Tag Archives: Olathe Real Estate

Most Believe A Real Estate Market Recovery Is At Least A Couple Of Years Away

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

A collaborative report by Trulia.com and RealtyTrac.com finds that 54% of a random 2,000+ people surveyed believe the soonest the housing market will recover is 2014. Perception is reality and for more than half of the people surveyed to believe that, we’re in for a long road ahead. Just six months ago a similar poll found 34% of respondents believed the soonest the housing market would recover would be in 2014. To find that 20% more people feel this way just six months later won’t come as a surprise to many home sellers out there and the path to a successful home sale is clearly ever-changing.

Just 18% of those polled felt the real estate market would improve in 2012 or sooner. It’s possible that things can change that quickly. Truly though, I believe NO ONE can predict just how fast things may improve. Once enough home buyers start jumping back into the market (in anticipation we’re on our way up), it’s anyone’s guess how much affect that will have on home prices.  It could depend whether foreclosures are rising or falling when we get to that point and, again, NO ONE can predict the timing of that either.


Posted by Jason Brown

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A Year Of Real Estate Market Stats Covering the Entire Kansas City Metro Area

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

Here’s a look at the real estate stats for the entire Kansas City metro MLS area. This includes  Johnson County Kansas, Overland Park, Olathe, Leawood, Lenexa, Shawnee, Prairie Village, Lee’s Summit, Independence, Blue Springs, Grandview, Liberty, KCK and every listing in between that reports to the MLS. The graph below is a look at the past 14 months of real estate activity. You’ll see in the light green area that there was a significant dip in the volume of homes on the market in January and February. Since that time, the spring real estate market has brought the typical jump in the number of Kansas City homes for sale. But we’re still below the volume of homes that were on the market this time last year and that’s a good sign.

We won’t compare April’s sales rate to last April’s because you can see last year’s stats were grossly inflated by the home buyer tax credit that was still in effect. Looking at just the past few months, sales in both March and April (individually) were better than and other month since the tax credit ended (with the exception of July last year).

Posted by Jason A. Brown

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Taking A Look At The National Housing Stats As We Head Into The Prime Selling Season

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

My National Association or Realtors (NAR) reports that existing home sales in March rose 3.7% over February’s stats. The numbers were down 6.3% however when compared to March of last year. But we were still in the tax credit era at that time, so it’s not a real fair comparison to gauge last March against today’s real estate market. Comparing March stats to February’s however does bring better news to Kansas City home sellers as we head into the prime home selling season.


Existing home sales have in fact risen in all but 2 of the last 8 months. That’s great news. A NAR survey shows that 33% of homes purchased in March were bought by First Time Home Buyers. NAR also reports the average existing home price in March was just under $160,000 — an almost 6% drop from March of 2010 – and an astounding 40% of total sales were distressed properties, such as bank foreclosures and short sales.


Posted by Jason A. Brown

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National Home Prices Take Huge Dip Back To 2002 Levels

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

The U.S. accused Saddam Hussein of developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. An arrest was made in the D.C. sniper gun attacks. Enron happened. That was a long time ago… 9 years to be exact. And the value of the average U.S. home today is now equivalent to the average home price at the time of those events, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller price index. The downward trend is likely to continue until the volume of new foreclosure listings slows. Nearly 40% of U.S. homes sold last month were foreclosures or Short Sales (upside down homeowners praying their lender will accept a payoff lower than the borrower’s loan amount).


The conditions present today make it tough for many typical home sellers to catch a break. Some sellers become nervous when their homes don’t sell quickly. Many will make a knee-jerk reaction to drastically lower their prices as they work to gain market acceptance. This erodes values of surrounding homes and becomes a vicious cycle in some cases. To break the cycle, I believe we’re going to need an extended run of positive economic news (should create more buyer demand in the market) and a sizable reduction in the volume of foreclosure listings hitting the market (less supply of distressed homes will increase the demand for typical resale homes).

