It’s been a while since I’ve pulled foreclosure statistics for Greensboro. Frankly, I’ve gotten rather busy – listing foreclosures, ironically. These, along with the ‘civilian’ buyers and sellers with whom I work, have kept me hopping. But it has seemed over the last few weeks that the foreclosure has slowed a bit. This got me wondering about foreclosure listings in general in Greensboro. So, back to my data mining and spreadsheets I went.

Here’s what I found:

In the last couple of months, foreclosure listings in Greensboro have indeed slowed up. The number of foreclosures listed in the 9 residential Greensboro codes over the last 12 weeks has been 91. That is LOW compared to what’s been going on since I started tracking this data in 2008. Really low.

The same week last year the 12 week running total was 160. The year before that, 131.

The downward trend has been fairly steady since Spring, witnessed by this graphic:

And the listings are down not only by raw numbers but also by the percentage of overall listings. For some time the percentage of foreclosures in relation to all listings has been about 12% – 15% at any given time. The last six weeks the percentage has averaged  7%.

The week ending July 31, 2001 had only 2 foreclosure listings. Two?! That’s awesome.

Right?

Being a generally optimistic person, my recent receipt of a button that reads “Moody Bitch” notwithstanding, I’d like to think our trip on this awful roller coaster ride is coming to a close. But being optimistic doesn’t mean being naive. Almost certainly we’re going to to have another wave of foreclosed properties coming on the market.

A quick check of tax records show that there have been 15 foreclosures posted in these zips in just the last 4 weeks that aren’t on the market yet. And that isn’t including properties where “notices of default” have been filed but where foreclosures haven’t been finalized.

The numbers may be down due to several factors, the least of which is that the sheer volume of properties has overwhelmed the banks. There are only so many reps to handle the process – now that the robo signers have been laid off…

Still, a breather from the grim parade of distressed properties is welcome.

Here are the rest of the graphics. I guess you’ll be able to tell when foreclosure listings pick back up when I don’t have time to post about foreclosure listings!

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as of October 30, 2010,  and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

Over the last couple of years I’ve been tracking foreclosure activity in Greensboro. At first, foreclosures were, while not unheard of in Greensboro, were rather few and far between. As a matter of fact, up until late 2008, our MLS didn’t have a designation for when a property was listed as a foreclosure sale. I, along with everyone else, had hoped that the real estate market and economy was experiencing a momentary, if jarring, correction.

Well, if hopes were calorie-free pizza, we’d all be skinnier.

Not only are foreclosed properties and the impact that have on communities and the real estate market here for a while, they’re becoming commonplace. Over the last twelve weeks in Greensboro, about 18% of all properties listed have been foreclosures.* That’s a lot.

Comparing the numbers to a year ago and even two years ago shows that the trend isn’t improving. It’s actually going in the wrong direction. For instance, this week last year there were 6 new foreclosure listings in Greensboro. The year before that, 12.

This year there were 16.

And the rolling 12-week totals, what I believe to be a better indicator of things, doesn’t provide a rosier picture. There were in deed many more foreclosures listed in the 12 weeks leading up to this time in 2009 (293) than this year (178) but this is more than last year (166). And it must be remembered that in 2009, these properties were just beginning to hit the market. In the early and last quarter 2010, there were halts to new listings while either the banks were trying to catch their breath or, later, trying to get their ducks in a row. All indications are that foreclosures are going to be coming online steadily for the next couple of years.

Alas, hoping things were different won’t make them so. Hunkering down is about all we can do.

Although pizza can sometimes help.

More graphs for those who can't get enough of them:

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as of September 29, 2010,  and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

Yesterday I, along with about 140 or so of my peers, were informed of a substantial change in our professional lives. The real estate firm with whom we work – some of us for decades – was bought the night before by Prudential.

To say there weren’t tears would be a lie. There were. Not because of the Prudential part but because we all pretty much love working with three of the classiest and most generous men around: Eddie Yost, Dean Little and Mark Yost. There is good news though. And the first piece is that all three will remain in charge and their philosophy will continue to be the guide by which things are done. The new entity is Prudential Yost & Little. (The existing Prudential Carolinas office at Friendly Center is now Prudential Yost & Little as well.)

Prudential is part of HomeServices of America, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. Yes, that Berkshire Hathaway. The one run by Warren Buffet.

The real estate market has been unbelievably tough. It has been hard on sellers, challenging for buyers who only a couple of years ago could have breezed through the loan approval process and, frankly, it’s been truly difficult for those of us who make a living in it. For all my glib remarks on this site (“good thing the windows on this building don’t open”,”some of us have gone from full-time agents to full-time drinkers”, etc.,) it really has been hard.

The combining of the Prudential and Yost & Little will be a powerhouse in Greensboro. And I mean a powerhouse. We immediately, with the stroke of a pen, became the big dog in town. I believe our listings now account for nearly 25% of all listings in Guilford County. Over the next couple of weeks, there will be about 1000 yard signs swapped out with the new ones. (A THOUSAND. Yikes!)

So, if there’s strength in numbers, they don’t get much stronger that that.

If you are currently a client of a Yost & Little agent, all that will change for you is that you now have even more agents who represent you.

