Housing Market is Still on the Rise

The housing market is still on the rise and continues to improve according to the findings by the NAHB/First American Leading Markets Index (LMI).  The LMI was developed to record and monitor the recovery of select markets throughout the United States due to the Recession. There are three components (average permit, price and employment levels) that are scored in more than 360 metro areas over a 12 month period.  The scores for 7-Lot 104 Maison du Lac Family Room 2these components are then divided by each of their annual averages over the last period of normal growth.  The three component averages are then averaged together giving the overall score for each market.  For single-family permits and new home prices, 2000-2003 is used as the last normal period, and for employment, 2007 is used for the last normal period.

What all of this means in a nutshell is that major metro cities throughout the United States are being monitored for an increase or decrease in real estate activity following the Recession.  The percentages are calculated each month by the National Association of Home Builders and distributed amongst the public and real estate markets so that investors have an idea of how the real estate recovery is progressing nationwide.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana is one of the top recovering cities on the list of major metros on the LMI and is doing 47 9-54 Maison du Lac Living Room 2percent better than the last findings recorded for the normal market level.  Southeast Louisiana shows an 85 to 92 percent recovery to the normal market level.  In fact, 75 markets out of the 360 metro areas beat their last normal levels of economic and housing activity during the second quarter this year which showed a year-over-year net gain of 13 markets (66% of markets have shown an improvement year over year).  This quarter’s LMI shows that more than half the markets nationwide have reached a 90% or above their normal market level. We are almost back to 100% of normal economic and housing activity that we had before the recession.

“The markets are gradually improving and economic and job growth continue to strengthen, which bodes well for housing for the remainder of the year,” said NAHB Chairman Tom Woods.

Out of the three components of the LMI, housing prices have shown the strongest recovery with 345 markets at the same or above their last normal level. Behind that is the economic level where 64 markets are at their normal market level or have exceeded their normal market level. Housing permit level is lagging behind with only 26 markets at normal or above normal market level.

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Strong Custom Home Building Numbers in Louisiana

Custom home building is going strong in Louisiana and at Ron Lee Homes in West St. Tammany Parish. The 2014 Census Bureau’s Survey of Construction (SOC) reports that 34 percent of the homes built in the South Central Region were custom built.  This means the home was built for you the owner, by a custom home builder, who will either build on your lot or build on a lot owned or purchased by the builder in the area of your choice in St. 1-54 Maison du Lac Exterior 1Tammany Parish. The other 66 percent were spec homes (speculatively-built homes) meaning they were houses built for sale or houses finished on a builders’ lot, ready for a home buyer to purchase. The house was sold to the potential buyer at one total sales price instead of selling the house and selling the land separately.

The SOC defines new home starts into several different categories which include houses built for sale, houses built by contractors, homes built by owners and for rent houses.  Not only does the SOC report if the houses are built for sale, by contractors, owners or for rent, they also report if the new home starts are being built in a community development with a homeowner’s association (HOA).  The HOA is created while the development is being built, and then ownership is turned over to a homeowner board which enforces private deed restrictions and maintains common areas.  In 2014 it is reported that 58 percent of single-family homes were built in a community with a homeowner’s association.

Why the uptick in the custom home market?  Many speculate that the limited builders’ means to borrow money 3-lot-199-bedic-creek-exterior-front-3via Acquisition Development and Construction (AD&C) loans have put a damper on their ability to purchase land, build a home on the land and sell the house to a potential buyer. Borrower restrictions are not new, so custom home building is the logical route to take for any builder that has vast experience and “comfort” in being able to build custom.  It was estimated that in 2014 one in four new home starts were custom homes. The custom home market is still on the rise and has reached levels above 2012-2013 but is still below the 2008-2011 levels.

At Ron Lee Homes, we build custom homes in many different subdivisions in the area including Terra Bella Village, Bedico Creek Preserve, Maison du Lac, and many more.  These communities also have established homeowners associations as well, and have lots available to buy and build a new custom home.  If you are interested in designing and having the home of your dreams built in St. Tammany Parish, Contact Ron Lee Homes at 985-626-7619 or e-mail Info@RonLeeHomes.com.

