Note to Hanover Sellers: Thank You for your Asking Price !
August 31st, 2010 categories: Check the Market Conditions, Learn Why to Sell with Us
Our snarky alter egos wanted to title this article “Hanover Sellers: How Your Asking Price Paid My Seller an Easy $20,000.” but we refrained. Ah well, must be softening with age. Read on…
A few weeks back we spoke to a prospective seller about selling a Hanover house that had been in their family for decades. Read the rest of this entry »
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“The Ancient Mariner of Real Estate”: Hanover & Lebanon Style
January 22nd, 2010 categories: Check the Market Conditions, Learn Why to Sell with Us, Relocation - Design your Local Life
Take a look up and down the streets of your town. See any FOR SALE signs? Does it seem like they have been there for a while? Search Realtor.com for listings in the towns around you. Does it seem like there is a lot for sale? Well it’s true – statistically, anyway.
But here is something funny: There are a sizable number of willing & able buyers around. They are not the fence-sitters of 2008 (& early 2009) who said “the time just isn’t right”. These buyers know the time IS right. What holds them back? Most commonly they say “There is nothing on the market!” frustration evident in their tone.
Houses, House Every Where - or not really?
Who is right? The numbers or the buyers? Well we think Coleridge was right: “Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.” It is increasingly difficult to get a truly good house at a fair asking price to stand out amidst all the overpriced inventory out there.
Home owners looking to sell want buyers to say things like “this house would work for us at $XX thousand less than the asking price” but buyers rarely do say that. They simply remove a house from their list and keep searching BECAUSE IT IS HUMAN NATURE TO FORESTALL MAJOR LIFE DECISIONS IN THE GUISE OF PRUDENCE. Smart sellers represented by professional agents combine a positive showing-experience with a price that motivates action to get able buyers to overcome their natural inertia. Ask us about putting the WILLING back into WILLING & ABLE ! ( contact: sam@shelleyandsam.com )
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Is the Dartmouth Real Estate Office Rational?
January 18th, 2010 categories: Connect with Dartmouth Life, Find Strategies for Buyers, Relocation - Design your Local Life
Dartmouth College Housing
Loaded question? You bet, but The Confidential is not backing away.
Dartmouth College frequently has houses that it owns but prefers not to. That part is rational. Unfortunately in the process of dispatching residential real estate the college makes the same mistakes, time and time again. The processes destroy value for Dartmouth College, for its employees/faculty and for the general public.
Please don’t misunderstand…I am sure that the Real Estate Office does good work in the management of institutional and commercial projects (as evidenced by the beauty of the campus and the great ambience of the town of Hanover itself) but in our professional context – being residential real estate - the writing is on the wall: Dartmouth College has poor capacity to understand the value of residential real estate in Hanover and a rocky track record of showing prospective faculty/staff how to make a soft landing in what can be a very frustratiting real estate market.
A word to the wise…make sure you get the market-tested perspective of a real estate professional like the authors of www.uppervalleyconfidential (shameless plug) before entertaining ANY real estate offering.
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Killer Question: How is the real estate market RIGHT NOW?
July 10th, 2009 categories: Check the Market Conditions
Hanover – Lebanon-Hartford Real Estate on Main Street
July of 2009: Obama is no longer the “new kid on the block” but at the same time it is too early to tell what the outcome of his multi-pronged agenda will be. Virtually everyone on Main St asks me some form of the Killer Question: “How’s the residential real estate market RIGHT NOW?” The Killer Question is asked so frequently and in such a serious manner- I think people are looking for any scrap of evidence that will tell them which way is up in this economy!
The Killer Question comes in two flavors:
“Is anything selling?” and “How far down are prices from the peak?” Read the rest of this entry »
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The Confidential Guide: How to lose $200,000 in Hanover NH real estate
May 29th, 2009 categories: Check the Market Conditions, Learn Why to Sell with Us
This story gets repeated pretty darn frequently in various forms but this version is the rarest gem – a full-blown, gold-plated teaching moment! I’m sitting at my desk in 2006 when I get a phone call from an attorney friend. Will the Confidentials go and talk to an elderly couple that she is helping with retirement planning? It seems that a good deal of their future depends on the equity they have in their Hanover house. In order for the plan to have validity they need a reality check on market value and what would be involved with capturing that value. Happy to do it for a friend, right?
