Bill Kuhlman\’s Real Estate Blog

I™ve just sold a Single-family property at 1 Crystal Pond Ln in Franklin. Come and visit my site to see other properties in that area. If you are interested in looking for or selling your home, please Contact Me.

I™ve just sold a Single-family property at 374 Lexington St in Waltham. Come and visit my site to see other properties in that area. If you are interested in looking for or selling your home, please Contact Me.

I™ve just sold a property at 4 – 6 Hurlcroft Avenue in Medford. Come and visit my site to see other properties in that area. If you are interested in looking for or selling your home, please Contact Me.

I™ve just sold a property at 4 – 6 Hurlcroft Avenue in Medford. Come and visit my site to see other properties in that area. If you are interested in looking for or selling your home, please Contact Me.

I™ve just sold a property at 4 Ridge Road in Framingham. Come and visit my site to see other properties in that area. If you are interested in looking for or selling your home, please Contact Me.

In any real estate market conditions, there are some who are at an advantage and some who  are at a disadvantage.   Today’s market is no different.   In Massachusetts today, it’s really great to be a first-time buyer, a buyer with a large downpayment and/or outstanding credit scores, or a homeowner  who is looking to trade up to a nicer home or a home in what is, for them, a better location.  

If you don’t have a home to sell in this market, you have a competitive edge over someone whose purchase is contingent upon the sale of their current home.   Sellers and their agents understandably have misgivings about taking a property off the market if there’s a good chance the deal won’t close because the buyer’s home doesn’t sell on time.   This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get a huge discount off the purchase price, but if you make an offer that’s unencumbered with a contingency that lets you off the hook if your home doesn’t sell, you will be more attractive to a seller.   This could mean that the seller will accept a price or other terms from you that they wouldn’t from a contingent-upon-sale buyer.

There has been a lot of upheaval in the lending market over the past six months.   Because of investors’ perception of risk in buying packages of loans from lenders, lending guidelines have tightened up significantly.   Increasingly, lenders are returning to traditional ratios and other lending guidelines to determine who gets loans at the best terms.   These days, the two things that can make you look like a better risk to them are having a 20 percent or greater downpayment, or having outstanding credit scores.   If you have one, you will get a noticeably better rate than the average borrower.   If you have both, you may see a significantly better rate.   Depending on the program, you might see rates as much as a full point or more lower than riskier borrowers.

If you own a home and are looking to trade up, this is an ideal time to do that.   Yes, you might have to accept a lower price to sell your house than you would have a year or two ago.   But you’ll save even more on the purchase of your new, more-expensive home.   I’ve heard one expert call this “Taking a haircut on the home you sell, but giving a bigger haircut on the home you buy.”

Let’s assume you own a home you could have sold two years ago for $400,000.   Maybe you’re kicking yourself for missing out on that golden opportunity as the market in your town has moved downward ten percent.   Today, you’d likely have to sell for around $360,000, a “loss” of $40,000.  

Now let’s say you’d like to move up to a home that, two years ago, could have been had for $600,000.   Guess what?   The price for that home has been similarly affected by the changes in the marketplace.   Assuming the same ten percent downward movement on prices, that home can now be had for $540,000.   Buy it now compared to two years ago, and you just saved $20,000 on the trade-up!

So if you’re thinking of getting into the market for the first time, if you’re looking to trade up, or if you have your financial act together, the 2008 real estate market is offering you some tangible advantages.   Are you ready to take them?

Hi, again.

You may wonder why I post and leave some info up here from months ago.   It’s because lots of so-called experts post all kinds of information about what will happen in the future without ever following up with how well they did with their previous observations and prognostications.  

I think that’s a very important piece of information for the reader.   So I’m starting off my blog with a couple of reports that I sent to my clients in the latter half of 2007 to give you a little historical context of how I view the past, present, and future of the Eastern Massachusetts real estate market.   Rather than simply boring you to tears, my  hope is that by doing this, you’ll be  better able to evaluate what I have to say going forward.   Except for these first few paragraphs, my previous post and this one were written in August and October, 2007.  

Since I work in a relatively wide market area, I get more of a “forest view” than most Realtors.   Unlike the vast majority of my colleagues, I regularly see the up-close real estate trees of communities in and around Boston, Cambridge, Brookline, Newton, Belmont, Somerville, Arlington, Winchester, Waltham, Lexington, Lincoln, Concord, Carlisle, Sudbury, Needham, Westwood, Wellesley, Natick, Framingham, Southborough, Marlborough, Canton, Shirley, Walpole, Acton, and Boxborough which gives me perspective on the Eastern Massachusetts forest.   I hope you find  this to be helpful.

I plan to post more regularly and more briefly from this point on.   I have a tendency to get blogged down in trying to say too much and say it too perfectly, which I know is antithetical to the world of blogging.   Rather than trying to jam a month or two months’ pile of information into each post, I’ll try to jump on a couple of times a week, jot down a couple of ideas, and get back out.   I hope you find this more useful and user-friendly.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote on October 31st:

In my last snail-mail newsletter, I talked about how, in general, my observation was that the real estate market in communities right in along Boston was going strong, it was steady between 128 and 495, and relatively slow outside 495.    I’ve just received the data from the Mass. Association of Realtors, which confirms what I’ve been seeing.   The data can be found here:   http://www.marealtor.com/content/upload/AssetMgmt/Documents/Member%20Resources/Research/quarterly/2007%203rd%20Q%20Report%20-%20SF.pdf     (If you’re looking for more data, let me know and I can send you links to similar reports for the first two quarters of the year, and/or links to sales and selling prices for Massachusetts condos and multi-family homes.)  

Here are some highlights of the Third Quarter, Single-Family report:  For the third quarter of 2007, the number of  single-family home sales was up 10.9 percent in Greater Boston, up 3.8 percent in the Northeast part of the state, and up 14.3 percent in the Southeast, compared with the third quarter of 2006.   Median sale prices dipped ever so slightly at -0.6 percent, -0.8 percent, and -1.8 percent, respectively.   (Interestingly, the average sales price was up slightly in Greater Boston, and down slightly in the Northeast and Southeast.)  The numbers of single-family unit sales were generally down in other parts of the state (Cape Cod, Central, South Shore, and West), as were median sale prices, except for Cape Cod, which jumped up 4.9 percent compared with the third quarter of 2006.  

For condos, the number of sales, median price, and average price were all up in Greater Boston compared with Q3 of 2006, and were  mixed in the Northeast and Southeast regions.    

The third quarter covers closed sales for July, August, and September, and reflects deals generally put together between May and August.   The credit crunch in August should have had a bit of an impact for the months of September and October, so you may see some single-month data that shows a drop for those months.   But these quarterly numbers are an encouraging sign as to the overall health of the market in the eastern region of the state, especially when you factor in the crunch.  

I’ve been consistently hearing from other Realtors I talk to that early- to mid-September showed a big upsurge in buyer activity.   I, myself, picked up four new buyer-clients in September and October, and have  had more  appointments to show property in the past five weeks than I had in the previous five months.      

Whether this is the beginning of a genuine turn in the market or just a blip in the flat-to-slightly-downward 18-month trend is too soon to tell.   But regardless, right now is still a prime time to buy a first home or trade up to a more expensive home, as you’ll be able to purchase more house for your money now than you will if the market gathers a few months of steam.   If the market does, indeed,  gain strength in the coming months, it may instead quickly become a great time to cash out and/or downsize.    

If you or someone you know is thinking about buying or selling a home, whether locally or anywhere in the world, I’d love to hear about it.   If I can’t help them myself, I can get them in touch with a great agent in their area.   And remember, I’m never too busy for your referrals.