Great Places to Retire - Plano Texas

Posted on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 03:44PM by Bill Webb Post a Comment When I think of retirement (which is not that far away) I always think of that place at the beach overlooking the ocean. How I will get up every morning and walk my dod down the beach and then go play a round of golf or some tennis with my friends. I recently have had to rethink that position. My parents lived on the outer banks of North Carolina and they loved the area. The ability to be so close to the ocean in a laid back community seemed like the perfect place to retire. That is until my father's health started to fail. A trip to the doctor was a 45 minute one way trip. The grocery store was 20 minutes away and even the closed bank, post office or gas station was 15-20 minutes away. When his health got really bad we had a problem with getting specialists that understood his illness. The community being small simply did not have the infrastructure that seniors really need. Why Plano is a great place to retire: What I learned from that experience was that I need to take a look at the retirement issue and make some decisions as to what might be the best fit for my wife and me. Having great health facilities that are close by is a great benefit. As we age we develop aches and pains that occasionally need to be attended to. Having a number of restaurants, banks, gas stations, auto mechanics, grocery stores and world class shopping within a few miles is also a huge plus. This is not to mention the cost of living. The Dallas area is one of the most affordable cities in the country to have the facilities and infrastructure that it has. Property values here are among the most undervalued in the nation. With no state income tax the area affords retirees with a tremendous value when compared to other areas. The wide range of entertainment, performing arts, lakes, parks and other facilities make this area a great place for the empty nester or retiree to live. When I look at all the things that are available to do I see no reason to leave this area. The only negative that I can see is the summer temperature. It can get to 100 degrees. But then when it does I am usually inside or I am in my pool enjoying the water. The winters are actually quite mild with not too many days under 30 degrees and rarely are their any lows under 20. All in all, the Plano area offers the retiree a great place to live:1) Great healthcare - Three major hospitals with others coming. Private clinics and physiscians are in plentiful supply.2) Major financial center with every bank immaginable available within a few miles.3) World Class shopping with both high end and more modest shopping readily available4) At two hundred fifty thousand people, Plano enjoys all the benefits of being a suburb of Dallas without the congestion. Traffic moves easily throughout the city.5) Very affordable housing - Plano's housing market is one of the most undervalued in the nation.6) Great schools - The perfect place for your kids to move with their family. You will be close without having to move to them.7) Great weather - Lots of sunshine and warm days in winter. Playing golf in January is very doable.8) The Dallas metroplex is a major cultural center with the largest performing arts district in the nation currently under construction. All of this makes the Plano area a can't miss area for the empty nester or retiree.

