Pat Kennedy - Your Washington, DC Real Estate Connection

President Obama is expected to sign the revised home buyer credit some time tomorrow.  And, at the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, I'm not sure how I really feel about the whole thing.

With the increased income caps of $125,000 ($225,000 for married couples), more people in the DC area will be able to take advantage of it.  But think about it a minute.  Is the idea to help first time buyers?  Or is it to help sellers?  And who are the sellers? A lot of them are banks selling foreclosed properties.

Um.  Is this one more bank subsidy?

The subsidy is providing an incentive for buyers to go into the market.  With more buyers in the market, home prices are increasing in some areas, and here in Washington, we are starting to see multiple offers in the double digits for well-priced homes.  So the buyer's tax credit may be offset by higher home prices, at least at the lower end of the price spectrum. 

I have to keep in mind that the lower end of our price range in Upper Northwest DC is upper brackets in other parts of the area.  Many neighborhoods east of Rock Creek Park and in other quadrants will benefit.  And the credit will likely benefit condo sellers.  

While this isn't a bad thing for sellers and the buyers who will get the tax credit, remember that a tax credit is $8,000 per transaction being subtracted from the plus side of the

national budget, which is already bursting at the seams.

In the meantime, I will try to do my part to make hay while the credit is in effect.  Hopefully, the credit will benefit Realtors® around the country, and we will pay more in income taxes, unless of course, we make less than the income cap and buy a place.

This mural is on the side of my favorite bookstore, Politics and Prose on Connecticut Avenue.  They have a large collection of both fiction and non-fiction, as well as great historical stuff about Washington, DC's rich history. 

© 2009 Patricia Kennedy. Unless otherwise noted, the content, both written and in pictures, is the property of Patricia Kennedy . If you would like to use this image, please  email me (housepat@mac.com) with your request. I'll almost certianly say yes, and ask only that you provide a link back to my original content as well as an acknowledgment.  The same thing applies to any other material you see posted here on Active Rain or on any of my other blogs.

On my first date with my sweetie, he suggested that we go out to dinner somewhere.  I immediately thought of Yanni's Greek Taverna in Cleveland Park.  It's that kind of a place.

OK, Yanni's isn't really a dive.  It's a no-frills Greek restaurant with tasty food, great Greek wine (at least the white wine) and an owner who looks a bit like a Greek Gerard Depardieu.

And the food is fun. 

They have all the usual appetizers, hummus, tzatziki, taramosalata, grape leaves, or just get the sampler. 

The Greek salad is huge, and my favorite, the Taverna salad (chopped lettuce with lots of fresh dill, feta cheese and dressed with tzatziki) is also big enough to share.

My favorite entrees are the charbroiled squid or octopus, and you're not into eating sea creatures, they have all of the standards as well.

In warm weather, their outdoor cafe is a place where you are sure to see someone you know, either at the next table or walking down Connecticut Avenue. 

Now, the service is a little bit on the flaky side.  A couple of the waiters are known to be occasionally grumpy - no one is going to fawn all over you.  But they do get the food to the table in a reasonable amount of time, and they'll get the order right.  And when it does arrive, I've found it to taste quite wonderful. 

And that's the most important thing, after all.

There will be a neighborhood Halloween party for Crestwood children of all ages this afternoon at "The Point", located at 18th and Shepherd Streets NW. 

It starts at 3 and ends at 4:30.

There will be treats, and contributions of anything with sugar (well, not coffee) from grown neighbors are welcomed.

It could get scary as our little goblins and gouls collect their first candy of the day and check out the woods, that I'm sure will be appropriately decorated for the festivities!  So grab your costume and, if possible, find a child to bring with you. 

It should be fun!

Our office email had an interesting thread today.

Blog Buddie Ed Schneider wrote an email note to colleagues about writing an offer on a house in Mount Pleasant in a twelve-way bidding war.  Then my colleagues began to chime in, one after another, telling war stories of being in double-digit multiple contract situations over the past week. 

In these situations, here are some of the things that people are doing to get the winning offer:

• Having the house pre-inspected so they go in without an inspection contingency
• Crossing out the financing contingency
• Crossing out the appraisal contingency
• including a healthy looking financial information sheet
• Including an obscenely high earnest money check
• Settling at the sellers' convenience
• Including an escalator clause agreeing to top competing offers by at least thousands of dollars with a cap way above the asking price.

Is participating in a bidding war a good idea? To get the house, you have to eliminate every way of getting out of the offer.  So if when you wake up in a panic about three days after you are the winner of your dream house wondering what on earth you were thinking, well too bad!  It'll cost you a bundle to get out of the deal - like that obscenely high earnest money check you wrote!

Earlier in the decade, if you wanted to buy a house, you often didn't have a choice.  But today, there may be options.  And when you do participate, you are doing your part to run up the prices in the market where you plan to buy.

When I'm not the listing agent, I hate bidding wars.  Over the years, my clients won their share, but I sometimes felt a little queasy as I represented them.  More often than not, I tried to work with them to avoid these situations.  How?

