot, only about 2.5% over the average sold list price for April, and the average days on market for all active homes is only 116 days.

It seems to me lately that a lot of the discussion among the inhabitants of that distant place, the “real estate blogging community”, has been about the effort to try to normalize, document, and promote what they’re doing.

There are real estate blogging coaches now, with a really fuzzy and indistinct line between those who make a living heping real estate bloggers and those who just say they’re real estate blogging coaches. Meaning no disrespect to the blogging coaches who actually are pretty good and make their living at, I suppose that to the extent you tell someone that a capital letter goes at the beginning and a period at the end, or whatever you tell them, that makes you a coach.

Also noteworthy is a growing body of rules, which is quite a challenge for those of us who have to keep up with the daunting task of breaking them as soon as they come up. This paragraph is a case in point, since the first rule of real estate blogging fight club is that we deny the existence of rules governing real estate blogging fight club.

On the promotion front, you’ll be pleased to know that if your public has yet to be lured into the brilliant circle of light that shines through your prose, for a mere three hundred bucks you can get your head on the back of the blogobus, thereby letting your public know that you’re a new face of real estate and leading the way and so forth.

There’s probably no other profession in any species on any planet in the visible portion of the universe that loves vanity ads the way human Realtors® love our vanity ads.

“Look at me. My head’s on a bus.”

Don’t get me wrong, Sellsius. I admire your ability to get paid for this.

One thing I don’t get, though: Aren’t there two of you, and if so, are there two of you in one Sellsius, a sort of alchemical binary, or is there only really one Sellsius, and if so, which one gets the head that’s not his on the bus? I came in late.

What I Really Think About Poor People

I didn’t react skillfully to the beginning of the whole charity thread, days ago, before we knew anyone was going to get ahead on a bus.

The truth of the matter is I was bitter about my experience raising exactly zero dollars from the real estate blogging non-community for the winter blogathon, and getting blamed for it into the process. Also on some level, I couldn’t bear to look while it happened like deja vu all over again, with the punditocracy donning their callous indiference as though it were the fine silk of virtue. I didn’t have to wait long, either. It took about a minute, and came precisely from the expected direction, right on time, with all the annoying precision of an off-key song.

So for being a dope to Sellsius, I apologize. Twice if there’s two of you.

But seriously though, where’s my beach?

It’s the perfect opportunity to catch up on some of my Amador / El Dorado blogging today.  I’m out of the office, enjoying a perfectly outstanding coffee at It’s a Grind in Cameron Park.

I need to snap a photo of this place some time.  Or you should just come over here.  It’s here, plus or minus a couple of hundred feet.

This is probably the best coffee shop in El Dorado County, and here it is in my own home town.

How’s that for convenience? 

I must be living right.