2007 Year End Number of Homes Sold Report for Calabasas, CA

January 24th, 2008 Categories: Calabasas RE Statistics, In The News Calabasas

Total number of home sales down 13% in 2007.

There were a total of 293 homes sold in Calabasas, CA during 2007, down 44 (13%) from the 2006 total of 337. Take a good look at the chart above, you can see that home sales were in line with 2006 figures until September. The time from escrow opened to actual close is usually 30-45 days, we can assume that the slow down in sales was actually two months earlier or July and coincides with the mortgage melt down. September, October, November and December were significantly lower in number of sales.

Its a Buyers market – with 9 months of Calabasas homes inventory.

As I write this post there are 172 active properties on the market in Calabasas. The absorption rate (average number of sales per month) is approximately 19* sales per month. This means that we have a nine month supply of homes on the market right now. Six months of inventory is considered a neutral market. Nine months would be considered a buyers market.

January and February will experience similar closed sales (approximately 20)

There are 15 Calabasas homes in escrow right now. These transactions would most likely close within the next 30 to 60 days. It appears that January and February will experience a similar number of home sales (approximately 19 or 20 each month).

The Outlook is for a moderate Spring and Summer 2008.

Move Up Buyers should start planning their move.

Home sales usually increase during the Spring and Summer and 2008 should be no different. Interest rates are lower than ever and buyers that are in solid financial shape will have no problem obtaining a mortgage. Smart move up buyers should seize this opportunity to sell their homes and move up to a larger and more luxurious home this Spring and Summer. This is the time to act if you are moving within Calabasas and are selling a lesser price home to move up. Whatever price concession you make on your current smaller home will be gained plus more on a bigger more expensive home.

First time home buyers with solid resources are encouraged to buy now.

First time home buyers that were priced out of the market before can now afford Calabasas. There are several condos listed in the $350,000 to $600,000 range and single family homes in the $650,000 and up range. There are a few bank owned properties and short pays that make this the perfect time if youve been trying to move in to Calabasas but thought the prices were too high.

If you would like more information on Calabasas and the market conditions or how these numbers will effect you and your home purchase or sale, please call Tracey Thomas at (818) 652-2937.

*The absorption rate was calculated by taking the total number of sales for July through December (116) and dividing by 6 months. (Six months = July, August, September, October, November and December)

Spoken by traceythomas | Discussion: No Comments »

“Sellers Choice” – Beware, these words could mean something you didn’t expect.

January 21st, 2008 Categories: In The News Calabasas

Even in this “buyers market” I received multiple offers on one of my listings last week.  As I was reviewing the purchase agreements I couldn’t believe how many agents are still writing in ”sellers choice” for title, escrow, home warranty company and natural zone disclosure company. 

Did you know that if you write “sellers choice” for natural zone disclosure and the other agent doesn’t pick a company in the counter offer, you’ll end up with a company called Seller’s Choice Disclosures?  That’s right, there is actually a company called Seller’s Choice Disclosure.  This is great if that is who you wanted, but not so great if you didn’t.  Also, if you just write NHD in the box then escrow will pick the company.  There is no company called NHD.  NHD are just the initials for Natural Hazard Disclosure.

The same goes for escrow, title and home warranty company.  I Googled “sellers choice escrow” and came up with 65,400 results.  I didn’t see any escrow companies in CA with this name, but why take a chance?  Just write what you want in the blank so there is no confusion.

And this brings me to another very important point regarding preparing a purchase agreement for a buyer.  It’s important to always specify who you want for NHD, home warranty, title and escrow companies.  Many times the listing agent won’t have a preference and you’ll get the company that you want. 

I’ve learned in negotiations that you usually have to give up something to get something.  If you don’t specify these items initially, then you can’t even use them in your negotiations.  To me it’s important start your negotiations from a position of power and this means preparing a well thought out purchase agreement with all of the blanks filled in. 