Some people predict we’ll never again see the real estate appreciation rates we saw for years in our country. While that may be true, to say that the housing market isn’t going to rebound would be bucking history.  Real estate has always rebounded and the pride of homeownership is one of the things that makes our country great. I am amazed when I hear the occasional person say that it’s crazy to own a home. I always tell them, someone is going to own the home they live in. Would they rather it be a landlord making the decisions for them the rest of their lives? I’ve yet to hear a plausible response to the question.  Real estate is also a LOCAL phenomena and the numbers reported nationally are drug down drastically by the real estate bubbles that burst in portions of California, Florida, Colorado and Arizona.


Posted by Jason A. Brown

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Kansas City Mortgage Interest Rates Fall For Third Straight Week

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

Mortgage rates were inching higher around the new year but we’ve seen them in a downward trend recently and have actually seen rates drop for a third consecutive week. This is an amazing benefit to buying in today’s real estate market and it’s likely 20 years from now we’ll look back in amazement on the interests rates some of us were able to secure. If you’re considering buying a home, the average national 30-year fixed interest is hovering around 4.75%. Most experts believe interest rates will hold steady for at least the next few weeks.

This week I’ve received notifications from Bank of America advertising 30-year fixed rates at 4.625% and from Wells Fargo advertising 4.875%. Mortgage rates with most lenders change daily and some even update their quoted rates twice a day. So take any interest rate quote you see with a grain of salt because they probably will have changed – possibly up or down – by the time you contact the lender. When buying a home, contact your lender and lock in your rate. If you have a contract, you can lock in the current interest rate for free. If you’re just starting the Kansas City home buying process, you can often pay around $150 to lock in the current interest rate for 60 days. Once you’ve locked in your interest rate, it doesn’t matter if interest goes up during the lock period, because your rate is guaranteed.

Posted by Jason A. Brown

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Olathe Kansas Real Estate Update – March 2011

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market
Real Estate Info for The City of Olathe Kansas
Recent 15 Days of Olathe KS Market Activity

After using the past 15 days of sales stats to calculate the absorption rate in Olathe KS we find there’s 8.1 months of inventory on the market. This is high but not too bad given we’re just now starting to see warmer temperatures and more home buyers scheduling showings. Also, the 101 homes that went under contract is a huge number and if we were to assume all those would close and use that figure to calculate the absorption rate, there would be closer to 4 months of inventory. That amount of inventory would actually jump from a buyer’s market to a mild seller’s market in that case.

Type

#

Average $

Avg DOM

Listings Past 15 Days

 147 $246,083

–

Total Active Listings

 881

–

–

Newest Contracts Written

 101 $210,459 172

Newest Sold (Closed)

 54 $210,241 192

* The Average $ of Newest Contracts considers the price the homes were listed at when they went under contract. Data pulled from Heartland MLS and deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Low samplings in any category can skew results. Stats may not be an exact 15 days from date of this post. DOM = Days On Market.

Months of inventory only considers inventory volume and doesn’t give consideration to actual sales prices. It’s concerning that the average home seller who listed the past 15 days hopes their home is worth around $246,000, while the average sales price was near $210,000. That’s quite a difference to say the least.

If your real estate goals involve buying or selling a home in  Olathe, we look forward to assisting you with your home purchase or sale. Our listing representation is top-notch and we have buyer’s agents who work the entire Olathe area and can represent your best interest throughout the home buying process. Please let us know whenever you have any questions about buying or selling an Olathe Kansas home.

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Posted by Jason A. Brown

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Good News, Bad News: Kansas Home Sales Rise 5% But Sale Prices Fall 8%

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

My Kansas Association of Realtors (KAR) report on January’s real estate market indicates the volume of home sales is picking up steam. Overall in the state of Kansas, home sales (closings) rose 5.6% in January 2011 compared with January of 2010. This is impressive when you consider that 2009’s figure was inflated by the home buyer tax credit. This market improvement outpaced the national market improvement of 5.3% and these figures are promising both locally and nationally.

There’s still too many homes on the market however, leaving 13.3 months of inventory in the state of Kansas. The months of inventory was calculated using the number of January home sales and dividing that figure into the 17,805 listings that were for sale at the end of January. With still too much supply for demand, homes sellers saw their average sales prices fall from around $160,000 in January 2010 to around $147,000 January of this year. That’s a significant 8% fall in home prices across the state.

