What is wrong with this picture? There are more buyers right now than homes for sale and sales have been increasing. The law of supply and demand says that prices should be going up right? Why are home values in some areas still going down? I can explain it from a very personal level.
My husband and I have owned quite a few homes. So against my better judgement, I let him talk me into a fixer-upper. I suppose it was boredom at same level that drove me to go along with a bad idea; we hadn’t been there and done that. A real home renovation adventure. Why not, the location was good. Not to mention that he was so suborn and passive aggressive about finding a single story home (they don’t really exist in Rocklin) so after 2 years of living in boxes and with the tax credit expiring, I broke down.
The fixer thing has turned into an expensive learning lab, but aside from that, it has been the worst investment ever. While the neighborhood is generally well maintained and has a unique feel to it, all that it takes is one really run down home in the general vicinity to ruin it for everyone else. There is a home four homes down from me that has fallen into such a bad state of disrepair that it screams dollar signs at you as you drive by it; not to mention that visual assault that occurs every time we are forced to look at it. So it was no surprise when it came on the market months ago as a short sale. In spite of the fact that the owners had pulled close to 600K out of it, they had never bothered to replace the roof, repaint the exterior or replace the rotting front door. It sat and sat with no offers. They agent did what any smart agent would do after 30 days and she kept lowering the price until she got an offer at close to 70K below what anything else in the neighborhood has sold for in past year.
So getting to the point. What does my real estate disaster have to do with depressed prices? There hasn’t been a sale in my neighborhood since last July. This disaster of a home will now set the standard as the only recent comp. The inventory is rough right now. Yes there are some very nice homes that come on the market, but they are few and far between. It is a buyers market only for homes that you wouldn’t want to live in. Every neighborhood in Rocklin, Roseville and Lincoln has a home like the one several doors down from mine in it too. Okay, the one in my neighborhood is exceptionally rough and old, but there is a rotten apple in every neighborhood and right now, they seem to be the only ones for sale. Until more nice homes come on the market and serve to stabilize prices, the bad apples are going to continue to rot our values. Lets hope that we start to see some pretty homes come on the market, because the ugly ones are hurting more than our eyes. Only the pretty ones can save us now.
Tags: Distressed Properties, Lincoln Real Estate, Rocklin Real Estate, Roseville Real Estate, Short Sales