Well, this "blip" (as I see it) being reported of increased sales has had a major impact on my home value. It's an increase in distressed properties apparently, resulting in a $16k drop in my home value in one month. So much for the reported "bidding wars".

I thought the reports said it was driving values up, good for the market, yada yada. More BS.

yea.. its starting to go downhill again.

There's 3 empty houses in the last 2 months on my street.

Some of the shadow inventory people are giving up and just up and leaving.

I'm in the DC area btw.

Too bad realty has to live with reality...

People have the misperception that buying and selling are endless phenomena. In reality buying comes in waves - like a sine wave. The current wave of buyers will run out MUCH faster than any prior ones simply because fundamentals are horrendous. I expect things to burn out almost completely by next year this time.

Shhh... Don't tell the ****tards here in Seattle... It's fun to watch; it's like Phoenix circa 2006, except the home values are 2-3x here...

DC? I thought DC was booming?!?

There are subdivisions around here with more for sale signs than mowed yards.

Where I am in Raleigh we went from 17 houses for sale in our subdivision in 2009 to only a couple now. I'm aware of 2 short sales as well. In addition to few used homes being available 4 new lots were purchased, cleared, and new homes being built. 2 of those are sold already. All while my home appraisal dropped 51K from 2009 until now.

@Resistance I recently moved to Seattle, curious what you think a "good time to buy" would be? The local market seems to have gone nuts over the last 4 months, but I think it'll come back to reality again. The question is when.

Greed - I honestly don't know if we are going to see "reality" in the next decade.

The sales are coming because inventory is tight (it's all orchestrated due to the "shadow inventory").

IT IS NOT DRIVING HOME PRICES UP - IT'S DRIVING THEM DOWN! (Fast & bad). I really don't know how to describe how much more ****ed a responsible homeowner can feel. :(

My REALTOR friends who stayed with it are doing well. (Central FL). I left in 2008, but I was a property manager 1st and a REALTOR 2nd. I now have owners of some of the properties I managed for my firm contacting me regarding my opinion of my former firm telling them to get back in and invest again NOW. These people became my friends while I was there.

Just can't recommend it, don't trust it. We're all ****ed, don't get in any deeper. (I do hope I'm wrong, but I just don't see it. :( )

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Shhh... Don't tell the ****tards here in Seattle...

Same here in Portland. Multiple offers. Some of the shadow inventory in the neighborhood has been put on the market in the last month or two (and already sold). As mentioned in another thread, some friends are trying to buy in our area and were having a lot of trouble getting an offer in in time. Finally got an offer accepted by putting an offer on a house the first day it was on the market - they offered the asking price which seems quite high to me. I have my doubts that the appraisal will come in anywhere near that high, but we'll see.

Seattle... Portland... hey, I get it: we're the air conditioned part of America and everybody wants to move here to cool off.

America's New Foreclosure Capitols
7/03/2012

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Real estate in Florida’s biggest cities has been on fire. Thanks to burgeoning demand and tight inventory levels, home prices in many of the Sunshine State’s markets have begun to tick up modestly. Take Tampa. Thanks to a 40% drop in inventory over the past year, asking prices are up 11%, according to Realtor.com. It has many folks crying “recovery.”

That proclamation may be premature. What’s lurking on lenders’ balance sheets is enough to put a damper on Tampa’s nascent housing rebound: foreclosure activity there has increased 111% since last May, with 27,703 homes in some state of the foreclosure process. That means the mortgage on one out of every 304 homes is in default in the city. At the current sales rate, that’s a hefty 22-month supply of distressed properties. Given that these homes sell at a 24% discount on average, the prices of neighboring non-distressed homes could be pulled down, too. The Cigar City is one of eight Florida hubs that made Forbes’ list of America’s new foreclosure hubs. ...

more, with a list of cities: http://www.forbes.com/sites/morganbrenna....

How is less inventory driving the prices down? Just the fact that the houses for sale are now confirming the lower prices?

I suspect because the appraisals are confirming the amount of distressed properties, which is what is selling here. Prices are rising (maybe) but values overall are dropping the more of them that sell.

Gotta wonder how much of the activity is an effort to get ahead of the upcoming real estate sales tax.

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DC? I thought DC was booming?!?

Nope. The local RE talk shows are pumping big time but my friend who is a realtor for 25 years states that it is dead here.

