Are you looking to sell your home, or is your home on the market and you’re wondering if everything that can be done is being done? Look to the “Three P’s” for your answer…

Never mind what the market’s doing – how can you control that? Everyone chases their tail around trying to blame the market for houses not selling, but what good does that do? The listing agent’s job is to make sure the “three P’s” are handled – not perform miracles.

1 – Preparation

2 – Price

3 – Promotion

Watch the video episode (a whole 1 1/2 minutes) for the executive summary!

Everyone is asking around Lancaster County and Central Pennsylvania – what’s going to happen with home prices, and when will we see the “good times” for sellers? It all comes down to, would you believe it, economics…

Supply and demand. Demand and supply.

Let’s pretend the home market is at a certain level of activity – prices and supply of homes for sale. Now, something happens to change the level of buyer activity (rates dropping for mortgages, silly tax credits, etc) and homes begin to sell. Now, buyers become a bit frantic and sellers (and realtors) sense this and price start rising. Multiple offers, same-day sales, overall a sense of craziness. Sound familiar? That was 2003 -2007 in a nutshell.

Now, something happens to the market (say, a crash?) that puts a damper on buyer activity. All of a sudden there are “too many” homes on the market and the prices are still trying to go up, but the buyers are not playing that game (neither are the appraisers for the banks, BTW). As the number of signs in yards grows, the sellers are the ones who get frantic.

Finally, sellers give up and start lowering their prices to get the home sold and move on. Or, they default for whatever reason and the distressed property sells for a cut rate. Now the “race to the bottom” of the real estate cycle has begun.

Lancaster PA home sales are in this last phase now. Where is the bottom? No one can say for sure but I predict prices will have to fall another 10% to get close to a “reset” point in the market here (prices have already fallen about 8-10% on average). Obviously, good economic news and job creation through small business expansions will be a huge factor in resetting the market.

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(c) 2011 Jeff Geoghan

As we can see, homes sales are indeed off this year – 17% to be exact.  Without any tax gimmicks to shore things up, we’re looking at raw sales trends.  New listings are also off by almost 10%.  The listings trend most likely reflects homeowners sitting on their houses in the face of financial uncertainty of various sorts.  Pending sales are also down, by 6%, over 2010.

Of course, prices are also down.  The burning question is “how much?”.  Well, the median sold price was down 6% over 2010 prices – that’s covering all price ranges and all over the county, all residential properties.  Sellers listed at 4% less on the median, too – a welcome trend as sellers finally come grips with the real estate downturn.  Lastly, average days on market was WAY up, 34% in fact.  Frankly, it’s taking a lot longer to get houses sold.

Here’s the historic home sales graph.  The lavender line shows how sales this first half of 2011 have been low.  Important to see is the red line, which shows how the last tax credit affected the market in 2010.  We need to get past July’s skewed numbers to see where sales will go in the second half of 2011.   Hopefully these Lancaster PA real estate market stats give you a truer idea of how sales are going.

I’ll be back tomorrow with the sales by price range – very interesting how the Lancaster County home sales market is shifting pricewise….

Today I’m talking about a theory I have about understanding homebuyer behavior – it’s called my “battery theory”. I’ve observed over many years and thousands of home showings a pattern where (with 2 or more buyers) there is pretty clearly a “positive charge” and a “negative charge” going on.

The “positive charge” person is likely the one who wanted to see the home, and encouraged the other to come along. They come in hoping to see their hopes confirmed with the property.

The other side is the “negative charge” individual – this is the one who wasn’t that interested in the property and may even have reservations concerning condition, age or other aspects. This one needs convincing that their fears are ungrounded.

As you can see, approaching a home listing with the “battery theory” in mind leads to planning to:

a) Encourage the “positive charge” person (s) through staging, lighting, colors, music, etc etc. – keep the good vibes flowing!

b) Encourage the “negative charge” person (s) by addressing possible mechanical and defect issues up front, offering a home warranty or even having the listing agent present at showings to explain things.

One last point – the roles of “positive” and “negative” will change most of the time since usually one person will like a certain kind of home over another. Keeps it interesting!

