The Story of a Struggling Virginia Housing Market
Misery loves company.
In this case, the company is the Loudoun County Virginia housing market, which is still sharing in the continued slump that has enveloped much of the nation.
The number of homes in Loudoun that sold in March 2007 fell 20 percent from 12 months earlier, according to the most recent data kept by the Dulles Area Association of Realtors. The average sale price also dropped from $543,515 in March 2006 to $513,066 this year.
Nearby, Prince William County saw a more drastic decline in the number of homes that sold in March at 41 percent. In Fairfax, Arlington and Alexandria, sales dropped about 6 percent.
Sounding cautiously optimistic, Jeanette Newton, chief executive officer of the Dulles Area Association of Realtors, said that “the market is improving,” adding that the number of homes that sold in Loudoun in March (440) did go up from February, along with Virginia mortgage activity overall (370). “It’s just going slower than we expected.”
She predicts a more noticeable housing rebound might not occur until spring 2008, that’s if “[mortgage interest rates] stay low” and higher gas prices don’t ward off more home shoppers.
Across the state, home sales in March 2007 dipped about 15 percent from March 2006. The average sale price, though, is still hovering near $267,000.
Nationally, according to the National Association of Realtors, 6.12 million homes sold in March, 8.4 percent less than in February. Officials partially blamed this recent downturn on bad weather.
“You don’t want to know my prediction. I’m not optimistic,” said Leesburg real estate agent Jay Thomas, with Keller Williams.
He said one indicator of a healing market would be seen out east. If homes start selling closer into Washington, such as in Arlington and Alexandria, then things “will start picking up out here.”
P.J. Riner, a local agent with Weichert Realtors, has a subdued enthusiasm about the housing market picking up, saying “we are always hopeful.”
She tells her selling clients that when they put their home on the market, it is no longer theirs. Pricing, staging and holding weekly open houses are all keys, she contends, to selling a home. And, of course, “it can be done” easier than many realize with the proper staging.
“Not just clean, but sparkling, toothbrush clean,” explained Sterling agent and home stager Nicole Richards, who has seen a recent spike in the number of sellers looking to stage their homes. “It has to look good, because there is so much out there. … If they can smell it, you can’t sell it.”
In Loudoun, 3,254 homes were on the market in March, and those that sold were taking about 130 days to do so, eight weeks longer than last year. Currently, listings in the east, said Newton, seem to be moving quicker than those in the west, something she attributed to snarled roads scaring off shoppers contemplating living farther away from the work centers of Fairfax and Washington, D.C.
Newton’s advice? “Sellers, be realistic at what you price at,” adding that the days of free-wheeling house-flipping two and three years ago are nothing but a distant memory. Home mortgage loan shoppers are now in control.
“I don’t think that is coming back anytime soon,” she said. “I’m not even sure what that was.”
SOURCE: The Loudoun Times-Mirror