Perrysburg Blog

This site - www.usdebtclock.org.

In honor of the soon to be renewed and expanded taxpayer giveaway of money to MORE home buyers – shamelessly pushed by my own guild/trade group the National Association of Realtors . . . I urge you to go HERE.

Think about this when you vote on Tuesday.

When you think about what we are doing to our children and grandchildren.

Just think about it.

It is madness.

First of all, my best guess.

Second – if I was that smart, I would be on Wall Street (but – I had a job offer there, and turned it down, preferring to work for IBM right after grad school and then to own my own business . . . so, maybe not!).

Third – this is for single family residential.  Not commercial.

Caveats and Suppositions:

1. Prices will follow jobs, job growth, and real wages.  NONE of those look favorable in Perrysburg now.

2. Any current month or quarter price jump is, in my opinion for the rest of this year, heavily influenced by the Federal First Time Tax Credit.   And the hangover from this will be hard to bear in 2010 and 2011.

3. Inventories continue to be high – in spite of the almost total absence of new construction product in Perrysburg.

4. More and more new bank-owned properties are coming on the market in Perrysburg.  I had to go to 3 new REO’s that I am personally handling in Perrysburg in the past 7 days.  One agent, one week, one city.  I have close to 100 upcoming REO listings in Wood and Lucas Counties coming on-line.  This inventory is looming and will impact the market and its’ price situation.

5. Mortgage Positions.  Short sales, resets, renegotiations – they are huge variables in any price forecast.   More and more Perrysburg sellers are defaulting, or are starting out with a short sale position.

6. Actual Incentives to Default.   This is utterly unknown territory for me . . . and for the market.  Why pay when you not only owe more than your house is worth, but add in the non-recourse nature of residential mortgages and the declining job market – and it actually becomes the wise, prudent, smart thing to do for many homeowners.  By that I mean NOT pay your monthly mortgage.

Those are my caveats.

My forecast?  Here it is:

I am expecting a further 10% drop in values, generally across the board, in Perrysburg in 2010.

If your house is great – in great condition, on a great lot, with a great floor plan, with great decor, and it is priced right you may escape the 2010 decline in value.  But that is hard to do.  Hard – but not impossible.  Great houses are getting great offers.   Buyers want value but there is a segment of the market that always will pay for quality.

Americans, and Perrysburg owners and buyers need to change their mindset about a lot of things.  One of which is that your house is NOT guaranteed to go up in value every year.  Your house is NOT a component of your retirement plan.  Your house is NOT a piggy bank to borrow against to buy this years toys and vacations.

It is a place to live.  It is your home.   And if you treat it right and buy it right and mortgage it right, it will be a great home.

I reserve the right to change my Perrysburg Price Forecast if our wise leaders further raise taxes on businesses, extend the tax credit, or institute national health care.   Any or all of those actions will cause the economy more harm and lower prices and demand.

To drive down West River Road and look at the wonderful Fall colors.

Technically, the chemical composition of chlorophyll in each leaf is changing as they die and drop off.   But the result is a vivid explosion of reds, yellows, burnt umber, orange and more as the leaf dies after 8 months of growing.

You can extend your trip down State Route 65 all the way to Grand Rapids.  It’s not far.   (Note: the Grand Rapids downtown shopping/dining/etc. experience is not what it once was!)

There is one particular point where the trees over River Road become a tunnel of color.   With our Northwest Ohio topography and the lingering effects of the clear-cutting farmers from 100 years ago, it’s rare in this part of the country.  So you just have to drive to Willowbend and Carrington Woods to see the effect.

It’s worth a drive.

A new listing -- Bank Owned, no less, in Perrysburg.

Great condition, 4 car garage, off alley access/drive/parking.  233 East Indiana.  Drop me an email or a call for today’s price.

2009 is almost gone.

And it has gone fast – very cold Winter early in the year, great Spring weather, a perfect Summer, and the rapid change of seasons this Fall.   A big vote on Casinos.  First Solar expanding.  A new Junior High principal.   A busy, fast year in Perrysburg.

What advice for those buying in the last months of the year?  What do I think?

1.  Go the Opposite Way.

2. Laugh at Loan Mods.

3. Learn About Short Sales.

4. Make the Move and Compromise.

5. Heartbroken Tax Credit Sellers.

Details and Thoughts:

1. Go the Opposite Way.

Is everyone buying a house?  Buy a condo.  Is “everyone” buying old?  Find a newer house.    Soon the clock will roll back, the holiday season will start, and most buyers will leave until next year.  So – I would write an offer on Thanksgiving Day or the day before Christmas.  Because no one else will be buying then . . . .

2. Laugh at Loan Mods.

These creatures are hard to find in Perrysburg.  Most people that need them and want them don’t get them – they have paid all their bills on time for 20 years.  So – “no mod for you”!   They are not working even when they are working – so I predict that in 12 or so months, the loan modified houses will just be new REO for me to sell.

3.  Learn About Short Sales.

Seriously.  They are the most exciting part of the ENTIRE Perrysburg market right now – IF you know what you are doing and how to do it.  If I was a buyer . . . . well, let’s just say I would be prowling for a short-selling seller and a bankrupt bank.

