Charlottesville's Real Estate Blog. Buyer &/or Seller Representation, Real Estate News
Have a look at this: These Are The 15 Housing Markets That Will Get Crushed The Hardest By 2012 .
Note that the traditional hotspots are there, and nowhere in Virginia is. And then there’s this – Charlottesville MSA home prices are predicted to rise in 2011. 
I’ll let you know in 2013 if they’re right.
After a closer look at the VAR’s July numbers, it seems that “median price†is really not at all indicative of market trends, which seem poor and getting worse with each passing month in this area.Consider, average days on the market of 86 marked an increase of nearly 50% from the same month in 2006 and 10% from June ‘07…. Dumping massive supply into a rapidly declining market doesn’t seem to make much economic sense.And from Luke:As a real estate amateur and an intelligence professional, I know one thing for certain, the Defense Intelligence Agency is moving a sizable portion of its operations to Charlottesville, creating a significant number of high-paying jobs and likely keeping prices inflated as they have been over the past few years, so I have no fear in buying a house right now, in fact I’m building one…. In short, the Dillon rule does indeed hinder our ability to manage growth, but the county is not without tools to address these issues.For that matter, Governor Kane [sic] has mentioned a willingness to work with local governments to give them more tools to address the issue of sprawl…. If we’re going to grow (and we seem to be) we should grow in the right areas, and we should grow in a smart manner – with infrastructure as well as houses.As noted on Brian Wheeler’s site last month:For the SFD permits detailed above (last 12 months), 61.4% were in rural areas and 20.25% were in the Crozet designated growth area …
The OFHEO has recently released their study looking at housing data for the first two quarters of this year (PDF).“House prices were basically flat in the second quarter despite tightening credit policies, rising foreclosure rates, and weakening buyer sentiment,†said Lockhart…. To the extent that recent mortgage market instability may have affected housing demand and prices, those effects would be evident in OFHEO’s next HPI release.The chart at the right, courtesy of housedata.info, shows the appreciation rate of the Charlottesville housing market since 1985.For the Charlottesville MSA,Our national ranking is 102The one-year rate of appreciation is 4.66%The second-quarter appreciation is .71%The five-year appreciation rate is 71%The number that should be of most importance to most people is the five year rate of appreciation – the timeframe by which most people should now be basing their purchasing decisions.For some context, in September of 2006, the Charlottesville MSA’s 5-year appreciation rate was 79.93% and our national ranking was 64. In 2Q of 2004, our 5-year appreciation rate was 52.86%, 2Q 2002 was 41.93%, and 2Q 2000 was 19.8%In short, with all the turmoil that is happening right now, housing likely will remain a good long-term investment for most people…. *These numbers do not necessarily reflect new-home cancellations.*The Charlottesville Metropolitan Statistical Area consists of Albemarle, Charlottesville, Fluvanna, Greene and Nelson Counties*The Case-Shiller home price index does not track the Charlottesville market specifically (PDF) – while it is an excellent source, using the Washington metro area to draw correlations to our market would be silly.
I had a neat little post all ready to go referencing these two articles – Housing’s rate of appreciation slows…. (Free link)- and then the NYTimes comes out with their spin on the data – Home Prices Fall in Nearly One-Fourth of Metropolitan Regions…. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO)’s quarterly report (PDF) was released the other day and has been the talk of the town.As a region,The South Atlantic Census Division including Florida, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland experienced its most significant price deceleration since at least the early 1980s. Its four-quarter appreciation rate fell from 17.43 percent to 13.74 percent. Even more specifically, are we really in a position to masticate and gnash our teeth over this?Charlottesville’s MSA*National Ranking – 641-Year Appreciation – 14.52%Quarter Appreciation – 4.11%5 Year Appreciation – 79.93%*MSA = Charlottesville, Albemarle, Greene, Fluvanna, NelsonNational statistics are a good guide to what is happening to the local market. Whether the County of Albemarle enforces its proffers will impact our market far more than what happens in Peoria (which has had a 22% increase in price over five years). Importantly, the agent bubble continues to lose ground – only about 30% of all area Realtors have had five or more transactions!The housing market continues to combat the culture of fear being propagated by the media…. What does it mean when the Government is using bubble visuals to depict the housing market?
RSS Appreciation Day – who knew? RSS is a vital component for news readers but also business blogs and real estate information delivery. The more people who use RSS both readers and content providers, the better for all. RCG is perhaps the leader in RSS delivery of real estate data. If only I could implement this type of search … One of my favorite RSS explanations remains Waldo’s “RSS for total Newbies.”
Good site with pretty graphs.