I won’t lie. I’m a bit sad. I’ve loved where I work. But Dean & Mark will still be down the hall from my little office. It’s just nostalgia that keeps me from being 100% giddy. And that will pass.

And, hey, Warren Buffet may decide he really needs a middle-aged woman with one fake breast and an attitude to help him run things. Who knows?

Things are changing all the time.

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The thoughts & opinions are mine. The quips that fall flat are someone else’s. Please feel free to shoot me an email with a question or a good joke.

And remember, real estate agents aren’t bad. We’re just drawn that way.

I haven’t posted recently about Greensboro’s housing inventory because there hasn’t been too much new to report. Over the last few months, the number of properties listed in the nine residential zip codes in Greensboro has fluctuated a bit, week to week, but has always been higher than same week numbers from 2009. So the case could be made that, even if inventory was lower in week “x” compared to the previous week, it was still higher that last year. Sometimes by as much as about 20%.

Until now.

I’ve double checked these figures more than once and it appears that for the first time in a very, very long time, the number of homes on the market is lower now than this week last year*. To me, this is pretty important.

For one thing, too much inventory in real estate puts downward pressure on prices just as much as it does with any other commodity. More supply than demand and sellers have trouble finding a price low enough to attract buyers.

For another, it’s just a relief finally have some statistic that indicates we may be righting this wayward housing ship. (And I had to be careful typing the word “ship” because as similar word is what I was really thinking…)

Add to this the fact that the average list price on houses in Greensboro has remained pretty flat for the last several months – indicating sellers have enjoyed all they can stand of “just reduced” banners on their yard signs – and maybe there really is a trend here.

Things may be different next week or next month or next quarter. And foreclosures are still looming out there, also contributing to pricing woes. But I’ll take 3% less inventory against 20% more any day.

Below are some more stats. Enjoy:

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as of October 30, 2010,  and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

I was going to write about the weekly foreclosure listings in Greensboro, but huge news is taking front seat right now: Bank of America will stop the foreclosure process in the entire country. Several other banks have announced the same for several states.

What does this mean to our area?

Heck, I’m not going to say I know when people who are paid great sums of money to know, predict and analyze these things obviously are unsure themselves. (If they know so much, howzcome we’re in this fix?)

I can say what *my* predictions are:

• In the short term, at least, the inventory of properties on the market will shrink. In Greensboro, foreclosures have consistently comprised about 8% of all listings. And our inventory is about 10% – 20% higher than it should be. The laws of supply and demand being what they are, it can be guessed less inventory will help shore up prices for those non-foreclosure sellers. A good thing.
• But there are going to be pending closings that get jacked up by this, so there will be some disappointed, angry buyers. A bad thing.
• Then again, this “break” may give those homeowners who are on the bring of being foreclosed upon a chance to get things together, or find a job or whatever will help them get caught up on payments. Another good thing.
• It may just be a delay of the inevitable and in a few months – or however long it takes to for these giant, overfed, overpaid institutions to get THEIR acts together – we’ll have another rush of properties hitting the market. A not good thing.

So, today I see 2 “good” things, 1 “bad” and one “not good” thing. I’m calling it a net plus for “good things” and going to have a glass of wine to celebrate.

The weekly Greensboro foreclosure numbers will have to wait. Just like Bank of America will have to wait before booting people out of their houses.

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The thoughts & opinions are mine. The quips that fall flat are someone else’s. Please feel free to shoot me an email with a question or a good joke.

And remember, real estate agents aren’t bad. We’re just drawn that way.

It looks like there’s a teeniest reason for hope in the latest weekly foreclosure listings in Greensboro. Couple this with last week’s post about August home sales and seems start to feel positively positive.

I haven’t posted every week with foreclosure numbers but I have compiled them faithfully every Friday, pulling all new listings for the previous week. I’m here to tell you I see the beginnings of a real trend. There are just fewer listings every week than there have been*. The 12-week rolling periods is the most telling of the stats as far as I’m concerned and the graph at left shows that there has been a gradual but steady drop in the cumulative number of foreclosure listings in Greensboro.

Looking even further back, the week-to-week-to-week comparisons from 2008 through 2010 show a dramatic drop in listings.

This may seem like faint goodness, but things can’t start getting really better until they stop getting worse.

It’s too soon to say that the worst is behind us. There may be more waves of foreclosure listings ahead. But at least there’s a staunch to the bleeding. For now.

Here are the rest of the numbers:

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as of September 29, 2010,  and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

There are things in life I approach gingerly and with my hands covering my eyes, fingers slightly apart, and squinting.

It’s an illogical thing to do in that I can see perfectly well through the gaps in my fingers and the squinting just makes me look funny. But there are times when you just don’t necessarily want to see what you’re going to see: scary scenes in movies, the number on the weight scale and, today’s topic, housing sales in Greensboro.

Well, I un-squinted and took a look at things.

The good news is, the August home sales were up slightly in August. The bad news? So was the number on my scale.

But that’s a story for another day.

