By STAFF WRITERS
editor@yourneighborhoodnews.com
Sharon Livingston has seen a change in the housing market first hand. Two years ago, she and her husband offered to buy their Windham Colonial-style house about an hour after it went on the market.
“I snapped it up,” said Livingston, who paid $629,000 for the house.
“It was such a small market (then),” she added. “There were hardly any houses.”
The Livingstons are now moving to Tilton and their Colonial is up for sale. Their asking price is $619,000.
The house has been on the market about three weeks. A few people have looked at it but there are no buyers yet, she said.
“It’s such a different environment (now),” Livingston said.
Area real estate experts and agents suggest the recent shift is more like a return to normalcy than an impending catastrophe.
“The market is not all the doom and gloom you see in the media,” said Jeff Keeler, owner of Pembroke’s Keeler Family Realty and chairman of public policy for the New Hampshire Association of Realtors. “The sky is not falling.”
Keeler said many homes have been staying on the market longer, frustrating many sellers. But he said sellers and real estate brokers have been living the high life until now.
“What we’re seeing is a reaction to 11 solid years of appreciation,” said Keeler.
Keeler described the last six months as a kind of “plateau” period.
Bedford market doing well
With 211 homes listed to date, Bedford’s real estate market is alive and well, said sales associate Joanne Gerety Rice of Coldwell Banker on Route 101.
“The market has rested a little bit and there has been a little bit of a price adjustment, but home sales aren’t really down since last year,” Rice said. “I don’t think that there’s a housing bubble.”
Homes ranging in price from $200,000 to $2 million are on the market in Bedford, with the $300,000 to $500,000 range being the most popular bracket, Rice said. Of these, 37 homes are under contract and waiting to close.
There are 53 $300,000 to $400,000 homes and another 53 $400,000 to $500,000 homes.
The market in Bedford is healthy for a variety of reasons, Rice said.
“There’s low unemployment in town, an airport that is only going to get bigger and a new school system that will be good for all price ranges,” she said. “Many people relocate because of education for their kids, that’s one of the primary reasons. The new high school will bring a sense of community that will only make Bedford a better place to be.”
Rice said the real estate bubble is media driven.
“There are so many positive indicators in the economy that there really shouldn’t be a perception of a problem,” she said. “If you create uncertainty, you drive down buyer confidence and enthusiasm.”
Why there’s a change
Keeler said while the local market may not be as disastrous as many may perceive, a portion of the housing market is creating a statewide crisis.
He suggested town restrictions on developers, like growth controls and excessive fees that have cropped up in recent years have led to a shortage in affordable housing.
“The towns put as many impediments as they can on residential growth,” he said.
The result, said Keeler, is that builders build more expensive homes to make a profit.
Keeler said the New Hampshire phenomenon has led to a surplus in homes in the $350,000 to $500,000 range, but said there’s still a need for housing for young families, which he suggested invigorate local economies.
“There’s none of it being built,” he said. “$225,000 and below, it’s pretty much still a seller’s market.”
Livingston agreed with that assessment. She thinks a huge building glut in town has changed the market.
“I think it’s obvious that the activity level has certainly slowed down compared to six months ago and I think sellers have to negotiate a little more than they did six months ago,” said Sandy Heino of Sandy Heino and Associates Realty in the Bow/Hopkinton area. “Part of it is just this time of year, in the fall, when things usually slow down, and I think part of it is when people listen to the TV or the radio and hear that it is a buyer’s market and things are going to get worse, they believe it.”
Slower to sell
Many homes don’t sell quickly because people price their homes according to the value of their neighbor’s home.
“It’s critical that sellers understand the idea of price adjustments and price their homes accordingly,” Rice said. “If homes don’t sell quickly, the inventory of available homes increases and supply and demand kicks in.”
People buying homes in Bedford are picky about a number of amenities, including but not limited to granite, hardwood floors, master bedrooms with walk-in closets and bathrooms, and multi-car garages.
“People can do a lot to make their homes more attractive to buyers, like eliminating clutter, depersonalizing the property, and cleaning the interior and exterior,” said Rice. “One of the most popular features right now is an open-concept theme like large, open kitchens.”
Anna Fish of Century 21 Advantage Realty on Mast Road in Goffstown, said her inventory of houses is high, with a low inventory of buyers.
While Fish said prices have remained static over the past half decade, buyers are not as quick to snatch a home off the market.
