Market Pulse - Durango, how much under asking price are houses actually selling for???

How much money are seller's leaving on the table these days? We hear about low ball offers but in Durango that is not necessarily the case. I was out showing property yesterday to a client and she told me that she thinks her husband wants to "totally low ball", meaning offer about half the asking. I took a few moments this morning to look up the relevant past sales and pending listings. In this case I looked at in town Durango, single family homes up to $450,000 and with 1-4 BR. I looked at everything that had sold between Jan of 2008 and today, March 7th, 2009. We had 89 sales and there are currently 5 homes pending sale in this category.

Now, to see how low sellers might go, I compared the last asking price with the actual closing price. They ranged from a high of 16% under list price to list price and two homes actually sold for more than asking (presumably the seller gave some concession so the buyer paid more, maybe some loan points or down payment assistance...) On average the homes closed for 4% under asking price. I must say I was surprised, I thought the percentage would be higher, the way everyone is talking about the buyer's market right now. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

I do know that seller's are dropping prices to get their home sold. From these statistics I would deduct that the homes that are actually selling are those homes that are priced at the market, meaning at a low enough price for the home to actually sell, and the buyers will actually pay close to asking price. The other reason might be that the buyer's here just don't make low ball offers. The other day I was talking to an agent in the Denver area and he said all he gets are low low offers. You tell me, Mr. and Mrs. Seller, what would you rather have, low ball offers or no offers? Finally, our sellers are likely not as desperate and are not accepting those low offers when they do come in.

Here is a link to the report I printed out for my buyers. Click Here for these Market Statistics. I can also email you a link to these sold and pending listings with pictures etc if you'd like more info. Due to MLS rules I'm not allowed to post a MLS link on my blog.

As far as my buyer's go, we talked about making an offer that's low, but not that low. We'll probably stick to an offer of about 10% under asking.

Want more information? Ask me anything. I'd love to hear from you.

If you don't want to leave your contact information but have a questions you can comment right here, publicly, in the comment section of this blog and I'll get back to you here. All you will need to do is come back to this page to see my answer.

Claudia

Claudia Williams
970 247 8388

P.S. For comprehensive real estate market statistics and pretty graphs on Durango Area Real Estate for the past three years click here.

Did you know that, by law, citizens of Vermont must take at least one bath a week?

Market Pulse - Real Estate in Durango, Sold and Pending

Here it is, the information you've been waiting for. A timely and useful overview of the real estate market. It's pretty easy to get statistics for the previous year /quarter, but to get info on what has sold and went under contract this week... A little tougher.

I'm here to help you (once I figure it all out for myself that is). I've been told that MLS rules prevent me from publishing links on my blog, unfortunately, that would be the easiest way, although our MLS is undergoing technical difficulties today... Soooo, I will publish PDF summary files as soon as I have the pdf uploader in place, hopefully in the next day or two, so keep checking back.

In the meantim, you can get sold statistics for the previous years at durangorealtor.com website: here's the link

I will give you a quick overview of in town Durango home sales since Jan 2009 (as of today, 4-5-09). I will post the pdf shortly. This info is based on Durango MLS, is deemed accurate but not guaranteed.

In town Durango - Sold 13 homes and condos, priced $159,000 to $469,000, avg days on market 164.

In town Durango - Sale Pending - 20 homes and condos, priced $ 159,000 to $589,000 (this indicates the market is picking up and we should see more sales in March and April)

In town Durango - Currently Listed - 332 listings priced from $135,000 to $2,200,000, with an average days on market of 248 (this indicates to me that only about one in about 8 houses only will sell this year)

I'm working on getting you more information and analysis, bookmark this site and check back often. Watch for email subscription feature coming up soon too. Thanks for checking this out. Feel free to leave comments (anonymous is ok) and questions and I will do my best to answer them.

Claudia

Claudia Williams
970 247 8388

P.S. Search the MLS at http://www.blueribbondurango.com/mls.php