The good news is ’stuff’ is happening. We are seeing lots of buyer signs with increased showings and more offers being written. For a ‘down time’ we are pleased to report that last week there were 3 new escrows, 4 properties sold and 7 that expired from the market. The Incline MLS also reports 11 new listings-4 condos, 1 PUD’s and 6 Single Ramily Residences. There were also 37 price changes, not all of them were decreases. Interesting markets bring about interesting times and of those price changes 12 properties actually increased their price while 25 continued to go down. Some of these price increases may have been a result of a campaign by a local real estate company to try and drive sales by decreasing the price 10% for a ’special sale’ for the week. People are trying numerous tactics in today’s market to get their property sold, but the bottom line is…if you are not the best priced property on the market in your price range and competition and if you do not have the most amount of amenities of your competition, these ‘marketing ploys’ are NOT going to get you from listed to sold. Today’s buyers are saavy…often times they know more than the real estate agent or the sellers as they access county records, realtor.com and other readily available consumer resources.
Drilling down these numbers farther, let’s look at the properties that went into escrow this week.
1347 Zurich (A Best Buy Property)-There is no history available in the MLS, but the outcome is the same as the other two we are going to discuss, it was listed almost a year ago…12/17/07 and the price has been reduced several times, finally going into escrow.
918 Tyner-New build project, beautiful home, it’s been in contract two other times and fallen out, had a price reduction from the original price of $1,975,000 when originally listed in January of 2008, dropped to $1,850,000 and increased to $1,875,000. Keep your eye out for the report from us on what it actually sells for. This one should be interesting.
121 Rubicon (A Best Buy Property)…What a story this one is. It was originally listed at $2,895,000 in August of 2007. It dropped to $2,495,000, dropped to $2,199,000 and was taken over by another brokerage. It continued to drop to $1,950,000 (not bad given it’s large sqft, but the house if you have not seen it is extremely whimsical to say the least and of course CHOPPY) and most recently it dropped to…$1,495,000. Within a week, no surprise, several offers later…an escrow! WOW! Again, this will be a fun one to watch and see what the final number is at closing.
Let’s dig a little deeper into the sales this week…OMG…It is all about the price!
830 Oriole #18 a White Pines Unit was originally listed in May of 2007 for $525K, dropped to $509K, $495K, and then most recently to $449K when it finally went into escrow. The closing price…$420K, quite a haircut from the original price.
929 Northwood #118 is a perfect example of pricing agressively and for sale. This condo was listed on 8/16/08 went into contract within a month and sold a month later for $829K…no messing around with the price.
854 Lichen #7 (A Best Buy Property) is another perfect example of pricing in this market, however this was a bank owned property and a smoking deal compared to competitors in the market. I am sure competing condos in the $400K mark were quite happy to see this condo dissapear from the inventory. Listed at $284,900, this unit went into escrow within 7 days of being listed and sold for $275K. See…there are some amazing deals out there.
915 Jennifer (A Best Buy Property) is another ‘F’ word…’Foreclosure’ and was originally listed in 2006 for $1,629,000. You can imagine it dropped and dropped and dropped, but had these owners originally listed for a competitive price (Perhaps $1.2Mil) they have been able to save themselves from foreclosure at that time (Of course we are speculating as no one knows their true situation). We see this happen more and more in this market as people try to save themselves by asking too much for their home and then in the end they loose. For the buyers of this house…they were complete ‘Winners’. After this property went into foreclosure it was listed in June 2008 for $1,050,000…a great price for lots of sqft and a peek of the lake, however the market would not bear it. After being reduced to $850K, this house went into escrow within a week with multiple offers and sold for $850K. Congratulations to the winners of this house!
Best Buy Properties Added This Week…Under Tear Down’s we added 542 Silvertip listed at $620K with 1932 sqft of living space and a two car garage, it could be considered a major overhaul, but the nicest thing about this property is the large lot and peeks of Lake Tahoe, the subdivision of course is extremely nice. Another Tear Down on a more upscale level is 1560 Vivian listed at $2,150,000, the price is still up for debate, but the lot is awesome with .688 of an acre and walking distance to the private beach, it’s a pretty site to build up to 9000sqft on. the exisiting house is adorable with some old world charm and comes with access to the private beach, common pier and buoy. Could be a great project for a developer.
A PUD already on the list, 949 Harold #21, just reduced to $419K. Another great deal on a furnished, 3 bedroom 2 bath condo within walking distance of the golf course, shopping and restaurants.
A single family residence already on the list, 418 Pat Court, just reduced to $595K. What a steal for a very livable home or tear down project on a nice quiet cul-de-sac.
Come back next week for more details on the Incline Insider! For a full look at all the Best Buys in the Area, click here.