So we have the conversation with said elders and it goes great – a love fest. Everyone is open with their ideas, hopes and opinions. We go off to do our valuation work and we come up with a market-focused opinion of value and what they need to do to tap the value. Attorney is happy – planning is done with greater confidence, end of story. Hold on – not the end! Read the rest of this entry »
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Buy-in Fees in the Upper Valley: No Big Deal or Scary Seller’s Tax?
May 15th, 2009 categories: Check the Market Conditions, Find Strategies for Buyers, Learn Why to Sell with Us
Brook Hollow, Village Green, Oak Knoll, College Hill, Eastman, Quechee…homeowners associations big and small are voting in buy-in fees or capital reserve fees or non-recurring buyer contributions…call them what you will, they appear to be here to stay.
Are buy-ins bad? The Confidentials tend not to label buy-in fees in terms of good or bad. We prefer to gauge market reaction to a fee and quantify how a fee will affect our clients who are OWNERS (or soon will be). To begin, we divide Buy-in fees into either NOMINAL or MATERIAL.
The definitions are simple…as a buyer if you found out about said buy-in fee AFTER your purchase contract was negotiated would the size of the fee be enough to make you want to walk-away from the property? If you answer NO (or more likely “grumble, grumble, grumble…NO”) then the fee is NOMINAL. On the other hand, if you answer YES (or “H*LL YES”, “I’M OUT OF HERE” or any derivative) then the fee is MATERIAL. It turns out that that threshold number is typically 1/2 of 1% of the contract price (or $1,000 on a $200,000 purchase price). Read the rest of this entry »
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Are VT Property Taxes Lower Than NH ?
May 2nd, 2009 categories: Check the Market Conditions, Find Strategies for Buyers
This question comes up all the time with first time home buyers and people relocating to Hanover, Norwich, Lebanon or Hartford. Its roots lie in the fact that VT has an income tax and NH does not. We observe that buyers are motivated to ask this question partly by anecdotal conversations (”I have heard from colleagues/friends…”) and partly by a sense of fairness (”It seems like it oughta be…”).
This answer is as concise as we can make it – it is partly factual and partly anecdotal & it explains why WE ON THE FRONTLINES know that the raw facts only tell part of the story.
Here is the factual part…consider a 3 bedroom Cape with a 2 car garage sitting on 0.3-1.5 acres built between 1950 and 1979. Now place that house in each of the four cities/towns in the center of the Upper Valley. Property taxes look like this (using 2008 data, rounded to the nearest $100.00):
- Hartford, VT $4,000
- Hanover, NH $5,000
- Lebanon, NH $6,700
- Norwich, VT $7,100
Seems pretty straightforward, right? Not really! VT is not uniformly lower from these four points but on the AVERAGE it seems VT is 20% lower – the problem is clients don’t buy “AVERAGE HOUSES”, they buy “ONE UNIQUE HOUSE” so averages tend to misinform buyers.
So here comes the anecotal part (and if we were betting-types we would put our money on OUR OWN anecdotal knowledge when compared to what colleagues say around the lunchroom table): If the decision were so straightforward then ONLY NH HOUSES would sell but we know that is is far from the case. Plenty of people who intended to buy on one side of the river found themselves ending up on the other! Why?
The answer is DEFINITIVELY one to be made on a case-by-case basis. Living in VT can mean a higher TOTAL TAX BILL (payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes and taxes on investments) but weighing the factors can tip the balance for an individual consumer. Things to consider are:
- If you work in VT – you’ll pay VT income tax (even living in NH)
- If you find house prices (for equal properties) to be cheaper in VT
- If you simply can not find a property that truly ”moves you” in NH
- If your need for (or belief in) social services outstrips what NH offers
- If you always dreamed of life in a wonderful, small-town VT community
In summary, THE CONFIDENTIALS say: don’t limit your choices without testing the waters on either side of the MIGHTY Connecticut River!