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10 Reasons to Buy a New Home

With the house market in full recovery, and home inventory tightening up nationwide, you as a home buyer have a very significant choice to make when deciding the type of home that you would like to buy.  Location is always important, and price is normally a deciding factor, but there is one other huge consideration you should make when purchasing your home – choosing to buy a new home vs. buying an existing home.  Below are 10 reasons to buy a new home vs. an existing one.

1. Tax Benefits:  Each month as a renter, you spend about the same amount of money as a mortgage and get none of the benefits while your landlord pockets your rent, increases equity, and writes of property tax costs.  As an owner of a new home, you will receive all of the tax benefits of owning your own home PLUS, if you have savings from a retirement IRA account, you can pull out $10,000 from this account – tax free – as long as the money is used for a down payment on your home, and you are a first time home buyer.

2. New Home Warranty: Buying a new home vs. buying an existing home gets you brand new everything – windows, doors, paint job, carpet, appliances, and all of your lighting and trim.  When you buy an existing home, you may have the unwanted chore of constantly replacing worn out parts of your home.  Also, your new home comes with a 1, 2, 5 warranty per Louisiana law which protects the home in its entirety the 1st year, all major structural components for 2 years, and framing and infrastructure for 5 years.

3. Repairs and Maintenance: In addition to replacing components, existing homes come built-in with a honey-do list.  You could be repainting the interior and exterior, upgrading / renovating the kitchen cabinets and countertops, and replacing door knobs, hinges, and other pieces and parts of the home.  With a new home, you don’t even have to worry about things falling apart for a few years at least if you have purchased a quality-built home in St. Tammany Parish.

4. Energy Efficiency: Green building has become standard for many home builders in St. Tammany Parish, and Ron Lee Homes is a Certified Green Builder by the National Association of Home Builders.  By installing all green building features, you will not only get the benefit of owning a brand new home, but you will save money in the long run with lower energy bill as well as the environmental satisfaction of reducing greenhouse gases.  With previously owned homes, especially homes older than 1980, you will be dealing with less efficient home openings, insulation, and HVAC systems which will increase the cost of heating and cooling your home.

5. Smarter, Safer, Well-Built: New systems installed in new homes now come with smarter and better working fire alarms, security systems, and smoke detectors.  There is even certain types of primer boards, plywood, and sheetrock that is fire resistant to withstand a fire event.

6. Credit and Financing: Buying a new home allows your mortgage company, lender, or banker more options in choosing the right loan for you.  Especially if you are investing wisely, your home may appraise for a higher amount allowing more equity and better interest rates.

7. Low Interest Rates: With all of the worry that the Fed is about to increase interest rates, rates are historically low and are still at record-breaking lows compared to any previous year of buying a new home.  Because you get to write the interest off on your taxes, it is a win-win situation when buying a new home.

8. Holding Its Value: Because you are buying new instead of previously owned, your home is in better shape and will last longer as long as you chose the right builder.  No matter how wonderful a previously owned home is, it will still “fall apart” eventually faster than a new home because it is older and more worn out.

9. Avoiding Health Risks: With the new information about lead paint and its effects as well as asbestos, many people are very aware that older construction can contain these hazards.  As long as you have hired a quality builder to build your new home, you will never have to worry about hazardous construction materials that could drastically affect your health.

10. Fun Choices: When building a new home, you get to put part of your personality into it by making selections such as cabinetry, countertops, paint, siding, flooring and much more.  In addition to being a part of building your own home, you can take comfort in knowing that you are making the biggest financial investment of your life – one that will give you equity and security for the future.

If you are ready to build your new home in St. Tammany Parish, Contact Ron Lee Homes, a custom home builder, at 985-626-7619 or E-mail Info@RonLeeHomes.com.

 

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New Home Sales are Still Going Strong

Even though statistics show a lull in new home building permits and starts, new home sales are still going strong. Both May and June have seen a positive outcome for the housing market and new home buyers.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Commerce Department reported that nationwide housing dropped 11.1% in May, but building permits rose 11.8% (the highest it has been since August 2007).  This1-1 Polo Farms Exterior-1 almost equal fall and rise was predicted by economists because of lack of inventory in the housing market. Current new home starts are down, but building permits are up because builders are getting geared up for a big push because of this lack of inventory.  It has dropped to around a 4-month supply, the lowest it’s been since the Recession. “The uptick in permits shows our builders are optimistic that more consumers are returning to the housing market,” said NAHB Chairman Tom Woods.

