Archive for June 2024
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Home Sellers AND Buyers Are Both Trying To Get Used To Home Inspection Contingencies Again |
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 For much of the past five years, in many price ranges, in many locations, we were seeing multiple offers, escalation clauses, and buyers willing to remove any and all contingencies. Home inspections were a thing of the past -- for a few years. But now, with somewhat fewer buyers in the market to buy (given higher mortgage interest rates) we are often just seeing a single offer, or only a few, rather than 5 to 10 offers on a popular new listing. As a result, home inspections are often taking place on transactions in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County. Since home inspections haven't been top of mind lately (given the heated market) here are a few reminders to home sellers and buyers related to home inspections... Sellers - Certainly, it would be ideal if the one offer you received did not have an inspection contingency, but you only have one offer, so it is probably reasonable to go along with the home inspection. Buyers - Try to focus on major issues in the home inspection report. It is not necessarily realistic to think a seller is going to address every minor issue identified in the inspection report. Sellers - Your buyer is (probably) not just trying to use the inspection report and contingency to renegotiate the deal. Assume the best about your buyer, that they are attempting to renegotiate the deal given the new information they discovered during the inspection process. Buyers - I do not recommend asking sellers to make elective upgrades to the home. Your home inspector might have pointed out items that would be done differently if the home was built today, but was normal at the time the house was built -- or they might point out areas where you could make improvements to improve energy efficiency, etc. These sorts of items are not typically repairs (or upgrades) that you should request from a seller. Sellers - If the unknown of what might be discovered during a home inspection worries you, it could be a good idea to have an inspection completed before listing your home to identify and resolve any significant issues. Buyers - Given how difficult it can be to line up a contractor or handyman these days, consider being willing to discuss a credit with the seller instead of requiring that repairs be completed. I suspect home inspections will continue to be (will return to being) a normal part of the home purchasing and selling process over the next few years. | |
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Home Improvements Only Offer A Partial Return On Investment But That Is Only Part Of The Story |
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 Given that so many homeowners have fixed mortgage interest rates below 4% (or below 3%) there are plenty of homeowners who are likely to stay in their homes for MANY years to come. Staying in a home for many years to come will likely mean that at some point you are considering some home improvement projects...
The list could go on and on. When asked by homeowners about the return on investment of home improvements I am quick to point out that they all typically offer only a partial return on investment. That is to say that if you spend $25K on project X, your home's value might only increase by $15K. If you spend $85K on project Y, your home's value might only increase by $40K. You get the idea. BUT... looking at the return on investment through that singular lens (change in home value) is only looking at part of the story. Typically, homeowners make improvements to not only increase the value of their home but also to improve their experience of living in the house between now and at whatever future date they sell it. Each of the potential home improvement projects noted above would provide you with some greater enjoyment of your home or greater utility from your home for the duration of your ownership of the home. So... if you plan to stay in your home for a while, and are considering some home improvement projects, don't only look at how those improvements will affect your home value... also consider how they will improve your enjoyment of or your use of your home. | |
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If You Are The First Or Only Buyer To Make An Offer, Go Ahead And Include Those Contingencies |
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 Egads! The market is crazy right now -- would be home buyers have to include escalation clauses and they certainly couldn't include an inspection contingency or an appraisal contingency!?! Right? Well... yes... often... but not always. Sometimes you might be looking at a home that has been on the market for 3, 7 or 10 days -- without an offer on it as of yet. Should you offer full price, waive an inspection and opt out of an appraisal contingency? Not necessarily. As funny as it might be to say this... If a house has been on the market for a few days and does not have any offers, go ahead and go crazy... include that inspection contingency, and the radon test contingency, and the appraisal contingency, and... wait for it... maybe even try to negotiate a bit on price!?! Certainly, your offer might spur on another offer, and then you might be in a competitive offer situation where you are revising your offer and removing your contingencies... but you might just find success in buying a home with a few of those used-to-be-normal contingencies. ** results may vary based on property type, price range and location ** ;-) | |
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Mortgage Interest Rates Declining Steadily Through Start Of Summer |
