Archive for June, 2008

Houssee.com Real Estate Award #2

Posted by John Lockwood on 13th June 2008

The Houssee Award is an award for the best real estate content every week. As much as possible, we try to pick the awards from the stories that received the most natural votes and comments from other Houssee.com users during the week (though sometimes in the case of ties or categories with no votes, we have to punt and the host has to pick a winner).

Congratulations to everyone who won and thank you to everyone who participated! Winners, feel free to pick out a shirt in your size — wear it proudly under your gold Century 21 jacket.

The top vote-getter this week in the General category was Brian Block’s amusing video of the Desperate Realtor®. Some of you may not know whether to laugh or cry when you see this one. I was reminded of the two agents who knew one another back in the bad old days of 14% interest rates. One of them came in grinning from ear to ear one day, and the other one asked why he was so happy.

"I had two sales this week!", said the happy one.

"Really, that’s great", said his jealous colleague.

"That’s right", said the first, "my television and my car."

The Market Updates category was an eight-way tie, so we’ll single out two for special because they went beyond the usual recital of data (which is admittedly a staple of my own blog). Michael Saunders’ Sarasota Real Estate Market Perks Up (with the catchy subtitle "Looking Down From Where We Used To Look Up From"), chronicles the Sarasota details behind a phenomenon that’s happing in many areas — as prices have fallen, unit sales have started to pick up. Another winner in this category was the short but sweet look at how a single strong employer will help stimulate her local market in Christina Asad Edwards’ Economy Booster.

Hey investment writers — no new posts this week. Could you have won easily? You bet.

Melina Thompson’s I Think I’ll Wait for the Half Off Sale takes top honors in the Real Estate Marketing category. Buy one house get one free? Why not!

Listing Announcements — the category you didn’t vote for — was tied between a lot of listings, but since this week’s entries were all featured courtesy of Bill Gassett’s Blog, we’ll declare the blog the winner this week and let you go over there and check them out. Hey look: Bill plugged Houssee, too. I just saw that while linking over. Thanks, Bill!

The vote winner in the Mortgage category was Peter Thompson for his article FHA Is the New Conventional. Although on the one hand Pete shows how FHA ended up filling the gap formerly served by conventional financing (instead of sub-prime as predicted), this article is also an excellent overview of many of the feature differences between FHA and conventional financing.

In the About Houssee / Winner’s category, you voted most for Houssee.com Passes 100 User Mark (And Other Updates).

Who will win a Houssee next week? It’s up to you to let us know by submitting and voting for your favorite real estate articles. Remember, Houssee winners are as much as possible based on natural votes, so please be aware of our spam policy, but other than that, come on by and dive in!

Are you interested in hosting a Houssee award on your blog? If so, stay tuned to our Houssee Blog, where we’ll have instructions coming soon.

El Dorado County Real Estate Market Update

Posted by John Lockwood on 11th June 2008

Over on my Sacramento Blog, I’ve been discussing how Sacramento County real estate sales are starting to heat up in a big way, fueled by high foreclosure rates and huge year-on-year price reductions. I believe that we’ll see prices start to improve in Sacramento County as early as next year, as fewer option ARM resets hit the books (though depending on how you slice and dice those numbers, that may be an overly optimistic assessment).

In El Dorado County, the story is a different one in several respects:

The overall cost of homes is higher.
There are fewer foreclosures and short sales available, though still many more in this market than in previous years.
The Year on Year price reductions have been large enough to hurt, but still not as dramatic as Sacramento County.
Because of the factors above, fewer first time buyers are entering the market and competing for homes.

The upshot is that while Sacramento County’s unit volume has soared 64.2% from May to May, in El Dorado County unit volume went down slightly, from 151 units in May of 2007 to 146 units in May of 2006.

This May’s average home sold for $429,434 in El Dorado County, down 20.3% from last May’s average of $538,590. The median price has fallen 20% during the same period, from $488,000 to $390,500. Sold price per square foot dropped 21.4%, from $242.61 in May of 2007 to $190.77 in May of 2008.

This year short sales and bank foreclosures made up 35.6% of the total sales, compared to 13.2% last year. Short sales accounted for 7.5% of the total, and REOs made up 28.1%. There are currently 12.4 months of inventory in El Dorado County. The expired to sold ratio is up slightly this year — at 54.1% compared to 48% last year. The average discount from list price for a sold home was 3.6%, compared to 4% last year.

2701 Sandhurst Drive, Cameron Park, CA

Posted by John Lockwood on 5th June 2008

Vicki Agregado-Babcock just listed this beautiful home in her own neighborhood of Deertrail Estates. I had the pleasure of touring this home and taking pictures earlier this week, and this is one of the best we’ve seen in some time.

2701 Sandhurst Drive, Cameron Park, CA

Location: Deertrail Estates

Wanted: bright, open floor plan. Competitively priced, yet not a short sale or foreclosure. Immaculately remodeled within the last few years. A big, shady, corner lot with a big back yard. All this in a fantastic location with great schools. Stop looking, we found it for you, and it would be an honor to show it to you. Or call your agent and get her to show you this before it’s gone.

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