June’s readings are the highest since September 2014. NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) reported that single-family homes rose 5 points to a level of 59 (a score of over 50 indicates a good housing market).

“The HMI indices measuring current and future sales expectations are at their highest levels since the last quarter of 2005, indicating a growing optimism among builders that housing will continue to strengthen in the months ahead,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe.

The National Builders Association of Home Builders (NAHB) developed the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) by taking the monthly survey they have been conducting for 30 years and estimate the builder’s 2-lot-199-bedic-creek-exterior-front-2insight of the current housing market.  The survey asks the builder to rate the sales expectations and current single -family home sales for the next 6 months as good fair or poor, and the traffic of prospective buyers as high to very high, average or low to very low.  They take these scores and calculate the index.

“Builders are reporting more serious and committed buyers at their job sites and this is reflected in recent government data showing that new-home sales and single-family construction are gaining momentum,” said NAHB Chairman Tom Woods. This is great news for those who are looking to buy a newly built home and for builders who are in the business of new home building or custom home building. This coupled with an increase in pending home sales, new home sales and mortgage applications make it a great time to purchase a new home.  In St. Tammany Parish, in Louisiana, if you are interested in building a new home for your family in Mandeville, Madisonville, Covington, or Abita Springs, Contact Ron Lee Homes to begin discussing designing your floorplan to either build on your lot or buy a lot in an existing subdivision.  At Ron Lee Homes, we strive to make your new, custom home building dreams reality!  Call 985-626-7619 or E-mail Info@RonLeeHomes.com.

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Unfilled Construction Jobs Are on the Rise in 2015

Good news for those who are looking for a job in the construction industry, unfilled construction jobs are on the rise in 2015, making the construction labor market a great place to start looking if you are unemployed.  Typically jobs in the construction field usually decline from March to April, but this year, the open positions in March were the highest since July 2007, and in April they were the third highest since the Recession. Mark Vintner, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities comments that “home building will be one of the economy’s largest upside surprises in 2015.”

According to the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) survey, “employment in home building/remodeling stands at 2.453 million, broken down as 696,000 builders and 1.757 million residential specialty trade contractors.” To sum it up builders and remodelers added 149,000 jobs on a net basis. Many experts believe that housing and construction jobs are the fastest jobs to bounce back after a recession because of expansion.  In fact, the constructions industry was responsible for 20% of employment created in April 2015.

The unemployment rate is not only falling in the residential industry but in the real estate industry as well which will boost the national housing market. According to the National Association of Realtors, “Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed last month, increased 0.9 percent to 112.6, the highest level since April 2006.”

This is still a great time to purchase a new home because all fears of another recession are pacified while they are still not strong enough to cause the Fed to raise interest rates sooner than September 2015.  Household formation is going strong, and Americans are ready to become homeowners which is paving the way to the construction of new homes both single-family and multifamily. We can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel in the housing industry job market.

 

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Five Remodel Ideas That Will Enhance the Value of Your Home

How do you remodel with a tight budget when it comes to home improvement? Need to find ways to stretch the dollar when it comes to your remodeling plans? Here are five remodel ideas that will enhance the value of your home.

First and foremost, we start with the heart of the home – the kitchen. Whether you are remodeling for your personal enjoyment or for the resale of your home, it is best to keep a happy medium in your design ideas – unless you never plan on selling your home. A good way to keep remodeling costs down is to use your existing kitchen layout. A little makeover on countertops and cabinets can go a long018 way. Re-facing your existing cabinets can refresh the overall look of your kitchen. If your cabinets are just too old or not worth keeping, go with ready-to-assemble cabinets which cost half of what new custom cabinets will run you. Countertops can also eat up your budget. Using two different surfaces in your kitchen can keep the cost low. A good way to do this is to use a solid surface on your countertops while using butcher block on your island top. A great benefit for you as the homeowner as well as a potential buyer (if you are looking to sell) is to add Energy Star® appliances. This will not only help with the aesthetic look of the kitchen, but it will also lower your utility bills.

