All Real Estate is Local
Peeling back the national numbers and focusing on New Jersey specific statistics will give you a much better idea of what is going on in Ridgewood and surrounding areas. Below is a recent video and a statement issued by the New Jersey Association of Realtors.
Reacting to the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®‘ (NAR) 2010 Second Quarter Metro Home Prices/State Resales report, New Jersey Association of REALTORS® (NJAR®) Chief Executive Officer Jarrod C. Grasso, RCE, today issued the following statement:
“There is no denying the impact the federal home buyer tax credit has had on many local real estate markets. It provided an incentive for first-time purchasers to obtain the American dream of homeownership and, in turn, provided an outlet for sellers to trade up to the homes of their dreams. Many of the trade-up buyers were also able to receive a federal tax credit for their purchase.
“The effect that the stimulus had on New Jersey in particular can be seen directly by looking at the increase of sales activity during the second quarter of this year. Existing home sales in the Garden State increased 15.4 percent from the first quarter of 2010 to the second. They are 29.9 percent higher than the second quarter of last year. New Jersey home sales have also far outpaced the nation, which only showed a quarterly sales increase of 9.1 percent and a yearly increase of 17.3 percent.
“Each of New Jersey’s metro areas have seen year-over-year growth in median home price. This may be a sign of market stability. Even with the tax credit out of the equation, today’s buyers can experience record-low interest rates and affordable prices. However, these conditions will not last forever. Consumers will need to rely on the U.S. government and private businesses to create jobs to revive confidence, which should thus revitalize their confidence in the housing market.”
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What Clients Are Saying About Al Donohue…
Alicia Abdoo and Anthony Inzerillo – formerly of Richards Road, Ridgewood
“Let me just start by saying…the only realtor you should use to sell your house is Al Donohue. We want to take him with us to our new location so that when we sell there, he could be our agent. Now let me tell you why we think Al is unsurpassable as a seller’s agent.
Process: Al took us through the process of getting our home on the market – pricing, timing, marketing approach, preparation and staging with efficiency, professionalism, empathy and thoroughness beyond any realtor we have ever done business with. Al far exceeded our expectations and left no stone unturned.
Tools:Al applies technology to the greatest advantage of his clients. From his well designed websites, to his leveraging of wireless communications, to his Internet statistics which give you a real time update of how many people are looking at your home via his website. With Al’s use of technology nothing is overlooked and you get maximum exposure to the right buyer which is critical in the current market state.
Results: He sold our house in a “buyers” market in 3 days for well over asking price. The asking price he suggested and we agreed to was above what we originally thought the market would warrant but Al’s expertise and savvy educated us and proved to be right on target.
Al Donohue is everything his marketing literature advertises. He instills confidence, integrity, expertise, honesty and sold our house in a difficult market in what we considered record time. Thanks Al.
you certainly are living up to your name as a self-serving realtor. the data you are presenting is as of June 30. we all know the first-time homebuyer credit provided a false hope for clowns like yourself and EXPIRED ON JUNE 30. Why not extend your data to July? well my guess would be because you would rather mislead your clients…as we all know july existing home sales were down by 27% to a 15 YEAR LOW! Keep up the good work Al!
http://www.realtor.org/press_room/news_releases/2010/08/ehs_fall
LaLaLand – I love you man but it is getting harder and harder to bite my tongue. I don’t mind criticism if it is well founded – but yours is not. I also don’t mind attacks if I feel the attacker has a firm grasp of the subject matter – which you don’t. First off, in the article you cite the very first sentence says “…but home prices continued to gain, according to the National Association of Realtors®.” Home buyers and sellers do not care about the # of homes sold. They care if the value of their home is going up or down – and values are going up. You cite national statistics which have no bearing on local real estate. Also, pending home sales, which are a leading indicator, were much better than expected and that report came out only yesterday.
Calling me a clown is a bad idea. I am a nice guy but don’t push me. It is easy to make snide comments when you are anonymously posting on my blog but I highly doubt you would be saying this stuff if you were standing in front of me.
Let’s keep the dialogue going but ease up on the personal attacks.
Al,
Understood. Thanks for your patience. Apologies for my social ineptitude and for personal attacks which were not intended as such. Just trying to get to the truth and cut through the salesmanship of the business.
The reason prices were “up” is because transactions at the low-end were down more than the high-end in July due to the removal of the first-time tax credit paid for buy YOU and ME and hence a positive mix shift – hopefully you understand how a mix shift works. Apples-to-apples, i think most (all?) would agree bid v ask continues to very much favor the buyer despite ALL-TIME LOW interest rates. Why should the US government and rational US citizens continue to subsidize those that made stupid decisions?
Grim Housing Choice: Help Today’s Owners or Future Ones
By DAVID STREITFELD
Published: September 5, 2010
The unexpectedly deep plunge in home sales this summer is likely to force the Obama administration to choose between future homeowners and current ones, a predicament officials had been eager to avoid.
Over the last 18 months, the administration has rolled out just about every program it could think of to prop up the ailing housing market, using tax credits, mortgage modification programs, low interest rates, government-backed loans and other assistance intended to keep values up and delinquent borrowers out of foreclosure. The goal was to stabilize the market until a resurgent economy created new households that demanded places to live.
As the economy again sputters and potential buyers flee — July housing sales sank 26 percent from July 2009 — there is a growing sense of exhaustion with government intervention. Some economists and analysts are now urging a dose of shock therapy that would greatly shift the benefits to future homeowners: Let the housing market crash.
