I noticed recently that it was a lot easier to show homes lately...why you ask?  Because there are so many vacant homes in the three major counties I serve, Travis, Hays and Williamson Counties.

People have moved because of transfers or unfortunately foreclosure situations and when a home is vacant I don't need to make appointments.  I can just take my clients straight away.  Now from a market perspective I don't like to see it but I have to admit it does make showing homes a lot easier. 

When you see a vacant home you usually can translate that into a more motivated seller.  The seller is now likely making two mortgage payments or in the case of a pre-foreclosure or foreclosure the bank may be willing to accept a lower offer. 

On one such showing day I found over half of my planned showings were VACANT!  That is huge!  So I pulled data to see how many homes were vacant in the areas I serve and found that when I take out new construction (because obviously they are vacant) Austin had almost a 40% Vacancy rate for all of the homes currently for sale.  I wanted to see how that compared to the other cities I serve.  The chart to the right shows what I discovered. 

You can see the numbers across the various cities are not that far off from each other.  I decided to take it to the next step and look at it from a county perspective focusing on the big three: Hays County, Travis County and Williamson County.  No surprise that Travis is leading the pack with vacancies in the mid 30s. 

I'll be watching these numbers closely as it tells us a lot about what's going on in the market. 

As mentioned before vacancies usually translate to more motivated seller.  For example if I have a buyer looking at two homes for sale, one which has been vacant a while and the other still has the owner living in it, my client and I will likely make the assumption that the seller of the vacant home is more motivated.  That seller is probably paying two mortgagees, two sets of insurance and taxes, having to worry about lawn care and utilities and weather...bottom line their asking price may be softening.  So we may go after that home, hoping to get a better deal.

The second aspect of vacancies is the unfortunate issue of foreclosures and pre foreclosures.  We're seeing many of the 'California' investors of a few years ago starting to 'walk away' from their investments as they find their cash flow isn't as it once was.  Two of my last three sales in which I represented the buyers, the sellers were 'California' investors.  One was going into foreclosure, the other one just wanted out.  (I use the word 'California' in quotes as many if not most of the investors were from California but I'm referring to the surge a few years ago of out of town investors.) 

If a buyer is willing to be a bit more flexible and patient, as short sales and foreclosures can take longer than a 'normal' sale, they can often move into their home with some built in equity.  I'll be writing a bit more on this process later. 

Bottom line the vacancy rates are showing there definitely are some softer prices out there.  Call us at Adkor Realty ...512-449-6070 or visit our website at www.SoldbyCeleste.com and we can help you take advantage of some of them!