The 2nd quarter homes sales data is now available for our review. I confess, I thought the numbers would be better than they are. Some agents are reporting that they are busy but when quizzed, those are agents selling a fair number of REO’s or low priced homes. The more expensive homes are still selling very slowly.
The following graph is an update from one I created in May. I’ve also added more school districts for a better comparison to the northern Franklin county/southern Delaware county areas. Although many of the school districts sold substantially fewer homes than in 2008, the average price of the homes sold has not declined nearly as much. For instance, 23% fewer homes were sold in the Olentangy school district but the price that buyers paid was only 2% lower than last year. The Westerville district saw a similar disconnect with 29% fewer homes sold at an average price that was only 9% lower.
This might be a disappointment for buyers hoping to submit a low-ball offer and then have the seller accept it. The disappointment for sellers is that if they plan to hold firm with their pricing, they may have their home go unsold given the limited number of buyers.
Click to enlarge chart
The good news – for sellers – is that for the past two months, average home prices in most of these school districts has been increasing somewhat each month. The good news for buyers is that these prices are still below what they were a few years ago. The “experts” predict that the current market is a “reset” and that it will be quite some time before we return to the higher prices that we saw in 2003-2005.
Recommended reading for home buyers:
Copyright © 2009. Elaine Reese, Real Living HER. Reproduction of any portion of this blog post or the images is prohibited by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If this post is being viewed on any site other than www.ReesesPiecesOfRealEstate.com then the material has been stolen without permission. Violators will be reported.
My Smart Phone can’t read my mind.
Will smart phones eliminate the use of phone numbers using alpha letters?
Yesterday I was in the process of transferring a number of the domain names I own over to GoDaddy from another hoster, because GoDaddy charges nearly a third of the price to register a domain name. GoDaddy’s phone number on the flyer was 866-GODADDY. Lots of companies have their number set up that way to make it easy to remember. Hey, even 1-800-GOTJUNK uses their phone number as their company name.
Smart phones use a QWERTY keyboard … like a computer. They are primarily a mini-computer that functions as a phone. Notice that the Blackberry has a number pad (the white keys) similar to a computer keyboard.
So I dialed 866 then when I was ready to dial the “G” I realized that it wouldn’t work. There is no way to convert the “G” to the appropriate number. I thought perhaps the smart BB would “know”
what I was trying to do, but when I hit the “G” key, it converted the 866 to “xff”. OK, so xff-godaddy doesn’t work too well.
The regular “old” phones associate 3 alpha letters to a number which is what these companies rely on. So without an old phone for reference, how can I know what numbers I should use to call those companies that use alpha letters for their number?
With more people canceling their land lines, and more people using Blackberries or other smart phones with QWERTY keyboards, I wonder how this will affect the use of these alpha phone numbers.
Hm-m-m-m. Technology once again changes the old ways of doing things.
Copyright © 2009. Elaine Reese, Real Living HER. Reproduction of any portion of this blog post or the images is prohibited by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If this post is being viewed on any site other than www.ReesesPiecesOfRealEstate.com then the material has been stolen without permission. Violators will be reported.
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Posted in Commentary, Technology
Tagged alpha phone numbers