If you are purchasing a home in Calabasas CA and you’d like your California Residential Purchase Agreement prepared and negotiated by a professional who understands the nuances of this very important contract please call Tracey Thomas at (818) 652-2937.

Spoken by traceythomas | Discussion: 6 Comments »

Texas Hold’em – Just Because I Make It Look Easy Doesn’t Mean It Is

January 17th, 2008 Categories: In The News Calabasas

This is such a great story, I couldn’t wait until the transaction closed to write this post. Mr. and Mrs. Buyer contacted me via email. They said they had seen my my blog and were relocating to Los Angeles from out of State and needed to find a home that suited their needs in one weekend. They had been to the San Fernando Valley one other time on a house hunting trip but didn’t find what they were looking for. Both, Mr. and Mrs. Buyer were very tech savvy with Mr. Buyer relocating for a position that he had accepted with an online gaming company.

Spoken by traceythomas | Discussion: 5 Comments »

Prevent Mortgage Fraud – Foreclosures in Calabasas and the San Fernando Valley

December 14th, 2007 Categories: In The News Calabasas

Predatory lending has caused many foreclosures in Calabasas and the San Fernando Valley.  If you are having trouble making your mortgage payments, seek professional advice immediately.  Be aware of the people making you offers that sound too good to be true.  Scam artists will mail you offers, call you on the phone and even show up at your door.

Freddie Mac just released this video about mortgage scams.  Con artists are seeking homeowners in trouble.  Freddie Mac has a web page for Avoiding Mortgage Fraud.  If you are in trouble this is a good place to start. 

No San Fernando Valley Real Estate professional will ever ask you to sign your deed over.  If anyone asks you to sign a quit claim deed, know that you are most likely a victim of fraud.

If you are having trouble making your payments, contact your lender or your San Fernando Valley Realtor or call (818) 652–2937.

Please watch this short video from Freddie Mac.

Homeowners HOPE can work with you to help find a solution.  1–888–995–HOPE.

Spoken by traceythomas | Discussion: 3 Comments »

A Few Miles From Calabasas – Secluded and Sexy Bell Canyon – Las Virgenes Schools

December 10th, 2007 Categories: In The News Calabasas

Just a few miles from Calabasas and you feel like you’re on top of the world in this secluded Bell Canyon hilltop estate.  This magnificent home was designed by architect David Towbin to showcase the expansive city light and canyon views from every room.  There is a private gated entrance and lush California landscaping that is low maintenance and Eco-friendly.  French doors that open from the living room, dining room, kitchen and family room on to the patio make it easy to entertain inside or out and take advantage of the year round beautiful weather.  

Spoken by traceythomas | Discussion: 4 Comments »

Snow Day in Calabasas California

November 30th, 2007 Categories: Calabasas Events, In The News Calabasas

Get your sled and head on over to Gates Canyon Park in Calabasas this Sunday December 2. Calabasas is having their annual Snow, Snow, Snow Day. I’ll never forget the first time I saw kids playing in the snow in their tee shirts, shorts and gloves. Calabasas has tons of snow trucked in for this event. They spread the snow on a huge hill and everyone has a blast sled riding until it melts. If you’ve never seen this you have to check it out, it’s really a sight. Something about snow and palm trees in the same picture is very surreal.

Admission is only $5.00 per child, two to twelve years old. Children under two are free. The event runs from 11:00-1:30. There are also refreshments, pictures with Santa and arts and crafts. Be sure to bring an inner tube, sled or saucer. If you don’t own a sled, you can use a metal baking tray. They work great and are extra slippery when they get cold. I’ve also seen people use their pool toys and plastic garbage can lids. The weather forecast for Sunday is sunny and 64 so the snow won’t melt too fast.

Get that Thermos of hot chocolate ready and I’ll see you there. Be sure to take your camera, the folks back East really get a kick out of this stuff.

