In search of an immaculate home...

I was searching the MLS last week for a home between $250,000 and $450,000. A home that you would consider to be of high quality, great condition, wonderfully maintained, and that has lots of character and charm. A home that I would call special. I was only looking in three or four specific communities but I really didn’t come up with much. Undaunted, I broadened the search to include all the homes in Belknap County and Moultonborough regardless of price. Fortunately, the MLS search system we use allows me to search for very specific keywords within the public description of the property so I can zero right in on the type of property I wanted. I picked “keywords” that would describe a desirable home and searched through the 1300+ homes currently on the market. The results were surprising and yielded two obvious conclusions.

Was the maid off last week??

Of the 1300+ homes available there were only 27 “immaculate” homes found! Can you believe that? Does that mean there are 1273 less than stellar house-keepers out there, or perhaps some of the homes were listed the week the maid was off, or maybe the agent just didn’t want to mention the state of cleanliness of the home? I’m not sure what keyword to use to look for something less than “immaculate”. I tried “well kept” and only 9 homes came back (one being “well kept immaculate”—I liked that one!). The search revealed only 16 homes when I plugged “pristine” into the search. That’s not a real common word to use, but who wouldn’t want a pristine home? Of the 16 homes that came up only 3 were “pristine homes”. The rest were describing the setting, the frontage, the water, the lot, and so on.

How about “high quality” homes? There were only 3 out of 1300! What quality were the rest? I tried “well built” and found only 4 properties. Now I am getting really concerned that the remaining 1293 homes are all of inferior construction…or is it again a case of vague property descriptions? It was hard to tell by some of the photos of the homes that I looked at.

What about a “like new” home. I found a mere 19 and some of those only “looked” like they were new, some “showed” like they were new, and some were in “like new condition”. All the rest of the 1281 listings therefore weren’t “like new” and had to be just plain “new”, “young”, “older”, or maybe even had Indian Shutters and an outhouse.

I found just 48 of the 1300 to be described as “well maintained”. That can’t be good. However, only 9 needed “TLC”. I highly suspect that in reality both these results are much higher. That’s good and bad.

A real Charming house!

 There were 67 “charming” properties listed. Now anything can be “charming”, but I think this word gets misused a lot as some of the homes were not remotely charming based on the pictures I saw. I love homes with “character”, but there were only 18 homes that came up in the search. That means there could be 1282 lackluster, bland homes out there. There were 48 “cozy” properties starting with a $35,000 A-Frame home all the way up to a $1.4 million cottage on Governors Island. That’s a big range for the word “cozy”.

But, there were 133 “wonderful” results! There were wonderful “communities, lots, neighborhoods, spots, lawns, locations, gardens, and floor plans”. And there was the age old wonderful “family home”. It seemed though that you had to get up in the price range quite a bit before the true meaning of “wonderful” really kicked in…

And, lastly, the keyword “beautiful” yielded 334 properties. There were beautiful “floors, lots, woodwork,

Not the kind of character I was looking for...

waterfront, landscaping, yards, etc, etc, etc…”, but only 16 beautiful “homes”. The rest therefore had to be only good looking, maybe stately, or down-right ugly. But as they say: beauty is in the eye of the beer holder, I mean beholder, so this category is somewhat subjective.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to use multiple keywords in my search. It wouldn’t seem to let me do it. But I bet if you were looking for an immaculate, pristine, well maintained, and charming home you wouldn’t find any at all—at least by the description of the property.

So you could conclude that (1) there are few homes on the market that are really outstanding or that (2) the property descriptions could be improved. Perhaps it is little of both? There does seem to be shortage of really great, high quality homes with character and charm especially in the mid-price ranges. It’s not that there aren’t good solid houses out there, but as Realtors®, we don’t walk into too many low to mid-priced homes where the first word out of our mouths is “Wow!”. We rely on photos a lot to convey what a house is like and many times great pictures can make up for a lackluster description. But it would also help a great deal if there were honest property descriptions relaying more about the condition, quality, and how a property feels rather than something like: “This 3 bed, 2 bath, Colonial on nice 2 acre level lot, has new appliances and flooring, a large deck, plus a huge back yard. Great location. Hurry, won’t last long.” (and just for the record there were only 45 homes that had a “great location”).

So if YOU are looking for any of the foregoing attributes in a home, call me! I know where all the beautiful, high quality, immaculate and pristine homes with character and charm are. It is not an easy job, but someone has to do it…

So the holidays are over and we are headed into a bright and prosperous 2009! Right? Over the holidays there were plenty of articles about the state of the real estate markets and the economic world. One of the typical “Big Loser” and ”Big Winner” lists about real estate  was on MSN.com which you can take a peak at if it is still there. In a nutshell though the big losers according to this article were:

1. the homeowners who lost their homes to the bank (enough said).

2. home builders who obviously have homes in inventory and can’t move forward building more (I think that needs to be expanded to all their suppliers and subs).

3. home sellers– if you had to sell it was obviously not the best time and you probably sold for less than what you really wanted.

4. real estate agents–fewer or no sales means many are getting out of the business or finding part time work (we are all self employed so there are no unemployment benefits to fall back on).

5. mortgage brokers–they say that the ranks of mortgage brokers have dwindled by a third.

6. the US taxpayer–who is going to share the burden of all the bail outs that really stemmed from this whole sub prime mortgage mess.

I would add a #7 to include home inspectors and title companies as they have been hit hard as well by the decrease in home sales. A #8 should be the local and state governments. They will surely feel the pinch with less revenues coming in as people struggle to pay their property taxes and with less property sold here in NH the revenues from the transfer taxes on property must be significantly off.

There is always someone who wins when someone else loses no matter what the situation. MSN’s list of big winners include:

1. first time home buyers–there are unbelievable deals out there right now on entry level homes. (I would expand this to include any homebuyer as there are great deals in every price category).

2. REO agents and asset managers. REO agents are the real estate agents that handle the bank owned properties. Not a glamorous segment of the business but obviously those sales are up so at least these agents are doing well. The companies that provide property services to the bank owned properties like winterizing and plowing also have seen their businesses boom.

3. attorneys–I know, who cares? It is their list not mine. Attorneys usually thrive in any market but those handling evictions, bankruptcies, and foreclosures did particularly well this past year.

4. small banks did well because they never bought into doing risky mortgages, stayed true to their business model and now will thrive in 2009 as well. That is no more evident than right here in the Lakes Region. We are extremely lucky in that there is plenty of money locally for those with good credit that want to purchase a new home.

5. loss mitigation and default management workers for the larger lending institutions saw increases in pay as they had to handle the flood of non performing loans.

I would also add a #6 to include investors. Yes, I know these types of buyers that bought and flipped property for a quick buck helped drive up values and they might have been part of the original problem, but I would bet anyone who bought property in 2008 as a longer term investment will come out feeling like Warren Buffet. I am sure there are other winners that belong on this list that really aren’t evident right now. 

Hopefully in 2009 the economy will begin to show signs of being the up and coming big winner as we get back to basics with people living within their means, saving money for the required down payment on a house, and buying only what they can afford when they can afford it.