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The Curse of the Evil Septic System
April 23rd, 2009 categories: Find Strategies for Buyers, Learn Why to Sell with Us
Most properties in the Norwich – Hanover – Lebanon – Hartford area are NOT serviced by municipal sewer systems and we are seeing an increase in “deal casualties” relating to septic systems. The CONFIDENTIALS notice two factors that contribute to this trend: the age of the housing stock and the lack of rationale in determining remedial actions resulting from test reports.
House built in the 1960’s-1980’s that have not had system upgrades or replacements may be due and that makes up a good portion of local housing. That’s the objective fact – now here comes the subjectivity…there is a HUGE tendency for the miscommunication, misinterpretation and misapplication of septic inspection results.
Every one of us can recall times that a simple repair (say $3,500) was billed as an epic problem (say $25,000) by an overzealous inspector or by an understandably agitated buyer. Does that mean that all inspectors (or buyers) that call for expensive repairs are over-reacting? Not at all! But more commonly the RIGHT ANSWER lies somewhere between doing nothing and the seller paying for a full replacement. Read the rest of this entry »
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Can Valley Confidential’s “peak behind the curtain” help sellers AND buyers operating in the same market?
April 12th, 2009 categories: Find Strategies for Buyers, Learn Why to Sell with Us
A giant YES! It is fiction to think that buyers will only gain when sellers lose (or vice versa).
Look at it this way – a seller with realistic market knowledge and sensible price expectations can expect that buyers who know “value” will be quicker to offer and make offers closer to asking price if they suspect other educated buyers will do the same. Buyers who see an asking price that accurately reflect the condition and limitations of a house will get fewer surprises during a building inspection leading to fewer deals falling apart over things like failing septic systems or roofs. Sellers who use fact-based pricing and buyers who negotiate in-line with these realistic asking prices are more likely to strike deals that appraise successfully and are more likely to be blessed by the bank that will write the loan. If these hurdles have been crossed with minimal discord then attorneys for buyer and seller are more likely to reach agreements on contract terms, that being the final step to a successful closing.
So if you are a realist – how can it be any other way? Smarter sellers and better buyers make successful transactions and there is NO CONFLICT in a single source that empowers both sides to understand their realistic range of options and outcomes.
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Market Trends – what to measure?
April 12th, 2009 categories: Check the Market Conditions
For purposes of markets, pricing & trends – what constitutes the Upper Valley?
The Upper Valley of NH & VT (or more correctly the Upper Connecticut River Valley) is geographically centered on:
- Hanover & Lebanon on the NH side of the Connecticut River and
- Norwich & Hartford (being White River Jct, Wilder, West Hartford & Quechee) on the VT side of the Connecticut River
Beyond this central core the Upper Valley stretches about 20km in each direction to include these towns:
VERMONT
Fairlee
Hartford
Hartland
Norwich
Sharon
Strafford
Thetford
Windsor
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Canaan
Cornish
Enfield
Grantham
Lyme
Orange
Piermont
Orford
Hanover
Springfield
What factors drive real estate pricing in the Upper Valley?
For the area as a whole relative to other markets (in no particular order):
- Hiring at major employers (being Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Hypertherm and the VA Hospital)
- Quality of life in village settings like ours vs. urban settings (see www.theurbanrefugee.com)
- Growth in communications and transportation infrastructure (in support of telecommuting professions)
For the relative pricing of houses within the region (in order of decreasing importance):
- Proximity to jobs with the highest job density being Hanover & Lebanon
- School system
- Proximity to schools, commerce and town services
- Age, condition & size
- Lake or river access
- Views, privacy, landscaping and lack of traffic noise
- Acreage and outbuildings (barns, workshops, guest houses)
So using these definitions – who did well in the Upper Valley in 2008? In Q1 2009? See the next post for specifics.
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