When prices are lower, these experts argue, buyers will pour in, creating the elusive stability the government has spent billions upon billions trying to achieve.
“Housing needs to go back to reasonable levels,” said Anthony B. Sanders, a professor of real estate finance at George Mason University. “If we keep trying to stimulate the market, that’s the definition of insanity.”
The further the market descends, however, the more miserable one group — important both politically and economically — will be: the tens of millions of homeowners who have already seen their home values drop an average of 30 percent.
The poorer these owners feel, the less likely they will indulge in the sort of consumer spending the economy needs to recover. If they see an identical house down the street going for half what they owe, the temptation to default might be irresistible. That could make the market’s current malaise seem minor.
Caught in the middle is an administration that gambled on a recovery that is not happening.
“The administration made a bet that a rising economy would solve the housing problem and now they are out of chips,” said Howard Glaser, a former Clinton administration housing official with close ties to policy makers in the administration. “They are deeply worried and don’t really know what to do.”
That was clear last week, when the secretary of housing and urban development, Shaun Donovan, appeared to side with current homeowners, telling CNN that the administration would “go everywhere we can” to make sure the slumping market recovers.
Mr. Donovan even opened the door to another housing tax credit like the one that expired last spring, which paid first-time buyers as much as $8,000 and buyers who were moving up $6,500. The cost to taxpayers was in the neighborhood of $30 billion, much of which went to people who would have bought anyway.
Administration press officers quickly backpedaled from Mr. Donovan’s comment, saying a revived credit was either highly unlikely or flat-out impossible. Mr. Donovan declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement, a White House spokeswoman responded to questions about possible new stimulus measures by pointing to those already in the works.
“In the weeks ahead, we will focus on successfully getting off the ground programs we have recently announced,” the spokeswoman, Amy Brundage, said.
Among those initiatives are $3 billion to keep the unemployed from losing their homes and a refinancing program that will try to cut the mortgage balances of owners who owe more than their property is worth. A previous program with similar goals had limited success.
If last year’s tax credit was supposed to be a bridge over a rough patch, it ended with a glimpse of the abyss. The average home now takes more than a year to sell. Add in the homes that are foreclosed but not yet for sale and the total is greater still.
Builders are in even worse shape. Sales of new homes are lower than they were in the depths of the recession of the early 1980s, when mortgage rates were double what they are now, unemployment was pervasive and the gloom was at least as thick.
The deteriorating circumstances have given a new voice to the “do nothing” chorus, whose members think the era of trying to buy stability while hoping the market will catch fire — called “extend and pretend” or “delay and pray” — has run its course.
“We have had enough artificial support and need to let the free market do its thing,” said the housing analyst Ivy Zelman.
Michael L. Moskowitz, president of Equity Now, a direct mortgage lender that operates in New York and five other states, also advocates letting the market fall. “Prices are still artificially high,” he said. “The government is discriminating against the renters who are able to buy at $200,000 but can’t at $250,000.”
A small decline in home prices might not make too much of a difference to a slack economy. But an unchecked drop of 10 percent or more might prove entirely discouraging to the millions of owners who are just hanging on, especially those who bought in the last few years under the impression that a turnaround had already begun.
The government is on the hook for many of these mortgages, another reason policy makers have been aggressively seeking stability. What helped support the market last year could now cause it to crumble.
Since 2006, the Federal Housing Administration has insured millions of low down payment loans. During the first two years, officials now concede, the credit quality of the borrowers was too low.
With little at stake and a queasy economy, buyers bailed: nearly 12 percent were delinquent after a year. Last fall, F.H.A. cash reserves fell below the Congressionally mandated minimum, and the agency had to shore up its finances.
Government-backed loans in 2009 went to buyers with higher credit scores. Yet the percentage of first-year defaults was still 5 percent, according to data compiled by the research firm CoreLogic.
“These are at-risk buyers,” said Sam Khater, a CoreLogic economist. “They have very little equity, and that’s the largest predictor of default.”
This is the risk policy makers face. “If home prices begin to fall again with any serious velocity, borrowers may stay away in such numbers that the market never recovers,” said Mr. Glaser, a consultant whose clients include the National Association of Realtors. “Then we’re back to Depression-era problems.”
Those sorts of worries have a few people from the world of finance suggesting that the administration should do much more, not less.
William H. Gross, managing director at Pimco, a giant manager of bond funds, has proposed the government refinance at lower rates millions of mortgages it owns or insures. Such a bold action, Mr. Gross said in a recent speech, would “provide a crucial stimulus of $50 to $60 billion in consumption, as well as a potential lift of 5 to 10 percent in terms of housing prices.”
The idea has gained little traction. Instead, there is a sense that, even with much more modest notions, government intervention is not the answer. The National Association of Realtors, the driving force behind the credit last year, is not calling for a new round of stimulus.
Some members of the National Association of Home Builders say a new credit of $25,000 would spark demand, but they realize their chances of getting this through Congress are nonexistent.
“Our members are saying that if we can’t get a very large tax credit — one that really brings people off the bench — why use our political capital at all?” said David Crowe, the chief economist for the home builders.
That might give the Obama administration permission to take the risk of doing nothing.
GOAAAASHHH!!! I couldn’t stop smiling !!
“every superwoman needs a superman…here I am ”