Austin Living

Determining the right time and right price at which to have your home enter the market is always important.  If you’re considering selling your home and you have a pool, timing can be downright critical.  Landscaping features like pools, fountains, ponds, winding rivers, are wonderful, but can be impacted by seasonal influences.  Let’s say it’s December and we are shopping for a home.  When we look at a home that has a pool covered up in the backyard, leaves strewn about, we tend to miss the “glistening oasis” effect that we’d get in the summer, right? Additionally, we tend to think more about things like maintenance, how many months of non-use would we have, what about risks?  Likewise, if it’s Summer, the winter-lodge ski vacation theme in your guest room with flannel bedding isn’t going to evoke “warm fuzzies”  like it would in winter months. 

Bottom line: Buyers react to home features differently based on the seasons.  Plan your timing accordingly and price accurately for the amenities, demographics, and timeline you have available.

  Sometimes we stumble across a web site with information that’s too great not to share.  Such was the case when I found the following web site that contains everything I ever wanted to know about the roof of my home. The roof is such a vital part of our home and carries the potential for great disaster if ignored.  Yet it is something so easy to overlook when thinking about regular care and maintenance.  As homeowners, it is our responsibility to be as informed as possible about this significant investment in our properties. 

US Inspect, a nation-wide inspection company, has published an informative site with resources you might find valuable.  I have printed out several of the pages that promise to be valuable assets to my collection of “Home Documents.”   Click on http://www.usinspect.com/Roof/roof.asp for more.

There are times in everyones’ lives when one needs a break.  Just a pure, no excuses, sabbatical from our professional lives - one in which breaths are taken, perspectives are gained, and energy resurges to carry one forward.  This is where I’ve been…on a blog break. 

  I hope your holidays went well and that you find yourselves, your homes, and your lives safe, warm, sheltered, and full with the knowledge that Spring is just around the corner and that soon flip-flops will return as the “season’s shoe of choice”!

Meanwhile, the real estate market continues to take interesting turns.  The Feds’ economists are busy trying to calculate just the right move to stimulate the economy.  There are strange little pockets of the nation, however, who continue to mystify the critics.  Austin leads the pack of the unexpected - hooray!  And, now, I think people are finally starting to believe it.  Well, it only took 8 months of convincing - not too bad.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, the mythology one hears about the real estate market activity during the holiday season.  “Nothing moves.”  “The holiday lull.”  Well, if you’re active in the Austin market right now, you know that this couldn’t be further from the truth. 

Thus far, November is shaping up to be a more active month than either September or October.  There is speculation on why this is, but I think the simplest explanation is best:  We’re experiencing recovery from the mortgage industry chaos of August/September and we have enough inventory on the market to keep buyers interested. 

For buyers, there are definitely some deals out there.  For sellers, buyers are reliably active, if still a little cautious.  Generally, we’re seeing some allowances offered by sellers to entice buyers to their properties, but I don’t think this should be given too much emphasis.  We see this kind of movement as a response to higher inventory levels and longer sell times.  Alarm bells are NOT sounding for us.  So, hang tight, do your research, and test your flexibility.  Agile plays will be the keys to success in our current market.

The mailbox, in my opinion, has been a long-under-valued accessory to the home’s curb appeal.  No one writes in MLS remarks or flyer descriptions “charming mailbox!”.  But we should!  The mailbox, in neighborhoods where they’re either attached to the house or set at the curb, provide the first glimpse at the home’s character.  Sometimes the feeling is “kitsch”, sometimes it’s “sleek”. 

In my neighborhood, a part of Austin developed in the 1970’s, our mailboxes are encased on limestone towers and positioned at the curb next to our front walkways.  Some of us have planters with periwinkle plumbago growing or a nice jasmine vine crawling up and around it.  Either way, the condition and appearance of the mailbox sets the tone for the home as you park your car and step onto the sidewalk. 

For mailboxes attached to the house as mine was in Northern Virginia, it provided that “period-vintage accessory” to my 1950’s split level home.  Again, if the mailbox were in good condition or fashionably aged or patina’d, it gave the home a guest’s first feel for what was on the inside. 

In our current years of modern and green home design, we’re seeing art deco numbers and stylized mailboxes in a brushed nickel finish don the outdoors of the homes.  This is the integration of a simple elegance offered by this design style with the functional-utility orientation of the green/modern movement. 

Long story short, mailboxes and house numbers are truly the harbingers of the style of a home and for those interested in sprucing up their curb appeal, there’s no better place to start.  From personal experience, it’s an oddly satisfying update that will pay off immediately whether you’re preparing to sell, trying to impress the neighbors, or just getting ready to welcome family and friends to your home for the holidays.  Your postman will even thank you!

I know many investors are sitting on the sidelines, and it’s not because it’s the season of Fall Sports.  It’s because they’re growing ancy, worried, and downright cautious.  In Austin, this is frustrating many to many sellers who were hoping for investor buyouts or flippers who were taking their chances on Texas’ solid market. Well, hold onto your hats….we’re simply huddling on the field planning our next play.  It’s true, the market is proving that players can’t always play the odds and win, but if there’s one thing we know, thanks to the slogan for the Texas Lottery, “You can’t win if you don’t play.” 

