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.

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.

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.

Greensboro was recently named a “hot” housing market by Money Magazine. That’s nice and all, but what really matters is how many times pen is put to paper and properties close. By that measure, June was indeed hot for Greensboro real estate.

There were 348* closed properties in the nine residential zip codes in Greensboro. That’s up about 34% from June 2009 when there were 259 closed properties. (This is only slightly lower than June 2008, which had 388 closings, but down 19% from June 2007, when there were 428 properties closed….>meh<…)

This was the 5th straight month of improving numbers.

The average closed price is up as well, at $172,052 which is 5% higher than last June ($163,663).

The sales data by zip codes shows that almost all had year-over-year increase in sales. Only 27406 was flat. Two zips, 27401 and 27455 actually had more closings in June 2010 than in the previous two years.

The sales numbers for July will be a test, since the effects of the federal home buyer tax credit will have passed for the most part. But for now, let’s celebrate this hot, hot June.

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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.

While the current supply of listings is not the highest it’s been in Greensboro, it isn’t far from it. And the average list price is nearer the bottom of the range rather than the top.

What does all this mean to buyers, sellers and to those interested in their own property values?

It means things are pretty cruddy for you if are trying to sell your house and things are pretty good for you if you’re looking to buy.

This has been the case for some time now. (I would like to compare inventory and prices for this week compared to the same time last year, but I was so demoralized after months of bad news in 2009 that I took I hiatus from stats for several weeks. Now my pity party is over and comparative data will be the name of the game from now on – no matter how gross.)

This is not to say nothing is moving Properties are selling. In the next day or so I’ll post about the June sales numbers, which were higher than May as well as higher than last June. A large part of that is undoubtedly due to the late, great federal home buyers tax credit. But, still.

The long and the short of it is, if you want to sell your house, clean it, de-clutter it, make it smell nice and price it properly.

That last thing is key. The whole issue with so much inventory is that, if you have a house to sell, there are that many more people who have one to sell at about the same size, location, school district, etc.,  You have to make your home the one that buyers can most easily see themselves purchasing and moving into with the fewest hassles.

Getting back to the numbers, the 27410 zip code continues to have the lion’s share of listings: 674.

27405, 27406 and 27406 are neck and neck and neck with 443, 446 and 445. (27405 & 27406 also have the greatest number and greatest percentage of foreclosures.

The average list price for the week, including all property types, is about $222K. What will spending about that amount buy you? Here’s an example. (Click on the photo for more information):

2209 W. Friendly Avenue, Greensboro, NC $214,900 (MLS#572063)

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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.

I’ve added a metric to my weekly peak at the foreclosure listings: The percentage or overall listings are foreclosures.

For all the months and months I’ve been tracking weekly forclosure listings in the nine residential Greensboro zip codes, I’ve never looked this number.

Well, bad on me because that number may be as telling as any other about the state of the market here in town.

For the week ending June 20, 2010, there were 14 new foreclosure listings. There were 142 listings overall, meaning 9.9% are foreclosures. This got me to wondering about the historical trend for this measure in Greensboro.

As well as I can figure, pulling data from the MLS (from whence all my listing information has always come), 9.9% is fairly middling. Actually below the 12 week average of 11.8% of weekly listings. In those 12 weeks, the highest percentage was *gag* 17% and the lowest was 6.7%.

Looking back to the same 12 weeks last year and the streams begin to cross:

You can see that there were weeks last year when the percentage of foreclosures was quite a bit lower than now. But there was a moratorium on foreclosures for a spell back then. I was surprised to see, though, that the percentage of foreclosures on a weekly basis, other than the moratorium time, hasn’t changed appreciably since I started tracking way back in early September 2008.

That was the month things started feeling pretty weird, real estate-wise around here.

I would have thought that we would have seen a steady increase over all this time. Not so. Over these nearly two years of data, the average percentage of foreclosures listed has been 11.6%. Again, these are properties listed in the Triad Multiple Listing Service (MLS). It doesn’t include properties sold on the courthouse steps or otherwise outside the MLS.

Still. It surprised me.

Oh well. 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) 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.

Those are the numbers, a snapshot of current inventory and the average list price for all 9 Greensboro zip codes.

Although 3300 properties is down from last week’s number of 3314 (and the previous week’s – 3304) the inventory number is still too high and the average list price is still off from where we were last year.

