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Listing your home for buyers with children

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In areas which cater to families with school age children, it’s important to time the listing of your home appropriately. The basic rule is that you need to get it on the market in time for buyers to close, get moved, and settle in prior to the start of the school year. Often sellers list their homes too late, and they miss the real estate market for buyers with kids.

Let’s take The Glen as an example. The Glen is an upscale housing and retail development on the former grounds of Naval Air Station Glenview in Glenview Illinois. It is home to a couple of thousand luxury homes of various types, including single family homes, townhomes, row homes, duplexes, condos, and two-flats. Prices in the Glen range from the high $300,000s to over $2 million.

Children in the Glen attend District 34 elementary and middle schools, including Westbrook Elementary School, Glen Grove Elementary School, and Attea Middle School. For high school they attend Glenbrook South High School in District 225. Naturally, there are wonderful private schools available in the area as well, but for purposes of this exercise let’s look at the public school calendar. From there, we will work backward to determine the best time to list your home.

The first day of District 34 schools for next school year will be August 23; for District 225, it will be August 25. If we assume a family would like to get their kids settled in their new neighborhoods to make friends two or three weeks before school starts, we’re looking at a move-in date of around the first of August. Prior to moving in, we can assume a time on market of a month or two…so to be safe, let’s say two months. After the agreement is signed, there is usually a 45 to 60 day period before closing. So, doing the math we find that getting a home on the market would be best to occur by early-April.

This means that home sellers in the Glen who wish to attract families with children should be moving rather rapidly to get their home ready to be listed. You need to find your Realtor and get your home prepared for showing. There’s really not a lot of time to spare.

I am an award-winning realtor who lives in and sells extensively in The Glen. If you are interested in selling, buying or renting in the Glen (or greater Glenview), please contact me right away.

Margaret Ludemann, @properties Realtor

847-401-1802  margaretludemann@gmail.com

Conditions are favorable for home sales

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Stepping back from my usual Glen-specific blog content, I thought I would share with you some thoughts about the state of the housing market generally.

The environment for home sales remains strong as it has been for the last couple of years. Jobs are critical to a strong housing market, so I was heartened to see that the nationwide unemployment rate recently dropped to 5.1% which is the lowest rate in many years. Consumer confidence, which of course is influenced by low unemployment, is strong; and that means that people feel good about spending money…and in the context of housing, to purchase their first homes or to purchase higher priced homes.

The other hugely positive factor that is impacting housing is available credit. Sure, it’s not like the wild, wild west days that fueled the build-up to the bubble, and that’s good. But slowly and surely lenders are becoming more reasonable about lending standards, making mortgages more readily available to prospective home buyers. Specifically as it relates to The Glen – which has an abundance of high price point homes – many of the largest banks have loosened credit standards for jumbo mortgage loans which exceed conventional loan limits.

So all of this is good news for home sellers and home buyers. If you have any questions or comments, please get in touch with me. I am an award-winning Realtor with @properties who lives in the Glen (in Glenview Illinois), and I would be delighted to discuss the benefits of living here.

Margaret Ludemann            847-4-1-1802   margaretludemann@gmail.com

Glenview home sales down, prices up

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Full-year 2014 real estate sales and pricing data for Glenview Illinois are not yet available, but I have some preliminary numbers that are quite interesting.  Glenview is a north shore community near Chicago with many luxury homes.  The data represent transactions from January 1 through November 30. This data is not only for The Glen but rather for all of Glenview. Later in January I will be able to provide Glen-specific full year sales and pricing information.

So, for the first eleven months of 2014 home sales in Glenview were down 8%. This is for unit sales; that is, the number of homes sold. That’s not really surprising since 2013 was a banner year, a period when home sellers got off the sidelines after the long haul back from the depths of the recession.

Home prices in 2014, however, show an entirely different story. The median price of homes sold in Glenview was up 6%, and the price per square foot was up 10%. This is rather remarkable after such a strong 2013.