Anyone who pays close enough attention to the housing market to read this blog knows that there was a fairly dramatic increase in housing sales in Greensboro – as well as most parts of the country – leading up to the expiration of the Federal Home Buyers’ Tax Credit back in June. And, as expected, sales dropped off pretty sharply in July. What was unclear was how things would look after that drop.

Here in Greensboro the answer is: better? (Emphasis on the question mark)

There were 205* closed properties in August. This was up from July (193)  but lower than March through June. August sales were just about what they were in December of 2009 (209). Not great. Not worse. So, in today’s world, ‘not worse’ equals ‘better’.

What surely does seem to be true is that prices have apparently bottomed out. And that really is better. Falling housing prices benefit no one in the long run. Not even those buyers who get the good deals. After all, no one wants to buy and then see the value of their purchase drop.

As this graph shows, while prices took a bit of a beating in the last part of 2009 and the first few months of 2010, we’re pretty much back to where we were this time last year.

Granted, this time last year was not as great as the hey-day period of 2007. July 2007, to be precise.

But the fact is the average closed price in August ’10 was $167,148. Not only is this very close to the July average closed price of $169,755 but is only about 1% lower than August ’09 ($168,152).

This is significant in a year when prices have been off as much as 11% in same month yearly comparisons.

So, while it’s not time to through a party, it may be time to start looking at things with cautious optimism – and not through squinty eyes.

Here are more graphs for those who love them. And you know who you are:

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as of September 29, 2010,  and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

Tagged as: Greensboro foreclosures, MLS, Multiple Listing Service, Triad MLS

More of the same. Almost exactly the same, as a matter of fact. Of the new listings last week in Greensboro’s nine residential zip codes, 17 were foreclosures. That represents about 13% of the total new listings.

That’s not a great number.

But it is, alas, the way things have been for the last several weeks. Earlier this year, we might see about 8% or 9% of new listings be foreclosures but the last 8 weeks have averaged 13.2%. The highest was four weeks ago when 15.3% of new listings were foreclosures. Gag.

The only thing that might be a bit encouraging is that the number really is fairly steady in the 13% range. At some point the number will come down. I won’t be standing on one foot waiting for it, but it will happen.

Another sad-but-true consistent stat is that two Greensboro zip codes – 27405 and 27406 – continue to have the lion’s share of foreclosure: 44% cumulatively; 23% and 21% respectively. It should be noted, however, that back in October of 2009, these two zips had  more than 50% of listed foreclosures. This may be an indication of foreclosures impacting more areas of town more than things really improving in those two zips. Is the glass half empty or half full?

I just know that sometimes looking at these stats make me reach for a glass totally full. Of gin.

An even less uplifting number is 185. That’s how many foreclosures have been listed in Greensboro in the last 12 weeks. That’s more than have been in any of the previous 3 months of running 12-week totals. It isn’t surprising that foreclosures continue to hit the market. Lenders have been working through back-logs of delinquent loans for months and they’ll keep on processing them for some time. It takes months of non-payment for a lender to foreclose, then months more for the paperwork to be slogged through, then more time yet to get a property listed.

What does all this mean to you, dear reader? It means there’s still a lot of shaking yet to go on in the real estate market. Frankly, foreclosure listings will probably still be hitting the market for months after the unemployment figures rebound (for the previously mentioned time-frame reason).

So, I’ll keep watching and writing. You keep reading. And one of these days all of our glasses will be full.

Mine, probably still with gin.

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email.  I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as of June 29, 2010,  and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.

The last 12 hours have provided news stories that are dismal and dismal-er in regard to national home sales last month. So as not to  make the rest of the country feel bad about its poor numbers, Greensboro is right there with everyone else.

Sheesh.

A decline in sales was expected. The Federal Tax Rebate for home buyers has about expired (there’s an extension to close on contacts that were in place by April 30th) but for the most part, people who hurried up to find a house by the end of April also hurried to close by the original cut-off date of June 30th.

That left poor old July out in the cold. Or the extreme heat, as it turned out. Most hellish temperatures EVER. Too hot too think. Too hot to trot. And perhaps too hot to buy houses.

All in all, it’s been a fairly wretched time for anyone other than sno-cone vendors.

To be specific, there were 188 closed properties in the nine Greensboro residential zip codes in July*, compared to 244 in July 2009 and 348 in in June and . That’s a decline of 23% and a gut-flipping drop of 45%, respectively.

(I’ll see your ‘Sheesh‘ and raise you a ‘Yowzer‘).

Sale prices are a different story. The average closed price in July was $167,565. That’s only about 2% down from both July of 2009 ($171.484) and June 2010 ($172,051). What this says to me is that prices really have about bottomed out. Sellers have been squeezed as much as there is to squeeze. They’re all squozed out.

Another rather startling stat is that 28% of the closed properties in Greensboro were foreclosures. Not the highest percentage ever, but certainly the highest in last several months.

Alright, enough palaver. Here are the rest of the numbers (and purty charts):

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If you have questions, comments or a good joke to share shoot me an email. I’m a full time Realtor®, I love what I do and would be thrilled to hear from you.

* All data from Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS) as of August 24, 2010, and is only as good as the information entered, which is done by humans, who make errors. The information is only for those residential zip codes for Greensboro and does not include the surrounding communities.