A little rain today :-0
How’s your Thursday so far?
- Who brought the fog?
Howdy, and I hope you’re having a wonderful Thursday so far. All of the news reports say we’re in for some rain this weekend, so I suppose the fog we’re experiencing here in the Austin-San Antonio Corridor is just the beginning of having a little more rain in the forecast. Having spent a few years in Germany, I’ve grown to really like this weather, not that we’ve had a whole lot of it over the past three of four years. In fact, I’d pretty much given up on having any rain around here until this past September, then the skies opened up and we’ve been this way ever since. We need all we can get!
This has been a great week for us and a great one for the company in general. We’re still seeing quite a few buyers in the market and we’ve had a reliable source of good listings in the market throughout the mortgage crisis and the after effects we’ve experienced since. Reviewing some of our reports from this morning, it looks like the actual number of listings that have sold (single family only) are down about 30% in volume from what they were just a few years ago. Considering the fact that some areas of the country had a nearly complete stoppage of sales at times, we feel very fortunate to be living in one of the best real estate areas in the country.
The federal tax credits are still driving many of the sales we have in the area, and that’s no suprise. The current tax credit runs $8,000 for first time home buyers and there is also the additional tax credit for $6,500 for those who are not first time home buyers, but who have lived in their primary residence for 5 of the last 8 years. Both of these credits are significant, and they’re creating some artificial demand for homes that wouldn’t normally be in such demand. If you’re interested in what the tax credits might mean for you, please contact us and we’ll refer you to the right professionals to answer your questions in detail.
Otherwise, we’re currently preparing for our spring market and in the process of identifying the listings we will bring on the market during that time period. What people are currently looking for are listings in great condition, affordably priced, with realistic sellers who are motivated to sell/move. There are many listings on the market that are overpriced, and they can see right through the inflated values in an instant. Price them well from the start!
I sincerely hope that life is treating you well wherever you are, and we welcome the opportunity to help you and your family accomplish your real estate goals in 2010. What are you specifically looking for in your next property this year?
Former Johnson City VFW Post
Commercial property in Johnson City
2600 square foot former VFW Post available with +/- 1.75 acre lot with mature trees located just southwest of the intersection of Highway 290 West and Highway 281 in beautiful Johnson CIty, Texas. Site is zoned commercial and would be appropriate for many uses and potential redevelopment as well.
For more information, please visit the webpage for this property.
Austin best place to invest for 2010
Who? Me?
Now this is the kind of weather we expected around Christmas time! If you’ve been outside this morning or even bothered to look outside, you can see…IT’S COLD! It looks like central Texas will escape the snow that we were reading about last week, so single-digit temperatures will have to do!
Looks like we have a bit of good news coming out of the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M today. Grubbs & Ellis deems Austin the best place to invest for 2010, claiming a 20-30% surge in commercial real estate activity this year before entering into a more significant rebound in 2011. It’s great news that the greater Austin area is still in demand, but they also estimate that vacancy rates will climb as high as 19% before the year is over. No mention of the specific types of commercial property that vacancy rate was estimated for, so it seems the takeaway for this one is to do your homework and have an excellent business plan in place before purchasing your property. That’s always good advice.
Also as we figured, it looks like the education, health services, and government sectors are the “industries” that have actually grown over the past year. Now there’s a shocker! The Austin and San Antonio areas have been very fortunate to have the advantage of capital injection from all three sectors, which has helped local economies to adjust to the changing economic climate.
Currently, we’re getting ready for our Spring season and all of the craziness that comes along with it. The market here in Austin-San Antonio Corridor is fairly seasonal, as it is in most places, and it won’t be too long at all before the rivers will be full of lots of new faces! I hope you’re staying warm today wherever you are and we look forward to talking with you.
Have a great day!
New Condo Listing - 203 S. Mitchell - $73,500
In the mood for a condo this spring? We’re proud to introduce our newest condo listing located at 203 S. Mitchell in San Marcos. This condo is quite a bit larger than most of the units you’ll find around the San Marcos area, containing approximately 955 square feet. With 3 bedrooms, it also has that one additional bedroom that many condo buyers are constantly searching for in our area.
This condo is just a few minutes away from Texas State University, Prime Outlets, Tanger Outlets, grocery shopping, and three historic districts. This unit was recently remodeled in 2007, and has all of the upgrades you desire at below-market pricing. For more information about this listing, please visit the listing page and be sure to email us if you have any questions. Have a great day and talk to you soon!
Welcome to 2010!
Howdy folks, and welcome to 2010! The weather’s turning on us a bit here in the beginning of the year, but at least we get to experience a *real* central Texas winter. I emphasized the word “real” because for most of you, the winters here in central Texas really wouldn’t be classified as winters at all. For us, however, it’s not below 50 everyday and most of us aren’t walking around in shorts anymore, so it must be winter!
It’s difficult to tell just what changes are in store for us this year in the local real estate market. We had a great year last year, aided by the federal tax credit for first time home buyers and several other programs meant to drive demand. We still have those tax incentives in place until April of 2010, along with another tax incentive for those who are not first time home buyers. To find out if you qualify for these tax incentives, call our office at (512) 878-6208 or email us and we’ll refer you to the right people!
We very much enjoyed having the opportunity to work with all of our new clients last year and we welcome all of you to our family. How was your holiday season? What are your goals and plans for this year?
3 Local Companies on Fortune 500 List
Dell Inc. earned the No. 33 spot on this year’s Fortune 500 list. The Round Rock computer maker was one of only three Central Texas-based companies that made this year’s list.
Dell’s (Nasdaq: DELL) 2008 revenue totaled $61 billion—virtually unchanged from 2007. The company’s rank improved one place, from No. 34 on last year’s list.Fortune said that ever since founder Michael Dell returned to the helm of his company in 2007, Dell has launched a series of initiatives to help it compete. But the results of those efforts have been mixed.
