ZeeMaps Showing November Sales

I am pretty excited about a new feature of my blog. I ran across ZeeMaps trying to figure out how to publish the CORT property sales to my blog. It did exactly what I wanted it to do for free. So, every month I will be updating the map at the bottom of the blog page to show all the property sales in the Santa Barbara area. I haven't quite figured out if I want to do the same with the North County properties, but I probably will. Here is what it looks like. I will keep this map permanently posted at the bottom of the blog. I am not sure exactly as to how I may tweak this in the future, but it is usable right now. Let me know your feedback. See You In Escrow!

Santa Barbara South County Sales For November

I went back and looked at what CORT numbers I could find. The numbers I found went back to 1997. We almost did it, we almost hit double digits in the number of sales in the South County of Santa Barbara in November. I couldn't believe that the number we hit in October was ever going to be beaten, but it was and it didn't take long. Maybe December or January will be the winner and the number of sales will fall in to the double digits. I just can't seem to get a grip on what the bottom is going to be when it comes to the number of sales. We are certainly in our seasonal downturn and when you add the uncertainty the credit issues have thrown at every one's mental state of mind it goes to figure we are seeing historic lows in terms of the number of transactions. Lawyers Title had the pleasure of opening escrows today on 9 properties that were auctioned off by a builder over the weekend. If you ask me the buyers made good deals. The properties are brand new and have some very nice features and amenities. I think sellers are doing what it takes to draw buyers in to their properties. The number one thing is being realistic on a listing price. Now back to the CORT numbers, I couldn't find any months where there had been less than a 100 sales close. I looked all the way back to Jan of 1997. There were a handful of months below the 150 number, but there were many more months where there were over 300 closings. We are living in historic times. The next few months could be record breakers, but after that I think we are going to see things start picking up. See You In Escrow!

October Sales Activity For Santa Barbara's South County

CORT and Dataquick got to the numbers out to us quickly this month. That can only mean 1 thing, there weren't many sale transactions in Santa Barbara County. There were 109 transactions from Goleta to Carp. That compares to 151 transactions in 2006. That is almost a 28% drop in transactions for the month. The areas that were most affected were Santa Barbara and Goleta. Goleta's number dropped 56% from 48 transactions in 2006 to 21 transactions in 2007. Santa Barbara's number of sales wasn't off as significantly but it was down 17% going from 76 in 2006 to 63 in 2007. Carpinteria remained unchanged while Montecito was down 2 transactions from 16 to 14. What does it all mean? My CORT records go back to 1997 and there hasn't been 2 back to back months like September and October of 2007 during that time span. We are living in historic times! I am not expecting November and December to really change things with respects to how many transactions are closing here on the South Coast, but I am feeling pretty darn confident that 2008 will be a better year for closed escrows. Tomorrow I will post the North County charts. See You In Escrow!

Freakonomics vs. The Real Estate Agent

Once again my reading or should I say listening to books on cd's is creeping in to my thoughts. This time the book I'm reading is making some interesting comments about the true motivations of real estate agents. The book is also doing a pretty good job of backing up their statements. The question they asked was is a real estate agent truly motivated to get the highest dollar possible when selling a clients home. The conclusion they drew was no. Here is what they did, they took a very large number of homes being sold by real estate agents and compared them to a large number of homes being sold by agents as their own homes. The observations they made were that the homes the agents were selling for themselves took longer to market and sold for 10% more. They then used a $300,000 sales price as an example to go on and explain that the motivation for an agent who will make another $150 dollars if that property sells for $310,000 is not very great compared to the agent selling their own home and pocketing another $10,000. Interesting listening and reading. If you are a real estate agent feeling picked on right now, don't worry they pick on a lot of other professionals. I would really recommend reading this book, Freakonomics.