Greetings!
This month’s newsletter is going to double as your normal monthly “state of the market” letter AND answer the questions asked in our “real estate quiz” that’s running in the Sunday, March 9th real estate ads as well as the upcoming issue of The Real Estate Book.

Last month, we included two of the three ads that our parent company, Realogy, had run as full page ads in the USA Today newspaper, along with our comments on reasons to be “bullish” about housing. This month, you’ll see ad number three, along with the past month’s pending charts that illustrate why we STILL think the Southern Tier market is a great market!

The first thing you’ll notice on our pending charts is that there are less than 500 homes on the market in the areas that our company “tracks.” (We do most of our business in the Steuben and Chemung County areas served by Addison, Campbell, Corning-Painted Post, Elmira, Elmira-Heights, and Horseheads school districts so that is what we track.) In the year 2000, we had 832 available single family homes to choose from. This is a 40% reduction from 2000 to 2008 in the number of homes (SUPPLY) available. If you’re curious, that number has gone up and down slightly over the years, but has steadily decreased since 2003 … 702 in 2001, 776 in 2002, 810 in 2003, 778 in 2004, 580 in 2005, 544 in 2006, 522 in 2007, and now 494 this year.)

We are excited to see that the pendings (DEMAND) in the month of February (which means the houses that went under contract) totaled 95. That is the highest figure in the past 9 years, with the exception of the year 2002, when there were 100 homes that went under contract in March. Last year in February, there were only 63, and in 2006, only 53. We truly believe that we are lucky in our area to be benefiting from good economic news (JOBS!), low interest rates, and NO glut in the number of homes on the market.

In our newspaper example, we decided to do an “absorption rate” in one specific area and price range to illustrate the fact that, unlike SOME areas of the country that made big news, we are not oversupplied in housing! If a buyer wants to look in Horseheads between $100,000 and $150,000 right now, there are 14 homes to look at – not a huge number. In the past 12 months, in that same parameter (area and price), there were 55 sales, or 4.5 sales a month. That means that we were absorbing about 4.5 homes per month, and if you look at today’s supply of 14 homes and divide it by 4.5, you realize that we have only a 3 month supply of homes on the market in Horseheads in that price range!

As for financing – there ARE still mortgages available with low or no down payments. And just like in the good ol’ days, if you have a job history and a good credit score, you will most likely be able to get a loan! Gone, however, are the days of “no income verification” loans, which meant “if you dream it, you can state it and no one will check up on you.” Those are the types of risky loans that got the mortgage industry into trouble, and it’s fine with us that those days are gone!


Oh – and one last thing: the Elmira-Corning Board of Realtors produces a report each month to be sent to the National Association of Realtors. (That’s where they GET all of those national stats that you see quoted all the time.) Days on market is one of the things that is tracked. In Chemung County, that figure is 172 days and in Steuben County, it’s 174. That means our AVERAGE days on market is JUST under 180 days or 6 months. However, our days on market are actually higher because in our system, if a house is on with one broker for 6 months and it’s relisted with another broker, or if it expires and is relisted by the same broker, it starts again at day one. So our days on market count isn’t accurate in my mind, but the official word and answer to our quiz question IS 6 months.

The message that good, long-term Realtors are trying to get across is that real estate is a good, LONG TERM investment – and unlike a stock and or a bond, you can LIVE in it! And home equity is the single largest source of wealth for most Americans. The second message that Realtors are trying to help people understand is that real estate markets are LOCAL. Even between here and Rochester, the market varies tremendously! And in many ways, we have various markets even here, as you take our locations and then divide by price ranges. The upshot is: if you want to know something about the real estate market, ask someone who makes their living DOING it, and don’t rely on the generalizations that you’ve been hearing about for the past two years in the national media!

If you’re listed with us, we once again express our appreciation to you; if you’re not and you’re reading this newsletter online, we invite you to call or e-mail us and get to know the experts at Coldwell Banker Horizons Realty – your perfect partner in real estate! We’d love to help you buy or sell your next home!