Hood River Real Estate and Columbia Gorge Real Estate

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Overall this month has seen a good uptick in volume, but a decrease in prices. How’s that you say?

Cash. Cash cash cash……I’ve never seen so many all cash buyers in this market. Cash being King however, means something else…….discounts. And how.

Lots of discounted offers, and lots of deal making and negotiating. How these impact comparable sales can be devastating. Look for troubling signs out in Fox Hollow, and Country club, as appraisers attempt to swallow recent sales that are 20, and 30% below the asking prices. Other markets are marking to more traditional prices as sellers finally come back to earth in Hood River.

As prices grind lower, however, more and more buyers are showing up. The first wave and,  (in my opinion) the best deals have come and gone. If this does prove to be a bottom, July and August will be the floor. Remember about a year ago when I was talking about toxic events? I think I can say that barring another toxic event, the structural instability in residential is all priced in at this point. It’s only the bleeding that’s caused by long term unemployment that’s left, and that tends to come out slowly, and over time.

I hear in Florida, Nevada and California, there’s booming business in “foreclosure tours” but not here. Here, each deal is a one off, each motivation, unique. Neighbor to neighbor, house to house, block by block and marriage by marriage, it’s all playing out on a very small, and very personal scale. This is the downside of hyper-local.

As for mortgages…….Not too many troubles on the HERA adjustments, but I’m certain we’ll see some stuff here soon. Key factor to avoiding those issues, is don’t renegotiate the contract after appraisal has been ordered, make sure you intend on closing the deal with the mortgage broker you start the process with, and allow about 4-5 days ahead of closing to begin escrow……….

September is loading up, Hoping October will be strong as well. It’s been a long spring and Summer in Hood River Real Estate, see you out here soon!

There has been a decent pick up in the sale of Hood River Real Estate. Our local trends are mirroring that apparent feeling that we are bottoming out, the same as the sentiment found elsewhere. That does bring into question, was the Northwest in synch with the rest of the country, but less impacted? or are we lagging the rest of the country? (Some estimates are by two years! Boy, I’d hate it if that were true)

It’s becomming clear to me that we are in synch with the rest of the country, and are experienceing some bottoming, but we are by no means out of this, anytime soon. I’ve been commenting to clients that there are so few markers of where we are at, that I’ve fallen back to intuition. I’ve been trying to determine how I feel about this market, and then map that feeling back to a point in previous cycles I’ve experienced. From my experience, I think we are halfway. We’ve got another long year ahead of us before things start to improve. I’ve always been a fan of the best inventory coming at the front end of a recovery, and the best deals are at the back….so we’ll see.

I’ve been pondering how “value” is measured in the market at the moment as well. I was reminded of a certain client a few years back, who bought a property because of the square footage. The house was quite plain, and so people didn’t buy it because of it’s perceive plain-ness. Over the ensuing couple of years, he managed to solve all of the perceived problems of the house, and was able to extract some great value.

These days, it really appears that “quirkiness” properties that have great attributes, are not being valued correctly. A bunch of years ago I used to write about the “quality penalty” where if your home wasn’t *exactly* right, you were penalized ruthlessly on value. Now, I’m seeing that this cycle is a bit oversold. Really interesting properties with pretty small “quirks” (OK, and some not so small) are practically being ignored. I think there are some values there.

Price reductions have caught fire. You’d figure about August it would really start up, and I think a bunch of people have jumped the gun and are marking down. The markdowns are significant, and I think they will help. They have ripped apart a deal or two though.

Actually closing a deal however, continues to be challenging, but everyone is going to have to change, or go away. It used to be that my number one question from clients was “when will the loan documents be here?” now its “Did I get my Loan?”

The HVCC (Please see my Prior post) has caused some headaches and delays, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. Even the new restrictions on disclosures, the HERA disclosure and cooling off adjustments (Please see that post) are just shifting the structure of deals. I’m pretty happy about that. Managing a transaction for the largest asset you’ll ever (well, most of us, anyway) own, should be handled by people who handle negotiating, networking in real time, counseling skills. people who are expert at communicating across distance in real time. (That usually means having e-mail on your phone, at a minumum) There used to be an old tip in Real Estate, something about looking at a person’s shoes to indicate how much money they have (seriously) These days, there’s a cell phone version of that. If your realtor doesn’t have a phone that accepts e-mails and doesn’t text. Drop ‘em.

That’s it for this month, I’ll try to post more frequently than once a month from here on out……probably a good idea, given the shifting landscape.

Social media is quite the darling thing these days isn’t it? Has anyone figured out how to use it for Real Estate effectively? (Check out the Video)

Sure, in some big cities, I even saw a guy in vancouver who has a facebook page and all his clients fanned him…..yeah, like that will work out here.

How should social media platforms work out here in Real Estate? Here’s what I’ve been working on, and so far, it seems to be working ok for me……

1. Don’t use FB for Business, especially Real Estate business! It just doesn’t work. Far better is linked in.
2. I’ve been using twitter personally, (mauim) and I just started to real estate tweet. (copperwesthr) I can see some great use there, but I’ve not revved it up yet.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten……Social media seems like a great tool for this marketplace, it’s just how it’s deployed that matters. What really matters, though, is that going forward, you have to be conversant with Social Media platforms and networking to be effective in this day and age. A simple cell phone isn’t going to cut it anymore.
Stay Tuned!