Even in today’s market it’s wise to stay in the game.  Why?  Because if you don’t…if you step outside the lines and just watch, your perspective will change.  Your edge may dissipate, and your fire-eating tolerance may start to wane.  Investing requires a mindset of persistence - just as in football, boxing, music or dance - one’s strategy, technique, and assets don’t improve while resting.  They improve through work, patience, attentiveness, and forethought. 

My advice?  Grab a bucket of popcorn and pull up your favorite real estate search engine but only once you know your numbers

The past few mornings I’ve ventured out before sunrise to find that my flipflops are just not sufficient to ward off the seasonal chill that has decended on Austin.  It’s definitely Autumn and that traditionally means a change of markets.  This year feels a little different and analysts from coast to coast are busy commenting on what it means, where we’ve been, and what’s to come.  From my perspective, this market in Austin is just what we would expect to see at this time of year.  We have a little more inventory than normal, yes, but we had fewer sales this summer which accounts for this increase.  It isn’t enough of a shift, though, to put us into a real “buyer’s market”.  In fact, we’re really in a balanced market.  The frenzy we’ve experienced in the past few years has become our basis of comparison. Now is simply a time to readjust our perspective on reality.  It’s time to start talking about what we used to talk about in neutral markets - - buying and selling homes based on carefully thought-out needs and wants.  I propose we are, in Austin, not experiencing too much out of the ordinary for a seasonal slow this Halloween week.  So…don’t be spooked, just ring the doorbell and say, … you know the drill. 

So, I broke down this year and decorated my house for halloween.  I’ve decorated inside before but this year I tried to pose a tasteful, but fun decor around my front doorway.  I placed pumpkins piled casually on the front porch step, a single strand of bats that light up purple and two swashes of faux spiderwebs.  Too minimalist?  I’m not sure.  I just know, I like the look of tasteful decorations and I struggle to find things to hang, cover, pile, connect, and position just so…..so as to say, “We care and are aware that it’s a holiday,” but not so much that it screams - “I let my pre-teen children decorate my front yard hanging ghoulish items from the trees, skulls with red eyes on the mailbox, and pumpkins with questionable things carved into their flesh - - all in celebration of this crazy, but fun holiday”.  See my predicament?  It’s easy to go overboard - - very easy!

Hope you’ve found a great way to express your family’s Halloween spirit.  I’d love to see pictures!

Everyone, I’m certain, has heard someone say… “Real Estate is seasonal!  Sell in the Spring & Summer - that’s when buyers are buying!”  Well, I’m here to tell you…that people buy year-round.  Yes, there are spikes of activity during the Spring and Summer months.  Why?  Our psyches. 

Truly. There’s something about us as human beings that we start preparing our nests in the Fall as the days grow shorter and the nights colder. We tend to focus on our homes, preparing them for the holidays, guests, and family; we entertain.  Then come January 2nd….something happens.  We return to work after the crazy holidays, we count our blessings that we survived the deluge of family, friends, shopping, returns, thank-yous, and house-cleaning-required-festivities….AND….suddenly we think, “What on earth was I thinking this year!  Our house isn’t big enough for all that mess’o'people!”  And the next thing we know, we’re shopping for a new home. 

Okay, perhaps I’m exaggerating a little here, but I don’t think we’re too far off track.  There is something psychologically and socially driving our actions and, in the U.S. at least, this has set forth patterns of real estate activity, upon which we now base our beliefs about the market.  (For a mini-pun…) The Real-ity, though, is that at every hour of every day of every year - there are people who need to sell their home and people who need to find a home. This means, if you’re selling - you need to simply follow the best rules of real estate: Price it well and appropriately for your market, expose your home to the right buyers, and start packing.  And for buyers, this means that, while inventory levels vary by month, there is quite likely the “perfect home” out there…it’s just a matter of perseverence and having great resources to help you find it!

Thoughts, anyone?

I’ve had lots of questions this week about timing.  When should I put my house on the market?  Should I wait until Spring?  When should I start looking seriously for a home to buy if I want to move in the Spring?  These are great questions and the answers now are different than they have been in the past.  

Work the dates backwords…Let’s say your goal is to move into a new home in April’08.  On average, you need 30 days to close on the purchase of your new home once your offer is accepted.  It takes buyers an average of 30-45 days to find a home they want to buy.  In today’s market, having a pre-qualification letter from your lender is paramount.  Many sellers will not even entertain offers from buyers without this letter.  It is also advisable to be able to submit a condition-free offer.  This means that when you write an offer to buy a home you don’t write it so that you “must sell your current home” in order for the deal to go through.  Yet, most of us will need to sell our current home before buying a new home - otherwise we could potentially have two mortgage payments (yikes!). 

This means your home needs to be on the market when you start to shop seriously for a home to buy.  Depending on your local market, the average days on market may be 60.  This means you should expect to have your home on the market for 2 months before receiving an offer.  Take this time into consideration.  You also need to talk with your Real Estate professional about how to price your home to make sure it sells by the time you are ready to buy.  That way the closing of your current home can be scheduled to work out in accordance with the closing of your new home.  See - timing is everything! 

So, let’s recap.  You want to move in April’08. You need to sell your current home before purchasing a new one.  30 days to close on each.  30-45 days to find a home you want to buy.  Average days on market (DOM) in your area is 60.  This means you need to look at listing your current home in January’08 and start seriously shopping for a new home mid-January/early-February. 

Now the question becomes… “Should I really list my current home in January?  Isn’t the market slow at that time of the year?”

Let’s address this question tomorrow.