4. Make the Move and Compromise.

Wow.  What are interest rates?  (Plug:  Want a weekly update of rates, one screaming hot listing, and some real estate market intelligence, just subscribe to my weekly Buyers Intelligence Update.  Email me to get on the list -jon@modene.com)  5%?  4%?  Outrageous.   30 year fixed money for a pittance.  I would NOT lose out on this, looking for a perfect house, and miss a 4.85% loan.  No way.  We are compromising my dear.   Pick a house.  Any house.

5. Heartbroken Tax Credit Sellers.

This program is ending 12/1/2009.  Some of these deals are going to go “Ka-Ching” and close.  Some are going to go “Ploink” and bust out.   And some of those sellers are going to be super-motivated to sell and may be willing to lower their prices even more in the face of a shrunken, post-incentive buyer pool.

“Thems” the sellers I would want to buy from in December . . . .

Remember – simply go to www.OnlyPerrysburg.com for a list of all houses for sale right now in Perryburg!

There has NEVER been more real estate information available on-line.

Never.

At the government level there are excellent auditor sites for Lucas County and Wood County.

It seems that just about every broker, agent, and even fly-by-night real estate company has a property website.

In fact, there are so many “IDX Sites” that pump a stream of data out from the local Toledo Board of REALTORS MLS database that the local MLS does not even know how many there are extant.

Add to this listing aggregators, listing scrapers, and stealth sites – and the world is awash in property listing sites.

Some of these sites are easier to navigate in, or have more bells and whistles.  But in my opinion what matters is . . . . how accurate is the data?

Any site that has SOME of the listings on it is flawed and really, in the final run, worthless.

Sites that have ALL of the listings from last week – mainly worthless.

Buyers want ALL the listings ALL the time – and they are smart enough to figure out, eventually, where that happens.

Alexa ranks the major websites.  You can read the current top 20 or so here.

Two things to look for if you are interested in getting maximum exposure for your house or your search:

1.  Nobody beats www.Realtor.com   No one.  They are the number one most visited site.  But what does NOT show up on that ranking is that transferees from other cities use it.  Almost all of the corporate relo people that are leaving Toledo . . . are looking on Realtor.com.  And most of the incoming transferees have relied on it.   (By the way, RE/MAX Master’s listings come up FIRST on any search on Realtor.com . . . with more pictures, more information, and primo position.  That’s how much I believe in the power of Realtor.com)

2.  RE/MAX has a pretty decent site.  It was ranked #5 when I wrote this, throw out the commercial focused Loop.net and it’s number 4.   Why so high?   About 3 years ago RE/MAX started changing all of its’ advertising.  All adds are now about RE/MAX.com and not about the company.

You can look here – http://workingforyou.remax.com/ – for a pretty neat site that shows real time searches around the country for buyers looking at RE/MAX.com.

Our corporate site was the first “National MLS” with every city and board represented.   Apparently a lot of people use it.

My own marketing and “from the field reporting” tells me that photos, virtual tours, videos, and more photos are what people want and expect.

It’s also interesting to see the details of how other people live when they are listed for sale on Realtor.com  You can look at Cleveland Browns QB Brady Quinn’s house on line on Realtor.com Apparently he is planning on moving!

What do you think?

Gratuitous in that it is totally unneeded.  You felt that when you left your house today – COLD.

Winter is coming on.

This past week – in Perrysburg.  Right here.  Right now.

Did you notice that?   80 degree weather and not then – BLAM – cold and Autumn.

No warning but the position of the sun and the calender -  well, I guess that is some warning.

But – from a real estate point of view, denizens of Northwest Ohio cannot just flip the calender and go from Summer to Winter.

You have to prepare – at least if you are a good steward of what you own.

From a real estate perspective that means changing the vents on your crawl,  checking and securing your gutters and downspouts,  bringing in the hoses and any water-scaping pumps, and generally checking everything that should be sealed to make sure that it is.

For my corporate owned houses we are busy getting plumbers to winterize the plumbing systems and arranging for snow removal service.

At my house we also had to buy some straw for our barn cat, Mr. Hobbs.  And we had to start listening to his plaintive pleas to come inside – but he can’t.  I have a terrible cat allergy.

This – a horrible and cold Winter – is fast approaching.

The mouse is not running up the clock.

No, the clock is running out on the Grand 2009 Housing Gold Rush Tax Credit.

Think about it – you are going to be GIFTED up to $8000 dollars US currency for buying a house you were going to most likely buy anyway.

Amazing.

For whatever reasons they have chosen – Big Government has decided to intervene on the street, at the place you live, with intimate precision in your wallet.

Because $8000 is a lot of incentive.

No whether you are a libertarian free-market capitalist or not – you will still take the money if it is offered to you.   I would.  Some 100 year quote from Justice Leorned Hand echoes in my mind . . . . .

So – take the money and run.

No one will think the less about you – forget that the USA is broke.   That we don’t really have $8000 to give you.   We will print it.  Or we will borrow it from China.  And your children can pay it back someday (with interest).

But the stock of under $200,000 homes and the number of days you have to close are finite.

So buy now – and let our leaders who authored this program worry about the consequences!