Ramesh Nyberg's Real Estate Blog

Einstein quote: "Nothing happens until something moves."
You gotta love the simplicity of that. Now I have time to move. And time? Well, my favorite definition of that comes from my police academy firearms instructor: "Time is what keeps everything from happening at once."

With the amount of varied tasks I was trying to tackle by myself, everything was happening at once. And when that happens, trust me--nothing moves.

This is a short update, in between market data announcements (which are still a couple of weeks away). Updates:
The 9-unit Homestead apartment building I have for sale just reduced their price from $499,000 to $429,000.

The 4/3 Keysgate home I had for sale for some time is now under contract.

New listings are on the way.

A recent special feature in the South Florida Business Journal tells a bleak tale of the commercial retail market. In short, its becoming, or has become, the "tenant's market" we spoke of here in previous posts. It sure looks like it will soon become a buyer's market as well. The article noted that Miami-Dade County is in better shape than Palm Beach and Broward, where vacancy rates hit over 20% last quarter.

More notably is Kiera, my new assistant, with computer skills, people skills, and the ability to free me up to do more face-to-face marketing and do more of working on my business, rather than working in it.
In other words, to have time, to make things move.

It is interesting that the word "doldrums" means a "a state of inactivity" or "depression or boredom", but it also refers to the ITCZ (the intratropical convergence zone) where the building blocks of hurricanes are formed.

Ok, that's the last time you'll hear me use the "H" word all summer. But for those of you who missed it, the season started on June 1st, so get your generators working, your water, batteries, propane, and all that other stuff you've heard of ad nauseum, at the ready.

The May sales stats are out, and the residential real estate market in Miami-Dade County continues it's very determined march back to normalcy. Single familiy home pending sales continued to increase for the fourth straight month, hitting 1338 properties under contract in May. The inventory continued to slim down for eighth consecutive month, to 11,236. That's remarkable, considering that this time last year, the number of unsold homes sat at 17,058. The temptation is to say, "Ah, it's all foreclosures doing that." A good portion of it is. But that's changing, as evidenced by two important stats: one is the recent nationwide NAR report that foreclosures were down 6% from April to May. The other evidence resides in the chart on this site showing average prices for sale and sold--both went up. That doesn't mean prices of homes are going up, it means that homes in higher price strata are starting to sell--and be listed--again.

The other interesting stat to mention is that the days on market number, which jumped wildly from month to month between 125 and 109, has settled down. For the past 7 months, average time for homes to sell in Miami-Dade County has been contained within 103 to 109 days, making the market somewhat more predictable.  

As previously mentioned, homeowners in higher price ranges are gaining more confidence in the market. The average asking price in Miami-Dade County has steadily curved upward from $604,000 in October '08, to $728,000 last month.

Palmetto Bay, which averaged 17 sales per month from June 08 to February 09, has posted pending sale numbers of 25, 29, and 26 the last three months.  Pinecrest, which has been more finicky and unpredictable than the rest of the market and saw numbers as low as 9 and 10 sales several times the past year, had 21 sales in May, and 23 in April.

Ok, no more--for those of you who want more of a mathematical experience  click on $ales by the Numbers, from the menu to the left, and have a statistical smorgasbord.

July 15th is my next Networking Happy Hour-- if you have never been, and you have any kind of business and would like to be invited, please send me an email or give me a call. This a very informal and unstructured group, though I do only invite one person per profession for each get-together. We have a nice time, and build business relationships together.

The summer market is here.
What's more, I am encountering more and more people who are much more well educated about short sales and foreclosures. This is good. A couple of people I am working with have been burned on short sales, and they are avoiding them without me coaching them to do so.

Don't get me wrong, there are times when it could be wise to put an offer on a short sale--when you have the time to wait, and you don't mind having your deposit tied up for 2-3 months, and you've accepted the fact that it may never close. If you can deal with all that, you might make a killing on a house. Also, I try to find out if the listing agent it using a short sale specialist or lender workout company to do the dirty work on behalf of the seller. It can be daunting. On one of my short sale listings, I had to introduce myself to the short sale consultant four times, and just as many times be told, "we never received anything," after I faxed and emailed them the contracts and other paperwork over and over.

It's interesting to see Lennar's ads in the paper, which are trying to steer people away from all that mess and towards their deeply discounted places. Enough about all that. The new sales data will be out soon, so look for that here, at $ales By the Numbers.

I'm still finding alot of commercial space available for lease along the highway. Some hardheaded landlords are trying desperately to hang on to yesterday's lease prices, but they will eventually have to knuckle under. Like residential properties two years ago, the commercial inventory is starting to pile up, and when that happens, there is only one place for prices to go. From now on, it will be a great time for business owners to upgrade their retail or office space.

The previous posts you've read here have been telling a story of a market starting to pick up steam again. You've also heard me take a swing or two at the news media, because they are so in love with the dark clouds I don't think they would know a silver lining if it bit them in the classified section.
All the stats show that the housing market is on the upswing. But the Herald simply could not resist printing something negative, so today dug up this fairly insignificant stat about new construction being down 14%. This should be no great surprise, should it? The economy, while it seems to be recovering, doesn't justify building more residential properties just yet. We haven't reached that tipping point yet where sales and new inventory are balanced, and prices can start to climb back up.

