Monday, December 13, 2010

Why You Should Purchase A San Antonio Area Home Right Now



Here’s why you should purchase a San Antonio area home right now.

It’s December, typically the slowest month for Alamo City realty sales.

It’s likely there will never again be a home buyer’s market like we have in San Antonio right now.

If our realty market behaves as usual, after the first of the year, realty sales will perk up dramatically and list prices will rise.

Also, mortgage interest rates are rising now and expected to continue to rise in the first quarter of 2011.

So, please don’t wait. Now’s the time to take advantage of low home prices and low mortgage interest rates.

We’re here to give you home buying advice or assistance. Our goal is to help you purchase the best house, in the best neighborhood, for the price, terms and conditions most favorable for you. Don’t hesitate to call on us.

Queremos ayudarle con comprando la casa o perfecta ayudarle vendiendo su casa con servicio excelente.    (210) 288-9810 Missymcbee@kw.com.

We will be honored to help. We’re Stephanie and Randy Kelley and Missy McBee, Realtors® at Keller Williams Legacy, San Antonio, Texas. If you have questions, need San Antonio realty or mortgage loan advice or assistance, or just want to chat a bit about the wonderful Alamo City, please call us at (210) 863-2661 (Randy) or (210) 867-8743 (Stephanie), or (210) 288-9810 (Missy) or email us at swkrealtor@aol.com or kelleybus@aol.com or missymcbee@kw.com. Our SanAntonioHomeQuest.com Realty Solutions Team is always ready to help you with your home buying or selling needs and will gladly give you the best advice regarding timing your San Antonio home search.

We’d love to tell you more about why you should purchase a San Antonio home right now.

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Timing Your San Antonio Home Search

When the time comes to house hunt, planning your lead time is very important.

Let's address buying a resale home first.

Give yourself at least 3 to 5 days to visit listings and at least 30 additional days to bring your purchase to the closing table. For example, if you want to be in your newly purchased home on 1 June, we recommend you be in San Antonio for your on-site home search no later than the 3d week in April.

What can you expect when you start visiting homes for sale.

Most buyers find they can't speed shop comfortably. They need time to develop a personal comfort level with the home search process. The comfort level will usually gel after the first or second day of visiting listings.

Keep this in mind. For the average home buyer, there's an inherent disadvantage in seeing too many listings over a short time period. Simply stated - visiting listings is a physically and mentally tiring experience. After seeing too many homes too quickly, there's a risk of developing a type of mental fuzziness whereby the details of homes you've seen start to meld and morph.

To keep from becoming confused, be prepared to take the time to make notes, maybe take pictures or videos, and, before leaving a listing, to discuss and record its pros of cons.

We recommend not trying to see more than 8 listings per day.

The next phase involves analyzing competing prospective properties, selecting your target property, and preparing and submitting the offer. That should take approximately 3 to 4 hours in an office setting. It's your realty agent's job to lead you through this phase and make it as clearly logical and comfortable as possible.

After the contract documents are prepared and submitted to the seller's realty agent, it's not necessary to stay in town. As long as you have telephone and Internet and/or Fax access, subsequent steps, to include actually closing your purchase, can be managed remotely.

What about buying a newly constructed production home?

Since the available home builder inventory is more concentrated in new subdivisions, it's somewhat easier to shop for a new construction home vs. going from point-to-point looking at resale homes. Consequently, if you are willing to rule out buying a resale home, you can cut your home shopping time to as little as 3 days by exclusive looking for a new construction product. We don't recommend that tactic, however, because you should at least peruse the resale market so you'll have a basis for comparing the value of buying a new home versus purchasing a resale home.  

Finally, what about buying a lot and building a custom home?

That's a very attractive alternative for a buyer with the time and resources needed to produce a home that's highly customized to meet all of his or her home ownership wants and needs. It's also a very tedious and complicated process not to the liking or capability of the average home buyer.

Keep these factors in mind. In San Antonio, unimproved residential lots and acreage tend to be very expensive. Ask your realty agent to set up a MLS search for residential lot listings for you if you are interested in learning about lot features and costs.

After acquiring your lot, the process of dealing with the builder, the architect, selecting features, going to show rooms to select floor covering, fixtures, etc., might take weeks instead of days. The average time to acquire a lot and produce a customized home from ground up can require 9 months or more for an elaborate home.

Although you don't have to be on-site from beginning to end, it's unquestionably better to be around while the home is being built. Otherwise, it's highly recommended that you keep in touch by designating a third party to monitor the process for you.