Looking closely at our local market in Johnson County Kansas, 321 homes were sold (closed) in January. This was virtually unchanged from the 328 home sales in Johnson County in January 2010. Comparing this January’s sales rate to the amount of inventory currently on the market, we find there’s 11.1 months of inventory available. This amount of inventory indicates a clear buyer’s real estate market in Johnson County Kansas and anyone in the market to make a move should contact us to see some of the great Johnson County Kansas homes for sale.

Posted by Jason A. Brown

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Any Way You Slice It, Shadow Inventory Will Have A Lingering Effect On Kansas City Real Estate Values

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

If you’re not familiar with the term Shadow Inventory, it means homes that are NOT on the market but will be in the near future. This includes bank owned properties that are not yet listed but also includes homes where the owners are significantly behind on payments — and that are likely to be bank-owned properties in the near future. At the slow sales pace being seen nationally, the Wall Street Journal has done some analysis and found there’s more than EIGHT YEARS of Shadow Inventory to be absorbed.


That number is staggering. Of course, it calculates matters using current sales rates. But even if home sales DOUBLED over, say, the next six months, that would reduce the Shadow Inventory to FOUR YEARS. Taking this painful excercise a step further, home sales would need to octuple to get it down to just ONE YEAR of REO shadow inventory we’re faced with today.

A high amount of Shadow Inventory leads to lower prices on bank properties as banks look to move them. Lower prices on bank properties bring down values of the stable homes in a community. That hurts even more homeowners and causes otherwise solid borrowers to be upside down on their homes. This leads to more Short Sales, which are half as bad for a community as a foreclosure but hurtful none-the-less. This leads to lower sales prices for solid borrowers in the area. Which leads to… me being depressed discussing Shadow Inventory.

Now you could also run with Standard & Poor’s estimate that there’s “just” four years of Shadow inventory on the market. Or, if your cup is half full, you could trust that my National Association of Realtors is correct with its assessment that only two percent of the nations properties should be considered Shadow Inventory.


Posted by Jason A. Brown

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December’s Real Estate Stats Indicate Home Sale Prices Are Increasing In The State Of Kansas

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

The Kansas Association of Realtors (KAR) report for December indicates the real estate market in the state of Kansas is stabilizing. After seeing five consecutive months of declining numbers, the number of homes sold (closed) in December 2010 was virtually identical to the number of sales in December of 2009.  This is even more impressive when you consider the previous year’s stats were compiled while we were still in the midst of the home buyer tax credit. The Kansas figures were also much better than the average national stats, which saw the volume of home sales drop 2.9% in December.

The amount of inventory on the market in Kansas stood at 8.8 months in December. In this case, the months of inventory was calculated using the number of December home sales and dividing that figure into the number of homes for sale when the report came out. Just as promising, the average sales in Kansas rose from $151,952 in December 2009 to $158,628 this December. That’s a very significant jump.

Looking closely at our local market, in Johnson County Kansas 521 homes were sold (closed) in  December. This was up from the 460 homes that sold in Johnson County in December 2009. Comparing this December’s sales rate to the amount of inventory  currently on the market indicates there’s 6.6 months of inventory on the market. This amount of inventory indicates a stable real estate market in Johnson County Kansas.

Posted by Jason A. Brown

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Comparing Real Estate Markets From Kansas City To Overland Park To Olathe…

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

Many major real estate markets that I keep tabs on are in a buyer’s market. But a few market’s are still in what the “experts” consider a stable market. Most experts generally agree that a buyer’s market is when there’s between 5 to 7 months of inventory on the market. Less than  5 months of inventory is a Seller’s market and more than 7 months of inventory is a buyer’s market.

I usually take a snap shot look at one city or one subdivision at a time, so today I thought it would be interesting to take a look at several of our major metro cities for comparison purposes. The following chart uses the absorption rate over the past 6 months in each city to calculate the months of inventory. As expected, Overland Park is seeing a “stable” real estate market and is followed closely by Prairie Village Kansas and Olathe Kansas…

City

Active Listings

Months of Inventory
Overland Park KS 1,081 5.7
Prairie Village KS 183 6.2
Olathe KS 933 6.5
Shawnee KS 390 7.1
Leawood KS 321 7.2
Lenexa KS 297 7.6
Lee’s Summit MO 832 8.3
Kansas City MO 5,176 9.0

Posted by Jason A. Brown

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