Properties Remain on Market as New Mexico Mortgage Activity Slows
Do you want to sell a house in Las Cruces? A couple of years ago, you could have probably had buyers knocking on your door within hours of putting the home on the New Mexico housing market.
“Sometimes, before you could put a sign on, it would sell,” said Louis Sauceda, owner of the Official Mortgage Team of New Mexico. “I was talking to an agent friend of mine and he said they now have to work a little harder to sell them.”
According to Annette West, a Las Cruces real estate agent with New Mexico Apartment Advisors, homes that sold in May took an average of 104 days from listing to closing. That’s on par with last May when the average length of time was 105 days.
But compare that to March of 2006, when 105 of the 160 homes that sold were on the market for 90 days or fewer.
West, who writes a business column for the Sun-News, based her findings on the Multiple Listings Service, which while not an exact science — the MLS “is only as good as the agents entering data” — still provides a solid comparison, she said.
“This info will change on a daily basis as real estate professionals update the MLS system for May closings,” she added.
Barbara Carrison, a real estate agent with Emerick Real Estate, said the fact that homes are taking longer to sell is not caused by a lack of home buyers, but an increase in supply.
“It’s taking a little bit longer because there are so many more homes on the market at this point,” she said. “There are not less buyers, but there are more houses.”
Barbara Dean and her husband David recently purchased a home in Las Cruces. The couple moved to southern New Mexico from Scottsdale, Ariz.
“From what I understood, the house was on the market for well over a year,” she said.
In addition, fewer homes have sold than a year ago as New Mexico mortgage borrowers simply wait on sellers to lower prices as much as possible.
In May 2006, 236 homes — includes manufactured homes, town homes, site built housing and condos — closed, West reports. Through May 29 of this year, that number dropped to 111. Sauceda said the real estate market in Las Cruces is still strong, but is returning to “normal” from its hot pace of the past several years.
“Homes are still selling,” he said. “Activity has slowed from what it was, but we’re still doing quite a bit of mortgages. What you’re seeing is (the market) going back to what is standard and normal for the industry.”
Despite that decrease in the number of sales, the average price for houses sold continues to rise.
“The average price in 2007 was more than $10,000 higher per home,” West said, “and the average price per square foot increased from $109.99 in May 2006 to $114.59 in May 2007.”
According to West, the average price for a home sold in May was $220,536, while that number was $210,231 in May 2006.
SOURCE: Las Cruce Sun-News