Bobbie's Blog

The magic word in real estate is location, and location within La Plata County certainly made a difference in sales and prices through September this year.

Bayfield real estate values continued to decrease, sales of open land in the county showed a big leap, and pretty much everyone else is seeing slow but steady growth.

“We’re just chugging along,” said Jarrod Nixon, president of the Durango Realtors Association, which released its year-to-date through the third quarter statistics for the Multiple Listing Service real estate transactions. “We’re showing a very gradual recovery, after sales bottomed out in September of ’09. But we’re probably still three years away from what I would consider a normal market.”

Bayfield continues to struggle with decreasing median prices – down 7.27 percent from 2010 and 28 percent from 2008, with 20 percent fewer sales so far in 2011.

“We have a situation with a lot of forced sales,” said Dave Hardy, the owner of Bayfield Realty. “We have a lot of repossessions and relocations of oil and gas people that’s driving prices down. But I feel like we’ve hit the bottom of pricing.”

Hardy said his office has been quite busy for the past week or so, which may indicate an uptick in sales.

One of the brightest spots in the local real estate picture is the sale of raw land in the county.

“The best way to summarize it is ‘land banking,’” said Justin Osborn, a Realtor with the Wells Group, who has sold a lot of land this year. “People who have cash are seeing some of the lowest land prices in 10 years, and with the stock market and bonds unreliable, it seems like the best time to buy for a long-term investment.”

Location of the property makes all the difference. Osborn said prices vary from $800 to $20,000 an acre, depending on variables such as water rights and views. He closed on three major properties in the third quarter, including the 800-acre Red Mesa Ranch that went for $750,000 and 400 acres of the Continental Divide Ranch, which sold for $2.6 million.

“The (U.S. Department of Agriculture) is still doing its (Conservation Reserve Program),” Osborn said. “So rather than overgrazing or developing, people can leave the land in natural grasses and still bring in up to $50,000 a year. So they can invest in land, get an income and enjoy the land. People like to go fishing, ride ATVs, go on picnics, go hunting or even grow their own food on their own land.”

Most of the land currently for sale was purchased for development before the market crashed, he said. Old-time ranching families are holding on to their property until prices go up.

And buying raw land isn’t for the cash-strapped.

“Unlike home mortgages, which are available at historically low interest rates, lending for raw land is not getting any better,” Osborn said. “Banks are asking for 35 to 40 percent down, which can be a lot of money.”

In Durango, where the median price was up a little more than 4 percent, and the number of homes sold was up almost 10 percent, location mattered, too.

“It goes neighborhood by neighborhood,” Nixon said. “The avenues (historic downtown Durango) have performed really well and held their value. But Durango West and even some of Crestview are still showing declining value.”

All three men cautioned against reading too much into quarterly trends. Osborn said it takes only a few big land sales to skew the statistics.

“In 2010, the federal government was offering that $8,000 tax credit through the first two quarters,” Nixon said. “That really affected the third, and into the fourth quarters. And purchase timing has changed. Loans were taking 60 days to close last year, and this year it’s down to 35 or 40.”

The number we should really be looking at is inventory, they said. Seven to 10 years is the estimate for raw land, Osborn said.

“We have between nine and 12 months of inventory in town,” Nixon said. “Six months is the norm. Until some of that inventory is absorbed, we’re not going to see prices go up too much.”

In the meantime, the next big development push will be for rental housing.

“When home ownership is declining, we see an immediate need for rental properties,” Nixon said. “That’s a large shift for us. We have more people and less supply.”

abutler@durangoherald.com

“We can always go down, but we can’t go up.”

Have you ever heard that from a client?  If you have been on many listing appointments, you have probably heard this statement once or twice.  When setting the sales price of their home, many sellers are tempted to tack on a few percentage points to “leave room to negotiate”.

Overpricing a home can have many ramifications for a home seller.  It can limit the number of potential buyers who can afford your home, reduce showings and create an impression in the marketplace that the homeowners aren’t really serious about selling their home.  Serious homeowners who overprice their home often get caught in the trap of price reduction after price reduction trying to catch up to the market.

During the past year, U.S. home sellers slashed more than $24 billion from home listings on Trulia.com. Trulia’s Q1 Home Offer Report indicated that on average, most sellers will reduce their list price after 79 days on the market, choosing to cut their original list price by 8 percent. Following a first reduction, 35 percent of these sellers will make a second.

Most homebuyers look at 10-15 homes before making a buying decision. Because of this, setting a competitive price relative to the competition is an essential component to a successful marketing strategy. Underpricing a home isn’t good either- educating your clients about the importance of properly pricing a home is key to the home sales process.

If you made green home improvements over the last few years with high hopes for lower energy bills and a quick recoup of your initial investment, you got an awakening: Your monthly bottom line likely held steady—or, worse, went up. 

Before you shun green, recalibrate your thinking from expecting fat returns to understanding the new bottom line: Smart retrofits help you hold your ground against rising energy costs.

Why have my green home improvements fallen flat?

Energy prices as a whole have gone up over the last decade, especially in certain regions of the country.

Although natural gas prices have dipped a bit since 2008 and electricity prices have stayed level, the trend line goes up for both from 2011 forward.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates an average annual increase in residential energy costs of 2.3% through 2035.

So…if energy cost projections hold, and assuming an average annual American energy bill of $2,200, you’ll pay 2.3% more each year (that’s $50 the first year) if you do nothing to reduce your consumption. Your bill will inch closer to $4,000 by the year 2035. Ouch.

3 energy saving retrofits that pay off

If the only reason you’re making retrofits is to manage energy costs, look for projects with maximum bang for the buck.

Rule of thumb: Try to beat the 2.3% annual average with green home improvements that reduce your energy consumption by 5% or more but have a modest initial investment. And don’t forget to ask whether your utility or state government offers rebates or tax credits for these improvements.

1. Seal and insulate ductwork that runs through unheated spaces—the attic, a crawl space, a garage. It’s not glamorous, but it can improve the efficiency of your heating system by 20%—a 5% bill reduction overall. If you hire an HVAC pro for this job, you’ll invest a few hundred dollars for labor and materials.
 

2. Buy a programmable thermostat. Is it possible you haven’t done this yet? For just $25 to $250, the you can save, on average, around 8% on energy bills simply by programming it properly.

3. Add attic insulation and seal air leaks. One of the best energy-saving improvements out there, because insulating and sealing your home can reduce your energy bills by 10%. Upgrading your attic insulation to the R-value recommended for your region costs anywhere from $.25 to $1 per square foot, including materials and labor; it’s less if you do it yourself.

But you won’t get the maximum savings if you don’t seal air leaks, so plan this as a combo job. Caulking and weather-stripping typically costs from $50 to $350, depending on the size of your house.

Karin Beuerlein in more than a decade of freelancing, has covered home improvement and green living topics extensively for HGTV.com, FineLiving.com, and FrontDoor.com. She and her husband started married life by remodeling the house they were living in. They still have both the marriage and the house, no small feat.

Source: Houselogic.com

Read more: http://www.houselogic.com/articles/eco-friendly-home-improvements/#ixzz1W9MVD2Fh