I updated the video tour I had for the listing at 7474 Ridgeview, just south of Dubuque.  With the new garage floor in place and plenty of refreshing, this home truly is ready to move into and enjoy for some country-style living not too far from Dubuque and everything…

What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than compiling Dubuque Real Estate Stats?  Well, I can think of a few things to do otherwise on as nice of a day as Sunday was around here, but in between visits at Sunday’s open houses, I was able to hammer out another set of stats to view what’s been going on in our Dubuque market.  

Once again this week, new listings outpaced both closed sales and listings marked as now pending sale.  This indicates that available inventory continues to creep upward - not by huge leaps and bounds - but a slow, steady rise in the number of available listings our current group of buyers has to select from. 

• New Listings: 32
• Price Changes: 20
• Homes Sold: 13
• Sales Marked Pending: 18
• Expired of Withdrawn Listings: 11

Another interesting note from this week’s analysis below is that the average price of homes sold in the rolling twelve month analysis now shows a 4% drop in average sold prices in the current year versus the last year ($157,870 last year vs. $1521, 534 this year).  How could it have dropped so fast from last week’s scant -0.2% drop as reported here a week ago?  

Well, it all due to one particular sale.  On July 15, 2009, a home in Dubuque sold for $1,465,000.  Now that that particular sale has rolled into the previous 12 month cycle, we can’t count it towards current twelve month sales totals, resulting in the 3.8% swing downward for this current year’s average sales price figure.  It essentially resulted in a drop of $2,000 towards this year’s average while boosting last year’s figures by roughly the same $2,000.  Not to fret, it doesn’t mean the Dubuque real estate market is in a freefall.  It simply is a statistical quirk that warranted a little further research… 

Dubuque Listings Inventory Analysis

Current Total Listings: 488   

 Active/Available Listings: 381 

 Pending Sold Listings: 107 or 21.9% of Current Market 

 Dubuque Sales Previous 12 Months: 870 or 72.5 Homes Sold per month 

Supply of Homes: 5.3 Month Supply Percentage Selling Per Month: 19.0% 

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 Dubuque Yearly Sales & Averages 

Previous 12 Months: 870 Sales – Average Price $151,534 - Days on Market 70 

 Two Years Ago: 715 Sales – Average Price $157,870 - Days on Market 87 

 Three Years Ago: 821 Sales – Average Price $148,819 - Days on Market 74 

 Four Years Ago: 979 Sales – Average Price $145,477- Days on Market 69 

 Five Years Ago: 1008 Sales – Average Price $147,103 - Days on Market 70

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Click to Enlarge

 It’s been a weird June & July for the Dubuque area real estate market.  Granted, homes are being bought and sold each and every day, but we certainly are not doing so at a typical level for the summer selling season.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that this is partly due to the expirataion of the home buyer tax credit.    

Courtsey of AP & FICO.com

I’ve droned on and on and on about the tax credit and how I personally felt it didn’t do anything to “stimulate” home sales except in the way that it stole sales from the future to jack up the numbers in the here and now.  I seriously doubt anybody came to the grand conclusiuon that the existence of the tax credit was a good reason to jump into the market.  It simply moved up timelines for folks who were going to be buying anyway.  “I was going to wait to buy a home in Spring  2011, but I sure didn’t want to miss out of the free money from Uncle Sam!”

All that said, I’m seeing that two other big factors continue to drag the market through the mud.  General gloominess by the general public about the jobs outlook and the economy as a whole is one.  I could stir up a political hornet’s nest by addressing that one itself  The other is the much higher credit standards the banks and credit unions are now adhering to.   

Credit score of 580 to 619? Fuhgeddaboudit!  You’ve got a score of 620 to 739? Yeah, you can get a mortgage loan, but it’ll cost you extra in terms of interest rate or fees.  This  morning’s story by Assosicated Press in the Telegraph Herald shows that over one-fourth of consumers (25.5%) have a credit score of 599 or lower.  If you’re a seller you can say Sayonara, Baby! (click the link!) to the 43.4 million people who fall into this unfortunate category.