It's been really busy for me this past week, both at home and at work. I have had a closing delayed for over a week, with lots of conflict and uncertainty back and forth on both sides, so I was ready for a little relaxation this past weekend. 

On Friday, I attended the Saphire Ball Gala at the Biltmore, a fundraiser for KidsUnited.org. What a nice affair that was, with a big silent auction, and way too many servers walking around with free martinis (!). The food and music was real good too. Thank you, Dave Rudra, from Clean Image Corporation, for that invitation!

Saturday and Sunday, my daughter and wife both performed this weekend at the Divas of Dance Indian dance show at Miami-Dade College. It was great! It was the first time Linnea, who is now 5-1/2, had ever performed on a big stage like that, and she did so well.. I was really proud of her.

I just got a new listing yesterday, so that's keeping me hopping, and tomorrow night I am hosting my monthly Networking Happy Hour at Hops. If you or anyone you know are in business of ANY kind and could use some new referral business, this is a really fun and relaxing way of doing it. I'll put them on the e-vite list for next month. We have a good time. This time, Enrique Colls, my photographer friend, will be there to take pictures and I will post them both here and on Facebook. I am really looking forward to that--with any luck, we'll have the closing the same day.

Just in time for me to talk to my friends Brian Lewis and Joe Desanti on their Circle Mortgage Radio show Sunday morning, the April sales data came out. Every month, when the new stats are published, you've been reading about the Miami-Dade single family homes market getting better and better. Well now, Pinecrest and Palmetto Bay have their own numbers to boast about.

The charts on these two municipalities have meandered lately, but look at what's happened now:  (you can click on "$ales by the Numbers", to the left)
Pinecrest- 9 sales in January, 10 in February, 16 in March, and 23 (the highest in over 14 months) in April. Just as impressive, the inventory dropped for the second straight month, down to 265.
Palmetto Bay - 19 sales in January, 16 in February, 26 in March, and a whopping 31 sales in April. The inventory there has gone pretty steadily down since August of last year, when it was 305, down to only 199 last month.

The county overall continued to improve in dramatic fashion. This patient was being given CPR a year a half ago. It's sitting up in bed and talking now:
7 straight months of decreasing inventory, down to 11,936 unsold (single family) properties, and its 5 straight month of increasing sales, with 1425 in April.

Remember, when listening to stats on CNN, MSNBC, and the like, that these are national statistics they are giving you. The experts have been telling us for a couple of years that when the market turns, look to destination places like South Florida to lead the charge, and that's what appears to be happening.

I had a very good sign on all this personally delivered to me last week in the form of an offer (which we went to full contract on over the weekend) on a Kendall townhouse I've been trying to sell for eight months now. The good sign was not just that we went to contract, but we did so at a very good price. We had just lowered it from $199,000 to $180,000.

The case in point here is that when you adjust a price downward, you are not "giving the place away", you are searching for--and hopefully finding--that energy point that sparks buyers to purchase in that specific area. Each neighborhood has a particular price per square foot (within $10-12) that most sales (distressed foreclosures excluded) will end up at. Your Realtor's responsibility is to continously analyze the market trends in your area, and counsel you on what's been selling and for how much.

I think the cool weather is finally over. When the mangoes start looking good, that seems to be the indicator, right? And the mango trees are full. 

I wasn't sure when I would be saying this again, but it is starting to look like a good time to get your home on the market, if you need to sell. I'm still telling people that if you don't have to, then don't. But if it's a time for that lifestyle change, retirement home, whatever it is, then the stats I've been talking about the last few months are telling us that summer might be real good.

I'm not saying the asking prices are on the rise--there is still a significant amount of inventory and we haven't reached that tipping point yet. But if you need to sell, I'm saying now, as the serious summer buyers start their searches. They'll want to be closed and moved in before the next school year starts.

If you happen to be on Twitter, you can now follow me there, at rameshnyberg. I always find it fascinating how people communicate. There is this revolution going on with communication, an expansion so fast and so great that the spectrum of people who are alive today can sometimes be so far apart--there are people from my generation--let alone my parents---who still haven't bothered with email, and then there are my sons' peers, who are twittering, instant messaging, facebooking, and whatever else, as a matter of routine.

The immediacy of it is what is exciting to me: find a home for someone, take a picture from the driveway, and email it to a customer. Get a reply from them, and make an appointment to see the house, all from your mobile device, all in a matter of minutes. Makes me wonder what type of things my daughter will be communicating with ten or fifteen years from now.

Enough wondering--it's nearly 8am and I'm not out the door yet!

I had an interesting weekend. I was fighting off a cold all week (still am, actually) and so on Saturday I really needed to get out of the house and do something different. You know those little cherry-like fruit that grow on bushes all over South Florida..they look like little pumpkins, and they are red when they are ripe? Well, they are called Surinam Cherries. We have an entire hedge of them along our back fence, and another bush near the patio. I've never seen so many ripe fruit on the bush. I kind of grew up on these things. So Linnea and I picked a whole mess of them.. filling up two large bowls. I ate at least twenty of them that night, but I had always wondered, "what kind of jam would this fruit make?"