I also have information about sales prices vs. list prices in 2014, through November. The average selling price of a Glenview home was 96.4% of the average list price. Not bad. In real estate anything at 95% or higher is considered quite good. So, 96.4% suggests solid performance, though perhaps not extraordinary. In other words, the negotiating leverage between sellers and buyers was relatively even.

Home prices in The Glen tend to be higher than most (though not all) of Glenview. It will be interesting to see Glen-only sales and pricing data for the year. So check back with me via these weekly blogs toward the end of January or early February.

Margaret Ludemann, Glen homeowner and @properties Realtor

MargaretLudemann@gmail.com   847-401-1802

Mortgage interest rates: good news for home buyers and sellers

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A few weeks ago a potential buyer of a home in The Glen (in Glenview Illinois) told me that he was holding off buying a home until mortgage interest rates improve. I believed that was unwise, so I researched historical 30 year, fixed rate mortgage interest rates using Freddie Mac data. I grouped them into 5 year periods and calculated the averages. What did I learn…that recent mortgage interest rates are roughly half what they were 25 years ago!

The average rate in August (the most recent data available) was 4.12% for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. This is a smidgeon higher than early months of 2013. Rates, however, have inched downward in each of the last 4 months; and that August rate of 4.12% is actually lower than the same month last year. So it is clear that home financing today is extremely low. While rates may bump along with modest increases and decreases in the short term, there is no evidence that they will become appreciably lower in the foreseeable future. In fact, it is likely that rates will eventually increase to more normal levels.

Interest rates matter…a lot…because they affect a buyer’s monthly payment and the total cost of financing over the period of ownership of a home. Every 1% rise in interest rates reduces buying power by approximately 11%. Obviously today’s low interest rates are beneficial to home buyers, but they are also good for home sellers. If buyers can purchase more house because of low interest rates, there are more qualified buyers for sellers’ homes.

If you are interesting in buying a home in The Glen or greater Glenview, please email me at Margaret.ludemann@cbexchange.com or call me at 847-401-1802.

Margaret Ludemann, Glen homeowner and @properties Realtor

Real estate in The Glen: August lull, September to pick up

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I have a Glen-specific, proprietary website. In fact you may be reading this blog on that site. It provides information about real estate in the Glen (in Glenview Illinois)and allows visitors to search Glen listings. The search engine optimization firm that I employ provides the tech-marketing magic that brings prospective home buyers to the site; and I am provided with numbers of all kinds weekly.  These numbers show a late summer slow down in the Glen, which is seen nationally as well. In the 4 week period in May over 2,000 first time visitors came to my site. (This is a very POWERFUL tool!) The following 4 week periods declined by 7.6%, 6.7% and 10.9%. In the last two weeks alone (August 10 – 24) the number of first time visitors was down 35% from May. Looking at the site’s first time visitors in previous years shows this same pattern.

The good news for prospective home sellers in the Glen is that the number of first time visitors increases in September and then remains relatively even and strong until December. This trend is supported by my site’s prior-years data. So homowners thinking of selling, should be getting their homes on the real estate market soon to take advantage of the increase in buyer interest just around the corner.

But it’s not only buyers who take a real estate time-out in mid-to-late summer. The listings cupboard in the Glen is pretty bare right now, too. Of the 237 single family homes in the Southgate neighborhood, there is only 1 home listed for sale. The same is true in Tower Crossing, the large, 4 story brick townhomes adjacent to Glen Town Center. In that development there are 154 homes, but only 1 is listed for sale. At the Landings (formerly Concord) and Chapel Crossing neighborhoods (with 311 homes combined) there are only a couple of listings.

Spring interest among buyers is matched by sellers who want to take advantage of that peak selling season. People with children want to make their purchases and get moved in before the new school year begins. In mid-to-late summer interest drops as I’ve shown above; and smart sellers know this so many get their homes on the market in late winter/early spring; and conversely there are few new listings in mid-to-late summer or from Thanksgiving until early March.

Margaret Ludemann, Glen homeowner and @properties Realtor

MargaretLudemann@gmail.com   847-401-1802