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As Homes Take Longer To Sell, They Pile Up Which Tells Us Buyers Are Less Enthusiastic About Buying

A report from the Dallas Morning News in Texas. “Is Dallas-Fort Worth becoming a buyers’ market? With more properties on the market and sales beginning to slow, things are starting to change. Half of the country’s largest housing markets — including D-FW — are shifting, according to a new study by Trulia. ‘Dallas has started to shift towards a buyers’ market in the past year,’ Trulia researchers say. ‘As of January 2019, 78.9% of all ZIP codes in Dallas have shown signs of shifting in favor of buyers.'”

“For the first three months of 2019, home sales by real estate agents in North Texas have fallen 3 percent from first-quarter 2018 numbers. And the number of houses listed for sale n the area has jumped 24% from a year ago. About 18% of houses on the local market have had at least one price cut, Trulia says.”

“Among big city markets, some of the biggest changes are occurring in San Francisco and Las Vegas, where sellers have reigned for years with super high home prices.”

“‘A market can be shifting in favor of buyers when homes take longer to sell, price cuts are increasingly common, and more homes sell below their original list price,’ said Trulia economist Felipe Chacon. ‘Based on those three metrics, two are moving in favor of buyers in Dallas — days on market and share of price cuts.'”

“‘This will likely be a gradual shift on the ground but an important one for people shopping for homes there this spring,’ Chacon said. ‘As homes take longer to sell, they pile up and bump up inventory, which benefits buyers but also tells us buyers are less enthusiastic about buying up what is available than they were a year ago.'”

The Houston Chronicle. “Houston is tilting more toward becoming a buyers’ market, according to a Redfin report. The percentage of buyers who have been able to close on the first home they place an offer on has jumped more than 25 percent from last year — a sign that the odds are shifting to favor buyers.”

“The shift was part of a nationwide trend, in which the percentage of homebuyers who were able to close on their first home offer reached the highest point in three years. The jump was especially pronounced in West Coast cities such as San Jose. Nearly two-thirds of people who purchased a home in the San Jose metro area successfully purchased the first home on which they made an offer, compared to only 25 percent a year before.”

“‘Last year, homebuyers had to pull out all the stops to land a home in competitive West Coast markets,’ said Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist, ‘but this year there are more homes for sale and the odds are more in the buyer’s favor.'”

From Fox 7 Austin. “East Austin homeowners Bob and Kathy Bennett bought their home in 2011. When they received their latest appraisal notice, they received news they were not surprised to hear: their home value continues to rise. ‘It’s gone up about three times since we’ve purchased it. Three-hundred percent, tripled in value,’ said Bob Bennett.”

“In 2019, Austin has seen home values go up, but not as much as they were in previous years. ‘What we have seen in the past year based on the data we’ve seen in the previous year, is a softening of the Austin market for the residential properties, while in the past we’ve had double digit appreciation across the county,’ said Marya Crigler, chief appraiser at the Travis County Appraisal District.”

“‘Our taxes have gone up five times…from in the neighborhood of $2,000 to over $9,000 a year. Every year it’s gone up,’ said Bob Bennett. ‘We appeal it, they bring it down a small amount, but it still has gone up probably $1,000 or more every year.'”

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This Post Has 54 Comments

  1. ‘bought their home in 2011…‘It’s gone up about three times since we’ve purchased it. Three-hundred percent, tripled in value’

    But central bankers say you can’t see a bubble til it pops.

    1. Now that pretty much the entire west coast RE market is submerging, it is only a matter of time before the next talking point starts hitting the news cycle. “RE prices are falling but the effects are ‘contained’ and will not have a significant impact on the broader economy or stock market.” It’s weird how proclamations like that seem to coincide with large volumes of insider selling. I wonder if there might be a connection.

    2. ‘bought their home in 2011…‘It’s gone up about three times since we’ve purchased it. Three-hundred percent, tripled in value’

      Fire in the hole!

  3. ‘As homes take longer to sell, they pile up and bump up inventory, which benefits buyers but also tells us buyers are less enthusiastic about buying up what is available than they were a year ago.’

