“Clean it up”

“Pick up your mess”

Well . . . if you have children you know the lingo.  But you have to keep your house neat in order to do a great job and keep every visitor happy.

So . . . while I am at a real estate technology mastermind group it seems like a good time to tell you that the blog you are reading is now fully enabled and cleaned up for your use on your mobile device.

Real estate web stats are growing almost exponentially for mobile devices vs. old fashioned desktop devices.

And the odds are that you are/will be viewing my site on a mobile device – so it now looks different and works better on your iPad or iPhone or Android device.

13.

That’s how many new build houses are on the MLS as I write this.

13.

In a city/township of almost 50,ooo people.

That’s. Not. Many.

13.

The new construction market has imploded.  Died.  The builders are gone.  Busted.  The developers are gone.  Broke.   The few homes on the market are by very specialized and savvy niche builders.

And they tend more towards building for contract rather than speculation.

Want a new home?  You are going to have to sign a contract and have your financing in place.  That’s how it works in 2012.

(By way of the old memory bank . . . it worked this way in 2005 – we would get in a car and show you 25 houses in various stages of completion in Perrysburg and if you didn’t like any of them we would have one build just for you . . . )

How bad was it nationwide?  National TOTAL new construction sales fell 2.2% from last month to a rate of 307,000 annualized.  The total in 2010 was 323,000, the lowest amount since record keeping began in 1963.

That’s the dead cat thud.

There is now nowhere to go but up . . . right?

Builders have to be very careful . . . but there is no competition if you have a spec or can build on a contract.

Buyers?  Better be ready to rent while you build!

It’s always good to end on a high note.

Here is a table of SOLD prices in Perrysburg, looking back 2 full years.

Even if it’s not that high.

Prices in Perrysburg for single family home sales were technically down in December 2011 vs. 2010.  But the average price was higher.

Seasonality has fully returned . . . which means lower closing numbers are in store for January, February, and March.

What about the price trends for what sellers are asking and buyers are writing accepted offers on?

Glad you asked!

Here’s your pretty chart (just click on it to read it in normal size . . . )

Remarkably steady and constant if you factor our the seasonality effects . . . Still not a normal market in Perrysburg . . . but we are getting healthier!

I wrote an offer or two this week.  On Perrysburg properties.  Being sought after by investors.

It’s common.

And it’s getting to be more common.

Think about where you can invest your money:

1. Stocks.   Maybe smart.  Maybe painful.  Check out the history of FSLR, my favorite stock, and hold on.

2. Bonds.  The returns are not much though.  In fact, this week, large investors were willing to PAY money to invest in German government securities.  Imagine that strategy taken out enough years  – you will have NO money with a long enough investment.

3. Cash.

4. Gold.

5. Other investments.

6. Real estate.

I had to list a house in Toledo today – $12,000 or so.  My firm last sold it for $70,000.   Now there are some terrible facts and realities associated with such a market crash.

Ignore all of them.

Instead imagine you bought the house for $12,000.

What could you do with it?  What kind of rental income could you get? What is the upside?  What tools and skills would you need to make it into a great rental property?

Again – people are seeking out real property in this collapsed, depressed market.  To invest in.

Inventory is down by over 20%

Interest rates are at all time lows.

Rents are up and rising.

And multiple offers are hitting on good houses.

And I think fortunes may be made right now . . . in Perrysburg rental property.

Since I just got back from a conference in America’s most cosmopolitan, outward looking city – New York City – where you are prone to hear German or French or Russian voices as you walk on 5th Avenue – I thought about the foreign buyer in Perrysburg.

There are a lot of them!

They come here to buy.

They come here because Perrysburg real estate is a very safe buy.

They come here because of the schools, the lifestyle, and obviously the employment.

And they buy a lot of real estate -  MSNBC.com reports that foreign buyers bought over $80 billion in US property in 2010.  That was up from $66 billion in 2009.

I have sold property in and around Perrysburg to buyers from the Ukraine, Poland, Russia, France, Great Brittan, China, Vietnam, Australia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Italy, and Canada (is Canada that foreign?).

What are foreign buyers looking for in Perrysburg?  The exact same thing that any buyer is -  a good deal, a great floor plan, a nice lot, and no surprises.

When many foreign buyers look at our prices and values I believe that they inwardly, secretly chuckle at how cheap our prices are and how large our lots are.

The best thing to do is look at a map – maps are my favorite tool!

Here’s one view of the flow of “Euro Buyers” into the US, courtesy of Trulia.com

One thing to think about – the three largest home sales EVER in America were all to . . .  foreign buyers.  This is one, in California.  It sold for $100,000,000.  To a Russian.

I talked to a friend of mine who knows the Russian speaking Realtor who wrote the contract for Yuri Milner, the Google/Hedge Fund type investor.  I think that he was sad – he will never, ever in all of his career close on a deal that large again.  Must be sad to realize that!

The walkaway.

The “strategic default”.

The “jingle mail”.

You can look up the term on line.

But it happens when your personal life and your financial life have collided with your real estate life and the value of your real estate is smaller than the amount owed the bank.

