I read with great amusement Gene Weingarten’s column in this Sundays Washington Post magazine titled, “Soft Boiled Detectives, A suburban police blotter” which featured excerpts from the weekly Vienna VA police reports. Ripped from the headlines were stories about a dispute between a landlord and his tenant over which toilet each should use (they shared the house) and another about an intoxicated individual with sushi in his pants.
There was an article in this month’s issue of Update Magazine, the trade magazine for the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors on the ins and outs of Section 8 housing. I will summarize the key points and add in my experiences with Section 8 tenants . (A link to the full article is at the […]
For years I have kept a record of the market stats. I have tried to keep my summaries simple. I look at the 3 major categories of housing: single family detached, townhomes and condos. Through different market cycles, they move in different directions. I also pay attention to days on market, inventory levels and the percentage of sale price to list price.
For a more thorough analysis, I would recommend clicking on the Real Estate Business Intelligence link under the Market Stats tab above. There you can not only look at a variety of charts and graphs but can drill down to very specific sub markets including zip codes.
The chart below gives you a good overview of how 2011 compared to 2010. The numbers reflect activity in Fairfax County, Arlington County and the cities of Alexandria, Falls Church and Fairfax.
Often homeowners move up because of a life event. Perhaps two single homeowners are getting married and need to sell their current homes and buy a home better suited to their new life. (A Realtor’s dream – 3 transactions!!) Or perhaps an expanding family requires more space. Or a wonderful career opportunity pops up outside of Northern Virginia.
However, other moves are discretionary. The homeowner has the financial resources to move to a new home and desires to do so for a variety of reasons; more space, bigger lot, smaller lot, more amenities, better schools, etc. The actual timing of the move is not critical so these folks often ask, “How is the market? Should I do this now or wait?” There may be some personal financial factors that dictate the proper response but the market is not really a factor. Here’s why.
Recently I wrote a blog outlining the basics of buying foreclosures, short sales and other distress property. I mentioned in that post that short sales are a vast wilderness with many pits, traps and paths leading nowhere. The stories below reinforce that statement. These are real cases I have worked over the last few years. The names and some other data have been modified to protect privacy but the key points are accurate and, most importantly, the timelines are real. The moral of all of these stories is that before deciding to pursue a short sale, make sure you have enough time and resources to wait for the bank to make a decision. If you are one who likes certainty and control, the short sale world is not for you. There is very little the buyer or buyer agent can do to shorten the time between contract and settlement. The pace of the transaction depends on the bank negotiator, the seller and the listing agent. On to the stories….