    This is step 1 in the equilibrium adjustment process to lower prices. Step 2 is when some of the owners of the inventory pile reduce their prices to levels where they are able to remove their home from the pile.

    2. Well everybody is acting like speculators – cuz they are! Crazy to buy when prices are shooting up, disappear when the glut arrives. Dallas is gonna get hammered.

  4. FYI, since they don’t have a state income tax in Texas, the way they even things out between rich areas and poor areas is to redistribute the very high property tax revenues from places such as Austin. So some of those property taxes are going elsewhere in the state.

    Moreover, there is no price disclosure requirement for deed recording in Texas, and thus no comparable sales to see. So yeah, fight that appraisal, because you never know what deal in the insiders are getting.

    1. No sales tax in Oregon, but property taxes are around 2% in many areas around Portland. That’s 10k a year on a 500k house. Add in State income tax and you’re way over the SALT deduction limit.

  5. Pocket listings up! I wonder why???

    CNN: “The Top Agent Network has become the primary marketplace for private listings. In the Washington DC area, for example, some 200 properties are announced privately there every month.
    The number of properties on the system increased by 34% in the past year compared with the year prior and sales volume has gone up 44% over the same time, according to David Faudman, founder and CEO of the Top Agent Network.
    “Everything is for sale for the right price,” says Faudman, who designed the communication system for the highest producing agents in a market. “Going on the MLS is a lot of show and tell. We’re for the serious, not the curious.”

    1. We’re for the serious, not the curious.

      Meaning…people who have enough money that they don’t care if they overpay as a bubble is popping? They just want what they want and don’t want the world to know about it?

    1. I noticed that on all these mortgage watch announcements it is not just the price decreasing but also the property size. I guess people prefer smaller houses now.

      1. Actually he just cherry picks places like that to make it seem like prices are falling faster than they are. It’s really unnecessary because 90% of us agree that the bubble is popping. We don’t need misinformation and misleading posts like his to distract from the truth.

    1. Not according to the Washington Post. To them, Mueller didn’t say “total innocence” therefore that means guilt.

      So much for Rule of Law.

      (btw the only, and I mean the only time, I’ve seen a lawyer say that someone was “innocent” (rather than not guilty), was after the Duke Lacrosse case.)

  11. ‘At least one of the houses Leonard Yang converted, on Sacramento’s Logan Street, has since been torn down. The alleged cells also took 100 semi-affordable houses off the market in the midst of the region’s worst housing crisis in years.’

    ‘Nielson, who has his concerns about California’s legal cannabis industry, nonetheless believes the work his agents did to interdict the China-connected black market was worth the years of hard work.’

    “To me, the big advantage of what we did was giving the neighborhoods back to the people,” he said. “And saying to these foreign entities that might be watching Sacramento that it’s not a good idea to come here and buy a hundred houses. We’ll shut it down, and they’ll lose a lot of money.”

    https://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/chinese-connection/content?oid=28025888

      1. Jeebus, there’s photos!

        ‘Public defecation is a straight-up fact of life in mainland China. It’s something you’ll see on roads, public places, subways, airplanes, and even elevators.’

        I talked with a guy who had been stationed in South Korea who said he saw the same thing there, out in the countryside.

        1. It’s a fact of life in San Francisco, Seattle and most every large metro in this country, too.

      2. The future of California encapsulated….a giant borderless gender neutral bathroom. On a related note, did I not read that defecating on side walks was decriminalized in Denver?

      4. My uncle moved from NY to Texas in the 70’s. The neighbor’s dog was making regular deposits on his lawn but he hesitated to speak to the neighbor about it. Over the months they got a little friendlier so my uncle told him he hated to mention it, but Sally was making a habit of pooping on his lawn. The guy burst out laughing. Sally was his wife’s name.

    1. In another 10 or 20 years Greenwich may be affordable again

      Tax on CT wealthy could raise $200M annually

      By Keith M. Phaneuf And Mark Pazniokas, CTMirror.org Updated 3:19 pm EDT, Thursday, April 18, 2019

      This proposal is expected to enjoy strong support from leaders in the House and Senate’s Democratic majorities, but Gov. Ned Lamont has said he opposes any effort to raise the income tax, arguing it would weaken Connecticut’s economy and drive wealthy taxpayers from the state.

