(BETHESDA REAL ESTATE)

Some folks are just great negotiators.  That's a good thing, right?  We all want to get the best deal possible and feel like we won.  Depending on the circumstances, you can negotiate yourself right out of a home with this strategy though.  I know. I've been through it often enough lately...

Here's how the conversation goes:

Client:  I am going to want to really negotiate for this and get the best deal.

Me:  That's great.  What area are you looking in and what kind of price range?

Client:  I'd like something in new construction in Cabin John for under $950K

Me:  You realize there are about 10 sales per year in that location and much of those are for new construction well over $1M?  There is not that much property that fits your specific needs.  This particular home is not likely to come up again anytime soon and it's under priced right now.

Client: But this is a depressed market and I want to get the very best deal possible.  If we can offer $750K do you think they'll take it?

Me: :(

I wish I were making this up.  The folks lost this house to another buyer who listened and made the right offer.  Those buyers are now living in a beautiful newly constructed home that was a screamin' deal!

The national press would have everyone believe that all homes are in foreclosure, all sellers are desperate and you'll pay pennies on the dollar for a house.  Now, I grant you that there are many opportunities for good buys out there.  I've gotten them for my clients - even when I was shocked the seller would take the deal - but the reality is that when buyers start to narrowly define their wants they can find that there is really not that much inventory from which to choose. 

As soon as that happens the shift in strategy needs to be taking place from wanna deal to wanna house!  The goal is a home, not a contract writing exercise.  If there are fifty properties that suit your needs, let's write!  But if there is one home, you have more at stake and should be working towards a winning strategy not just trying to prove that you're a better negotiator.

He who has the house wins.  Not the one who writes the most contracts...

Bethesda MD Real Estate >> Single Family Homes Sold Through December 2007 - Montgomery County, 20816

There are 8 homes for sale in Westmoreland Hills:

• A Colonial with 4 beds/3 full baths/ 2 half baths offered at $1.025.000 (reduced from $1,115,000)
• A Colonial with 5 beds/3 full baths offered at $1,195,000 (reduced from $1,280,000)
• A Colonial with 5 beds/3 full baths/2 half baths offered at $1,199,000 (reduced from $1,299,000)
• A traditional style home with 3 beds/3 full baths/2 half baths offered at $1,350.000
• A Colonial with 5 beds/4 full baths/ 1 half bath offered at $1,595,000
• A Colonial with 5 beds/4 full baths/ 1 half bath offered at $1,645,000
• A Colonial with 6 beds/3 full baths/2 half baths offered at $1,799,000 (reduced from $1,850,000)
• A Colonial with 5 beds/6 full baths/1 half bath offered at $2,600,000

Two homes are under contract:

• A Colonial with 4 beds/3 full baths offered at $1,200,000
• A Colonial with 4 beds/4 full baths/ 1 half bath offered at $1,399,000

If you would like to see any of the active listings, just give me a call!

(1/16/08) Information Source: MRIS - Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

For more information about real estate sales in Bethesda, MD 20816 please email me at josette.skilling@longandfoster.com or visit my website at Bethesda Real Estate

All data courtesy of:

Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc.
4733 Bethesda Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20814
301-385-9213 (cell)
240-497-1700 (office)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by The Activerain Network and its members and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of Josette Skilling or Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc.  Josette Skilling and Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc. are not responsible for the accuracy nor the content provided by the community.

Bethesda MD Real Estate >> Single Family Homes Sold Through December 2007 - Montgomery County, 20816

There is one active listing in Greenacres:

• A 3 bed/1 full bath rambler is offered at $549,000, reduced from $599,000.

If you would like to see this home, please give me a call!

(1/16/08) Information Source: MRIS - Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

For more information about real estate sales in Bethesda, MD 20816 please email me at josette.skilling@longandfoster.com or visit my website at Bethesda Real Estate

All data courtesy of:

Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc.
4733 Bethesda Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20814
301-385-9213 (cell)
240-497-1700 (office)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by The Activerain Network and its members and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of Josette Skilling or Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc.  Josette Skilling and Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc. are not responsible for the accuracy nor the content provided by the community.

Bethesda MD Real Estate >> Single Family Homes Sold Through December 2007 - Montgomery County, 20816

There are two active listings in Glen Mar Park:

• A Colonial with 5 beds/3 full baths/1 half offered at $859,999 (reduced from $989,000!).  It's an interesting layout but at the new price it's very much worth looking at!
• A rebuilt Colonial with 7 beds/4 full baths/1 half offered at $1,695,000 and reduced from $1,845,000. 