Using the Internet in the Home Selling or Buying Process

Posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 01:46PM by Bill Webb Post a Comment As a realtor, I am amazed at how many people look to the internet as the single and most accurate information on the value of their home. Sellers using website such as Zillow and other such companies as the definitive source for a pricing strategy when marketing their home for sale. Likewise buyers use these same resources as a sign of true value when determining how much to offer on a home that is for sale. I have no problem with any of the websites such as Zillow, Redfin or others as tools to use in helping a buyer or a seller with determining value. To think that we would use such information as an absolute is beyond me. The various websites available to today's consumer should be looked at as a set of tools. Many of the available tools are useful in helping us determine a possible range of value for the particular property that we are interested in buying or selling. When we use the internet as a definitive source for value we make the assumption that homes are commodities. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every home in every neighborhood is uniques is some way. It may be in good condition or it may be in poor condition. The floorplan may appeal to some while others would find it undesireable. We can only know these things by seeing the home and knowing what the market expects. Luckily Zillow and some of the others state clearly that their estimates of value are not appraisals and should not be construed as such. Yet we constantly see stories of people who use internet estimates as a true indicator of value and then use these estimates in the selling or buying of a property. Many times these individuals are sorely disappointed with the results. I recently read a story in the USA Today about how the internet is renovating the way that homes are sold. The article talks about a gentleman who listed his home on Zillow at a "Make Me Move" price of $699,000. Weeks later he was about to market the property through an agent at $659,000. This represented an almost 6% reduction in his original price. As luck would have it he recieved an email from someone on the website that was interested in the home. They settled on a price of $619,000 and he paid the agent $3095.00 to handle the paper work. This resulted in a net sale price of $615,905 or 6.5% below where he was going to list with the agent and 12% below his "Make Me Move" price. I do not know the area that this transaction took place in but it is my belief that had the seller enlisted the help of a real estate professional he would have priced his home closer too true market value to begin with, sold it in a shorter timeframe (saving carrying cost) and most likely put more money in his pocket at the end of the day. The article went on to claim how the seller had saved paying a typical 6% commission. As I see it he simply reduced the price by six percent and gave that money to the buyer in the form of a price reduction. At the end of the day, the buyer was most certainly better off having paid significantly below the original asking price. The seller on the other hand came out with far less money than his original asking price. My point is this: Use the internet as a tool in your price discovery process. 1) Use the internet to search for properties that are available in the area that you would like to move to.2) Use the internet to find information about the area that you are moving to.3) Use the internet to help determine cost of living comparisions when moving from one geographic area to another4) Use the internet to see what competition is in the market place when you are getting ready to list your home.5) Use the internet to discover what local economic conditions exist that will affect real estate values in an area. What is going on in Miami has little to do with what is going on in Dallas.6) Use the internet as a marketing vehicle to expose potential buyers to your property. When you are ready to make a move call a professional realtor. A good agent can save you thousands of dollars and can ease the stress of the transaction. The For Sale By Owner community comes to this realization every day. Realtor based transaction will sell much quicker on average and bring much higher sale prices than those of the For Sale By Owner. A home is generally the largest and most important purchase you will make in your lifetime. To handle the transaction in an uninformed and unprepared manner may cost you tens of thousands of dollars and many sleepless nights as well.

North Dallas Hosuing Numbers Remain Anemic

Posted on Saturday, February 16, 2008 at 03:09PM by Bill Webb Post a Comment Plano and the surrounding areas had yet another month of declining numbers from last year. Sales for all of North Texas were down 17%. Plano Sales were down 9% and average price unchanged. Interestingly though, the median price was up 8%. Things were worse in Allen and McKinney with Allen posting a30% drop and McKinney a 28% drop. Frisco was able to show a smaller decrease in units (5%) but the area's average price was down 7% and the median price was down 14%. Builder inventories in the Frisco area are probably the reason for the downward pressure on prices. The days on market time for the area was also significantly up. Plano came in at 88 days followed by McKinney at 88, Frisco at 99 and Allen at 111. This compares with all of North Texas at 88 days. New listings were up by 1% in Plano and total listings were up 6% over the previous year. Allen and McKinney both showed a drop in listings for the month versus January of 2007. McKinney was also down 8% in total listings versus a year ago. Frisco showed a small decrease on the monthly listings but were still 12% ahead in total listings from a year ago. North Texas as a whole posted a 9% decrease on monthly new listings and a 1% increase for total listings versus a year ago. We also have a hotness ratio that is provided to us by the North Texas Real Estate Information System. This ratio is obtain by dividing the pending sales for single family homes by the current inventory. With 126 areas reporting, Plano ranked 16th. They were followed by Allen at 19th, Frisco at 70th and McKinney at 71st. This number could give us some clues as to market direction in a more timely manner than just looking at the months of inventory. We will have more on this number in future articles. So, what do we have? Statistically we have a market that is at a crossroads. We are seeing some numbers decline while other numbers stubbornly hold on to a positive bias. For instance sales for the month in Plano are down 9% from a year ago. Months of inventory however is only at 4.1 which is hardly considered a buyer's market. The road that the market chooses will be unveiled in the next few months. interest rates, recession fears, foreclosures and gas prices could all play a part in the direction we take. Regardless of the direction, I do not think we will see the wild swings that we are seeing across the country. Our gut tells us that business has been stronger in February than it was in January. I believe that the statistics will bear me out, We will continue to watch for trends and let you know as soon as they show up. Stay tuned.

