Real Estate Trends

We knew it wouldn’t be long because when you attract somebody like Boeing to the state of South Carolina and 4000 direct jobs there would definitely have to be a big ripple in the pond of economic development that’s gonna be felt statewide.

Marion county announced that they are bringing a plane repair company that is going to bring 300 brand new jobs. Why is that important? Well, Marion county has been losing jobs for a LONG time. It’s kind of one of the black eyes in that area of South Carolina. “The best thing coming and going out of Marion is the road to the beach”, is the way I’ve heard it put a lot of times. Now there are going to be 300 high quality jobs brought into that area. Now, the other reason that’s important is that Marion is about an hour and a half away from where the Boeing plant is gonna be and York County is about 2 hours away. So, there are opportunities for bringing these ancillary businesses in. We are actively seeking those businesses and hopefully we are going to have some announcements in York County in the next 12 to 24 months that will be tied to that also!

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The entire state of SC got a big Thanksgiving gift and a Christmas gift for the next 10 or 20 years with the announcement of Boeing bringing their huge assembly plant to the Charleston area. This is a new world that we live in and announcements like that are few and far between.  I gather it will lead to more of our smaller upstarts. One of the funniest things that happened while I was in San Diego was our contingent from Washington State seeking out the SC group. Those were interesting discussions. But where the good part of the Boeing acquisition for our state comes in is the additional ancillary jobs that it creates. Don’t underplay the large numbers that come out of Boeing, when we start talking about 150 million dollar investment and the creation of 12,000 to 60,000 jobs. Those are big numbers but one of the things that don’t make the news is the 2000, 5000 and 10,000 square foot acquisitions that happen to help support businesses. Also, don’t under estimate those acquisitions of property during this time and how it’s going to add to our recovery. I mean 10,000; you can put almost 100 people in an office environment with 10,000 sq feet. That’s a big building and that’s a lot of jobs.  As the recovery occurs you are going to start seeing little retail spaces starting to be gobbled up and also office spaces, so as those for lease and for sale signs start to disappear. Know that our residential market is also recovering and we are going to start seeing, in my opinion, some price increases.

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Tip #3: Test fire alarms, smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors, and vacuum out the dust. Batteries should be checked every six months to ensure that they’re working.

Tip #4: Remove excess leaves and damaged branches from trees surrounding the house. Dead branches have the potential to break and fall, ruining roofs, decks, or vehicles and possibly causing injuries to people.

brought to you by Old Republic Home Protection Home Warranties www.orhp.com

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The local development community is a lot smaller than it used to be. The reality of it is, us as consumers, when you look at a developer and the money that they had made over a period of time, it’s easy to say, golly they were the evil ones, making all the money. Remember, these guys were also (and ladies) taking all the risk. And that has played out as the economy changed and people and big builders were not building as many houses. These were the ones that were stuck with their projects making sure that they could continue to make their payments and go from there. Now these local developers, the ones that still have projects going, are starting to see a little more movement in the projects. Where we were almost at a stand still on a lot of them. We’re starting to see a lot of interest in which lots are being purchased, whether or not for investment or for home builders coming in and building those projects out. We’re seeing new home builders in the US, kind of like the successors to the big (maybe) 12 that were out there originally, like Centex and Pulte have now merged. But you also have DR Horton, who’s done well in our area. You have a lot of these builders that will continue to build good products and continue to purchase up lots. So the developers are starting to see a little bit of a turn in the amount of lots on the market. It’s been said before, those who take great risk, should have the potential for great reward. And what people forget, is that a lot of these projects that you see coming up out of the ground are financed by the bank with money put in by the local developer. During this downturn the bank climate changed drastically as well which put these guys and ladies backs up against the wall. A lot of them have, and what I believe we’re going to see in the future is that we are going to see more of the developers coming with, their own cash which helps these projects go without that extra hand in the pocket. Also great for the local economy.

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1. You need to find your Rinehart Realtor.  Which means find the person that you are comfortable with disclosing financial information and more importantly that’s gonna help you find the house of your dreams!