If you'd like to see either of these properties, just give me a call!

(1/16/08) Information Source: MRIS - Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

For more information about real estate sales in Bethesda, MD 20816 please email me at josette.skilling@longandfoster.com or visit my website at Bethesda Real Estate

All data courtesy of:

Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc.
4733 Bethesda Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20814
301-385-9213 (cell)
240-497-1700 (office)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by The Activerain Network and its members and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of Josette Skilling or Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc.  Josette Skilling and Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc. are not responsible for the accuracy nor the content provided by the community.

Bethesda MD Real Estate >> Single Family Homes Sold Through December 2007 - Montgomery County, 20816

There are no active listings or under contracts at this time.

(1/16/08) Information Source: MRIS - Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

For more information about real estate sales in Bethesda, MD 20816 please email me at josette.skilling@longandfoster.com or visit my website at Bethesda Real Estate

All data courtesy of:

Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc.
4733 Bethesda Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20814
301-385-9213 (cell)
240-497-1700 (office)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by The Activerain Network and its members and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of Josette Skilling or Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc.  Josette Skilling and Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc. are not responsible for the accuracy nor the content provided by the community.

Montgomery County MD Trends - Listings vs Sales Analysis

The story seems to be same: inventory is up and sales are down!  This is a good visual that shows just how wide the margin is.  I am trying to get the historical data for listings in Montgomery County out of our MLS system so I can show the difference between the seller's market years and today.  You can already see the convergence at the 2005 end where there was far less disparity between what was available vs what was selling.  The numbers this chart represents are:

• 2007 Listings = 64,744
• 2006 Listings = 52,605 
• Up 23%

• 2007 Sales = 9924
• 2006 Sales - 12,233
• Down 19%

The listings are distributed in Montgomery County according to the following chart:

(1/15/08) Information Source: MRIS - Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

(BETHESDA REAL ESTATE)

Single Family Homes Sold in November 2007 - Bethesda, MD (Montgomery County) 20816 

The last four houses on the list are all rebuilt homes and that upper bracket is helping to drive the median and average price up to the highest median price change we've seen all year.  The low sale of $495,00 is one of two this year at that price range - cute little, and I mean little, ramblers with one or two bedrooms.  But for someone who likes the area and its proxmity to downtown Friendship Heights, it's better than a condo!  The lot is very small at 4000 sq ft or so so it's unlikely a very large home will go up there but it's well below what a home costs in this zip code and has some room to get a bit bigger.

Note the discount column...  On average the sellers were getting close to their price except for Torchlight, which sold for very close to its price at the time of sale.  They were lucky to overcome that and still sell in a relatively short 25 days, a testament to the lure of Westmoreland Hills.  Had it been somewhere else they might have languished for months with that kind of pricing error. 

Overall days on market are not too bad with an average of 42 and many homes selling in under a month.  While less inventory is being moved, what is there seems to be holding its own.

(12/10/07) Information Source: MRIS - Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

(BETHESDA REAL ESTATE)

Single Family Homes Sold in  December 2007 - Bethesda, MD (Montgomery County) 20816 

What Does it Mean?

The neighborhoods covered by this report are:

• Fairway Hills
• Glen Mar Park
• Westmoreland Hills

Maybe they all took Christmas off this year??  Last month I wondered if the price increase would be maintained over December and it looks like it didn't...  Almost every number is down including days on market which are cut in half from last year.  If you notice, though, they are getting more as a % of their sales price this year as compared to last year.  With the exception of Boxwood, everything sold relatively quickly (the average in the county for the month was 118 DOM). Sales volume and units sold were down about 40% from this time last year throughout the county, so Bethesda trended a bit worse than the average there. 

Luckily the trend for the 4th quarter still shows a median and average price increases, albeit fewer sales and less sales volume:

• There are currently 36 active listings ranging in price from $549,000 to $6,750,000.
• There are 7 homes under contract which are slated to close between now and the end of February.

• Bethesda Real Estate Sales, September 2007
• Bethesda Real Estate Sales, October 2007
• Bethesda Real Estate Sales, November 2007

(1/10/08) Information Source: MRIS - Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

(MONTGOMERY COUNTY REAL ESTATE)  Foreclosures continue to be a hot topic in our region, though in Montgomery County we are still not so deeply affected as those states where economic decline or rampant speculation took place.  Of the 4451 active homes for sale in Montgomery County, 406 of them have some distress words attached to their listing:  foreclosure, short sale, REO, bank owned, or third party approval needed.   About 11%.

