Mark Wisterman's Paradise & Lake Oroville Real Estate Blog

Just another run-of the mill week for Lake Oroville home sales last week. The average home price in Oroville last week is skewed downward by the sale of an older mobile home that sold for $6,000. If you excluded that sale from last week’s numbers the average sale would have been almost $121,ooo, which is in line with longer term market trends.

As it has been over the past few months, the number to pay close attention to is the inventory number. The number of homes for sale in the Oroville market are at their lowest point in nearly a year. Breaking below 300 for the first time since I began tracking the number. While a lower inventory of homes is normally good for prices, it can have an adverse effect on the market if the number gets too low. An inadequate number of homes for buyers to look at runs the risk of causing buyer frustration and shoving some of them back to the sidelines to wait for inventories to increase.

Well, enough from me today.  Here are this week’s numbers.

Expanded Lake Oroville Sales Stats

 Sales for the Lake Oroville real estate market took a turn for the better this past week. The average sold price was the highest it has been in a very long time thanks to the sale of a couple homes that had been on the market for quite some time. The sale of these two particular homes was also the reason for the nearly doubling of the “days on the market” time. One of the homes had been on the market 928 days and the other had been for sale for 897 days.

Once again, though, the number of the week to lookout for is the number of Oroville homes currently on the market. This number has hit another new low for this blog site and is threatening to go under 300 for the first time in probably two years.

We’ve all heard the old saying , “Give them an inch and they will take a mile.” Right?

Well, this has never held more true than it does today in this age of bank owned properties. No, this is not another one of those bank, bashing blog posts that seem to be everywhere these days. Quite frankly it is difficult to tell if the expanding trend of banks REQUIRING  more and more of a potential purchaser before accepting an offer, is the work of the banks or of some of the bank-employed REALTORS® that have hitched their fortunes to their bank-employer.

Let’s take a little walk down memory lane to see what I mean.

Inch #1-In the beginning, banks that owned foreclosed homes simply required that a buyer present a loan prequalification letter with any offer that was made on one of their homes. This seemed fair, as no seller wants to be dealing with a buyer that is not qualified for a loan.

Inch #2- It was then not good enough that the purchase contract stated that the buyer had given a deposit check to their agent. The bank wanted a copy of the check.

Inch #3-Next the major banks required that any prospective buyer be loan prequalified with their bank before they would consider the buyer’s offer. Great way for the bank’s loan officers to try and persuade a buyer to swtich their business to them. Yes, it is happening! Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t panic everyone!!!! These numbers do not appear to be accurate this week due to the Oroville Association of REALTOR®, The Chico Association of REALTORS®, and Paradise Association of REALTORS® switching to a new multiple listing service. It appears that some sales have not yet been reported into our new system by some of the Lake Oroville REALTORS®. By the looks of the numbers, I certainly hope that is the case.

Don’t spend much time on this but be sure to check back in next Tuesday to see how we are really doing.

I just added a new widget to this blog site in pursuit of my commitment to give you as much information as I can about the goings on in the Lake Oroville real estate market.

Now that I have finished compiling the sales statistics of the Lake Oroville housing market from the last 4+ years I can provide a more local perpective on the real estate market. 

Each month I will update the Northern California numbers as well as the Lake Oroville numbers. You now not only get to see what our local market is doing but can now compare how we are doing as compared to the rest of the north state. Be aware, though, that the Oroville housing numbers, being on a smaller scale, will show more volatility than the larger scale numbers of the Northern California region.  And, as I have said before, the trend is more important than the raw numbers.

With this added information at your finger tips, I now need YOU to provide ME with some information, and more importantly, your opinion.  Are the housing numbers I provide here helpful to you, or is it too much, or is it maybe not enough? I know this blog cannot be everything to everybody, but,  I want to be sure that what I provide you is what you feel you need to satisfy your hunger for all things real estate. Please leave your comments and let me know what you like as well as what you don’t like about this service. I appreciate your participation.

Through all the conversation and debate surrounding the condition of the housing market in this county, there is one thing I am sure we can all agreee on. The market has changed, is changing, and will continue to change going forward. Some of the change is good; some bad; some needed; some we could all do without.

A lot of what most of us would call “bad changes” for this market centers around the over zealous tightening of lending guidelines, and the knee jerk reaction of lawmakers and regulators that, so far, have inhibited the free market from working it’s “magic.”

Well, my friends, I can’t believe I am about to say this, but recently it seems that the government may have gotten something right with regards to assisting the market.

Today we invited Renee’ Jones from the local Mission Hills Mortgage office of the Lake Oroville real estate market to come to our office and give us an update on the new disclosure requirements that lenders must now make to borrowers during the loan process. Renee’ is a top notch loan officer who strives to stay on top of all the latest lending rules so I knew she would be up to speed on these new regulations.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development  recently mandated that as of January 1, 2010 all lenders must use the same prescribed format for disclosing the terms of a borrowers loan. Not only that, but the timing with which these Good Faith Estimates are to be  delivered to borrowers is also going to be more strictly enforced in order that terms and fees to a loan cannot be changed at the last minute. In fact some of the terms and fees, once disclosed, cannot change at all, safegaurding borrowers from the incompetent and/or dishonest acts that some lenders have used to increase their commissions on the loans they are selling. The new disclosure format will allow you, the borrower to more easily shop for the loan package that provides the most value for your money. Read the rest of this entry »

The following chart is something I produced to give you a visual idea of what the price ranges of  homes  currently for sale in the Lake Oroville real estate market..

As you can see, the inventory levels, as compared to nealry all other price ranges, are quite low in the $100,000 and below range which is what is mostly selling due to the $8,000 federal tax credit.  The highest inventory we see is in the $200,000 – $300,000 price range. In my view this is the price range that will need to pick up the sales pace before we see any lasting improvement in the level of home valuations.  Unfortunately, for sellers I don’t see a big turn in home sales at these price ranges in the near future. I hope, however that I am wrong.

Weekly sales data will be available here later today!

It seems that my blog posts may be being read even by Congress.

On November 14, 2009 I blogged about the financial state of The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the possibility of an increase in the minimum downpayment requirement from 3.5 percent to 5% in order to obtain an FHA loan to purchase a home in the Lake Oroville real estate market and beyond.

Seems that I am not the only one thinking this way. RealtyTimes.com has an article about this very thing.

CLICK HERE to read the article.

Ok, everyone. I have been a bad boy. I usually have these Lake Oroville real estate market stats to you on Tuesday’s, and here it is Saturday already. For my punishment,  just after I get done with this post, I am going to go stand in the corner until it is time to make my next post.

Here is the recap of sales for last week. I would comment on these, but I have to get to my corner.

See More Stats

As I was getting myself ready for work this morning I was listening to the T.V. as I usually do each morning, and it is a good thing I did. If I hadn’t been listening,  I would have not realized what I was about to miss.

The speaker on the screen was talking about the events of exactly 3 years ago today and how happy she was that they occurred as they did. Had things occured differently on that fateful day in 2006, she said, we would not be celebrating today.

So, I thought that, in order to properly celebrate this occassion, I would do a little research for you, my loyal readers, in order to assist  you in understanding why she is calling for celebration and cheer. Here is what I came up with:

Happy Anniversary,  America

So, what it is the occassion, you ask?  Well, that is your homework assignment for the day.

Oroville Real Estate, homes for sale, Paradise, Chico properties, Butte County