Buyers know the market is slowing

From the Courier Post:

House sales slow
By JEANNE RIDGWAY

It’s been two years since real estate customers competed furiously to buy houses, scribbling purchase offers and casting them like bouquets at sellers’ feet.

Powered by low-interest mortgage rates and huge buyer demand, New Jersey’s residential resale values exploded 85 percent over the last five years.

“Two years ago, even my dog could have sold real estate,” said Anthony Yula, manager of Budd Realty in Woodbury. “Hang a sign around his neck and get him to bark, and the house would have sold.”

Once super-charged, the real estate market canters along at a slower pace today.

New Jersey’s resale inventory was 67 percent higher in August than it was in January, Patrick O’Keefe of the New Jersey Builders Association said.

“Selling this backlog of homes will take nine months, even if no more listings are taken,” O’Keefe said.

A chill wind is blowing for future real estate values, some industry observers think. But in South Jersey, most “solds” are holding their values, Brian Belko said.

“I don’t see a decrease in prices, but I am seeing an increase in inventory,” said Belko, a top Realtor nationally, working for Prudential Fox & Roach Realtors in Turnersville. “The houses that are selling now are the ones in the best conditions and the best locations and priced competitively,” he said.

Cathie Galanti, assistant manager at RE/MAX Preferred in Sewell, says her office has 14 percent more listings now than it did six months ago. Higher-priced homes, she notes, are slipping in value.

“Prices are definitely not going up as quickly and homes in the range of $300,000 and above seem to to be coming down, about 7 percent within the last year,” she said.

In New Jersey, Drew Fishman wonders if some customers are being scared off by national media reports.

“I believe the biggest problem is perception, that the market is awful and that some unknown balloon has burst,” said Fishman, who is first vice president of the New Jersey Association of Realtors.

Tracy L. Harris said her buyers seem to be in a wait-and-see mode.

“They know that the market is slowing down,” said Harris, who hangs her license with RE/MAX Preferred in Sewell. “They are seeing that sellers are cooperating more and dropping (listing) prices more than they have in the past.”

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