In late October when I ran this data last, I didn't use the term third party approval in my original data so the numbers reported were a bit lower.  The actual was 5000 homes for sale and 498 homes for sale with some sort of distress terms in the listing.  About 10%.

• Since the beginning of October 2007 there have been 86 sales and 65 homes have gone under contract.  They were on the market for 148 days on average and ended up with only 88% of their asking price (lower than the county average for "healthier" real estate). 
• The average price of these homes for sale is in the lower range of the market at $358,826 and they've already discounted to about 93% of their original asking price.
• Those that sold averaged $324,956, which was 88% of their original asking price.  So with the above info, it looks like the current inventory might have another 5% or so reduction before it's priced to sell.

What does this mean? 

• To a current seller first and foremost it means reduce the prices!  By a lot.  It means getting below the highest sale or pending sale by enough of a margin to be in the game.  As more of the foreclosures come on it continues to push price down even for well presented properties because buyers wait to engage out of fear or because they know the prices will go lower and lower. It means constant vigilance on price and condition if you truly want to sell your property.  If there are clusters of foreclosures, more sales will need to occur to increase confidence back in the neighborhood and prices will have to be in line with the economic needs of that demographic.
• To a future seller it means fully understanding how any foreclosures or distressed sales play into the pricing of your real estate before you bring it on the market.  If your agent has this much information on your area,listen to it!  If you don't have the same motivation some of the distressed property owners have, it's perhaps a wise choice to rent for the next few years.
• To a buyer it means you better do your homework and understand what this means to your future investment in the property.  If you are planning to live in the community understand the market and demographic factors at play.  If you are buying as an investment and plan to rent it, will the rents sustain your investment and are there enough renters to cover your costs?  A bargain can very quickly turn into a dud unless you've done a complete analysis of the property.  You don't want to be the next seller in this cycle just looking to get out the property at any price because the alligator is eating you alive.  Make sure your agent knows how to give you this depth of information.
• To the investor:  are therebargains?  Sure, for the savvy investor.  What do you intend to do with the property?  Rent it?  If so, the next analysis will be on the rental incomes the area has been supporting (and expect that those who are being displaced in this round will need housing afterwards) as well as the types of housing this average home sale price will bring.  There are many townhouses and condos in Germantown, Gaithersburg and Silver Spring in this list.  As with last month's report, many of the foreclosures are clustered into certain zip codes as the chart above shows.  The demographics of the neighborhoods will need to be studied to ensure there will be a stable rental base that can afford the price as well as enough amenities as to draw renters in the first place.  Germantown in particular already has a fairly high number of rental apartment complexes.

There are many factors to consider before making an investment purchase.  I can help you get the rest of the story...

Data current as of 1/3/2008  Source MRIS deemed reliable but not guaranteed. 

For more information about real estate sales in Bethesda, MD 20816 please email me at josette.skilling@longandfoster.com or visit my website at Bethesda Real Estate.

Josette Skilling
Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc.
4733 Bethesda Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20814
301-385-9213 (cell)
240-497-1700 (office)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by The Activerain Network and its members and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of Josette Skilling or Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc.  Josette Skilling and Long & Foster Real Estate, Inc. are not responsible for the accuracy nor the content provided by the community.

Google Page 7 to Google Page 1

I have learned so much here in a short time but it took a post by Karen George on changing your title pages for it to really sink in.  My website, in its template blandness, had languished in the hinterlands of Google but by going in and changing my title pages exactly as she suggested my ranking went up to page one right away.

So, what did I do?  Changed it again to another related term.  And got booted right back to page 5.  So I changed the titles again and waited, and waited, and waited for Google to index my site again and there I am.  Right back in position 11!

This is the coolest.

Now I'm deep back in the techno geek land I thought I'd left behind with my hi tech career and I'm loving it!  Tools, analytics, code, problems.  Oh, yeah.  That was why I left hi tech..... the problems.  Ah, but the rewards when it works are sweet. 

Now that it's definable and repeatable I can understand how to implement other keywords and start changing and adding content.  And by the looks of it to beat out some other sites, more content, and more content, and more content....

Here's a big thank you to Karen!