Second, you can never go wrong with adding more square footage to your living space. This will increase your home’s value as well as the quality of your living space. When adding living space, keep in mind the cost can add up. You will need to think about the cost of removing existing walls, moving / adding electric and or plumbing, adding to your foundation, adding a new roof, adding windows, and adding new exterior siding. A word to the wise, a successful addition looks like part of the original structure. Keep this in mind when planning the location, choosing materials, and adding to the existing roof line.

The third thing on the list is curb appeal. First impressions go a long way. The first thing anyone sees is your home’s exterior. There are many solutions to creating a great look for both your home’s exterior and landscape. Make sure your yard is clean and neat by cleaning out overgrown plants, bushes and trees. Painting your home’s exterior can update your home’s look by giving it a nice facelift. If the 027budget does not allow for a new paint job, a good pressure wash to your siding will dramatically change the outside appearance of your home. To take it one step further, you can add a new entry door, change out old windows, add a front porch, or add dormers which will give your front elevation a new look without completely renovating the whole exterior.

Fourth but oh so important, is the master suite. Anyone buying a home will tell you that their sleeping quarters are very important. If you already have a master bedroom, an update will boost its appearance, making it a more inviting space to spend time in. By doing a few simple things such as painting, replacing the flooring, adding new accessories, and changing the lighting you can create a whole new look to your master bedroom. However, be careful with the choice of paint colors. Muted but distinct colors fit best in a master bedroom for resale purposes. If you do not have a master suite, consider adding one. Things to contemplate when adding a master suite are the location of your new room, if you would like a sitting area, window and door placements, what kind of ceiling you would like, and your lighting.

The last remodel area is where we spend a great deal of time – the bathroom. If your budget is a concern, the focus should go to the powder room and master bathroom remodel first. Stick to the old floorplan. Removing walls, moving bathtubs, sinks and toilets can be a huge cost. Go for cosmetic changes. New paint, new plumbing fixtures, new tile and lighting can enhance your existing bathroom. A great way to stretch your dollar is to use a flat mirror with two lighted sconces instead of a mirrored cabinet with a row of lights. Use plain simple white tile in your shower with a glass colored border which gives it an updated look without spending huge bucks. Regarding paint, this is one area where big, bold colors are a great way to make a huge impact.

If you are considering remodeling your home in St. Tammany Parish, Ron Lee Homes now offers a complete remodeling service.  Contact Ron Lee Homes today to learn more about our remodeling process.  Call 985-626-7619 or E-mail Info@RonLeeHomes.com.

 

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Sell Your Existing Home With Home Staging Techniques

In order to be able to upgrade your existing home to a second or even new third home buy, you will need to be able to sell your existing home with home staging techniques.  It can be a hassle to constantly have your home “show-ready,” so you in order to get as quick a home sale as possible, you will want to use the following advice on tips and tools to prep your home for sale.

Every detail, no matter how small, is important when staging your home.  Buyers want to be able to picture living in the space. When deciding to list your house for sale, remember, you will sell your house faster, and for moreRon Lee Homes offers remodeling and renovation services in St. Tammany Parish money, if you add interior decorating techniques that will make a home buyer visualize each room of your home’s space.

When selling a home, first begin with the basics and begin with one of life’s necessary chores – cleaning.  A dirty house is not inviting to anyone. Wild paint colors can be a distraction.  You may love your home decorating skills but others may not. Repaint with neutral colors for a nice clean slate. One thing to think about before adding your new paint job is to make any necessary repairs to damaged walls or trim.

De-clutter your home. Think sensory overload – this is not what you want to create for your potential new home buyer. Small knickknacks create clutter which creates chaos. Simple clean lines create a calm inviting feel. Depersonalize your home for sale.  Remove all family photos, or collectables – you want a blank canvas for the buyer to fill in with their ideas to personalize the space and make this their new home. A clean, newly painted, de-cluttered and depersonalized house for sale will give you an edge over some of your competition.