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 Outdoor temperatures may have been HIGH during the first few weeks of summer... but mortgage interest rates have been falling! Over the past years, the average 30 year fixed mortgage interest rate has been 7.01%. The average rate peaked last October at 7.79% and then fell relatively steadily through December... but then (mostly) climbed again all the way through May when it hit 7.22%. Since that time we have seen a decline almost every week, and the average rate is now 6.87%. That is nearly a full percentage point lower than the high of 7.79% this past October. Home buyers are certainly enjoying these lower mortgage interest rates though they hope they will continue to decline. | |
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I Just Contracted To Buy A House But An Even More Exciting House Was Just Listed For Sale!?! |
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 Thankfully, this doesn't happen too often, but I have had a few clients over the years who have been in this predicament. They finally, excitedly, ratify a contract on a house that they are thrilled to purchase... and then... a few days later... a house hits the market that is even more exciting! What is a conflicted buyer to do? 1. Remember that you are contractually bound to buy the home that you signed a contract to buy. There will likely be ramifications (financially and otherwise) if you do not complete the purchase. 2. Remember that you were excited about lots of other new listings in the past, all of which you were much less excited about after you toured the houses. Thus, even if the shiny new listing seems like a really exciting house, you might not actually like it as much as you think you will if you walked through it. 3. Remember that in a competitive market (which we are still in, for the most part) there isn't any guarantee anyhow that you'd be able to secure a contract on that newer and possibly more interesting listing. 4. Remember that this dynamic will always exist -- whether it's a few days later, a few months later or a few years later -- a home will inevitably come on the market that will be (or will seem to be) more exciting than the home you bought a few days ago, a few months ago or a few years ago. 5. Consider turning off your new listing alerts to avoid feeling conflicted? 6. Feel free to talk all of this through with me and I can try to help talk you off of the ledge if you are suddenly less excited about the house you just contracted to buy based on a new listing that just hit the market. | |
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Four Story Building Of Storage Units Proposed On Stone Spring Road |
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 A developer is proposing to build a four story building of storage units in the location shown below -- on Stone Spring Road, not too far from its intersection with Port Republic Road, next to Dupont Community Credit Union.  Find out more about the proposal here. | |
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16 Apartments (Plus An Industrial Building) Proposed On Baxter Drive |
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 A light industrial building and 16 apartments have been proposed on Baxter Court as shown above. Here's the potential site plan...  Learn more about the proposal here. | |
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16 Townhouses Planned For Corner Of Deyerle Avenue And Lucy Drive |
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 City Council recently approved the rezoning (from R3 to R8) of a one acre parcel at the corner of Deyerle Avenue and Lucy Drive to allow for the development of 16 townhouses. Here's the potential site plan...  Learn (a bit) more via the application packet here. | |
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Three Story Apartment Building With 15 to 20 Apartments Planned On West Elizabeth Street |
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 The owners of a 0.24 acre lot on West Elizabeth Street, between North High Street and North Liberty Street, plan to build a three story apartment building with 15 to 20 apartments. The owners have received approval from the City for the rezoning required for this development to move forward. City staff, planning commission, city council and the developers all seem excited at the prospect of bringing more living opportunities to the downtown area. Interestingly...
I'm just realizing that the site will potentially be transformed from only being used by cars (a parking lot) to a use that does not allow for cars (apartment building with no on-site parking). :-) | |
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Listings Hitting The Market On Fridays Make It Important For Buyers To Have A Lender Letter Ready To Go |
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 A buyers says... I plan to buy a home as soon as "the right one" comes on the market. I talked to a lender six months ago and they didn't have any concerns with being able to approve me for a mortgage. I'll just wait until the right house hits the market and then I'll get a prequalification letter from my lender. This works out OK some of the time to most of the time - but not all of the time. Sometimes a new listing hits the market on a Friday. We might go see it on Saturday afternoon. By the time we are looking at the house there are already two offers in hand and a few more might be received at any moment. If you love the house, and want to make an offer, we might be in a tight spot, because... 1. An offer without a lender letter won't typically go anywhere. 2. An offer with a promise to deliver a lender letter on Monday won't typically go anywhere. Certainly, sometimes a seller won't be making a decision until Monday or Tuesday and sometimes offers don't materialize that quickly. But... if you want to be ready to make an offer on a house that you love when it hits the market, you should already have a lender letter ready to go. | |
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How To Best Understand How Home Values Are Changing |
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 Full Disclosure: I have more questions than answers today. In the first five months of this year versus last year...