• Homes that are look fabulous tend to attract multiples.  Why not use your imagination and go for the ugly and poorly staged (and reasonably priced) stepsister who, with a face lift and tummy tuck could become quite a beauty.
• Homes that are priced below market tend to attract multiple offers, often pushing the sales price to way above market.  It might make sense to look at homes that are priced at or a little above their market value.
• I never ruled out the homes that had been on the market for eons.  Often they are a pain to show, have a resident pit bull, or some other issue that isn't related to the price or quality of the property.

In the early years of the decade, it was really hard to avoid bidding wars, and we felt lucky to be writing an offer on a place with only 4 or 5 other buyers.  But today, in most price ranges and DC area neighborhoods, there is a lot to choose from. 

You need to try to avoid getting caught up in the need to win - and the same thing applies to your agent!  Just because 15 other people are going wacko over a house doesn't mean you have to do it, too!

© 2009 Patricia Kennedy. Unless otherwise noted, the content, both written and in pictures, is the property of Patricia Kennedy . If you would like to use this image, please  email me (housepat@mac.com) with your request. I'll almost certianly say yes, and ask only that you provide a link back to my original content as well as an acknowledgment.  The same thing applies to any other material you see posted here on Active Rain or on any of my other blogs.

© 2009 Patricia Kennedy. Unless otherwise noted, the content, both written and in pictures, is the property of Patricia Kennedy . If you would like to use this image, please  email me (housepat@mac.com) with your request. I'll almost certianly say yes, and ask only that you provide a link back to my original content as well as an acknowledgment.  The same thing applies to any other material you see posted here on Active Rain or on any of my other blogs.

Chevy Chase isn’t just a goofy guy who used to be on Saturday Night Live.  In the early 1900’s it became one of Washington’s early street car communities.

Many of the early homes were built from kits purchased from Sears Roebuck and transported on trolley flat cars.    The contractor would load everything from the flat bed to a wagon and then to the building lot. 

There are also many of the Washington area cliché houses in Chevy Chase, center hall brick colonials.  These came later, typically in the 1930’s. 

The architecture in Chevy Chase is pretty eclectic.  There are homes in all sizes and shapes and styles, and while many have been added onto and renovated, others are close to their original condition.  This can make it pretty interested when we do a competitive market analysis for a client.

There are currently 38 homes for sale in Chevy Chase, with prices ranging from a lot of $598,000 to a high of $1,895,000.  To see these listings, you may click here.

While the trolley are now in a museum, Chevy Chase does have a Metro stop at the Friendship Heights station.  The neighborhood public schools have a good reputation, and from most of the neighborhood, it's an easy walk to restaurants shopping, and the Avalon Theater.   So, if you are thinking about a move to Washington, Chevy Chase might be a good neighborhood to consider.  

© 2009 Patricia Kennedy. Unless otherwise noted, the content, both written and in pictures, is the property of Patricia Kennedy . If you would like to use this image, please  email me (housepat@mac.com) with your request. I'll almost certianly say yes, and ask only that you provide a link back to my original content as well as an acknowledgment.  The same thing applies to any other material you see posted here on Active Rain or on any of my other blogs.

While I love working all parts of Washington's market, from tiny condos to the big ones in Georgetown and Kalorama, the high end of our market is just fascinating.  Let's face it, showing big gorgeously renovated homes is probably more fun for most of us that traipsing through run down wrecks that smell like cats.  Strangely enough, though, it's a lot easier to sell a run down wreck at the low end of the pricing scale than to negotiate the sale of most upper brackets properties.

There has been lots of anecdotal evidence that things are slow at the higher price points. 

It may be my faulty memory, but it seems like homes in neighborhoods like Georgetown, Kalorama, and Spring Valley have higher asking prices than they did at the peak of the market, which was probably somewhere in 2007.  So I decided to take a closer look to see what kind of story the numbers tell.

There are currently 68 homes listed for over $3million.  The top 50 range is list prices between a low of $3,945,000 to a high of $39,500,000, with an average current list price of $6,757,920.  This is almost 9% lower than their original list prices that were an average of $7,547,420, at least during the current listing period.  (Many were listed before their current listing at higher prices, which would increase the average.)  The average days on the market is 235.  

Right now, there are only four homes in this price range that are under contract.

Here is the breakdown, comparing the average sales figures for the top 50 sales during first three quarters of the last three years.

Year                           2007              2008             2009
Original list price     $4,641,860    $3,977,841    $3,595,736
Final list price         $4,641,860    $3,881,600    $3,420,328
Sold price              $4,248,914     $3,587,110    $3,052,576
Days on market       125 days        145 days        228 days

The days on the market numbers do not include the "private exclusives" that were not placed into the MRIS database until after they sold.

What this is showing is that the 2009 average list prices are (even after price reductions) are double the average sold price.  And they are much higher than the selling prices for 2007, the year the market is thought to have peaked.  And even if you exclude two large, historic estates that are currently for sale in Georgetown for $39,500,000 and $19,500,000, the today's average list prices are still much higher $5,810,333.

In addition to perhaps overly optimistic price tags, there are also issues with obtaining upper brackets financing.  But I think it's mostly overly optimistic price tags!

And it wasn't my imagination or faulty memory!  What a relief!

But the really good news is, if you are in search of a luxury home in Washington, DC, it appears to be very much of a buyers' market, and there are opportunities to purchase a wonderful home

And if you want to see what the top 50 homes in DC look like, just click here!