Whole Foods Market Inc. (Nasdaq: WFMI) also made the cut again this year, ranking 324th, a significant improvement from its 369th place position on last year’s list. Whole Foods’ revenue of just under $8 billion is a 20 percent improvement from 2007.
The only other local company on this year’s list of the top 500 was … read the full story in the Austin Business Journal
Texas Dominates Best Cities for Job Growth
Good news today!
(Forbes.com) – Texas has nine of the top 20 best cities for job growth in the United States, according a new study. Texas dominated every category, led by number one-ranked Odessa.
Others on the list are Longview (3), Killeen–Temple–Fort Hood (5), Austin–Round Rock (6), McAllen-Edinburg-Mission (7), Laredo (8) and Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown (10). Next come College Station–Bryan (16) and San Antonio (20).
The study used job growth data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 333 U.S. regions.
Friday Fun - Central Texas Market Update
It’s Friday and I hope things are going well wherever you find yourself in the world today. We’ve had a great week, with a recent spike in real estate interest and activity in central Texas over the past few weeks. Spring, as you may already know, really begins our year in real estate if you look at the market from a *cycling* perspective. Spring and Summer markets usually are the most active, with Fall coming in third and winter, a distant fourth.
I guess the most common question we get is what impact we’re feeling from the stock market, general economic climate, and the mortgage industry restructuring currently underway has had on our market. From what we’ve seen, the single largest impact is simply the lack of quality listings on the market right now. We still have plenty of great properties on the market, but the competition for the “cream of the crop” listings has increased signficantly, leaving the less desirable properties sitting on the market significantly longer than we would have seen a year or two ago.
There are 2 things (as I see it) that cause this - 1) Sellers may not be able to afford to sell their home at current pricing and 2) Sellers may not believe they’ll actually make money in the current economic environment. While both of those may be true for some, that’s not what we’re seeing on a regular basis. I think that’s true for less desirable properties, but not so much for properties that are in good condition and located in desirable areas. Add the difficulty of selling in other parts of the country to the inability to relocate even within intermediate timeframes, and you start to imagine some of the difficulties in putting together the right buyer with the right seller.
From a buyer’s perspective, there are some great deals out there and we certainly have a lot of interest in foreclosure and short sale properties. Sellers seem to be more flexible as we shift to a buyer’s market in many areas, and that’s certainly understandable. Our market in central Texas remains very stable in most subgroups, unlike much of the rest of the country. As a result, the central Texas market remains a good buy for many.
What does all of this mean for you? A little patience and perseverance goes a long way.
If you come to the table with both of those, you’ll do well.
If you’re planning on relocating to central Texas this year or maybe even next year, why not give us a call and put someone on your side who understands the market? I think you’ll find us to be an invaluable planning asset as you map your way to success. We’d love to talk with you to help you establish your winning team.
I hope your Friday is the best even and that you have an even better weekend ahead. That’s it for now. Have a remarkable weekend and see you on the high ground!
Trey
We’d love to hear from you
Good morning everyone! Just wanted to chime in to say hello and yes, I know I haven’t been great about posting more here on the blog. The spring and summer markets are prime time in central Texas, as they are in a lot of places, and we’ve concentrated most of our efforts in direct service for the past few months rather than keeping up the blog.
We’ve had an excellent spring so far, and average about 300 new visitors every month. Hopefully you’re finding our website useful. This site was always designed with the consumer in mind. We strive to put everything on here that you might need when searching for a home in the central Texas area. There are always things we could do much better, and those where we could have done much worse. If you have input or ideas for services or items we don’t currently offer, please offer a post to this message so that we can work on those projects for you. Your input is critical.
This site has been in operation since 2003 and we’ve really enjoyed working on it with you. The real challenge in any sales career is really interacting with clients and establishing those long term relationships that really matter. We’ve had the great opportunity to meet with the best clients in the world, numbering in the thousands. For those of you who have not experienced our people or the services we offer, you might try giving us a call or even sending us a message. We’re not about sending you mile after mile of useless junk mail or spam. That’s not what we do. If you haven’t had the opportunity to *really* talk with one of our agents - you’re missing out. You really are.
I’ve been in your situation many times in my life, and I too would hesitate to call if I thought I was going to talk to someone who’s really just out to make a sale. Of course sales are great when they happen, but our feeling is that if you’re taking care of someone like they’re your own flesh and blood, they will certainly take care of you - not the other way around. So far, that’s exactly the way things have turned out. I think it all starts with the brokerage and the broker providing the correct working environment and I have no reason to feel otherwise. For example, there are no sales quotas or sales meetings within our company, where hoardes of salespeople sit around “listening” to how many sales they have to make this month. There is no such thing in this company. Agents don’t enjoy that pressure and clients certainly don’t need to feel the results of that pressure with the agent they’re working with. It just doesn’t make any sense.
if money were the main objective for staying in this business, I certainly may have left this business long ago. In uncertain economic times, it’s easy enough to find reasons not to accomplish your goals, whether the goal is starting a new career, making a move, or buying/selling your personal home. But for every disaster story you may hear about, there’s also the flip-side, such as this story where a young couple that moved in with an ex-husband. Interesting times ahead, I’m sure.
Would you do me a favor? If you’re reading this, please respond to this post with your comments. I’ve been writing for 2 1/2 years now and we’ve never had a response on the blog. Maybe what I’m writing about is not the correct subject list, or maybe we just need to ask you to interact. I’d love to continue writing here, but if it’s not interesting or not providing the information you need, we may be able to better place our efforts elsewhere.
So long for now. I hope your market is great and we look forward to meeting each and every one of you!
Trey