Wait, what!? The detached homes that sold in the first five months of this year sold at prices that were 13% higher than last year... and attached homes sold at prices that were 15% higher than last year... but when you combine the two data sets the median sales price is only 5% higher? Yes, that is correct. My first theory to try to explain this was that maybe more detached or attached homes sold in one year versus the other. But, it seems not... 2023: 68% detached, 32% attached 2024: 67% detached, 33% attached Next up I looked at what happens when we take new construction homes out of the mix. When looking at home sales in the first five months of this year versus last year, and when only looking at resale homes, not new homes...
That is certainly much less confusing than the first set of numbers. Where do we go from here? 1. I want to see how some of these numbers change as we have more months of 2024 data to work with. 2. I will be thinking further about how to best understand changes in home values in this area... perhaps it is best to only look at resale home sales, or just look at resale detached home sales? 3. I will welcome the thoughts, theories, guesses and questions from my readers. :-) Yes, that's you. | |
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May 2024 Home Sales Outpace Projections, With Median Prices Increasing More Slowly |
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 Happy Monday, friends, and Happy Summer! Summer is well underway over here at the Rogers household, with Luke having finished his first year of college and Emily wrapping up 10th grade. The start of our summer has included getting away for a few days to the lake for some water skiing and tubing, celebrating my niece's graduation (congrats Sofia!) and looking forward to Red Wing Roots Music Festival in less than two weeks! I hope your summer is off to a great start and that you'll find some time to relax or get away for a few days at some point this summer.  Before we dive into the lake, or rather, the real estate data... each month I offer a giveaway for readers of my market report. This month I'm giving away a $50 gift card to Bruster's. Yes, I realize that is a lot of ice cream... but they have SO many delicious flavors! Click here to enter to win the gift card. Now, on to the latest happenings in our local housing market...  Above you'll find the basic numbers related to how many homes are selling in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County and the prices at which those homes are selling. Here are a few things that stand out to me... [1] Home sales this May (last month) were much higher than expected... with 20% more sales than last May. [2] Despite seeing a 15% decline in the number of home sales in the past 12 months compared to the 12 months before that, we are now seeing a 7% increase in year to date home sales, thanks in part to the strong month of sales in May. [3] You might recall that for the past few years we have been seeing a (surprising) 10% increase in the median sales price each year. The median sales price over the past 12 months ($336,010) is now 8% higher than in the 12 months before that -- and the year to date median sales price is only 5% higher than in 2023 year to date. Thus, it seems that the median sales price may be increasing a bit more slowly this year than in recent years. Looking for a moment just at detached single family homes...  Sometimes it can be helpful to look only at detached home sales to see how they are comparing compared to the overall market. This month I am noting that the median sales price of all homes sold has only increased by 5% year to date (from $325K to $340K) but the median sales price of detached homes has increased by 13% year to date (from $342K to $385K). If you're trying to buy a home, you are likely paying a higher price now than you would have a year ago. If you are trying to buy a detached single family home, you are likely paying a much higher price now than you would have a year ago. As one final subset of the overall market data, here's a look at only existing homes... excluding new construction homes...  If you don't happen to want to buy a new home (based on their size, location, price, etc.) then you'll be focusing just on resale homes -- and there have been far fewer of those home sales over the past 12 months. We have seen 17% fewer resale home sales over the past 12 months (compared to the 12 months before that) mostly due to sellers not selling - rather than buyers not buying. In slightly better news, we have only seen a 2% decline in existing home sales year to date, so as to say that the decline is slowing in the number of existing homes that are selling. Perhaps it is unsurprising then that the median sales price of existing homes is 10% higher this year to date compared to last year to date, which shows a higher rate of increasing prices for existing homes as compared to the overall market. Now, I started off by mentioning that May home sales exceeded expectations... and you can see that more clearly here...  