How's the End of Summer Market?

Let’s look at the investor market; it is alive and well in North Texas. Almost 40% of the homes sold in our area last year were not owner occupant. According to a recent release from Attom Data solutions, this percentage of properties were sold to house flippers, investors, developers and builders. The release states that is the highest share of purchases going to investors in our area since 2000! Our region’s long term average is usually 25%, so we are up a whopping 15 percentage points!!
The national average is roughly 33%.
I've got a video up about this too -- Investment Market Video -- if you want to see a quick explanation. More details are in the rest of this post:


And, these are the “A” rated area markets for investors:
Coppell.   Colleyville.   Southlake.   Argyle.   Keller.   Flower Mound.   Prosper.   Celina.   Melissa.


Last month we wrote an article looking at where the affordable homes are near us. Looks like the builders read my article! There’s been a push to construct more affordable homes. Now, most of these are out a ways: Celina, Princeton, Forney, Southwest Fort Worth; but some are a bit closer, with lots of construction in The Colony and Wylie.
    DFW keeps expanding.
Ted Wilson, a Dallas based home consultant, says “Builders focused on house prices under $300,000 reported brisk sales throughout the quarter. Sales activity over $500,000 was Choppy”. Here, he means choppy=slow; it’s interesting to note about what is moving fast/slow in our market.


Would you do this??
One third of all homebuyers––and 41% of millennials buying a home––made an offer on a home sight unseen!! The amount of property information, imagery, neighborhood data and new technology seems to be giving buyers more confidence to bid on homes without visiting them in person.  Properties in North Texas are selling fast and one strategy in locking up the home is to make an offer sight unseen.
Last year the percentage was 19%, and still just 21% two years ago. Millennials were more than three times as likely as their parents to make offers sight-unseen, with 41% having said they had done so, compared to 30% of Gen Xers and the only 12% of baby boomers buying without actually seeing.
One of the problems I notice with these unseen purchases is that pictures can be VERY misleading. My clients have told me hundreds of times, “this looks nothing like the pictures!”
Of course, I understand that in our market––a seller’s market––we are in trying to lock up the property with a contract. And in Texas we do have the option period that usually cost from $100 up to whatever is negotiated. Meaning, you can terminate the contract during the option period and pay that fee; so people are paying the option fee ($100 to ??) to lock up the home and then going to actually “see” their purchase during the option. If they terminate the offer, they pay that option fee.