Saturday, October 02, 2010

Distressed Property Workshop

The Wells Group will be sponsoring an online webinar on October 20 from 5 PM to 7 PM dealing with "DISTRESSED PROPERTIES". Those properties would include homes subject to a short sale, homes that are currently in foreclosure, and homes that have been through the foreclosure process and are now bank owned. Generally speaking, a buyer can get a very good deal on these types of properties, but there are certain "landmines" that one must be very aware of when making those purchases. That is just part of the information that we will go over in that webinar. In addition we will do virtual tours of approximately 40 properties currently available that meet those criteria. Most of these will be Durango real estate or Bayfield real estate.

If this interests you, please send me an e-mail asking for the webinar login information and I will send that to you as soon as that password system is set up. You can click on this link to send me an e-mail.

Durango Real Estate Statistics 3rd Quarter

I have been a long time tracker of Durango real estate sales statistics. The last three months of this year... July, August, September... just ended with 164 total residential sales in La Plata County. That represented a sales volume of a little over $59 million with an average days on the market of 215 days for those listings that sold. The average price was just over $361,000 while the median price was $314,500. I thought it would be interesting to look at how many units sold in the various price breaks, so I completed the study and here are the results: For homes that sold under $200,000 there were 38 sales; from $200-$300,000 there were 36 sales; from $300-$400,000 there were 43 sales; from $400-$500,000 there were 17 sales; from $500-$600,000 there were 13 sales; from $600-$700,000 there were 4 sales; from $700-$800,000 there were only 2 sales; from $800-$900,000 there was only 1 sale; from $900-$1 million there were 2 sales; and over $1 million there were 6 sales.

Clearly the largest volume of business was transacted at $400,000 and under. The very weakest price brackets were from $600-$1 million where in that $400,000 price band only nine properties sold. Obviously that is a very tough price range right now. If you are a seller in that price bracket, you may want to hang onto the property but if you are a buyer, it may be a good time to strike a hard bargain. Of those 164 sales, 123 of them were either Durango in town or Durango rural... meaning they had Durango ZIP codes. We still are seeing that people prefer to be close to Durango when buying their real estate.

This coming week I will have my complete statistical review of Durango real estate January through September. I will discuss part of it in my blog but I will also post it to the website on the statistics page which can be reached by going to www.BuyDurango.com and then clicking on the AREA INFO button, then the drop down button labeled DURANGO INFORMATION and lastly the drop-down button REAL ESTATE SALES STATS and here is a link to that homepage: www.BuyDurango.com Those statistics should be up before October 8.

If you're on the fence about whether to buy now or wait, please give Team Lorenz a call and let us help guide you through the decision-making process. In my 34 years of doing this, I've always found that the fall of the year is an especially good time for buyers because so many sellers want to be out of their property before the snow flies. There are still three months to go in 2010 and with interest rates still under 5%, it should make for a pretty easy decision.