Questions? Love to hear them. Looking for a better agent? Let me show you what I do…you’ll be impressed.

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Thanks for watching! Please take a moment to subscribe here athttp://tv.yourlancasterhome.com and pop over to our facebook page to “like” it at http://www.facebook.com/lancasterhomes

Choose Jeff Geoghan for your next home sale or purchase in Lancaster PA! Thanks.

While in virtually every category 2011 is looking worse than last year, interestingly the numbers look almost exactly like 2009.  Sold homes were not too far off last year at 4%, but pending sales fell 11% and that I’m not happy about.

New listings fell by almost 20% but the amount of inventory carrying over from December plus fewer homes going under agreement kept the total inventory almost exactly the same as first quarter 2010, from 3,930 to 3,943 respectively.

Pending and sold home numbers mirror 2009, interestingly

Home prices in Lancaster (median, which irons out any super high or low-priced properties) fell by 5%.  I’m not complaining… could have been a lot worse.

Average Days on Market (DOM) climbed 17% over last year, which is also not a surprise to sellers.

Takeaways?   PRICE, PRICE, PRICE.   Get those list prices down and the property will sell.  Get ready to rumble with tougher buyers than ever, too.

I think that in the recent run-up of prices, it may have been more true that the first offer reflected the most motivated buyer – inventory was down and if a house sat “there had to be a reason”.

Today, with many sellers in the situation of listing close to or right at their payoff amounts, it may not be so true out of necessity. Because today as well, sellers are more likely to experience “low ball” initial offers from buyers to test the situation. Sellers need to protect their bottom line as aggressively as ever.

So, only the seller and their representative can decide what’s best based on their circumstances – work with the first offer or wait?

Visit our homepage for Lancaster PA Real Estate

(c) 2011 Jeff Geoghan

As the first quarter of 2011 gets rolling, it’s a mixed bag of results in the Lancaster PA real estate market.  While sales numbers seem to be holding their own versus prior years, and the spring market outlook continues to look good, home prices are depressed and need a shot in the arm.

Looking at home sales figures, we can see that a decent new year’s traffic caused home closings to be up fully 20% over 2010.  Since there were no mitigating factors during this time frame last year, we can say that this rebound is almost surely the result of pent-up demand for housing being released after the holidays and as 2011 dawned.  New listings were down, I believe because everyone who needs to be listed was listed as of the end of 2010.  We should see this number rebound in March as the spring market pops.  One not-so-hot number was pending sales, which dropped 11% from last February.  All I can surmise is that buyer activity took a bit of a dip during February, although by all accounts word on the street is that activity is up right now in mid-March.  Overall, the inventory of homes on the market in Lancaster County is up 5% over 2010 but well down from its peak in December.  Declining inventory is key to a strong spring home market.

With regard to Lancaster home prices, it seems as though by any measurement the county is experiencing record lows, both in listed and sold prices.  February’s median prices represent record lows at $175,900 list and $158,000 sold.  In my opinion the middle price ranges ($300,000 to $500,000) are taking the numbers down, while homes in the mid $100,000’s are holding their own.  Of course, this is the cyclical down season so sellers are more willing to take offers, keeping prices depressed.   The average Days On Market seems to confirm this, as it stands almost 20% higher than 2010 at 94 days – that’s just over 3 months!  No wonder sellers are more anxious to take what’s offered.

Looking to Spring 2011, we can see that sales are poised to move upward – the question is how much of an upswing we will see.  Prices have nowhere to go but up.  Remember, if you want to sell your Lancaster home for the best price in the shortest period of time, choose a listing agent who has strong internet marketing and professional photos to make your home pop online!  Call us to arrange an evaluation of your home, and we’ll give you a great presentation of how we can help make your sale a reality in 2011.

Visit our homepage for Lancaster PA Real Estate

(c) 2011 Jeff Geoghan

We’re doing our regular catch-up for Lancaster PA real estate sales this year…through January 29th.

This year, there have been 629 new listings on the market, and 167 listings have closed. In the same time frame last year we’d had 778 new listings and 210 closed listings – that’s just about a 20% decrease in both categories. Clearly the market has contracted over 2010 so far.