Ok, I'll spare you all the details. I made jam Sunday. I've never made jam in my life. In fact, my cooking experience is limited to bbq, the occasional curry, and my annual holiday pecan pies. I Googled up a recipe for making jam, and by Sunday evening, I had three full jars of Surinam Cherry Jam, or Surinam Jam, if you want to get poetic. It is, officially, GOOD. I had some on my toast this morning, and I really liked it. Both my son and my wife tried it and gave it high marks. Linnea, though she had fun making it, wouldn't touch the stuff.

The next day, a customer called me and ended up writing an offer on a property. So, making jam obviously has a postive effect on business.

So the beat goes on. Sorry for sounding like a broken record here, but NOT tracking the progress of the market wouldn't be like me, and not sharing with everyone I know makes no sense.

March finished our FIFTH straight month of decreasing inventory. The number of unsold homes fell below 13,000 for the first time in two years. Pending sales went soaring: 1405 in March, compared to 977 in February, 900 in January. No, you didn't read this in the Miami Herald. Why on earth would they print this? It's not depressing enough.

"Months of Inventory" is a statistic based on a ratio between average monthly sales vs. unsold inventory. In January 08, it was 34.4, and it has steadily decreased--with a couple of zigs and zags, down to March's amazing figure of 9.2. We've been in the dumps so long with economic/housing news that it sounds like a reach to speak optimistically. But this is looking more like a real recovery than a brief trend. Notice that the stock market is not as volatile lately, and that the DOW is hanging around that 8,000 mark with a little more toughness? Notice that the mortgage interest rates actually crept UP a little the other day. Hmmm.

I know one thing--I've been working at a very brisk pace with so many buyers that I have referred a couple of them out to other agents.
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My Easter was nice--and if you have a chance to ever color eggs with a 5-1/2 year old girl, I highly recommend it. It was highly therapeutic and fun. And oh yeah, the ensuing egg hunt was cool too. Linnea wanted to do it a second time.
I've got some dear friends in from Connecticut, and so we are going to find some time to hit the beach, the Everglades, and my friend Mike's jazz jam tomorrow night.
The NFL draft is 10 days away, the Dolphins new schedule is out, and they have four--count em FOUR night games, three of them at home. Nice! Thins ARE looking up!

While the pulse of the residential market picks up every month, things in commercial real estate are taking a different turn, albeit a familiar one.

The latest edition of the South Florida Business Journal calls it the beginning of the "meltdown."
At a sales meeting this morning, Duff Rubin, the director of NRT Commercial for south Florida said the latest data for commercial sales is "sobering." He noted an 82%--yes, you read it right--82% decrease in sales compared to last year.

Rubin went on to tell us in detail that it looks like the commercial real estate market is entering a phase that the residential market started to experience a year and a half ago. Phrases like "short sale" and "REO" were virtually unknown to commercial Realtors before, and now, Rubin pointed out, they are becoming household words. Sound familiar?
Last week, I met a commercial broker who has an agent in his office who does solely foreclosures.

So, what does all this mean? It means that if the commercial market is following in the footsteps of the residential market, then opportunities will abound. Remember, when residential sales began to drop, and the inventory began to swell with foreclosures, some people moaned and wrung their hands. Others started to gather their funds, and went on the hunt. Those people today are buying at what could be the bottom of the residential market (or at least near the bottom, with remarkably low interest rates).

If the SFBJ and Rubin are right (and others have echoed the same forecast), then there is no reason to believe that the commercial market won't morph into a "buyer's market."

Nobody likes to hear that sales are decreasing. But keep the faith, and remember those "silver linings." And remember one of my favorite definitions: "Luck" is when preparation meets opportunity.

Let me hit the "Sweet Sixteen" first: If any of your friends try to tell you that foreclosures aren't selling, tell them about the Sweet Sixteen-- I posted the best unsold foreclosure properties I could find in south Miami-Dade County, so we could all track their success together, on February 11th, just a month ago. In 34 days, 9 of the 16 have gone under contract, and one has closed. It was in the West Kendall, 13265 SW 102 St. It was 7 days on the market, and sold at asking price, $209,000. (I'll update the status of the properties on the Sweet Sixteen page soon, and of course, start replacing them as well)

The stats for February 2009 are out: the sales keep ticking upward, and the inventory keeps shrinking. The number of unsold single family homes in Miami-Dade dropped for the fifth straight month, to under 14,000 for the first time in well over a year. We saw 1096 pending sales in February, which is more than double the number for February 08!
Recommendation: Get out your wallet, and buy while the interest rates are still low.

I know an investor who watched a foreclosure go from $237,000 in November of 2007, to $68,000, in December 2008. He made an offer, and settled with the bank at $65,000, for a 2/2, 1003 square foot villa in Palmetto Bay, in a gated community.  

The day before the closing, he got a tenant.
Want to see the place, or another one like it? I can show it to you, because I'm that investor. I like describing the workings of the real estate market here in my blog, but I walk the walk too.