Some more details:

• The percentage of foreclosures overall is about 8%. This has been a fairly consistent number.
• The zip code with the highest number of listings is 27410. Again, nothing new there.
• The highest priced property is $3,500,000. The lowest is $12,000.
• Of the current listings, about 18% are ‘pending’.
• 85% are single-family
• 17% are townhouses
• 13% are condominiums

At this point what we will hope is that the inventory is leveling off. One the number of properties on the market being to decline, prices will at some point start to increase. The last couple of months have had good sales data. It remains to be seen how the next couple of months will treat the housing market in Greensboro. But whatever the news, you’ll be able to find it here.

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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.

Shhh. Be very, very quiet. There have been Good News Faeries about, tempting us with little morsels of cheer. If we’re not careful, we may begin to feel better and worry a little less. Then what will we do with our time?

Wait. I know exactly what I’ll do. A cartwheel.

The National Association of Realtors reports that housing sales nationwide were up – way up – in April. And in Greensboro we did our share. There were 274 closings in April in Greensboro*. That’s the 4th straight month of increases, 18% more than last April and is actually the highest since – wait for it – August of 2008.

Granted, a great deal of this can surely be attributed to the Home Buyers’ Tax Credit which is now a part of our past. But thost 273 properties represent about 548 or happy folks, not including the movers, lenders, Realtors, appliance sales people, and pizza delivery people who benefit from housing sales. (It is almost obligatory that you order pizza to be delivered the at the end of a day of moving furniture. One wonders how people changes domiciles before Domino’s existed)

But there’s more to the upswing than just the raw number of sales. The average listing price and average sales price also increased, whilst the average days on market declined.

And if we look really closely, we see that in April, the percentage of closings that were foreclosures was less in 2010 (19%) than 2009 (27%). That can indicate that the sales in April were not investors look to scarf up deals but homeowners. Awesome.

Sales were up in most Greensboro zip codes, although 27405 and 27406 – those most impacted by foreclosure listings – didn’t enjoy the same lift. (Wow. Look at 27410 in 2007. Looks like it giving the finger to the rest of the graph!)

Who knows what the May sales will show us, but I’ll take four months of improvement over the alternative any day.

Now, please excuse me as I go to practice my cartwheels. If you hear sirens in town, you’ll know I need more work on 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) 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

After pretty much ignoring the data about new foreclosure listings in Greensboro for a few weeks (uh, months) I’m back at it. Sadly, not much has really changed.

Overall, the news about real estate has actually been more positive lately. I hesitate to type that too loudly as it may scare off the good mojo. And some of the good sales information is no doubt due to the Home Buyer’s Tax Credit that recently went the way of the VCR so we may start hearing more subdued reports regarding pending sales and mortgage applications. But there does seem to be a different atmosphere out there. I have clients who are interested in buying, even though they won’t be getting paid by the government to do so, and the wild look in many Realtors’ eyes has been turned down to a mere “freaked out” look rather than the “total panic” we’ve all gotten used to seeing.

Back to Greensboro’s foreclosures, suffice to say that there are plenty of them and the numbers continue to grow at a sickly rate every week. This is too bad because last year I was writing about how weekly listings and – to me, more illustrative of the situation – the number of listings over the previous 12 weeks was declining.

Not any more.

As a matter of fact, year over year comparisons of last week’s numbers show a decided increase in listings. And the trend shows no real indication of slowing.

The numbers:

The week ending last Sunday (May 23rd) had 19 new foreclosures listed. All but one Greensboro zip code – 27408 – had listings, with 27455 having the most at 5.

Looking at these zip codes over the last 4 weeks we see that 27405 and 27406 have had the most foreclosure listings at 15 and 17 respectively. There were no new listings in 27408 over the last four weeks.

Taking all foreclosure listings over all Greensboro zips over the last 12 weeks, it’s easy to see that see that there are still three zip codes that have been disproportionately impacted by foreclosures. 27405, 27406 and 27408 have a combined total of 114 listings over the last 12 weeks out of 186 for all zip codes. That translates to over 60% of foreclosures. On the other end of the spectrum, 27408 had 1% of foreclosures listed over the same period.

The 12-week rolling period isn’t any more cheering. The trend is up. And then up some more:

Being sufficiently depressed over all this so I decided to look at the same week last year. It didn’t make me feel any better:

I’m going to choose to believe all this activity is like when a toilet gets backed up and then a great woosh of … well, of stuff that smells exactly like these foreclosure numbers….goes flying through the pipes all at once.

Enough of my poetic writing. I’m off to make some showing appointments. That’s good news, right?

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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) 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