Inventory remains unchanged in West Savage in the month of July from a numerical standpoint, but the content is changing. Expired listings are up in West Savage. (This means they have ridden out their marketing contract with no sale.) New inventory is cropping up, particularly in The Pointe, which is seeing inventory heavily concentrated along the Carriage Hill Road corridor.
Let’s take a candid look at what is going on in the market across the board from a REALTOR® standpoint. The media talks gloom. Agents are optimistic. Here is what is really going on out there!
- Buyer activity: Buyer activity is strong on listings that are competitively priced relative to the market. Showings on these homes are abundant. Listings priced high for the market area see few showings.
- Pricing: Pricing is flat to mildly declining. The reality of market price is often difficult for a majority of sellers to grasp. We often hear sellers say they want to “turn down” some offers before taking one. Our advice is that in this market, if an offer materializes, one does everything possible to work with it. We do not want to reject offers in this market. We want to counter.
- Decision making: We are seeing a high number of buyers express “interest” in a home, then be slow to pull the trigger, leading more agents to take the word “interested” with a grain of salt until the buyer is willing to put an offer on paper. Buyers are taking their time and are savvy about inventory.
- Appraisals: The appraisal has become perhaps the largest hurdle in the transaction. We believe buyers and sellers determine value, and the goal of the appraisal is to ensure the lender is not taken advantage of. Some appraisals coming in are so low that neither buyer nor seller, and sometimes even both parties trying to meet in the middle, have enough funds to bridge the gap between sales price and appraisal price. Appealing an appraisal is challenging but possible, and we have done it.
- Lending: Funds are very accessible for borrowers with stable income and good credit. There are no issues or hiccups there, aside from the need to provide a lot more documentation than in years past. It is really the borrowers walking a tighter “creditworthiness” line that run into the most difficulties.
Our West Savage absorption rate is 7.76. That means if zero new homes come on the market, it will take 7.76 months to sell our existing inventory.
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