Now, to win over all your competition you must go the extra mile. You want to “wow” your buyer in the first five minutes. If they walk through the door and think to themselves, “I don’t see it,” you have lost a potential buyer.  The following tips will help you stand out from the other houses for sale in your neighborhood.

    1. Ever hear the old saying, “Home is where the heart is”?  You want to entice your buyer to visualize the good life they would live in that space. Set up a board game in the family room or stage a potential garden party in the backyard with margarita glasses and festive linens.  You want your buyer to feel like they can sit down and relax in the space.
    2. Use the “Rule of Three” when redecorating for the sale of your home.  Remember, you want your home to look natural and flow.  Decorators will tell you that an odd number will give you a good balance.  Too much symmetry makes a space look too stale and too cold, basically uninviting. Barb Schwarz, owner of Stagedhomes.com suggests, “When arranging tablescapes, go with three items of three different heights, in a triangle.”
    3. Keep your buyers focused on the space, not what’s in the space.  Do not leave any interesting reading material out for them to browse through, taking their mind off the task at hand.  If you choose to display any reading materials, a great idea is to use decorating, gardening or home magazines. Make sure any books or magazines that are displayed are appropriate and will not offend anyone, turning the buyer off.
    4. The master suite is one of the more important spaces in the house. Play the angles of a room and tastefully accessorize the space with stylish, if minimal decorations.  Putting furniture at an angle can break up a stagnant room.  Spruce up the master bed with decorative pillows. Think about how a luxury bathroom or spa is set up.  Take new thick bath towels and display them in the bathroom.  Tie the towels on the towel racks with raffia, tulle or thick ribbons.  Also place the towels on the edge of the bath with new soap and a loofah on top of them. Clean out your cluttered closets.  Only leave seasonal garments with matching non-wire hangers. Organize your shoes and have absolutely no dirty laundry visible.
    5. Another very important room is the kitchen.  You want the kitchen to feel clean and open.  You can do this by removing a lot of the stuff you normally use on your kitchen counters and just have basic decorative pieces such as plants, towels, some canisters, and maybe a cookbook. Clean out and organize your refrigerator, pantry, shelves and drawers; your goal is to have some empty space.  This gives the illusion that there is room to spare. Schwarz suggests, “My go-to touch is a white rectangular plate with three pieces of the same fruit spaced evenly on it–peaches, pears, apples.”  Let the buyer envision themselves cooking in the space with an open cookbook placed on an easel.

Remember you do not have to completely do an overhaul by renovating your home for sale or remodeling your home for sale.  By following the guidelines mentioned, you can accomplish a new look to your house. As a seller you want to master the “lived-in-without-looking-lived-in” look. Sellers can expect to experience stiff competition with other home sellers, so they should put their best and most creative “foot forward” when staging their home for sale.

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New Home Buyers Can Make More Flexible and Informed Mortgage Decisions

As credit requirements and down payment requirements become more feasible for first-time home buyers as well as conventional loan buyers, new home buyers can make more flexible and informed mortgage decisions about the type of loan that they would like to use making their purchase.  First-time home buyers can enjoy the benefits of using a loan offered by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae or even an FHA loan.  These loans typically reduce the amount of money that must be brought to the table and make it more affordable to buy a home.

Other home buyers can also use an FHA loan if they meet the time period requirements between the purchase of their existing home and the purchase of a new home.  Also, for the veterans, the VA loan is an incredible opportunity to become a homeowner and start establishing home equity.  Regardless of the type of loan you use when you buy your home, you still have to make a decision about the terms of your loan.  Interest rate, purchased points, ARM vs. standard, and time periods come into play when you are making your decision.  Below are some of the reasons that using a 15-year loan vs. a 30-year fixed loan can be beneficial to your long-term financial situation.

15-Year Home Loans:

1. Pay Off Your Home More Quickly:  If you are in a position to make a higher monthly payment (you have a lot of residual income each month, you have no financial responsibilities for multiple children’s expenses, you have a really low loan amount because you had a lot of equity when you purchased your home, etc.), you will want to consider using a 15-year loan.  Even though the payments will be higher each month, you will save 10’s of thousands of dollars in interest.  If you are near retirement age, you may want to pay off your home quicker so that you don’t have to make loan payments with a social security benefit check.