2. Find a Lender.Find the lender that wants to lend the money. We have Bank of America in our office. Suzie Wright, a wonderful lender and certainly is very apt to helping our people find property and a mortgage to fit your needs. Getting pre-approved with a lender is somewhat guaranteeing that you can get into a house.

3. Find a good Inspector. Either your lender or your Rinehart Realtor can help you do that. Find somebody that will give you their report online in a timely manner and that doesn’t mind you being there while the inspection is going on. The inspector spends the time that you would not spend, because your busy looking at the color of the walls, how’s the carpet, where will the couch go, etc.

to be cont’d

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There are a number of Mortgage Protection Programs out there right now. It seems that every franchise has decided that they wanna try and get in this marketplace. The beauty of the Bank of America protection program and it’s partnership with Rinehart Realty is that we’ve been able to eliminate some of the constraints on many of these programs. The big one is that this is the borrowers protection program. The borrower is the one protected which means it is not tied to a seller’s particular home. It is not just limited to employees, it also protects the self employed individual. There is no age limit and as I’ve mentioned before there is no cap in the coverage for your mortgage payment. It not only benefits the $150,000 buyer but also the high end market as well. There are some great deals on the higher end price range but a lot of times people are concerned about their ability to cover that payment should they lose their position. What a great opportunity to take action with Rinehart Realty and Bank of America who has your back should you fall on hard times!

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Visit yorkcountyrealestateinfo.com for some great real estate information! Contact us and let us know what you think of the site and feel free to send requests for certain types of information you would like to see on the site.

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At the NAR meeting in Washington we spent the entire Tuesday in the Realtors Real Estate Summit which was two separate sessions with an incredible panel. We started the morning off with Pat Buchanan and Harold Fort going at each other from the Republican and Democratic side and ended the day with Alan Greenspan. An incredible day, with everybody saying the same thing, “the real estate trend for this year is the quicker there is a recovery in housing, the sooner we will come our of the recession”. One of the interesting speakers during that time was the CEO of Wells Fargo Home Loans. He got beat up pretty hard. Pretty much what came out of that discussion with him and the economists on the panel with him at the time was if we can free up the money into the market. That means use the money that was in the original stimulus package instead of buying banks, instead of restructuring banks, actually put it out to the consumer. Which we’re starting to see some in the area of commercial lending to new businesses. We also starting to see banks tell people that now is the time to come get a loan. So it’s not just housing but also the business sector. Once we start that, once we go through that process then we should start to see the recovery.

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I attended the National Association of Realtors Meeting in Washington, D.C. and everybody from Alan Greenspan all the way down to every economist that saw us including the head of FDIC, the head of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack all said the same thing. Housing will return us from this recession. It will lead us out, it will be the leading indicator and it will be how we recover as a nation from this recession. We as Realtors were very loud on the issue of what will make this happen. FREE up the money. It really came down to nationally, how do you get the money in the hands of the consumer so that they can buy a house. Because, as I have mentioned before, housing also starts appliance sales, it helps the carpenter go back to work. It helps the plumber, the electrician , you name it. It puts these factories back in gear. We did hear from the Obama Administration that we’re beginning to see the bottom of this recession and when we get to the bottom you need to be buying. Buying a house! A lot of statistics are starting to show more sales picking up nationwide and that’s the number of transactions. We still have adjustment in prices in a lot of markets. Thank goodness in our market we’ve stayed pretty solid in our pricing.

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The luxury market or high-end home market is one trend that has definitely changed. It has been the area price range that has been hit the hardest around here locally. It has also been hit the hardest around the state of SC and obviously the nation.  What we’re seeing is an adjustment in those high-end homes. What used to be a 1.5 million dollar house may be selling for 1 million. Now that still sounds like a lot but certainly what you get for that million dollars is a lot. Something that I am certain that we are going to see in 2009 is the pick up in that price range. This means that as people become more comfortable that they’re not going to lose their job (these again are high income earners) they are going to feel more comfortable getting back into the market. This means selling their $300 thousand dollar houses to move into the larger house.

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