I hope this update finds you enjoying the holiday season with your family and friends. It's so nice to take a break and focus on what means the most to us.
Amidst the festivities of last week, there was still activity in the College Park market with 4 homes going under contract and 8 closed sales. The lowest sales last week were all bank owned properties, including a Lake Fairview condo selling for $17,701! The banks are really pricing their inventory to sell quickly and are "dumping" them at ridiculously low prices. If you are in the position to pick up some investment property, now is the time to jump on these deals. There are many investors out there ready to pounce, but if you go about it the right way you can take advantage of this opportunity to build your portfolio.
Here are the recent sales in College Park:
SS = Short Sale BO = Bank Owned
It's been an interesting couple of weeks in the real estate market. I've seen both some positive changes and some not-so-much.
You can certainly find many opinions floating out there about the future of real estate, but the truth is until people find jobs and businesses start to flourish, things are going to be crummy for a bit longer. I've read predictions for next year that between 4 million (Realty Trac) and 4.6 million (Moody's) foreclosures will be filed in 2010. Another challenge for 2010 is that mortgage guidelines are tightening. Fannie Mae just lowered the Debt-to-Income Ratio to 45% which means buyers will have to lower their expectations on how much house they can afford. FHA is expected to follow suit next month. This could also be viewed as a positive, however, ensuring that borrowers won't get in over their heads.
So what about College Park? You know, I've seen a lot of positive movement in our neighborhood in the past couple of weeks. More high end buyers are entering our market than we've seen in a very long time. There has been activity in the 500K and 800K ranges. There was a house that sold over one million last week and another just went pending. Good stuff! We're still hovering at 253 available properties and 56 pendings.
Rates remain under 5% on average, however, they rose last week to 4.94% on a 30 year and 4.38% on a 15 year mortgage.
Here are the recent sales in College Park:
SS = Short Sale BO = Bank Owned
Wow! Rates have fallen below the current record set back in April, averaging 4.71% last week on a 30 year mortgage. This is great news for folks looking to buy right now, however, if you're thinking of refinancing it might be tricky. If you don't have a ton of equity it might prove to be difficult as you can only borrow 80% of your home's value. We are seeing appraisals coming in significantly lower than most home owner's expectations on refinance loans.
Get ready to see a new wave of short sales coming onto the market in the higher-end bracket. I'll keep you posted.
Here are the recent sales in College Park:
SS = Short Sale BO = Bank Owned