2. Faster Equity Accrual:  Because the way that a 15-year mortgage is structured, you are making a huge dent in your principal and interest for every loan payment that you make.  Because your payments are higher, you are also paying off more principle, more quickly, thereby creating “instant” home equity by being in a shorter-term loan.

3. Pay Less Interest Overall: Have you ever looked at a Federal Truth in Lending page and wondered how in the world you ended up with $120,000 interest on a $200,000 loan?  With a 15-year mortgage, you pay significantly less interest over the life of the loan because you are cutting the time in half and increasing the amount you pay.

4. Lower Money Up Front: 15-year loans can require less money up front because they require a less stringent loan-to-value (LTV) ratio – 95% vs. 80%.  This means you can finance up to 95% of the value of your loan.  Also, 15-year mortgages typically have better interest rates because they deem the buyer more financially stable and responsible to make higher monthly payments.

5. Multiple Loan Types From Which to Choose: You can get many different types of 15-year loans – FHA loans, conventional loans backed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and VA loans.  You can pretty much select to turn any type of loan into a 15-year mortgage vs. a 30-year fixed mortgage.
If you are in the market for a new home for sale in the St. Tammany Parish area, you may want to consider building a new custom home in the cities of Mandeville, Madisonville, Covington, and Abita Springs on the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain.  For more information about building a new home and using a 15-year loan, Contact Us at 985-626-7619 or E-mail Info@RonLeeHomes.com.

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Ways to Maximize Your Home’s Marketability

It’s time to sell your home because you are ready to move on, move up, or move out of state and relocate.  Since real estate has been on the steady track to recovery, chances are good that your home will sell relatively fast in this emerging market.  However, there are ways to maximize your home’s marketability to be able to compete against all of the other home owners who are having the exact same hopeful thoughts as  yourself.  Take note of the concepts below when you are preparing your home for sale.

Keep it Simple:

The way to sell a home successfully to a potential home buyer is to help them imagine their furniture, children, pets, friends, and life in your currently occupied space.  You may want to consider going ahead and packing away the items in your home that make you “uniquely you,” which could include African animal heads on the wall, an extensive doll or teddy bear collection, or a series of books from a particular author alphabetized on your bookshelves.  You never know what people may find strange or offensive, so you want to minimize their exposure to these types of personal belongings.  In the kitchen, living room, and even your master bedroom, get rid of the clutter and clean up the surfaces to allow buyers to “fill up” the spaces with their imaginary lives.

 

 

Keep it Clean:

This may be a common sense concept for many home sellers, but your definition of clean and a potential home buyer’s concept of clean may be totally different.  Don’t take any chances: go from the outside in and the floor up.  You don’t necessarily have to hire someone to pressure wash the exterior of your home to clean it up, although, here in Louisiana, homes can accumulate mildew in less than 2 year’s time, so it might be time for a thorough

cleaning.  If you want to put some elbow grease into it, you can actually just mix up buckets of lightly bleached water and using a long-handled scrubbing tool for those stubbornly stuck-on spots, you can “wash” the exterior of your home to make the paint look fresh and almost new.  More work can be done by washing your windows both on the outside and the inside, making your floorplan more light and airy while also making the glass sparkle.  Vacuum and MOP your floors on the inside of the home – this will make your home smell fresh as well.  You can either rent a steam cleaner with a scented deodorizer in it or use a powder deodorizer in your vacuum cleaner for your carpets.  Once you have scrubbed every inch of every surface in your home, cover up any remaining odors and put your best foot forward by buying plug-in’s for each room.  They are very powerful and will probably last for the hopefully 30 – 45 days it will take to sell your home.  You never get a second chance to make an excellent first impression.