Good lord!

Asked "If my 20 year old son (they just moved here (Florida) last week and are renting, due to foreclosure/bankruptcy in MA) has $8,000 and can get a house for $80k - shouldn't he?"

I told him why "I wouldn't go there with a 10 foot pole", and they argued the point for half an hour. (It's a freaking blip atm, and here's why I feel that way, basically gave them a TF education.)

If you don't want the truth (maybe that's how you got into such a mess in the first place), THEN DON'T ASK ME! Arrrrggggghhhhhh!

I'm getting ready to buy. I've been living in apartments forever and the price of houses has dropped to the point that I can buy and pay just slightly more than I pay in rent. Will they drop more? Probably. But I've been waiting since the bubble started and I'm tired of not having a place that's my own. At this point I view it as renting from the bank vs renting from the apartment owners.

Redwolf, same here. I'm just tired of waiting.

I put an offer in on a property the other day, it wasn't accepted. My offer was for a little over 70% of the tax assessment, and slightly more than they paid just before the bubble. They countered with a price that was almost 20k more (putting it at about 79% of tax assessment). I turned it down and told the realtor that if somebody wants it worse than me, have at it. If the owners change their minds, call me.

Looked at another one today. I don't know WTF they were smoking on the tax assessment, but it's listed at 62.5% of the assessed value and at 69% of what the owners paid at the peak. It's a short sale, but not in bad shape at all. I might put in an even lower offer.

Now that I'm starting to see some signs of reality hitting here, I'm wondering if I should wait just a *little* bit longer (like until the end of the year).

Seek,

Don't know where you are located.. but using the tax assessment as a base for your bidding is a poor way to do it IMO.

Around me.. my house is tax assessed slightly higher (1 or 2%) than what I could sell my property for. My buddy that works with me, his house is 1 mile from mine in a different neighborhood and his tax assessment is probably a good 25% BELOW what he could sell it for.

Some of the older neighborhoods around me quite often have tax assessments that are a lot higher than what they could actually sell the property for. Often, this is because the county is overvaluing the land and the older houses are on larger lots but in less desireable neighborhoods.

JMO..

Oh, I agree. A lot of people around here have been trying to justify high prices by referencing tax assessments. More than one person has told me that a house *has* to be worth at least what the county assessed it at. Realtors will even use it in listings, saying "priced $XXXXX below tax assessment!". It's just a BS number.

I'm not really using tax assessment to determine what I'll offer. I guess I just find these numbers interesting. Especially when there's a huge disparity compared to even the asking price, which generally is set to allow for a good bit of negotiation it seems lately.

So what's the best way to decide what to offer? I know I can talk to a realtor about that, but...I just don't feel like they're a neutral party so I have a hard time trusting them. Comps are tough on most properties I'm interested in because they're usually not in a neighborhood and it's hard to find recent sales that are similar at all in the same area. I look up sales history, which helps sometimes. Even though I expect prices to drop more, I think I'd be ok paying the prices prior to the bubble here (which occurred a bit after everyone else). So I try to guesstimate what that price would have been and go from there.

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So what's the best way to decide what to offer?

loaded question.

usually the best way will be to look at closest recent sales of comparables and preferably in the same neighborhood. This is the best suburbs way to do it. Online tools like Redfin or Zillow can help as they can show you nearby sale records to any particular property. I prefer to use Redfin, but they don't have nationwide coverage.

it gets more difficult to price if you are buying in a rural area with a lot of land. cause even if you have 2 lots of 20 acres right next to each other, one could be worth a lot more than the other depending on all kidns of factors.

Also.. if you are bidding on foreclosures or short sales.. you need to understand how bidding works on both of those because it's entirely different. With forclosures the bank tends to set the price ultra-low and then let bidders fight it out to bid it up to price discovery. For short sales.. the sellers that just want out of the situation tend to price it too low as well but will accept almost any offer. Problem there is you'll wait 4 months only to have the bank say no.. we won't sell it for less than X$. You have to be careful with short sales that you bid something that will be accepted by the bank (which they base off the same sale comparables) or else you'll just waste a bunch of your time and effort.

So the answer is that it's different based on location of property, type of property and type of sale.

But in general.. nearby comparable sales that closed (made it through appraisal) is the best way to start.