Spoken by traceythomas | Discussion: 5 Comments »

So You’ve Cancelled Your Listing Agreemet – Now What? Insanity Part 2

November 29th, 2007 Categories: In The News Calabasas

Part one of this series, Insanity: Doing The Same Thing Over and Over and Expecting Different Results explains how to cancel your existing listing agreement. In this post, I explain my pricing process. Part three of this series will explain out of the box marketing strategies and what is working in todays market to bring in qualified buyers.

The correct pricing strategy is the most important factor when selling a home. It’s not enough to complete a comparative market analysis, agree on a price and publish to MLS. Price is so much more than just looking at what has sold in the past. Following are the steps that I use to determine the price of a home. This is not rocket science, but it is important and the information should be updated as new homes come on the market and other homes sell. Market knowledge is power and current information is mandatory.

The first and most obvious step is that I prepare a complete Comparative Market Analysis affectionately called the CMA. In this report I list all of the homes with similar square footage and room count that have sold within the past six months close to your home. Realtors often refer to these homes as “comps” (comparable homes). Then an adjustment is made to each of these homes to make it more like your home. For example if one of the homes doesn’t have a pool and yours does, then we would subtract the value of the pool from the price of the comparable home with no pool. I do the same thing for homes that are currently on the market, homes that have cancelled or expired and homes that are pending sale. From all of this data I can come up with a general price for you home.

Back in the day when houses were selling in less that a week, we’d take this price and add a cushion and publish to MLS. We can’t do that now! We need more information!

The next step is to determine what is happening in the hyper local market where your home is located. Real estate is local. What is happening in Arizona or Florida doesn’t have much to do with California or even the San Fernando Valley real estate market. As a matter of fact, towns that are located right next to each other can be experiencing totally different trends and would call for different pricing and marketing strategies. So how do I know what the trends are?

I track the prices and number of sales for each area that I serve every month. For example, only fifteen homes sold in Calabasas during October 2007. This is a 25% decrease in the number of homes sold over the same period last year. The average home has decreased in value 7% since last year. All of these factors need to be analyzed in order to come up with correct selling price.

The absorption rate is another critical factor that I look at when determining the price. Absorption rate simply means the average number of homes sold per month over a particular period of time. For example, right now there are 209 houses for sale in Calabasas. I know the absorption rate is 23.5 (I computed this figure by dividing the total number of Calabasas sales from January 1st through October 31 into 10 months). When I divide the number of houses on the market by the absorption rate it’s easy to see that it will take nine months to sell all of homes on the market right now (209 divided by 23.5).

These figures will also give us an idea of how many homes will sell next month as a percentage. This is important because it will tell us exactly where we have to be in price and condition to sell. In Calabasas only 10% of the inventory is selling each month (10% is the average for the ten months in 2007). This means that a house has to either be in the top 10% price wise and condition wise. It is extremely important to know these numbers before we price your home.

Knowing the competition is another factor that has to be examined. I make it a point to look at the other homes on the market from the perspective of a buyer. This way I can determine if your home is priced in the top 10% and the condition and amenities are in the top 10%. If for some reason the condition isn’t comparable to the other homes for sale, then the price has to be adjusted to reflect the condition. The only way to do this is for me to actually view homes in the same price range as they come on the market. This is why it’s important that your Realtor be familiar with your town and neighborhood.

Motivation is the final factor that I take in to account when determining the price of your home. If you’ve already purchased a home and are eager to move then I would consider being extremely aggressive in pricing. If you’d like to move but are not in a hurry, then a slightly higher price can be used. I say this with great caution since the Calabasas housing market is in a slight decline right now. The last thing you want to do is to price your home behind the price decline and “chase the market down” every month.

Only after compiling all of this data can I come up with a realistic and accurate selling price. I then present these facts to my seller and we can usually agree on a pricing strategy to get the home sold quickly. Sometimes after a seller has a chance to digest all of this information we’ll make the decision to hold off on selling the home. It’s important that a seller has realistic expectations and understands that having their house on the market can be stressful and frustrating if it is not priced correctly. Many times there are alternatives, like renting out the home which may serve the sellers ultimate goal better.

