Diana Olick over at CNBC puts out a lot of relevant data. Jumbos are really making the news these days. (You saw my last related post, right?)
“It seems that while the middle and lower end of the market was seeing real price recovery this Spring, the high end, which was pretty flat all fall, started to really tank from March through May.
Not surprisingly, the inventory of high end homes surged in January, just before that price drop and is continuing to climb.”
One real estate broker I’m working with in the Calabasas area is tweaking her business to increasingly implement alternative strategies for her high end clients. One of her listings isn’t moving because the sellers are insisting on $1,100,000, when the market only wants to pay $900K – $950K. (If they wait too much longer, the market might only want to pay $800K!)
If she can get this listing sold, then they’ll buy this other $2mil home they’ve got their eye on, so getting the listing sold for asking price is worth $3mil in business. We’re working on it . . . if we can get them to offer terms, then there’s a good chance they can get their price.
There’s not much help for many high end homeowners who are already far under water and have unattractive short term financing in place, but there are a few we can help who still have equity and happen to have great long term financing . . . but they’d better not sit around! Those trends above don’t look especially promising.