|
September 14, 2006 10:56 am
Housing market remains steady
“The good old rules still apply, it is still easy to sell a house in this market,” August said. “But a few thousand dollars in your price could be the difference between buyers considering your house affordable or not.”
By Melissa Dunson
CNHI News Service
JOPLIN, Mo. — Brian Fidler and his wife, DeAnn, wanted to buy a house.
After searching in the Bartlesville, Okla., area for homes in their price range, they were disappointed with the results. Few homes fit their budget, and most, Fidler said, he considered unlivable. He said he and his wife finally found one they thought would work. But after jumping through all the hoops of first-time home buyers, the deal fell through at closing.
Finding no success in Bartlesville, Fidler and his wife decided to move to Joplin and try again.
“It was the most miserable experience (in Bartlesville),” Fidler said. “It really burned us, and after we moved to Joplin, we lived in an apartment for a year. We still wanted to buy a house, but it was such a bad experience, we needed to wait for a while. It was not a buyers’ market.”
Once Fidler and his wife started looking for a house in the Joplin market, it took only two weeks to find one that fit their needs and their budget. Fidler said he was presented with 20 houses in the Joplin area that were viable options during the first meeting with his real estate agent.
“There were a lot of houses available,” Fidler said. “And we negotiated the contract that day. It’s been the easiest transaction we’ve ever done. We feel like we’re getting a lot for our money.”
Coming back
While recent economic reports foretell the end of the housing boom, Walter Malony, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors, said it all depends on the location of the houses. Areas that have seen large percentage increases in home appreciation, like California, Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Virginia, are now feeling the return to supply and demand prices, turning a once-hot sellers’ market in favor of buyers for the first time since the mid 1990s.
Malony says Fidler’s and his wife’s experience may have been unusual in Bartlesville, but their Joplin search was typical of the Midwest housing market, which has historically remained more stable than the coasts. He thinks even the fluctuating national market will bounce back in the near future.
“The bottom line is we have a growing population and the cost to build houses is just going to keep going up,” Malony said. “So, long term, housing is going to grow. There are cycles in the housing market. Right now, we’re entering a down cycle, but the fundamentals are there for growth.”
Scott Binns, president of the Ozark Gateway Association of Realtors, formerly known as the Joplin Board of Realtors, said the association is growing and attracting both realty agencies and listings. Binns said the association’s area listings increased 24 percent from July 2005 to July 2006.
“We’ve really grown and taken up some Realtors in Mount Vernon,” Binns said. “We’re spreading out — we have well over 500 agents in our board. When you have more agents joining, it says one thing: business is good. It’s a really important determining factor.”
Sustained growth
Binns said unlike areas on the West Coast, the Joplin-area real-estate market has been growing every year at a good, but controlled, 3 percent to 5 percent.
“When you put a house on the market and it sells in three days, that’s not very common,” Binns said. “That shows there’s a lack of housing and people are looking to buy whatever they can. You can just go by the rule that whatever happens on the coasts, be it housing or fashion, the Midwest is the last to see it. Every seller would like to see huge increases in their property value, but if it keeps going up, it has to drop eventually.”
Part of the Midwest’s success, Binns said, is that a low cost of living is attracting residents from other parts of the country. He said people from northwest areas like Seattle bought their homes years ago for $37,000 and are selling them now for $400,000, moving to the Joplin area, purchasing larger homes for significantly less and retiring.
“We have a lot of people moving back to this area,” Binns said.
Drawing on the work force of surrounding cities, Joplin’s housing economy continues to grow. “It’s made our market really strong,” Binns said. “And we’re even benefiting from all of the growth in Northwest Arkansas.”
Still, national home sales have been dramatically down in the last few months. July existing home sales were down more than 11 percent from the previous year and new home sales by 14 percent, according the National Association of Realtors.
Ed August, a Realtor with Charles Burt, said he can explain the sales slump and expects when September numbers come in, sales will be back up. August’s research shows the Joplin market has only sold about 30 homes less this year than last, a number he calls “really not that bad.” August believes low interest rates, cheaper gasoline prices and the seasonal spike in buying after Labor Day will bring buyers back to the market.
“From about the Fourth of July to the start of school, there’s a slump,” August said. “And then after Labor Day, there’s a seasonal spike.”
Long-standing rules
August said traditional homeowners who are trying to sell should be fine as long as they’ve owned their homes long enough to have built equity and see a good percent of appreciation. But he warns to stay competitive on price because it could be the difference between selling and sitting.
“The good old rules still apply, it is still easy to sell a house in this market,” August said. “But a few thousand dollars in your price could be the difference between buyers considering your house affordable or not.”
August said there wasn’t a difference in the market for existing and new homes, but that 60 percent of the homes sold in this region were under $140,000. He said he thinks there is a market saturation in the Joplin area for homes more than $320,000. Even so, August said, the market is far from dead and Joplin real estate remains strong.
“People are way overreacting,” August said. “There’s this ‘the sky is falling’ mentality. But there is not a problem in this region. It’s just really not that bad.”
Melissa Dunson writes for The Joplin (Mo.) Globe.
X X X
Local numbers
n From July 2005 to July 2006, sales were up 10 percent.
n The average time a house was on the market decreased slightly from 112 days to 110.
n The median cost of a house went up from $90,700 to $96,925 over the same time period.
Source: Ozark Gateway Association of Realtors
|