This brings me to the last and very interesting tid bid of knowledge on pricing homes in our challenging market. It’s trust. Trusting your agent’s ability to price the home correctly and follow through on marketing. Recently, I have had sellers contact me to re-list their home after it had expired or cancelled with another Broker. Each time I have completed these pricing steps and have discussed the information with the seller. We’ve decided together on a new pricing structure supported by this cold hard data. In every single case, the price has been significantly less than the listing price that they had originally. What is interesting here is that these sellers told me that they would have reduced their price sooner if they would have had this information. It’s extremely important that your Real Estate Agent is completing the steps necessary to give you the information needed to make an educated and accurate pricing decision.

If you would like more information on how to price your home correctly or an in depth analysis of your home, please call me at (818) 652-2937. Be sure to check out part three of this series on marketing strategies.

Spoken by traceythomas | Discussion: 4 Comments »

Insanity: Doing The Same Thing Over and Over and Expecting Different Results

November 27th, 2007 Categories: In The News Calabasas

Albert Einstein was ahead of his time, he said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Albert died in 1955 and in my book, this quote is brilliant and describes perfectly the glut of listings sitting on the market right now in 2007! A true visionary that Einstein.

Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the news, “the real estate sky is falling”, and they’re selling lots of advertising yapping about it on the TV, radio and in newspapers.

But I’m here in the trenches selling real estate every single day and I think Einstein is the brilliant one and the blue suits selling advertising are spinning the reality to fit their needs. I don’t buy their hype for one little second. Sure the housing market has changed, and yes prices have dropped, but here is the information that they’re not telling you on the nightly news. My news isn’t so dramatic, and in fact a little dry, but it is what’s happening in my little corner of California.

It takes work and knowledge to sell a home these days! Hmm, now that doesn’t sound very dramatic does it? It actually sounds kind of boring, but this is the real news, and this is the kind of news that will get a home sold.

And if you’d like to know how I know this, read on. I’ve changed the details to protect my fellow agents, but the gist of this story is very true.

The big news is that sellers are frustrated, fed up and looking for alternatives. Sellers are cancelling their listing agreements and hiring Agents that actually will work to sell their home.

Cancellation of a listing agreement is a sticky situation but one that has come up often lately.

As a Realtor, I am not allowed to solicit a homeowner that has their home listed with another broker. Twice this month, I have been contacted directly by a seller who has their home listed with another broker and both times, the seller wanted me to list their home. I am allowed to talk to a seller if they contact me, in fact, I can even give them information on my marketing plan and how to cancel their current listing agreement if they ask me.

Both of the sellers that contacted me wanted out of their current listings agreements because they wanted to list with me. Their reasons are another blog entirely so I won’t go in to that here. It is important to remember that most agents don’t want to be in a listing agreement with a seller that wants out. Every agent that I’ve talked to about this scenario has agreed that they would let the seller out of the listing if the seller asked. Many agents even tell you this when they sign the listing agreement in the beginning. In any event, it’s fairly easy to cancel a listing by just asking your agent.

Here in CA we have standardized forms called WINForms for real estate. There is a CA form called a “Cancellation of Listing” fondly referred to as the COL. Below is a sample of this form. As in anything real estate, EVERYTHING is negotiable. If you are considering cancelling your listing agreement, it is important that you read this form thoroughly and make sure that you understand exactly what you are agreeing to. This is a one page form, but very powerful. By simply checking the wrong box on this form you could be agreeing to compensate your original listing agent in addition to your new listing agent. Checking box 4 is the only box that states that there is no compensation to your original Broker. If any other box is checked or any other information is completed, it’s important that you seek legal advice before you sign this form.