April home sales (106) were much (!) lower than last April (124) but May did not follow that pattern. After only seeing 114 home sales last May... there were 137 this May! Adding up those two months to see how April+May is tracking year over year, we find 243 home sales this year compared to 238 home sales last year. As you can see from my abundance of purple arrows above, it's hard to say where things will head in June... will home sales drop below 2023 again, or match 2023, or exceed 2023? It's hard to know for sure, but keep reading for the latest on contract activity and pending sales, both of which should give us somewhat of a hint of what is ahead. But first, let's see how this year stacks up compared to prior years...  We have been seeing a decline in the number of home sales over the past few years (2021 to 2022 as well as 2022 to 2023) but that might be reversing itself in 2024. The 525 home sales we have seen in the first five months of 2024 puts us ahead of 2023, though certainly still behind 2022 and 2021. Stay tuned to see if we can come out ahead of the 1,206 home sales we saw last year. Next up is a monthly look at rolling 12 month trends...  The top (green) line shows (barely, if you squint) what I have already mentioned in this month's report... median sales prices are increasing, but maybe not quite as quickly over the past six months as compared to their trajectory over the past few years. But, we'll need to continue to watch this metric to see if price increases are indeed settling down a bit. The bottom (blue) line shows that after almost two years of a downward trend in the number of homes selling in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County... we might finally be seeing things level out and increase a bit. We peaked above 1,700 home sales a year... and over about two years then saw things bottom out at just over 1,200 home sales a year. Will this trend slowly make its way back up to 1,300 home sales a year? If so, how soon? I mentioned new vs. existing home sales a bit earlier, but here's how the breakdown looks over the past few years...  We have seen a steady decline in the number of existing homes selling in our market... and in the percentage of home sales that are existing homes. Three years ago 81% of home sales were existing homes and only 19% were new homes. This year only 71% of homes that are selling are existing homes and 29% are new homes. Many homeowners have low mortgage interest rates on their existing mortgages and thus do not want to sell their homes -- which is contributing to lower numbers of existing home sales. We are also seeing many more new home communities in our area -- from local builders, but mostly from regional builders. I suspect we will continue to see new homes making up 25% or more of all home sales over the coming years. Now, for predicting the future...  After a strong month of sales activity in May, one might wonder what the next few months will hold. As shown above, we have now had three straight months of solid contract activity (red line) compared to those same months last year (blue line). Over the past three months, 423 buyers (and sellers) have signed contracts compared to only 364 in the same three months last year. These strong levels of contract activity suggest that we will continue to see at least several more months of strong home sales. Trends in pending home sales also supports that theory...  A year ago (blue line) there were only 275 homes under contract (pending) in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County. Today, that has risen to 336 homes under contract in our market. The overall declines in the number of homes selling may be behind us at this point given recent months of strong contract activity and the current trends in pending home sales. Perhaps unsurprisingly, inventory levels are also declining a bit...  Back in July 2023 we saw inventory levels start to rise... and they have stayed higher than expected since that time. But... at least as of today, inventory levels are trending back down a bit. Will this trend continue? Or is it a one month blip? Stay tuned. Keep in mind that even as inventory levels rose from the 100-130 range to the 180-200 range, all of those levels are well below pre-COVID inventory levels. Days on market -- how quickly homes go under contract -- is also keeping things interesting lately...  After several years of a median days on market of four or five days, we started to see this metric drift upward in late 2022, corresponding in large part to increases in mortgage interest rates. Last summer we saw days on market start to decline again (back down to five days in August 2023) but then it rose through early 2024. Has the market slowed back down since that time -- or are we starting to see a seasonality to this metric? We'll need to see how things develop as we progress through the remainder of the summer months. And, finally, those mortgage interest rates...  