BUYERS RULE S.F. HOME MARKET.

Byline: BOB QUICK

Median sales price, number of homes sold down in second quarter

By Bob Quick

The New Mexican 

From the standpoint of sellers and real-estate agents, the news about Santa Fe real-estate sales Wednesday was a "a little sad," Santa Fe Association of Realtors president Mary Schroeder said.

The median sales price of a home in the city was off in the second quarter of 2009, and the number

of homes sold in the county was down.

The latest numbers confirmed that it's a buyer's market. A Santa Fe home that did sell in June went for only 80 percent of the original asking price -- down from 92 percent in May.

That means sellers were asking too much for their homes, Schroeder said, and buyers won't pay an unrealistic asking price.

On the other hand, Schroeder said at a news conference, Santa Fe's real-estate market isn't nearly as troubled as in places such as Virginia, where there are "pages and pages of foreclosures."

Schroeder, along with other association officials -- developer Joe Ortiz, banker Gary Gurule, city planner Reed Liming and others -- discussed real-estate sales, development and other matters during the session.

The median sales price of a home in the city dropped to $307,500 from $344,000 in the second quarter, a 10 percent decline from a year ago, while the number of homes sold remained unchanged at 116.

The median price for sales reported in the city has dropped considerably from the fourth-quarter 2005 peak of $470,000.

The association cautions that the median sales price is based on properties listed through the Multiple Listing Service, which does not necessarily include every sale in the area but historically has been used to track trends in the market.

In Santa Fe County, the number of homes sold in the second quarter totaled 98, down 21 percent from the same quarter in 2008. The median sales price, $450,000, was down 8 percent.

A sign of weakness in the local real-estate market was the continuing decline of the sale of townhouses, which came in at 56 in the second quarter of 2009, compared with 89 a year earlier. That's a drop of 37 percent.

Those sales were "devastating," Schroeder said. "Condos and townhouses have really taken a beating."

One reason for that, according to Ortiz, is that second-home sales in Santa Fe "have completely dried up."

Difficulty in obtaining financing for the properties is another factor, Gurule said. "That started late last year."

Land sales were also sluggish, with only 11 parcels of land sold in the city, compared with 14 a year ago. In the county, 21 parcels sold versus 23 last year at the same time.

"It's hard to get a loan on land," Schroeder said.

Another part of the association's analysis consisted of a short history of real-estate sales' dollar volume and number of units starting in 2000 and ending in 2008. Units sold (2,825) and sales volume ($1.2 billion) peaked in 2005 and then declined. By 2008, 1,396 homes were reported as sold with a sales volume of $716.4 million.

Housing starts have been few this year, Liming said. There were 106 in the city for the first six months of 2009, half the number reported in 2008.

County permits were also "significantly lower," he said.

When asked for his comment on the local real-estate market and the lack of activity, Ortiz said, "The strong survive. You have to be able to scale down or go out of business."

Homeowners, unwilling or reluctant to buy newer homes, are doing their own remodeling, he said. "It's no longer possible to get a soft second (mortgage) for a green-room addition" for many homeowners.

Ortiz also said the only busy builder these days is Centex, a national firm that is able to offer buyers an incentive package that local builders can't match.

Ortiz added that Santa Fe typically goes through a seven-year cycle before making a recovery.

The city's housing market

is now at a low but should start to turn around before much

longer, he said. "That's good news for those who can weather the storm."

Foreclosures are among the problems lenders have to deal with, but there haven't been many at Los Alamos National Bank, Gurule said, especially when compared to what's going on in other parts of the country.

First American CoreLogic, a real-estate data firm that is part of First American Corp., released a report that said the rate of foreclosures among outstanding mortgage loans in Santa Fe was 1.2 percent in May, a 0.60 percentage point increase compared to May 2008.

The national foreclosure rate was 2.5 percent for May.

During the previous 12 months, from June 2008 to May 2009, there were a total of 801 foreclosure filings in Santa Fe, or 2.19 per day. From June 2007 to May 2008, there were 479 foreclosure filings, or about 1.31 per day.

Despite those developments, for those with decent credit, "this is an excellent time to buy a a house," Gurule said. "You can get a 30-year mortgage at a fixed rate of 5.5 percent."

John Shepler of Shepler Commercial said commercial rental rates have been on the rise recently, but he added that it hasn't been "a huge jump."

"There are some great values out there," he said.

Contact Bob Quick at 986-3011 or [e-mail].