Check back for part two of this story. I’ll explain why these sellers are switching agents and how we’re marketing these homes that have already been on the market for sometime.

My sellers have 30% less stressful days on the market than other home sellers in the area (that’s 9 days less for each month on the market)! Call me to find out how. If you would like more information on the Cancellation of Listing form or how to sell your home in this challenging market, please contact me at (818) 652-2937 or tracey@traceyrealtor.com.

Spoken by traceythomas | Discussion: 6 Comments »

Pin The Tail On The Bottom Of The Calabasas Market

October 9th, 2007 Categories: In The News Calabasas

I have been working with several would be home buyers here in Calabasas. All of them feel that they should wait until the housing market is at the bottom before they buy a home. Id like to share my explanation of “the bottom of the market” and how it will effect your buying decision.

This is a graph that represents the Calabasas housing market. The left side of the V represents the market going down, the right side represents the market going up, and of course the bottom of the V represents the bottom of the housing market.

If I asked you to plot on this graph where you thought the housing market was right now …

… would you pick this spot or something close?

So you think that the market is going towards the bottom? OK, so if the market isnt at the bottom yet, how will you know when it does hit the bottom?

How will you know when the housing market hits the bottom?

You wont know that the housing market has hit the bottom until prices start to go back up. It will be difficult to be sure that the market has hit bottom for a few months. Its not a sudden shift, it is a slower more gradual shift. Youll be able to tell that the market has turned when prices reach this point (green arrow).

What is the difference in housing prices between the red arrow and the green arrow?

Not much… but there is a difference and it is major.

If you buy a home on the left side of the graph, it is considered a buyers market. You would be more likely to get concessions from a seller including price reductions, repairs, or maybe even personal property.

If you wait until the market turns and you buy on the upswing, you and every other buyer that has been waiting for the market to hit bottom will be bidding on the same house.

There really is not better time to buy a house than now for a few reasons:

I am suggesting to each and every would be Calabasas buyer to take a good look at the above examples and decide for themselves what percentage the prices will have to drop before they think housing prices have hit bottom and offer that price. For example, if you think that prices will go down another 5%, then submit an offer at 5% below the asking price.

For more information on how to determine when is a good time to purchase a home in Calabasas or a detailed market analysis on the different Calabasas neighborhood sales, please call me at (818) 652-2937. I track Calabasas sales, monthly, and weekly by neighborhoods and have daily information on closings so that you can stay on top of our changing market.

Spoken by traceythomas | Discussion: 7 Comments »

Calabasas September 2007 Real Estate Sales Figures

October 1st, 2007 Categories: Calabasas RE Statistics, In The News Calabasas

Listing your house and crossing your fingers was not enough to sell a house in Calabasas during September.

Fourteen escrows closed in Calabasas during September. This is a 39% decrease in numbers of closed escrows from September 2006. The average price of a home decreased slightly, 6.4% to $1,170,000. Its important to note that because the sample size is so low that even one more $2,000,000 sale would have skewed the average price dramatically.

In addition to publishing the overall sales for September, this month Ive also included a breakdown of each sale. Its important to note that all but one of these homes took a price reduction at least once during its time on the market, many of these homes had to lower the price several times. There are 248 homes on the market in Calabasas as I write this article and 25 homes with an open escrow. Buyers have many homes to choose from and are price savvy. Although interest rates are low, it is much more difficult to qualify for a mortgage now than it was just six months ago.

Although Calabasas Real Estate experienced a slight decrease in overall price, compared to the rest of the San Fernando Valley we are doing well. Stay tuned for my article “Chasing The Market Down” which explains how to price your home correctly in todays real estate market.

If you are interested in selling your home in Calabasas, please call me to see where your home fits in. if you are thinking about buying a home in Calabasas call me to find out which homes may be flexible in their pricing and ripe for a price reduction.

September 2007 Home Sales

Spoken by traceythomas | Discussion: 7 Comments »

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