Two years ago the average rate was just above 5%, and rates peaked last Fall just under 8%, but the average 30 year fixed mortgage interest rate has been consistently above 6.5% for a year now... and there are not any indications that we'll see anything below 6.5% anytime soon. Most home buyers (or would be home buyers) have now adjusted to this new interest rate environment, and hopefully nobody is planning to wait to buy until rates get below 5%. There is talk of mortgage interest rates potentially coming down some over the remainder of the year, but we've heard that talk quite a few times over the past six (+) months and it hasn't measurably happened yet. As I bring this monthly market recap to a close, I'll point out that I post even more charts and graphs for your perusal each month over here. And finally, as we look ahead through the summer and towards the fall... If you plan to sell your home in the next six months, let's chat sooner rather than later about market conditions, your home preparations, your timing objectives and more. If you are considering a home purchase in the next six months, I'd be happy to chat with you about the buying process, the market and introduce you to some mortgage lenders who can help you consider your financing options. Reach out to me anytime via phone/text at 540-578-0102, or by email here. | |
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Do Not Assume A Seller Will Say No To An Offer You Have Not Made |
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 It often goes something like this... "That house was listed for a sale a few days ago for $435K and I could probably only afford to pay $425K. I'm sure the seller would not accept my $425K offer, so I just won't make the offer." "I know that house has been on the market for two months priced at $650K without a price adjustment, but I'm sure the seller would not be willing to sell for $625K, so I won't even make the offer." "Even though that house has been on the market for a few months, they probably still wouldn't accept a full price offer because I would need to include a home sale contingency, so I probably shouldn't make an offer." In almost all cases, I recommend that all three of the fictional buyers above go ahead and make the offers that they chose not to make because they assumed a seller would say no to their offer. Certainly, a seller might really say no to your offer, but that's OK. If you never actually make the offer, you'll never have a chance to find out if the seller will say "no" -- or whether they would say "yes" or "no, but how about..." | |
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If You Are Selling A Rental Property It May Be Best To Sell Just Before Or Just After Your Tenants Move Out |
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 Property values are high and they seem to keep getting higher. That statement is not true for all locations, price ranges and property types -- but overall, the local median sales price keeps increasing. This dynamic has resulted in some owners of rental properties deciding to go ahead and sell those rental properties... which is a welcome turn of events for first time home buyers who are often looking to buy the same properties that may currently be rental properties owned by investors. So... if you are planning to sell your rental property... when should you do so? Your best bet will be to list your rental property for sale either just before or just after your tenants move out. If you list within this timeframe, your property will be able to be considered by owner occupant purchasers as well as other investor purchasers. In contrast... if you list your rental property for sale while the current tenant still has six more months on their lease... the lease will convey to and be binding on the new owner... which means owner occupant purchasers won't be able to consider the purchase of your property... and your property will solely be appealing to investors who would take over the lease. So... if you want to expose your rental property to the widest pool of potential home buyers... we should wait until you have about 60 days (or less) remaining on the lease... or wait until just after your tenants move out. | |
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When Will Construction Begin At Bluestone Town Center? |
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 A major housing development is planned on Garbers Church Road (and Erickson Avenue) and here's an overview of the timing, looking back and looking forward... June 2022 - Details first merge on the proposed housing development January 2023 - Planning Commission considers rezoning request February 2023 - City Council approves rezoning request May 2023 - Developer purchases the land for the development January 2024 - Plat for Phase One proposed And the latest... Mid/Late 2025 - Construction anticipated to begin From the article above...
Find out more about Bluestone Town Center here. | |
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International Companies Seem To Like Opening Facilities In Harrisonburg, Virginia |
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 The latest news... Virginia Business: Specialty gift manufacturer establishes $1.4M Harrisonburg operation
But don't forget the other international company that recently moved their operations to Harrisonburg, VA...
Learn more about these companies now with Harrisonburg-based operations... What other international company will show up next in Harrisonburg? | |
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Scott Rogers
Funkhouser Real
Estate Group
540-578-0102
scott@funkhousergroup.com
Licensed in the
Commonwealth of Virginia
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