Keep it Maintenanced

There is a good chance that it will rain in Louisiana while you are trying to sell your home – a chance that it may even rain very hard.  You will want to make sure that your home is kept in good repair throughout the entire selling process.  Before you even start the cleaning process, make sure you REPLACE damaged parts of your home – this includes dents in the walls, water leaks, cracked door or window frames, broken windows, and chipped formica or granite.  If you are not selling your home as a KNOWN, as-is renovation project, you don’t want a buyer to bypass purchasing your home because they see that work will have to be done as soon as they move in.  When selling a previously-owned home, there may be an understanding that it has already been lived in by other people, but you want to give them the illusion that they are buying a home that is in superior condition and will need little to no work at all.

Keep it Exposed

If you use the Internet for professional or personal use, you know that there are websites out there which maximize your home’s marketability through the use of social media.  You can be your own online agent for your home by taking excellent pictures (or having your really talented photographer friend take pictures) of your home and then posting to your personal social media pages.  If you do not yet have an online presence, ask one of your tech-savvy friends to help you by posting the listing for your.  In addition to social media, you can also sign up for real estate websites for free such as trulia.com, zillow.com, activerain.com, and redfin.com to post just your house for sale on the Internet.  Remember, the more pictures and descriptive information that you add, the more your listing will show up in the search results.

After all of your hard work, and your new home sells; you may be interested in building a new custom home on a lot in one of the excellent subdivisions in St. Tammany Parish.  You can Contact Ron Lee Homes at 985-626-7619 or E-mail Info@RonLeeHomes.com to get started on building your new home.

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Involvement in the New Home Market is Beneficial

According to all of the statistics from many corners: housing research firms such as Zelman Associates, investors in the stock market, the National Association of Realtors, and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), involvement in the new home market is beneficial on many different levels.  Investors are significantly pleased with the robust returns of national publicly held home builders such as Meritage Homes Corp., Toll Brothers Inc., Taylor Morrison Home Corp. and Standard Pacific Corp.  The U.S. Home Construction Index of the Dow Jones Involvement in the New Home Market is Beneficialhas seen a 10.8% gain excluding dividends for its investors.  Toll Brothers Inc. celebrates a 13% increase in orders year-over-year compared to 2014 as well.

Builders are reporting the sales of new homes have gotten off to a tremendous start in January and February of 2015.  The NAHB is also in line with this assumption, so the only downward impactful news out of all of this is that the sale of existing homes is faltering.  However, for once, there is good news associated with this negative trend.  Because of the real estate market recovery after the Recession, the inventory of homes that are on the market to be sold that can immediately be bought is 4.7 months.  This means that it would take only 4.7 months to buy every home that is currently for sale in the United States.  During the Recession, the inventory of homes reached almost 2 years, so this low amount of inventory is an indicator that the housing recovery has truly taken a positive turn.  However, during a healthy housing market, the inventory normally stands around 6 months.  So, existing home sales have slowed to their slowest pace in 9 months because of this and other factors.

Last year, both builders and Realtors alike suffered through the numerous and overwhelming polar fronts that came sweeping down from not just Canada but the Arctic itself.  These weather patterns last year literally had the housing market at a standstill during the 1st quarter of 2014.  While not as bad this year, the weather has affected people’s home shopping habits and kept them indoors.  Also, January and February are not normally booming months for real estate sales, so it’s definitely not time to panic and start liquidating all of the assets just yet!

003_mlsWhile the two factors above may be slowing down existing home sales, overall, home sales are set to increase during the spring which is typically the “busy season” for real estate because of three factors: the economy (GDP), job growth, and interest rates.  The GDP has been increasing each quarter for the past 1.5 years.  However slight, these increases seem to be “piling up” so that even some economists are surprised by the growth each quarter of the GDP.  Unemployment has been dropping for many months in a row and showing a consistent increase in available jobs each quarter as well.  The job market is getting so robust that people that had been on long term unemployment are once again entering the job market.  Finally interest rates for mortgages are still unbeatable at lower than 4%.  They do climb over 4% every couple of weeks, but even at those rates, they are still lower than an average interest rate in a “normal market” of 5.5% to 7%.

Investors, builders, researchers, and economists are sure to have their eye on the real estate market for both new homes and existing homes moving into the spring quarter (and hopefully the busiest quarter), so they will be able to predict if this sales phenomena is merely a lull or an actual trend.  In the mean time, new homes are for sale throughout the United States, and at the moment, buyers are interested in purchasing them.

 

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