“A few years ago, the prices were about the same as they are now,” Fish said, “but if I bought a house in January, I could sell it in six months and make a profit. I can’t do that now.
“People are beginning to realize the party is over, we’re back to where we were before it started. People are starting to realize that, because their houses are sitting longer,” Fish said.
To offset the change, Heino said sellers are offering incentives to build buyers’ confidence such as paying points and closing costs, offering one-time price reductions during open houses, or updating appliances and flooring.
“Sellers need to make their house stand out above everything else,” she said. “You only have one chance to make that first impression.”
It had been a “seller’s market” the past decade, according to Nancy Casagrande, general manager of ERA The Masiello Group in Windham.
Now, there are more homes than buyers, she said.
“Obviously, we are in a buyer’s market,” Casagrande said. “Prices are adjusting.”
Casagrande said, conservatively, prices of existing homes have come down 10 to 15 percent.
More foreclosures
Real estate agents said foreclosures have increased.
Joanne Riopel of Innovative Realty in Pelham said that sometimes a family buys a new home before their current one sells and carries two mortgages. But the house they left doesn’t sell as quickly as they had hoped, and the family finds themselves in a financial bind.
Reviewing the number of foreclosures in Goffstown, one town official pointed to a sharp jump in that statistic.
While Goffstown has recorded 14 foreclosure notices since June, and counted 15 foreclosures in all of 2005.
“It seems like a lot of foreclosures,” said Deputy Tax Collector Rene Millson. “I can tell you the folder (of foreclosure notices) is pretty fat.”
National trends
“While new-home sales have been quite strong throughout 2005, we see a cooling of the market to a healthy and more sustainable pace in the months ahead, as substantiated by recent surveys of our builders,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Seiders. “For 2006, we expect to see a 6 percent to 7 percent drop in sales, but certainly no reason for alarm. This would make 2006 the second or third best year in housing history.”
If you must sell
A seller’s best bet it to listen to their agent when setting a price for their home, Fish said.
“If you’re moving and you need to sell quickly, you better list it for what your agent tells you to list it for, because they know. A lot of the reason why houses are slower to sell is because sellers start out with an asking price that’s too high,” she said.
“Right now is a good time to buy and some buyers are making offers with great, great reductions to sellers,” Berge Nalbandian of Berge’s Real Estate in Salem said. “I’ve been doing this for 50 years and it’ll come around again like in the years prior.”
In the meantime, builders have been giving discounts and extras in new homes that aren’t normally included, he said.
Typical home sales
The following is a sampling of home sales across our readership area:
Hopkinton – 22 homes sold in June and July; highest price was $780,000, lowest was $189,000, and average was $358,140.
Bow – 25 homes sold in June and July, ranging from $190,000 to $915,000. The average home sold for $358,400 in July,
Dunbarton – 11 homes sold during June and July, ranging from $100,000 to $465,000, with an average price of $303,454.
Hooksett – 71 homes sold in July and August, ranging from $176,000 for a condo to $624,000 for a single-family home, and average was about $300,000.
Allenstown – 17 homes sold in July and August, seven of them mobile homes, ranging from $21,800 to $290,000. The average single-family home sold for $224,836.
Pembroke – 16 homes sold in July and August ranging from $89,000 for a condo to $305,000 for a single-family home. The average single-family home sold for $258,818.
Salem – 69 properties sold in June and July, ranging from $5,000 for a mobile home to $740,000 for a single-family home. The average single-family home sold for $367,038.
Pelham – 41 homes sold from mid-June to mid-August, ranging from $206,000 to $660,000, at an average price of $398,571.
Windham – 40 homes sold in July and August ranging from $153,466 for a condo to $1,225,000 for a contemporary home. The average price was $481,135.
Bedford – 96 condos and single-family homes sold in July and August, with condos ranging from $244,900 to $500,000, and homes ranging from $224,000 to $2,400,000. The average home sold for $486,447.
Goffstown – 63 homes sold in July and August, ranging from $50,000 for a mobile home to $435,000 for a single-family home.
New Boston – 25 homes sold in July and August, ranging from $10,000 to $770,000.
Weare – 41 homes sold in July and August, ranging from $54,000 to $412,000.
– Nicholas Brown, Darrell Halen, Rod Hansen, Jim Devine, Joseph Edgerton, Robert Inks, Steven Andrews and Ryan O’Connor contributed to this story.