Arn Cenedella

Archive for the 'First-time home buyers' Category

Is the real estate market approaching bottom?

The Sf Chronicle often paints a fairly bleak picture of the local real estate market.

However on today’s front page, the San Francisco Chronicle reports on some postive movement in the market.

The SF Chronicle reports that the Bay Area median price is around $300,000 and that with a Bay Area median income of $80,000, one can now buy a median price house.

Furthermore, 5,000 homes a month are purchased in the Bay Area.

Are we at the bottom? I do not know – but I think we are getting closer.

I do believe this is a good time for the first-time home buyer and novice investor.

Habitat for Humanity purchases their first REO in Menlo Park

Habitat for Humanity just entered into contract to purchase a home in the Belle Haven area of Menlo Park.

With the price of bank foreclosure REOs being so low, Habitat has started a program to buy existing homes, rehab them with volunteer labor and turn them over to new owner occupants.

If you have any lender contacts that handle REOs, please let me know as it might be to everyone’s benefit to have some of these REO purchased by Habitat for sale to owner occupants as opposed to selling to investors. (At the present time, most REOs are purchased by investors.)

As the exclusive buyer agent for Habitat in San Mateo County, give me a call and let’s talk.

Move up buyers stay home while 1st time buyers enter market

Teresa Boardman of St Paul Real Estate – ps she is a great photographer – recently wrote a post about “move-up” buyers in her market want to buy but since they existing home is underwater they can not sell their existing home. Hence they are unable to buy.
Many of her comments about the entry level being the strongest portion of the market with the “move-up” market being very slow or non-existent applies to the market on the San Francisco Peninsula.
Many first-time buyers are getting into the market – taking advantage of lower prices, very low rates and tax credits. Most sales are at the low end of the price spectrum with foreclosure REOs being a large percentage of all current sales. Hence median and average prices continue to go down.
The “move-up” buyer is sitting on the fence. Unlike your area, it is NOT because these potential “move-up” buyers are “under water” but rather they do not have confidence in the economy or the market to make a move-up in a market where moving up means selling for $1.5M and buying for $2M. These folks are just not interested in taking on $500K in additional debt when things look very uncertain. In addition since the price of their home has dropped, they may no longer have enough equity in their current home to put the 20% to 25% down needed to buy and finance their new home with a jumbo mortgage. So they are not “underwater” but lack the down payment to buy the larger house. I believe the “fear” factor is the bigger issue but lack of equity to make the downpayment on their purchase also contributes to the lack of activity in the move-up market.
Arn

Is there a slight uptick in the real estate market?

Kappy Mann, a colleague in Truckee Lake Tahoe recently posted an article from Rueters that states many people are entering the market for the first-time since ownership costs are now approaching rental costs in some areas of the country.

Combine low interest rates with lower housing prices, add in federal and possibly state tax credits and there is opportunity to make a good buy on your first property.

If you are looking in the San Francisco Bay Area, please contact me and I will give you all the information you need to decide if buying is right for you at this time. I am currently working with first-time buyers from $150,000 to $800,000 price range.