What’s happening with median home prices in Lancaster? Last year, it was $165,450 year to date. This year, it’s at $169,900, a 2.6% increase over 2010. The average price reduction from list to closing last year was 6.07%, this year is up to 8.25%. That’s because list prices are running higher this year…another interesting development.

So, initial signs point to a contracted real estate market with prices on the uptick. I’m seeing the possible signs of supply & demand kicking in, since there seems to be increased buyer activity right now. All this bodes well for the all-important spring selling season. Stay tuned…

If you have comments feel free to leave them here or email me at jeff@yourlancasterhome.com.  Check my website for Lancaster PA real estate.

Today I talk about a recent report by Zillow.com, everyone’s “favorite” real estate website, and their rankings of 125 metro areas in the US for 2010. They called it the “ten best places to buy”. Here’s the link:

http://www.zillow.com/blog/best-place…

Turns out that the Lancaster, PA real estate market (the metro area around Lancaster City) was ranked #7 out of the 125. Zillow researchers listed the top 10 as:

1. Utica, N.Y.
2. Oklahoma City, Okla.
3. Rochester, N.Y.
4. Pittsburgh, PA
5. Tulsa, Okla.
6. Albany, N.Y.
7. Lancaster, PA
8. Madison, Wis.
9. Green Bay, Wis.
10. Lincoln, Neb.

In a nutshell, Zillow’s business model is to strip deed records from counties and build models of home sales & values. I’m sure they used these data for their average home price of $179,300 for the Lancaster metro area (most likely the zip codes that are labeled as “Lancaster” – 17601,17602,17603 that includes most of Manheim Township, East Hempfield Township, Lancaster Township and Lancaster City, plus a good portion of Manor Township, West Hempfield Township and West Lampeter Township).

So anyway, the Zillow study tabulated numbers for “affordability”, unemployment, % of foreclosure sales and the change in their recorded prices for the metro areas. Using that matrix Lancaster scored very well.

I was interested in the top ten areas – mostly in the west-midwest and a narrow section of PA and NY. Isn’t that interesting?

As I’ve been telling my customers for years, the Lancaster area is not getting hit with 40% price reductions, foreclosures aren’t every other house sale, and the blue-collar and sefl-employed work environment doesn’t lend itself to mass layoffs and an adrift professional class. This Zillow report just backs those insights up. Lancaster PA homes for sale are as affordable as ever and it actually IS a good time to buy (ubiquitous marketing pitches notwithstanding).

If you want to talk about this Zillow study, home sale stats in Lancaster County Real Estate or any other homes subject email me at jeff@yourlancasterhome.com or comment here.

You would think this doesn’t happen that much anymore, but even today home buyers find themselves dealing with “competing offers“. You’ve completed your offer and delivered it to the listing agent to present to the seller. Then you get the call from your buyer’s agent that another offer is coming to the seller, a competing offer to your own. What to do?

In Pennsylvania the convention is that buyers will put their “best foot forward” when submitting an offer. If there are multiple interested parties, then the listing agent needs to tread carefully with how they notify each party and present the offers to the seller. An ethical Real Estate agent will not attempt to “play” one buyer against another in PA – it’s a strongly discouraged practice here. Instead the listing agent will merely advise the buyer’s agents involved that competing offers exist, leaving the content of the offers to imagination of the buyer.

In this case, the buyer needs to look at their motivation. Odds are, their initial offer price was lower than the price they would ultimately agree to to secure the home. Now that they face elimination in a competing offer scenario, are they REALLY willing to “let it go” at the low initial offer price? Probably now, and I advise buyers to up their offer to a number (or other contract terms) that they, having lost the competition, would still feel comfortable that they’d offered their best.   I’ve had times where buyers, not having done this, later regretted not upping their offer price. Keep in mind that this may not be the ultimate price for them – just as much as they feel will give them an advantage and/or give them comfort should they lose out.

If you have any questions or comments I’d love to hear them at jeff@yourlancasterhome.com.

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