Allright, but what’s been going in Dubuque’s Market lately? I’m glad you got around to asking.  As I’ve mentioned, the business is slower than it usually is.  Here’s a quick run-down of this last week’s activity:

• New Listings: 23
• Price Changes: 17
• Homes Sold: 12
• Pending Sales: 14
• Expired of Whithdrawn Listings: 4

Consider this – the same week in 2008 (an OK, but not completely awesome, year) saw 38 listings enter the market, of which 22 of them eventually sold.  Let’s check out the figures and charts for the latest rundown of the current market and recent market history… 

Dubuque Listings Inventory Analysis

Current Total Listings: 476  

Active/Available Listings: 372

Pending Sold Listings: 104 or 21.8% of Current Market

 Dubuque Sales Previous 12 Months: 877 or 73.1 Homes Sold per month

Supply of Homes: 5.1 Month Supply Percentage Selling Per Month: 19.6%

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Dubuque Yearly Sales & Averages

Previous 12 Months: 877 Sales – Average Price $154,682 – Days on Market 71

 Two Years Ago: 720 Sales – Average Price $155,006 – Days on Market 86

Three Years Ago: 820 Sales – Average Price $148,753 – Days on Market 75

Four Years Ago: 975 Sales – Average Price $145,028 – Days on Market 68

Five Years Ago: 1001 Sales – Average Price $146,557 – Days on Market 70

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Click to Enlarge

Note that I’ve swapped the Average Mean Price chart for a new chart tracking the Average Number of Days on Market.   Days on Market is key information for home sellers.  While we all wish we could beat the average, a number of homes for sale do not.  Once you’ve hit or gone past the Average Days figure with your listing, you very likely are becoming Market Stigmatized by the buyer public.  If they see that the home has been listed for 158 days and the current average is 71, the buyers just can’t help themselves but think there is a serious problem, either with the price, how well the homes presents itself, or that the sellers are unwilling to negotiate. 

“How long has it been listed?” is easily the most common question I get at an open house.  The buyers want to know (or at least guess) if the home is reaching a sort of market stigmatization point.  I could write another lengthy blog post about Days on Market, and I think I will soon…

It took me a couple of days to get the annotations and edits done, but FINALLY, here are the two walking tour videos I took of the new listing at 8467 Heidi Re Circle (if your device and internet connection can handle it, you can watch the Walking Tour Videos in HD)…

Here’s a quick post of my latest Walking Tour Video for the home for sale at 5491 Meadow Court in Dubuque (Asbury)…

Even with Google Maps, MapQuest, and dozens of other mapping websites, I still have received a few inquiries about how to find the new listing at 8467 Heidi Re Circle in Dubuque’s Southern Hills.  Well, since I’m already having way too much fun with movie mode on my Sony HX5V, I thought I’d quick shoot a driving directions video for the home.  I was already heading that way to take more photos and shoot a pair of my fast-becoming-famous Walking Video Tours, so I shot a one minute video, posted it on YouTube (with included annotations and funky dance-track music), and here it is…

Watch it a couple of times and tell me you don’t start bobbing your head and shaking your torso to the beats within, a la A Night at the Roxbury…

Here’s a three to four minute walking tour video I shot yesterday for my new listing at 2830 Washington in Dubuque, now listed for $44,900.  It is a three bed, one & one-half bath home on Dubuque’s far north end.  In fact, it is two blocks from my Grandma & Grampa Cookie’s former home on Pinard. 

This home happens to be a bank-owned home (a.k.a. a foreclosure).  Shopping foreclosures is certainly a different animal, but may present a bigger opportunity than many other homes in this price range or higher.  It simply takes the right buyer with the right temperment to understand both the oportunities and potential pitfalls that go with foreclosure sale homes…

I picked up a new camera the other day – my old Sony from circa-2004 just wasn’t cutting the mustard any more. Enter the brand-spanking-new Sony Cyber-shot HX5V I picked up at Best Buy.  Besides taking great photos and HD video, a really fun feature is the iSweep Panorama mode, which allows the user to instantly create rather large panoramic images within the camera with one touch using the embedded stitching software.  Simply press the shoot button and then pan across a scene.  The camera takes 100 photos and automatically stitches them together in one second.  It can detect faces and moving objects and correct for those as well.

Here’s a couple of panoramic photos I took yesterday at my new listing at 8467 Heidi Re Circle in Dubuque’s Southern Hills.  The home and subdivision lend themselves well to this feature, as Southern Hills offers great views in every direction.  One view is from the rear deck, while the other is of the cul-de-sac (8467 Heidi Re is the home on the right).

Caution, these photos are absolutely Ginormous – if you’re on a slow connection you may want to grab a cup of coffee…

Click to Enlarge to Full Size

Click to Enlarge to Full Size