Lee's Summit Homes Blog: Roxanne Van Buskirk

If you are looking for a home in the Lee’s Summit area, the time to buy is NOW. According to Trendgraphix, the average sold price of an existing home in Lee’s Summit in January was $140,000. That is the lowest average sold price in the past 15 months.  It is over $22,000 less than January of 2008.

There may not be a better time to buy a home in Lee’s Summit:

1. Interest rates are at historic lows.
2. Average sold prices in Lee’s Summit are at the lowest point in 15+ months.
3. The economic stimulus package is offering an $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers (Haven’t owned a home in the past three years).
4. Lee’s Summit is still a great place to live and raise a family, with top schools and more affordable housing than other areas of the metro.

If you are ready to take advantage of the market call me @ 816-251-1534, and let’s get started!

Our new house has one down payment and 360 damn payments.

According to the same ecomony.com study mentioned in the previous post, Naples Florida home prices are expected to drop over 70% from their peak by Q4 2010. The KC market looks robust compared to Naples!

Moody’s economy.com predicts that prices in the Kansas City market will bottom out in Q1 2010. The total average sales price drop will be about 5.1%. Of course some parts of the Metro will fare better (or worse) than others.

What is interesting is that today the Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors reported that the average price of an existing home fell over 21%; Quite a difference from what economy.com is predicting.  Numbers were down across the board.

Again, your area of the metro may be better or worse. Don’t rely on a market snapshot that covers such a broad area. If you really want to know what is going on in your neighborhood, call me for a FREE detailed market analysis targeted to your specific area. If you are selling, we can come up with a marketing plan for your home. If you are looking to buy, we can shop for a new home knowing exactly what a home is worth in the area you want to live. Reece and Nichols provides agents with cutting edge market analysis tools most other companies cannot offer.

Call me to get started!

CNN/Money has the best explanation (with examples) about how the tax credit/refund works for first time home buyers. The article also goes on to say the the reception is lukewarm at best for the housing portion of the ’stimulus’ bill.

It seems I am not the only one underwhelmed by this latest egg laid by Congress.

Waiting for a life preserver

Congress has passed the “Stimulus” bill that pretty much gutted anything that may remotely stimulate home buying any more than the bill passed last year already has. The only changes to the existing tax credit is that the amount is raised from $7,500 to $8,000, and the cash does not need to be paid back now, as long as the owners stay in the house 3 years. Woop-di-doo! My phone is going to start ringing off the hook any second now……..any second now…….really soon………..

I thought congress (small ‘c’) was really gonna get housing back on track when the Senate passed a $15,000 credit with no repayment that would have pulled more folks into the market. What we got was something that really isn’t much different than what we had.

As I see it, housing will stay in the doldrums for the forseable future. Prices will stay flat and folks will remain on the sidelines.

By the time you pay for a home in the suburbs, it isn’t.

Moody’s economy.com just released their report, Housing in Crisis: When Will Metro Markets Recover?

KEY FINDINGS

• House prices will stabilize by the end of this year.
• The national Case-Shiller house price index will decline by another 11% from the fourth quarter of last year for a total peak-to-trough decline of 36%.
• By the end of this unprecedented downturn, house prices will have declined by double digits peak to trough in nearly 62% of the nation’s 381 metro areas. In about 10% of metro areas, price declines will exceed 30%. 

The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel for housing prices. The bad news is that we may not quite be there yet. Again, these findings are general across the entire US. In the KC metro, our prices have not rode the same peaks and troughs as some of the harder hit areas. Normally, I would expect prices to stabilize before the end of the year, but with companies like Sprint talking layoffs, we could still see some downward pressure of home prices for a while.

The  The economic stimulus plan moving through Congress has provisions for giving home buys tax credits for buying a home.  Seattle Times has an article summarizing the stimulus bills:

To stabilize real-estate prices, the House would give first-time home buyers a tax credit of 10 percent of a home’s cost, up to $7,500, with income caps reducing the credit for individuals earning $75,000 and couples earning $150,000 — at a cost of $2.6 billion.

The Senate plan includes a more generous credit of 10 percent, up to $15,000 that would be available to all home buyers, with no income limits. That credit, proposed by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., would cost $18.5 billion.

Either version would be a boon to anyone in the market and ready to buy a home. Now, we just have to let Congress work out the differences between the two bills.

I will keep you posted on the progress.

An article in the KC Star outlines that the convergence of low interest rates and lower home prices makes this an idea time to buy. Prices may go a little lower, but expect a slow and steady climb to start sooner than later. If you are on the fence, don’t wait!

(There also may be some terriffic tax benefits in the Stimulus Bill being debated today)