      “I’ve been pretty strict on not raising tax rates,” Lamont reiterated Thursday. “Everybody comes in and goes, ‘C’mon on gov, it’s just a half a point. It’s just another point. It’s not that big a deal.’ But it’s the fourth time in 12 years or something like that.”

      https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Tax-on-CT-wealthy-could-raise-200M-annually-13778413.php

      Connecticut loses 3,400 jobs in first quarter of 2019
      By Jordan Grice Updated 6:09 pm EDT, Thursday, April 18, 2019

      https://www.ctpost.com/business/article/Connecticut-loses-3-400-jobs-in-first-quarter-of-13778790.php

  16. Rapid runup in prices to historically unprecedented levels?

    Check.

    Shrinking volume of sales transactions to a trickle?

    Check.

    Buyer belief that rapid rate of price appreciation can continue forever?

    Check.

    Widespread denial that a bubble is forming?

    Check.

    Can anybody guess what will next transpire?

    1. “Can anybody guess what will next transpire?”

      Well since the IPO hype has yet to settle and they will all under perform as Lyft did (doomed told me it’s going to the moon) I would guess once that disappointing news settles in, pessimistic views will start to dominate. Realturds and other REIC fraudsters will reach out to gov and private entities such as this NINA loan model so that they can qualify anyone left that can be suckered into this falling market. After all these Hail Marys prove to be nothing more than beating a dead horse we will all enter recession and a 2008 dejavu will eclipse in all of our lives.

    1. TPTB are going all out in their attempts to suppress the price of gold and prop up the attractiveness of the dollar and the U.S. bond market. They don’t even try to hide the blatant manipulation any more, since the regulatory capture of the CTFC and SEC was complete years ago.

  18. A fish rots from the head down.

    House Prices in 12 of California’s Most Expensive Coastal Counties Fell in March from a Year Ago. Here are the Charts
    by Wolf Richter • Apr 17, 2019
    Despite “the lowest interest rates in more than a year.”

    In California, the median house price in March was essentially flat with March last year at $565,880, according to the California Association of Realtors. But among the most expensive 16 coastal counties – those with a median price for a single-family house above $500,000 – there were only four counties where house prices ticked up compared to March last year: Napa +3.6%, Santa Cruz +0.9%, San Luis Obispo +3.2%, and Ventura +0.2%. In the other 12 counties, prices fell year-over-year. This year’s widespread decline in expensive counties is the first such event since the end of Housing Bust 1.

    Despite “the lowest interest rates in more than a year,” sales volume in California dropped 6.3% in March, compared to March last year, to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 397,210 houses, according to the CAR.

    Sales volume in March dropped in all major regions from a year ago…

  21. “Firefighting” is a lovely metaphor for bailing out well-connected crony capitalists while feeding the Middle Class and Millennials to the wolves.

  22. Looks like Las Vegas will continue to be the roller coaster market. The thing is, it’s a terrible place to live unless you are a retired multimillionaire, in which case you’ll have much better options elsewhere. The only reason that people tend to flock to LV is because of low rental and home prices, but then the flock reaches critical mass, those prices go up, and it’s no longer a good bargain, so everyone moves away and the prices crater. Wash, rinse, repeat.

    LV has a very high rate of people who move from out of state and don’t make it three years before they leave. They aren’t prepared for the numerous pitfalls that you don’t discover until you’ve been there a few months. Now that real estate is no longer in the affordable category, they will stop coming all together.

    Most of the new construction homes for sale, and the rental houses on the market, are these massively overbuilt McMansions in the 3,000 – 5,000 square foot range, which would cost a fortune to cool and maintain. The desert sun and the hard water will rack up repair bills very quickly. Not to mention the shoddy workmanship mostly done by illegal labor with fudged credentials. If all that weren’t enough, the property crime rates are unbelievable, and the burglars love targeting these “upscale” neighborhoods.

    Older construction rentals and homes are almost universally falling apart and located in dangerous neighborhoods with awful schools.

    When it comes to Las Vegas, you’re much better off at the roulette wheel than you are in the real estate game.

