Sheri’s Palm Springs Area Blog

Desert Bank Owned Homes Selling Near Listing Prices

Bank owned home at PGA West, La Quinta

Banks don’t want to own homes that they’ve foreclosed on and so they generally price them to sell. Early on in the mortgage meltdown we saw banks give many properties away at well under market values. Banks have gotten a better handle on pricing over the last year or so and now most bank-owned homes are now selling for close to the banks list prices. Most of these properties are still a very good buy, but I suggest to clients that we examine each property on a case-by-case basis to find the best low hanging fruit.

Our team recently ran the numbers for bank owned properties sold during the last six months. We limited our stats to those properties sold for $100,000 and higher. Of 846 properties sold by banks the average sale price was $256,836 and the high price was $2.5 million. The list to sale price percentage was pretty interesting and we’ve broken them down by the time each property was on market before being sold. Note that these time periods include the contingent periods during escrow.

Bank Sale Prices Versus List Prices By Time On Market

• 0-30 Days on market: 101.94% of list price (198 sales)
• 31-60 Days on market: 99.06% of list price (149 sales)
• 61-90 Days on market: 97.04% of list price (85 sales)
• 91-120 Days on market: 96.75% of list price (85 sales)
• 120+ Days on market: 95.59% of list price (329 sales)

These sales represent $203 million in bank owned sales over the last six months. That may sounds like a lot except that 3,648 properties were sold during these six months of which only 719 were bank owned equaling 23% of total sales.

Bottom line with bank owned properties is the offering price will generally be within 5% of the actual selling price at worst case. Entry-level properties (under $300,000) will have the most competition and generally sell for at or slightly above listing price dependent of how many offer the bank receives.

Only 13 Bank Owned Luxury Homes Sold Last 6 Months

Luxury homes (those above $1 million) will likely have a little more room to negotiate. In the last six months only 13 of these 846 bank-owned properties were sold for over $1 million with the average sale price of these luxury homes being $1.5 million.

47 Bank Owned Homes Listed, 14 Remain In 16-Days!

MLS Bank Owned Home Screen shot from 9/17/11

Everyone loves a bargain and a bank owned home usually offers buyers a great opportunity and value. Regular readers of my blog know that banks don’t want to own homes. Banks want to sell foreclosed properties and they want to sell them quickly. So how quickly have bank owned properties been moving lately?

I created a custom report today for bank owned homes that were listed (offered for sale) between 9/1/11 and 9/16/11. I used the popular and active price range of $350,000 to $999,000. 47 foreclosure properties were listed during this 16-day period.

Here’s Where It Gets Interesting!

33 of the 47 homes and condos are already shown as pending (or contingent pending) with having accepted offers in 16 or less days! Only 14 properties remained, and many of these homes were just listed in the last few days.

I took a screen shot of a small portion of today’s Desert Area MLS screen that we agents use in order to give you a graphical look at what I’m seeing. The green REO listings are ‘active’ or available, while the blue, yellow and blue listings are at some stage of having an accepted offer or already in escrow (pending).

Buyer Tip: When we discover a bank owned property that looks like a great opportunity, let’s be prepared to pounce! My team and I have helped people discover and win great opportunities in bank owned homes from $200,000 to over $2 million.

Local Real Estate Reporting: Read Between The Lines!

I browsed the local paper today, which took about five minutes. One headline proclaimed “Palm Desert Home Prices Rising.” The story went on to make several broad statements about local real estate that I thought I’d check out. I'll help you here to read between the lines.

• Large numbers of short sale and bank owned homes in La Quinta
• 54% of La Quinta single-family homes sold were distressed properties
• Palm Desert home prices rising and inventory down
• Coachella Valley median price down 8% to $167,500

The Palms Golf Club in La Quinta

Large numbers of short sale and bank owned homes in La Quinta

The majority of La Quinta’s distressed properties continue to be located in La Quinta Cove. ‘The Cove’ offers an eclectic mix of mostly entry-level properties and a large number of Section-8 investor owned rentals.

While some people like the funkiness of the Cove it's not on the short list of shall we say 99.9% of people interested in second homes here in the desert. Of 177 Cove properties sold in six months, 82 were bank-owned at an average sale price of $117,816.

54% of La Quinta single-family homes sold were distressed properties

In the last six months 754 La Quinta homes were sold. 200 of these were bank owned sales. But when we take the Cove (see above paragraph) and any homes that sold at under $200,000 out of the mix, that number drops to 84 or about 11% of the total. Using the same parameters there were only 87 short sales or about 11% of sales in six months.

Palm Desert home prices rising and inventory down

Palm Desert has four zip codes, but the data they used included only 92211. Turn out this zip code includes the active-adult community of Sun City Palm Desert with about 5,000 homes. Home sales at Sun City Palm Desert have been strong for over a year. So have sales in the similar communities of Sun City Shadow Hills in Indio and Trilogy in La Quinta. I’ve been blogging about this for over a year now.

Coachella Valley median price down 8% to $167,500

The median price has little bearing on the vast majority of people looking at buying or selling second homes in the desert. Most buyers want to be located in a gated resort lifestyle community, so the median price is out the window! A better strategy is to look at the average sales price over six months development by development.

Data Source: Desert Area MLS 9/29/11