The process is painful.  Traumatic. And fraught with risk.

Earlier today I went to a house, which shall remain hidden from identity for now (see description above . . . ), which was very nice.

Whose professional, educated owner had walked away from.

Gone.

Vanished.

Spurned our offer of “cash for keys”.

Turned off the water and the gas and the power – and vanished in the night.

Some thoughts:

1. Talk to your lawyer before you do this.  Seriously.  Just get a lawyer and get their opinion on what to do next.

2. Get help from ANYONE.  Family.  Friends. Charity.  Even the Federal Government has lots of programs.  And as worthless as HAMP or HEH! or HUH!? have been in the past 2 years – at least they often slow down the foreclosure train a little bit and give you time to recover.

3. Do not stop paying your food/gas/electricity/heat in order to make one more interest payment to the bank.  Sit down and think about what you have to have to live and survive.  Get some counsel.  Get some special help – but don’t lose everything in order to save an upside down, underwater house.

4. Get another legal opinion – lawyers are just like every other profession.  There are good ones, bad ones, and ones that do not know what they are talking about.   Get 2 opinions when you need brain surgery.  And 2 legal opinions when you are thinking about walking away.

5. At least call the broker/agent who was trying to talk to you.   This vanished owner lost $3000 simply by not calling me.  I bet he might have needed that money . . .

6. Put your families finances first – see #3 above.  I cannot stress this enough!

Many homeowners are being forced into this hard, cold calculus.  Banks might want to consider some very aggressive modifications to principal and not just kick the can down the road.   When upscale neighborhoods in Wood County are being hit and ravaged by strategic defaulters – it’s time to change the game plan.

Fearless 2012 Real Estate predictions from Jon:

1. Interest rates will be talked about more.  If they go up we will be screaming at how stupid we all were to NOT lock in.  If they stay at these historic, ridiculous lows it will mean that the economy is still in the tank.

2. An aging population demands “NO MORE STEPS!”.   So if you have a first floor master, a ranch, a main floor condo – all is good.

3. Perrysburg Values.  I fearlessly predict more of the same!   Values have held steady in the 43551 (more on that in a later post).  I see nothing that will change that.  You can look HERE to see the latest quarterly MSI numbers for Toleod’s Metro area.  See all those “negative signs”?  That’s bad.

4. Perrysburg Sales.  No new projects for sale.  No new plants being built.  No new big corporate moves.  More of the same  -  but note that there are several hundred new rentals opening/just opened up.  That SHOULD increase demand for single family housing the Pburg School district in the future.

5. Perrysburg REO’s.  That’s bank owned foreclosed property.  More.  Lot’s more.   Great news if you are a buyer.  Horrible news if you are a seller/owner.

6. Perrysburg Investment Property.  Blah.  The best deals extant are HUD houses in Toledo/Sylvania/Oregon/Maumee/Rossford.  Amazing deals.  But . . . HUD foreclosures are FHA loans that have gone bad.  The VAST majority of Perrysburg real estate closings now are FHA loans.  You do the math!

7. The Economy.  Holding pattern.  Solar soars/solar cools.   Autos crash/autos recover.  Caps and Snaps sell/Glass shines.  Corn and wheat are up / ethanol is cool.  Just more of the same.  And as I have repeatedly opined housing values and prices are going nowhere until the economy booms again.

8. Threat of Federal “HELP”.   The Fed wrote a big paper – about helping the real estate market.   There are ideas to lower mortgages, rent empty houses, maybe even store large amounts of newly printed dollar bills in foreclosed homes’ attics for all I know.  Lots of ideas to “help”.  If they happen – things will get worse.  There are operative laws of unintended consequences at work.

9. Best real estate search tool – Google.  More and more valuable.  It’s why I spend more money on Google advertising real property than any other broker or agent in Toledo.

10. Mobile.  If you are looking from home at houses it will most likely be on a tablet/iPad.  On the road? It’s your iPhone or Android.  Mobile tools using real estate software designed to look good and work well on mobile devices used by on the go mobile shoppers.  No looking back – mobile is the way to show/sell real estate.

11. Just Walk Away.  If the economy does not improve, if the employment picture is still grim, if the national debt is still exploding . . . I expect to see more and more “tactical defaults” as homeowners upside down simply leave the house empty and walk away.  Over 1/2 of the new bank assignments that I get are for abandoned houses.   I did two last week in Perrysburg – both empty houses/condos.

12. Longer and longer escrows.   We used to close in 30 days.  45 is the new 30 in 2012.   Every deal has more hoops, shunts, and landmines.  None of them are easy/fun/simple anymore.   It takes more time to close and more energy to get to the closing table.  I am writing a new special report on this very subject . . . .

Overall another challenging year.   Opportunity to buy great houses at a great discount.  Tough times to sell if you are leveraged.

I sold over 300 houses in 2011 – and it was my best year ever.   Tough market?  No.  A market you can thrive in if you know what is happening and you have ideas on where it is going.  You need help with your real estate predictions . . . you can always call me.