    1. “The only reason that people tend to flock to LV is because of low rental and home prices” and that’s over (we rent.) The downtown neighborhood we’re in had two daylight burglaries in the past two weeks. In one case, the thieves didn’t even care that neighbors were filming them stealing the family’s truck along with other items.

      The neighbors are bursting with pride over the doubling of house prices from what I read on next-door.com and owners’ comments have turned quite snobbish – categorizing hired help as “good for grunt work”, people walking through the streets as “riff-raff” and criticizing the upkeep of others’ houses. One lady they picked on is chronically ill; no one sympathized. They all seem like they’re losing their minds.

      We’ve been here since 2006. Can’t go back to NYC. Blew the opportunity to get a bargain house in 2011, though there were good reasons not to buy that particular place.

      I’ve been saying to my family lately that we don’t have to stay here forever.

      1. I lived downtown for a couple of years. I felt lucky each day when I came home from work and my house hadn’t been broken into, and my dogs were still safe.

        The safety issues were in addition to the numerous trashy, loud, and inconsiderate neighbors. A good number of them seemed literally mentally ill, and had lived there for decades.

        When you are a member of nextdoor, ring doorbells, or facebook neighborhood groups, you realize the staggering rate of property crimes being committed in broad daylight every single day. You will never hear about most of these crimes on the news or in any police blotter. A lot of them aren’t reported, and the city goes out of it’s way to hide the true picture.

        We had many occasions where people came to our door trying to get in, or testing to see if anyone was home. All doors and windows on the property had gouges and pry marks where thieves had broken in, in years past.

        At the end of it all, it doesn’t matter how low the rents were, it’s simply not worth it if you could return home at any time to find your home emptied and trashed. We couldn’t even go out of town for a weekend because we felt we needed to stay home and guard the house.

        Left a very bad taste in my mouth to say the least…when you factor in the oppressive heat, low-paying jobs, awful traffic, and other LV problems, it’s just not worth it even if rent were free! Good luck, I hope you can persuade your family to get out!

        1. Also, prop mgr has not sent new lease. Haven’t asked, since last one came with a $200 increase, which is likely to happen again.
          Also, I’m hardly a clean freak, but the dust is driving me crazy. I feel like I might as well be living outdoors. Rental is old (’68), with single pane, leaky and decrepit windows. The house must be shifting because cracks are appearing and some doors are getting harder to close.

          Going to start looking for my “Oil City”.

          1. John, meant to reply about people knocking on the door all the time – that was most surprising to me. Some are con artists, others just selling services. Haven’t noticed any attempt to enter.

          2. Yes, our house was very old as well and the mid-century charm is what initially attracted us to it. But the dust was indeed annoying, along with the huge cooling costs due to lack of weatherproofing. Many structural issues with the house as well, making us glad we weren’t owners. It seemed like a real money pit.

            At least 4 or 5 times, sketchy characters would come to our door with an obviously phony story about needing to come in and check for pests or something. Twice, a homeless couple showed up late at night and were very belligerent, demanding money and for me to open the door. I had to actually brandish my weapon before they would leave. A naked homeless woman came screaming into my driveway and didn’t want to leave. Police helicopters circled overhead pretty much every single night.

            An older neighbor who had lived there for 30 years casually pointed out a street guy one day and said “oh, he’s one of our neighborhood burglars” as if she was talking about a stray cat. Turns out the guy had broken into the house next door to us 4 or 5 times already. And people just accepted it as normal!

            I’m no stranger to gritty inner-city environments but all that was just too much. And the local city councilman would basically mock people who complained, telling them to “move to Summerlin”! It blew my mind. And, turns out Summerlin is no safer than downtown – burglaries, car theft, and home invasions are epidemic there as well.

            It was as if the “urban renewal” hipsters there prided themselves on the outrageous crime rate because it made them feel cool.

            Las Vegas has cured me of my desire to ever live in a major city again.

  23. You’ve just described our situation exactly, except for the local burglar. These people around here are hyper-vigilant – as soon as someone sees something, they post what amounts to an APB on nextdoor. The funniest was “An African is walking through the neighborhood.” No one dared answer that one.

    It’s all getting so old.

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