If you don't know the ins-and-outs of Texas real estate, we recommend using an experienced realty buyer's agent to represent you irrespective of whether you intend buy a resale home, a brand new production built home, or even if contract to have your home built by a custom home builder. Real estate deals are complicated and quirky and a good buyer's agent knows when and how to advise you about unseen risks and to lead you around the home buying pitfalls no matter how you eventually acquire your San Antonio home.

You'll find that an experienced realty buyer's agent is indispensable when the time comes to scout out the San Antonio area for your best home buy.  Keep this in mind. San Antonio is a very large city - the 7th largest metropolitan area in the United States. The area is highly diverse in terms of neighborhood demographics, geographic features and climate, quality of subdivisions and prices and styles of homes therein. Having a least a basic knowledge of where you might want to live in the San Antonio will help focus your search on the best neighborhoods, with the best conditions and prices meeting your home ownership wants and needs. 

We will be honored to help.  We're Stephanie and Randy Kelley and Missy McBee, Realtors® at Keller Williams Legacy, San Antonio, Texas. If you have questions, need San Antonio realty or mortgage loan advice or assistance, or just want to chat a bit about the wonderful Alamo City, please call us at (210) 863-2661 (Randy) or (210) 867-8743 (Stephanie), or (210) 288-9810 or email us at swkrealtor@aol.com or kelleybus@aol.com or missymcbee@kw.com. Our SanAntonioHomeQuest.com Realty Solutions Team is always ready to help you with your home buying or selling needs and will gladly give you the best advice regarding timing your San Antonio home search.

Sunday, December 05, 2010

December 2010 San Antonio Residential Realty Market Report

San Antonio real estate is great this holiday season!

Although early December is typically the low season for realty activity in and around the Alamo city, there are indications that this year will be different.  Many factors are contributing to an unusually active market for late fall and early winter.

First, because of the area's high employment rate, population growth, and better than average home prices, San Antonio is unquestionably a top market for home buyers and sellers.

Second, mortgage rates remain historically low and lenders are aggressively seeking qualified home buyers.

Third, there are positive signs suggesting the national economy is experiencing a slow, but relatively steady recovery. That factor alone is bringing more buyers than usual into the market this December.

Consequently, reasonably priced and well prepared resale homes are selling well and production home builders are offering enhanced buyer incentives in hopes of clearing out their new home inventories before the new year.

Although it's a great time to buy a new construction home, it's always prudent to diligently check out the incentives offered by the builders and particularly the loans offered by their affiliated lenders. Before signing a sales agreement, a buyer should seek the help of a real estate professional to verify (1) that the property is reasonably priced and (2) that the lender is offering the most favorable loan, with the best interest rate, for the lowest settlement costs.

For those who love stats, here are the key indicators for San Antonio's single family detached home listings as of 5 December 2010.

There are 11,733 homes for sale compared to 10,951 one year ago. The inventory is high but trending steadily downward. The plentiful inventory is a favorable sign for home buyers and the downward trend is a favorably sign for home sellers.

The average sales price for the most recent closings is $214,455, compared to last year's $181,959. That's an unreliable indicator because of the large number of lower priced properties sold in 2009 under the tax incentive program. An analysis of longer term data indicates an absence of any significant sales price appreciation since 2007. That's another good sign for buyers.

Average cumulative-days-on-the-market (CDOM) for the most recent sales is 135 compared to 126 last year. During 2009, CDOM figures were unacceptably high, but dropped fast during the Federal Tax credit home buying frenzy. It remains to be seen if cumulative market time will improve further, but a slight upward trend is possible. Nonetheless, for the time being, CDOM data is positive for San Antonio home buyers, specifically, and for San Antonio's realty market, generally.

Industry analysts see these data as reflecting a housing market favoring buyers over sellers but trending toward more balanced conditions in the coming months.

That's all for our December, 2010, San Antonio residential realty market report. We encourage reader comments and recommendations about how to make our reports more informative and useful.

Wishing you a merry Christmas and Happy New, we're Stephanie and Randy Kelley and Missy McBee, Realtors® at Keller Williams Legacy, San Antonio, Texas.  If you have questions, need San Antonio realty or mortgage loan advice or assistance, or just want to chat a bit about the wonderful Alamo City, please call us at (210) 863-2661 (Randy) or (210) 867-8743 (Stephanie), or (210) 288-9810 or email us at swkrealtor@aol.com or kelleybus@aol.com or missymcbee@kw.com. Our SanAntonioHomeQuest.com Realty Solutions Team is always ready to help you with your home buying or selling needs.

We look forward to answering your questions about our December 2010 San Antonio Residential Realty Market Report.

Wednesday, December 01, 2010

BofA in WikiLeaks crosshairs? | Inman News

Great article in Inman News this morning. Does Bank of America have it coming? To see the entire article, go here:



BofA in WikiLeaks crosshairs? Inman News