July 2007 Article History

There are 6 articles published in July 2007. Here are the first 20:

Loudoun and Fairfax County Monthly Trend Charts 7 days, men in skirts, knobby knees and 843 emails Vacationing with 5,000 of my closest Scottish friends sellsiuso visits the Guide on Blog Tour USA The Guide goes to Real Estate Connect Loudoun single family prices holding steady

You will find a complete Index of Articles by Category in the History Archives.

July 19, 2007

The Loudoun and Fairfax County monthly trend charts are updated with June, 2007 data. It is later than normal due to my planned absence. The Loudoun New Construction chart is also updated. All the charts can be found under the topic Market Conditions.

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July 18, 2007

We are back from our annual trek to Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina on the occasion of the Scottish Highland Games of the same name. The weather was cool, met many old friends, made some new ones and got a couple rounds of golf in. Not trying to turn this into a travel blog but, thought it would be fun to share some of the sites. The only downside to this exemplary vacation was returning home to 843 emails of which at least 750 were junk. Vacations are supposed to be a stress reliever. Nevertheless, it is good in many ways to be back and refocused on the many challenges and tasks waiting for us.

The Daily Market Watch picked up again this morning. The monthly statistics are waiting for me to fill in the all the charts. It appears (at a glance) that not much changed in a week without watching.

Below are selected photos depicting activities and friends at the event.

Left to right:
(1) Massed pipes and drums marching with dance competition in the background,
(2) Pam relaxing on our mobile patio with a friend, and
(3) A meet up with the friends that were on our 2005 Scotland tour (the "head only" is Alex Beaton, Scottish entertainer and tour organizer).

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July 9, 2007

We are making our annual pilgrimage to the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games (GMHG) in Linville, North Carolina. This is our 12th consecutive year attending the games and hooking up with many friends we have met at this festive production. We camp (in a very nice RV), we eat and we imbibe (always in moderation). Sharing a taste of single malt with friends and new acquaintances is always a pleasure.

No daily updates, no ranting on the blog, no email (clients can reach us by cell phone); just enjoying 4,500 foot altitude in clear, fresh air, mostly cool temperatures and at least one round of golf.

Will return July 17th.



From left to right (click for full screen):
Our camping home, the mountain, the game field with spectators.

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July 5, 2007

Surprise! Surprise! Joe and Rudy made a special effort to stop by the Guide on their Blog Tour USA. Welcome to Northern Virginia. We had a great visit and I kept them here way longer than what they had planned, I'm sure. Interesting that they look the same as their pictures I see on the sellius blog. Rudy does appear to be much younger than Joe. I couldn't resist documenting the event with pictures (Rudy had a camcorder running the entire time and I probably said some things that will haunt me for at least a few days...).

Click photos for a full page view.

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Yours truly will be attending the Inman News Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco July 31st through August 3rd. I am looking forward to meeting all my real estate blogger friends at Blogger Connect, a subset of the conference.

An excerpt from the Connect Website:

The Inman conferences are the premier networking, information, and technology conferences for the real estate industry.

Executive-level real estate professionals, opinion leaders, technology giants, industry experts, and press gather each year at Connect Conferences to discuss a broad cross-section of traditional and cutting-edge topics critical to the real estate industry, opening the door to a wealth of opportunities for business development, information and idea exchange, discussion and debate.

So many great Bloggers to meet, maybe too little time!

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July 3, 2007

The Loudoun Single Family Detached Home Prices chart is updated with June, 2007 sold data. Average price is up 2% from May. Of specific note is the sold price to assessed value ratio. On average for June, homes sold at 95% of the assessed value. The average seller subsidy is running at about $7,000. Net-net: homes in Loudoun County are selling for about 93.5% of assessed value.

From the Loudoun Daily Market Watch, we see listing activity declining, withdrawals rising and sold properties remaining constant at about 400 per month. If this trend continues, inventory should start decreasing again.

The real question prompted by this data analysis: What factors are causing prices to remain as high as they are with selling pressures in a buyer's market? The real answer is somewhat elusive. Is it sellers holding that firm on price? Is it the mix of higher priced homes becoming more affordable? What is the real year over year price change?

One of our readers, R. Timm, suggested an approach to try to normalize average sold values by the average assessed value. Assuming average assessments are flat 2006 to 2007, we performed these calculations and plotted the results on the following chart. Looking at June 2007, sold prices have dropped by as mush as 28 to 30% year over year this month. Our biggest problem with this approach is two fold: 1) assessed values are not always accurate and 2) homes sold in the first half of the year most likely had 2005 assessed values in the listing when listed. The latter explains the slow rise in average assessed value the first few months of 2006. It would be a significant manual research project to obtain the true assessed value from county records for each of the homes in the sample period.


R. suggested another approach using above grade finished square feet as the normalizing factor and, in fact, performed those calculations for me. Rational here is that square footage is a significant factor in home value (as is age and size of lot). It shows a May year over year decline in the 15% range. This seems much more reasonable. I haven't had time to generate the flash graph but, here's a picture of R.'s result.



Thanks R.!

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