DECATUR — If the Decatur housing market were the TV starship Enterprise, you could find your home selling at warp speed or plodding for months on impulse power.
The pricey end of the universe has definitely been the slower end of the market. Statistics from the Decatur Association of Realtors, for example, showed that no homes priced at $300,000 or more sold in February. But, despite what has generally been a sluggish start to the year, eight homes sold in the $70,000 to $99,999 range in February, and another eight sold in the $100,000 to $139,999 category.
“I have heard higher priced homes were sitting but, in our price range, it seemed like people were grabbing good homes,” said Julie Griffin. She and husband, Chad, and their 18-year-old son, Chase, got a good deal on a spacious three bedroom ranch listed for more than $89,000 on North Country Club Road and didn’t hesitate: they snapped it up after it had been on the market barely two weeks.
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They were coming out of a rental home in Harristown and had no chain to slow them down when they made their offer. “It’s got a new roof, windows, furnace and new kitchen cabinets,” added Julie Griffin. “If we had waited to think it over, it would have been gone.”
The latest verbal reports from Realtors, spoken to after the official Decatur Association of Realtors numbers were compiled, do reveal all market segments are now showing distinct signs of intelligent life thanks to a warm and early spring. But even in the winter and when the weather was bad, home shoppers may not have been buying but they were still browsing out in the vast expanse of cyberspace. Realtor Internet sites have become convenient portals to explore potential new homes via pictures and they now serve as the first stage in a filtering process to shortlist or reject potential prospects.
“Then buyers come out to actually see the home and the neighborhood and everything that surrounds it,” said Shirley Henrichsmeyer, a broker associate with Glenda Williamson Realty. “Today, actually seeing a house is the second part of the puzzle for buyers.”
Henrichsmeyer sold the Griffin family their home and she sold a $121,000 house on West Melrose Drive to the Richter family from Cedar Falls, Iowa, who did extensive online shopping before making the trek to confront real property in the real world. As the new principal of the LSA High School in Decatur, Richter knows the value of doing his homework. The principal and his wife, Kari, who will teach kindergarten at the Lutheran School Association, spent months online searching for the ideal home for themselves and their children, Justin, 9, and 5-year-old Josiah.
“We actually enjoyed the experience,” Nathan Richter said. “It was so great being able to look at houses before we even got to Decatur and, when we did get there, we had already narrowed it down to five or six we wanted to see.”
Richter said the house market in Cedar Falls, largely sheltered from the recession by being home to major John Deere facilities and a massive Target distribution center, was moving at light speed with houses selling very fast. The Decatur-Macon County market also has been fairly well sheltered from the wild swings seen in many other areas, but it has been feeling a slowing gravitational pull in recent years as sales numbers dipped slightly.
The Decatur Association of Realtors stats showed 678 active listings in February this year with 59 sold and 11½ months of housing inventory on the books. In February a year ago, there were 637 active listings, 62 had sold and the inventory stood at 10.3 months. The average sale price lost altitude as well, standing at $79,131 in February this year compared to $96,898 at this time a year ago. Average days on the market was up, too, rising from 131 in February 2011 to 140 in February 2012.
Realtor Glenda Williamson believes the numbers reflect some of the fallout from the reshuffle of Tate & Lyle jobs from Decatur to Hoffman Estates and she is waiting to see what the effects will be from Archer Daniels Midland Co.’s recent round of layoffs. But she said it’s important to remember that workers are constantly coming into this area, too, and the overall housing market was picking up steam that should be reflected in better numbers for March.
And the comparison of full year-over-year figures shows the sales trend is still down, but not by much. The Decatur Association of Realtors logged 1,176 home sales in 2010 compared to 1,128 in 2011, with average days on the market rising from 122 in 2010 to 125 in 2011. But the average sale price in 2011 was $109,378 compared to 2010’s average of $105,965.
Williamson said buyers who are venturing out in 2012 in the quest to colonize new space won’t waste their time on a house that doesn’t look inviting, whatever it costs and whether it’s being viewed in this world or the virtual version. And having any house for sale that’s filled with wallpaper is the equivalent of firing photon torpedoes at yourself: you’re going to have a bad day.
“If buyers see a lot of wallpaper in a house on the Internet or anywhere, they won’t go inside to look, it doesn’t get shown,” said Williamson. “People don’t have the time to redecorate.”
Realtor Judy Cooper, who works with her husband, Howard, at Brinkoetter and Associates, said houses in all price ranges that sell are invariably clean, tidy, uncluttered, free of defects and priced realistically. She said a qualified buyer, thanks to ever more stringent lender requirements, is a precious commodity and if one of them makes an offer on your house, try to work with it.
“When that offer first comes in, it may be a disappointment to the seller, but try to meet them somewhere where you can agree,” added Cooper. “Don’t let loose of qualified buyers because they are hard to come by.”
And yet even when the house is spic and span, priced right and pleasing to the eye, that fabled qualified buyer may still ask Scotty to beam them up if the potential new home doesn’t smell right. “One of the hardest things to do is to have to walk into a home as a Realtor and tell somebody ‘Your house has an odor,’ perhaps because they’re smokers or it could be pets,” said Cooper.
“But if the house smells bad, it’s a big turn off for buyers. The smart seller has got to be aware of all the buyer’s senses.”
