Fritz Pfister

Last week I said bet on a new record for the number of closed home sales this November after end of month closings were reported. Holy Cow, the local Realtors knocked this one out of the park! The 363 closed home sales were up 78.81% over last November’s 203. Granted last November was down over 35% from the previous year, and the tax credit had everyone scrambling to get their home purchase closed by the original November 30 deadline, but a 78.81% increase is quite a shellacking!

Back down to earth now, the number of homes going under contract declined as predicted, however only slightly by 2.72%. But that’s falling below a fairly miserable November of 2008 when everyone was still shell shocked from the financial meltdown, and we were receiving daily doses that this was the worst crisis since the Great Depression from every news outlet, every five minutes. That doesn’t do much to inspire confidence. So it’s not real good news we fell below a considerably bad month.

Not to worry it’s all good. The Springfield market once again shows its resiliency with quite the comeback following a miserable 2008 and beginning to 2009. Closed home sales through November up 5.62% to 3,474. The median sale price up 3.8% to $109,000. The average sale price rebounded, and is only down by .35% to $125,251.

Today we can announce that the Springfield Illinois housing market is no longer a buyer’s market, except for homes priced above $300,000. We have now entered a level market due to the inventory of homes for sale falling to 1505 the fewest since the sellers market of 2004. It’s once again good to be a home seller in the Springfield area.

The question becomes; for how long? The tax credits for first time buyers and qualified repeat home buyers expires on April 30. Just about every mortgage professional I have spoken to thinks these record low interest rates will continue until at least summer. On a side note; interest rates are like your teenage children, you know what they should do, what you want them to do, but you never know what they will do. Makes life interesting.

With that in mind, the local housing market should be in excellent shape through April. At least conditions will be favorable. The wild card is how many buyers are left? How many buyers will enter the market? How many repeat home buyers, that have to sell their homes before they can buy another, will be able to get sold by April 30?

Then the question becomes, who will be left after April 30 to buy a home? What will happen to demand for housing following 14 months of the government paying people to buy a house? The only saving grace is the expiration of the program is at a time we would normally see more buyers entering the market. In my opinion there will be a calm after the storm. How long that will last will be determined by the local economy and the number of jobs.

We had relatively good news yesterday as the national unemployment rate fell .2% to 10%. The devil’s in the details though. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 98,000 people quit looking and therefore weren’t counted, and the biggest increase in jobs were by temp services. In other words, unemployment appears to be headed in the right direction, however the light at the end of the tunnel could be a freight train headed our way, instead of clear passage. We will find out in the coming months.

Thank goodness the government changed the rules on this round of taxpayer gifts to home buyers. You only have to have a valid contract in force by April 30. Then you have through June to get the purchase closed. That means fewer contracts will fail by falling through the cracks during a mad dash to get closed. There are only so many appraisers, title companies, lenders, inspectors, and Realtors, and if I’m not mistaken there’s still only 24 hours in a day.

The bottom line is the artificial market created by tax credits, and artificially low interest rates led to the biggest November in the history of the local housing market. Job well done.

Make this a great week from Fritz and Kristie Pfister and The Pfister Success Team of RE/MAX Professionals Springfield. If you desire to sell your home we have immediate openings for home listings, 4 out of 5 of our listings have sold this year. Now’s the time to plan ahead, April 30 will be here before you know it. Call us at 217-652-7653.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of Fritz Pfister, or identified sources,  and not those of RE/MAX Professionals Springfield, or RE/MAX International.