The Plano Real Estate Market January 2008

We have been inundated over the last few months with stories of how the housing market is imploding. Almost daily, there is another article or news bite on home prices falling and how they will continue to fall for the foreseeable future. We hear the cries of record foreclosures, with a landslide of new foreclosures sure to come as soon as all the sub-prime adjustable loans come due. Much of what is being said is true. On a national level home prices are down. There are plenty of foreclosures with more to come. We may see the national price picture continue to erode over the next year. What these articles do not point out however, is that real estate is a local market. It is driven by local conditions and the local economy. With that point in mind we will look at the Plano (and surrounding areas) market. 2007 was a year of change for housing in Plano and the surrounding areas. 2005 and 2006 had seen record sales in the area and homes were moving at a fairly rapid pace. If a home went on the market, was in average condition, and was priced close to market value, it would get sold in a reasonably short time. While many areas of Florida, Arizona, Nevada, the east and west coast were enjoying double digit appreciation on home values, our market lagged behind at a general rate of about 4% per year. Many areas of the country were seeing theoretical gains of 25-30% per year. I say theoretical since the gain is only realized if you sold your property and actually put the money in your pocket. As we see now, these gains were unsustainable. Housing affordability was quickly becoming out of alignment with the rest of the economy. It was simply a matter of time until we had a correction to bring it back in line. Our area did not see the double digit appreciation figures of some areas. The local economy has remained quite strong. A diversified workforce and generally healthy local economy have kept our area at the top of the charts for job growth. In 2007 the rate of job growth in the state of Texas was almost double that of the country as a whole. True, unemployment has crept up to 4.5%, but that lags behind the national average of 5.0%. Because of this our housing demand in the area has remained fairly steady. The sub-prime situation will take some time to sort out, but again our area will be less affected than some parts of the nation. What we do know is that lenders are now more cautious in making new loans. The days of being able to qualify for 100% financing without verification of income are probably gone. So what is going on in our area? First I will give you the facts. Then I will try to give you a market opinion on where we will head for the rest of 2008. For the year, North Texas MLS sales were down about 8% from 2006 levels. In the Plano area, sales were down 11%. Average Price for a home in the Plano area was up about 4% to $276,669. The average price for all of North Texas was also up about 4% to $201,568. Pending sales also reflected an 8% decline for North Texas and 11% decline for the Plano area. The time it took to sell a home was up in both cases. North Texans took an average of 74 days to sell their homes. Plano sellers took and average of 55 days. These numbers represent a 6% and 8% increase respectively. These are certainly not the doom and gloom numbers that we have seen in the national and local news. The fact is that our market is faring much better than the country as a whole. However, I am concerned about the recent monthly numbers. In the last few months we have seen sales fall at a much steeper pace than indicated above. I believe that part of this was precipitated by the sub-prime crisis and the news that surrounded it, I also believe that we are the victims of our own press. The sensationalistic headlines have bombarded the average home buyer with a "sky is falling" attitude. It has taken a few months for us to see that this is not indicative of the local market. I do think that the market numbers need to be watched closely to see if we will see a new trend to much lower prices or will we see things balance out. Listings currently available in the area are about where they were last year. This means that we do not have an influx of inventory. Prices have been able to rise in the face of a more challenging market. This indicates that buyers are finding value at these levels. So where will we go from here? We are likely to see some softness in the market in the first quarter of 2008. This will be more prevalent in some price points more than others. We will delve into that subject at a later date. I believe builders in the area have curtailed new development plans, and have sold off excess inventories to the point that they will not put undue downward pressure on the market. I believe that we will see a resurgence of activity in the second to third quarter of this year. I do not think that we will see 2008 approach the levels of '05 and '06, but I do think we can be in line with 2007 numbers and maybe finish a little stronger. Is this a buyer's market? If you are a buyer it is a great time to purchase a new home. There is certainly excellent value in the marketplace at this time. Buyers may be able to capture a great deal if the timing is just right. Interest rates are extremely low, and that lowers the true cost of home ownership. If you are a seller it is not a time to run for cover. We are finding that homes in good condition and priced appropriately are selling in this market. We do see buyers being more discriminating in their purchase. This means that the homes on the market must be in good condition and priced properly. With the correct condition, pricing, and marketing, a seller may expect to get their home sold in a reasonable amount of time. Our market seems to be fairly balanced at this point between buyers and sellers. The numbers would support this view and our opinion is that while this balance may ebb and flow from month to month, we will see this balance continue throughout the year.