We were talking to a realtor yesterday to see what our house is worth...turns out that it doesn't matter if you have property or not right now. It's all about square footage. The average sale is $85/sq ft. We have a small house. We can only hope that a builder might look at the property and want to subdivide it. We haven't decided yet what to do. He will come back with some options. Here are some of the statistics he gave us:
•Foreclosure/Short Sale Listings (1/15/2010): Total Listings 10424; Short Sales: 4735, 45.4% of all listings; Bank Owned Listings: 2137, 20.1% of all listings. Short sale and REO listings consume 65% of total listings
•New Home Sales (December 2009, units sold): 477 Year Change -25.7% (excl condo conversions, highrises)
•New Home Sales (December 2009, median price): $216,854 Year Change -11.2% (excl condo conversions, highrises)
•Existing Home Sales (December 2009, units sold): 3774 Year Change +45.8
Here are some things I have learned:
•New Residents (December 2009): 4311, Year Change -7.4%
•Total Employment (December 2009): 833,000 Year Change -7.4%
•Unemployment Rate (December 2009) 13.1%, Year Change +50.6%
I took a look around today as I drove out of our cul-de-sac. I don't even notice all the for sale/empty houses anymore. I do see the small development that was started on the next corner from us that stays unfinished and slowly decaying. I think they would have been beautiful houses. I know there must be many more around me but they are silent. I do still notice the strip retail buildings that were built a couple of years ago that never got filled. Large buildings stand with empty office spaces. The signs are loud but there are no takers at any price. It seems sad and we are not the only people that feel that nothing good will come of this soon.
Posted originally on Facebook Blog 3/10/10
