SHREWSBURY, Massachusetts – Well my brand new for sale signs came yesterday, so it’s time to go out and list a few more properties this week, as we officially enter the “Spring Market” starting today. I’m so excited!  While I will certainly miss the relative peace and quiet of the winter season, I’m charged up and ready to go with my 25th year of selling homes in this great town of ours.

As we speak, I have clients looking for some very special properties, and inventory still remains incredibly low.   Hopefully some of you out there are thinking of making a move, so that we can make some of these deals happen this spring.   Demand remains high for a wide array of properties.  Certainly the <20 year old colonials in nice neighborhoods are always highly sought after, and still seeing dozens of showings and multiple offers.   Also in need these days are nice ranches, splits and capes in the sub $400k range, so if you’re living in one of those, now’s the time for you.

I did want to recap the transactions for the last year and try to separate myth from reality as best as I can.  Certainly nobody can watch the evening news without hearing about the incredible challenges that have faced the real estate market nationally.  On the local level, however, your perception of “how the market really is” may be based less on national news stories, and more on the individual results that you and your family have witnessed first hand.

Here are just a handful of examples, of homes which I sold in 2010.  If you ask any of these people how the market is, I’m sure they’ll give you a much different response than you might get from someone who’s home has been languishing on the market all year.

 

I listed this home at 18 Thistle Hill for 399,900, and had 4 offers the first day, selling it for over the asking price.

 

This home on Waterville was one of my favorite listings of the year. Listed at 649,900, we had multiple offers the first day, and sold it for over the asking price.

It’s important to note that these properties were priced at the high end of their market analysis, so they were by no means “underpriced.”  They were, however, immaculate inside and out, and that makes a huge difference.  While you might think that these were a fluke, I can assure you that they were really much more of the norm than you might think.  Here are a few other recent examples to document that.

 

This fantastic home in Winchester Estates was listed at 525K, and sold for full price the very first day, and had a long list of other people who inquired just a bit too late. It represented one of the highest prices per square foot in the development, yet still sold instantly.

 

One of the highest price ranch homes of 2010, this home was listed at 349,900, and sold for nearly full price it's first weekend on the market.

Asking one of these homeowners, “what the market is like,” you would hear things like this:

“The market is fantastic.  We sold for far more than we thought, in just a couple of days, and bought a great new home at a price far lower than we would have been able to a few years ago.”

“We were petrified after all we heard on the news, and had resigned ourselves to being on the market a long time, but we wound up with 4 buyers in a bidding war on our home.”

“Not only did we see for over our asking price, but we managed to secure a 4% interest rate on the dream home that we purchased.”

Of course, their experiences were a result of not just our hard work, but theirs as well.  As I always advise people, they spend a week or more getting the home ready for the market, making some minor dollar productive improvements, and creating a truly turn-key gem that each and every buyer through the door would fall in love with.

Would it surprise you to know that here in Shrewsbury there were more homes sold in 2010, than a year ago, and that in contrast to the “national news” prices were up significantly year over year?  Well then, prepare to be surprised.

 

Shrewsbury single family and condo sales prices in thousands.

This first graph shows the average sales prices here in Shrewsbury, of homes sold each year dating back to 2005. From a high in the 460′s for 2005, we saw a precipitous decline in single family home prices down to a low of 391K in 2009.  That has rebounded sharply, to 409K, thus far in 2010, a rise of about 5%.  Similar results were seen in condominium sales, with 2010 actually recording the highest average condo sales price in the last five years in Shrewsbury, at 298K.  (It’s important to note that that data was very skewed by the inclusion of 10 condo sales in the 500K+ range in the Adams Farm development and doesn’t accurately reflect condo values in town.)

 

Number of single family and condo home sales in Shrewsbury, last five years

In terms of the sheer number of sales taking place, we see some mixed results.  From a high of 340 single family homes sold in 2005, that dropped to a low of 255 in 2008.  Since then, however, we’ve seen a huge bounce back, up almost 20% to 293 sales thus far in 2010.  This trend has not been seen among condo sales, where the decline from a 2005 peak of 244 units, has leveled off in the 60′s, a major drop, to be sure.

The key for success in 2010 was like baking a cake. The core of this cake was a comprehensive  marketing plan that ensured that every potential Buyer out there was introduced to the product. This was then iced with accurate price expectations which ensured that when a Buyer was introduced to it, this home would stand out as a great value compared to recent comparable sales and current competing listings.  Of course no cake would work without the decorations on top, and in the case of successful home sales, this took the form of proper house preparation, a process that, as an agent, I guided my Sellers through.  Sometimes it was merely just some fresh paint.  Other times, it was identifying potential home inspection issues and taking care of them from the outset.  In other cases, it required the completion of some long deferred maintenance items to make the home truly shine.  You certainly can’t argue with the results that were achieved.  

In short, the national news, is the national news.  For us here in Shrewsbury, however, things have been pretty stable.  That’s not to say that some aren’t suffering.  For example, the person who may have purchased in “neighborhood X” for $650K at the peak of the market, and took out a mortgage of $625K, and now has no choice but to move, has a big problem.  They’re looking at a home that today may only be worth $590K, and finding that they don’t have enough cash on hand to even pay off the mortgage.   These are the situations that wind up in what are called “short sales.”  In a classic short sale, the objective is to sell the property for fair market value, and negotiate the payoff with the lender to allow the seller to be able to get out from under the mortgage.

For the vast majority of Shrewsbury home owners that are not “upside down” on their mortgages, and who want to make a move, 2011 will prove to be the very best time in decades to make that happen.  To a local person, moving locally, and even to many moving out of the area, the decline in overall prices has been more of a positive than a negative.  For example, one of my clients contacted me in 2007 to sell their 2700sf home near Route 9.  They were interested in moving up to a cul-de-sac up in the Spring Street neighborhood, where they had fallen in love with a home price just over $1 Million.   At the time, I did a market analysis on their current home, and projected it would sell for around 590K.  They were thrilled, of course, because they had purchased in back in 1992 for $220K, but for reasons known only to them, they were never able to pull the trigger and make the move.  Since then, their home has declined in value from $590K to about $520K – still a huge profit over their original purchase price, of course.  The real kicker, however, is that the home they were looking to purchase for over 1 Million Dollars was now able to be purchased in the $700K range.  Thank goodness they didn’t “sell at the peak of the market,” because had they done so, and then bought at the peak of the market, they would be in the hole by almost 300K.  Today, they can make that move with a much smaller differential in price between the two homes, and get a 4% mortgage rate on top of it all.

In closing, Tip O’Neill has always been quoted as saying that “all politics is local.”  The same can be said for the real estate market.  All real estate is local!   While the national news isn’t great, and likely won’t be for many years to come, things here in Shrewsbury are just fine.  Such is the benefit of living in one of the greatest towns on earth.

It’s been a personal honor to be “Shrewsbury Realtor” for the last 25 years, and I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all my treasured clients for all that they’ve made possible, both for me, and my entire family.   I feel privileged to be able to serve you for all this time, and look forward to doing so for another few decades to come.

For now, it’s time to really get rolling to maximize your results this spring.  You can reach me anytime, day or night, so just call me at (508) 845-HOME <4663> or even better, just ping me an email at steve@shrewsbury.net and we’ll set up a very casual, no pressure, meeting, and discuss just what we need to do to make you and your family happy.  All inquiries are 100% confidential, so don’t worry that reaching out is going to get the neighborhood gossip going.  The number one key, is to keep it low-key.