Warm Greetings Real Estate Fans, I feel like every summer gets hotter and hotter. Must be my age 😊 Our real estate market could drop temperatures dramatically. We are currently running about 14% behind last year’s sales. This is not good news. It looks like we will be waiting until next spring for hope in our market. Last month we sold seventy-nine residential properties compared to 102 last year. A deficit of twenty-one! I thought I would focus on the main issue affecting our market. It’s one you hear nationwide but let me put some math to it for you. One word, affordability. I can only focus on the two…

Greetings Real Estate Fans, The weather is heating up. I wish I could say the same for our real estate market. Last month is the first time this year we have closed more escrows than same month last year. Three more to be exact. We closed escrows on 83 homes last month. May is usually one of our best months for closings. I’m a little worried if this is our best, we are in for a tough year. One thing I have noticed. Homes that are priced right tend to sell. Buyers can see value. Now that value could be the amount of land or the design of the home.…

Greetings Real Estate Fans, Usually, we look for May flowers this month. Unfortunately, not much is blooming in our Hi-Desert real estate market. We are not alone! Nationwide sales are flat. High interest rates and high fuel costs appear to be keeping most buyers on the sidelines. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) appears to be focusing on the fall market this year with the hope of lower interest rates and lower fuel costs becoming a reality by late summer. For us, right now, we are living with very low sales numbers. In the first trimester of the year, we find ourselves 40 closed escrows behind last year which was…

Greetings Fans, Sometimes I feel like the Grim Reaper when I share my Market Updates. It sure seems like poor news has been with us for well over 50 months now. Frankly, at this moment, I do not see any significant change in the near future. A couple of months ago I shared a study from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) that predicted if interest rates dropped at or below 6%, over 500 thousand buyers would return to the market. The rates dropped into that range in early February, but nothing changed locally (or nationally for that matter). Optimism was high early in the year that the spring market…

Greetings Real Estate Fans, This may be the “love” month, but there is very little to love about our Hi Desert real estate market. In January we closed escrow on just 43 homes. 43! From Morongo Valley to Johnson Valley to Wonder Valley. Just 43. This is the lowest number of closed escrows I have recorded since I have been producing these Updates starting in 2013. We also have a growing inventory of listings. 676 today. 641 when I produced the Update on February 4th. I expect to see this number grow to well over 700 by the end of March. We hit over 900 last year in May. But…

Season’s Greetings Fans, Just a few weeks left this year. We are struggling to close over 850 escrows. I expect the number will come in between 845 and 860. This will be the lowest amount since I have been keeping records (2013). At this writing, we have 694 active listings in residential. Down from 707 when I wrote this Update. Many of these are very old. One is over three years active. 40 are over a year active. Another 117 are over six months active. Why is this important? Buyers use the Days Active in the MLS (DAM) as a source to negotiate price. The thought process is if you…

Greetings, Real Estate Fans, First a gratuitous plug. Debbie and I own a small graphic business. The graphics are reproductions of historic events, places, and businesses in and around our part of the Hi Desert. We have a partner who prints our graphics on all types of items like apparel, totes, hats, mugs, mouse pads, and many others. Last month we started a new marketing campaign focused around a “podcast” from local urban legend, Yucca Man. Yucca Man is a Big Foot type character that roams the Mojave Desert. For each item, we share the history of where the item is from or for. You can see the podcast on…