Apex Properties Blog and News:

If you were to pop into my office at 26717 Westheimer Parkway Suite 404 on any given weekday morning, you would find our Real Estate Team on the phone, making calls.

From 8-9am we contact every listing that terminated or expired off the market yesterday. 50% of these owners will relist the property within 7 days so it's an excellent source of business for us.

After we call all of those, from 9-12 we call the neighborhoods around our current listings. One of the best sources of a buyer for one of our listings is a coworker, friend, or a relative of someone that already lives in the neighborhood.

Think about it. These people have likely visited the area, and maybe even mentioned to their friend or family member that they would like to live here too!

So if you were to hire a Real Estate agent, would it not make sense for them to tell every neighbor they can possibly reach about your listing and inquire if they have any family or friends that would like to move nearby? I have met thousands of people this way and the majority of ya'll that read this email were initially contacted by me because I was selling a neighbor's home.

Hiring a realtor who is a pro on the phone makes all the difference. I answer ALL SALES CALLS from buyers, agents, and all leads. I'm not just making outbound calls to find your buyer but I'm also taking all inbound opportunities. Some agents route their calls to assistants during off hours or even all the time but I do not. I make the most of every opportunity to get my clients homes sold for the most amount of money!

When the day comes for you to sell your house, we're here to be the most proactive agents in the marketplace, and our sales history daily schedule proves that's the right approach.

I am here to serve you if you have a Real Estate need.

Please call me anytime if you've got questions about the market or if you'd like to have any kind of Real Estate conversation.

HAR has published the full report for the October month end numbers for the Houston Market. Read that report here.

More than 8,600 properties sold in the month of October and the average sales price was up over 5% this year.

Our total active inventory is now at nearly 50,000 properties. The supply of inventory is really growing and I am seeing days on market extend for most of our listings. This should begin to draw down as the new year gets going and all of the elective buyers start looking for and going under contract on their next house.

This is the time of year when the people looking to buy are the most serious so if you need to get your house sold, call me anytime and we can discuss your goals!

I am here to serve you if you have a Real Estate need.

We'd like to share a recent encounter that can perhaps help someone else.

After her home didn't sell with another agent, I called this seller and she agreed to interview me.

I'll spare you every detail but the short message here is that when I looked at her previous listing with the photos, and the alarming language, I could tell she had ZERO chance to sell based on what the agent had done with the listing.

The point of a listing is to get buyers to tour the home. You can't get an offer if you don't get a showing.

With her previous agent she did not get ONE showing in 63 days on market.

We helped her prepare the home and now we've relisted the home today.

Take a look at the differences below, and remember that when you hire a Realtor, their most important advice and work for you may very well be performed before the home ever goes on the market.

In my view, the pre listing walkthrough is the one of the most valuable things I bring to the relationship and I charge nothing to do this.

We want to help you get your house ready so it will sell for top dollar.

We have the experience and the contacts to help you achieve your goals.

HAR has published the Fresh Report for Houston's October market and take a look at this....

...average list price is up year over year by more than 5%!

You hear stories about people waiting for the market to crash to buy something and sometimes they need to wait a really long time.

In a growing market like Houston, I have the belief that we're going to experience steady value growth in residential Real Estate for the next 10-15 years.

The best Real Estate advice ever given is,

Don't wait to buy Real Estate....

Buy Real Estate and wait.

We have a very healthy inventory of just over 30,000 available properties and I assume that will grow slightly until January when we start to see the sales really pick up, and the inventory will slowly draw down through June as the spring and summer selling season get underway.

I am here to serve you if you have a Real Estate need.

Please call us anytime if you've got questions about the market or if you'd like to have any kind of Real Estate conversation.

We have entered the fall selling season!

From now until the end of the year a couple things will happen with our Real Estate market.

Real Estate transaction counts will likely reduce slightly for a couple reasons. Some sellers opt to remove their properties from the market if they live there and want to prepare for the holidays. Same thing goes for some buyers. They may not want to deal with the logistics of moving at this time of year.

This seasonal influence reduces the available inventory and leads to a reduction in total sales.

On the flip side, it also leads to a reduction in active listing competition, so in some subdivisions, it may be easier to go under contract.

Also, the buyers and sellers that stay involved in the market through this time are definitely likely to be more serious about doing something.

All that said, even in our slowest time of the year, more than 7,000 - 8,000 properties will transact every month.

Relocations happen year round. I would venture to guess that 50-100 couples fly into Houston every Friday, look at homes on Saturday and fly home Sunday. New babies are born, people pass on and different housing needs are surfacing all the time. The circle of life drives Real Estate all over the world.

So if you need to sell a home and want to get it done before the end of the year you will want to prep the house so it feels completely move in ready for the buyers and make sure to price it correctly so the showings begin to flow and you achieve the maximum offer in the minimum timeline.

If you'd like to move this year, or even if you're thinking about moving next Spring/Summer, please reach out to me and we can schedule a prelisting walkthrough where we'll take 15 - 20 minutes together to walk your house and come up with a gameplan to get it ready for sale.

This costs you absolutely nothing!  

I am happy to do it for future clients because I know what a huge help it is with getting the property sold for the maximum price when you go on the market.

We are here to serve you when you have a Real Estate need.

Please call us anytime if you've got questions about the market or if you'd like to have any kind of Real Estate conversation.

Last week we talked about how the average LIST price had fallen just a couple hundred dollars year over year.

Now HAR has published the full sales numbers report for September and the good news is when it translates to the actual SALES prices we are actually UP AGAIN. The average price is up 0.3% to $415,435.

If you'd like, you can read the full report at HAR.

The total inventory has grown quite a bit from 39,000 available properties to almost 49,000 active listings, now placing us at a 4.4 month supply of homes.

Reaching 4-6 months of inventory level is considered a "stable market," so we have officially exited the "sellers" market we had been experiencing this last 4 years.

That said, there are still areas with much lower inventory levels so every house and neighborhood is unique. There are also some new construction subdivisions where it is most definitely a buyer's market, i.e. Cane Island, Prairieland in Bridgeland, Tamarron, and Cross Creek West. Builders are reducing list prices dramatically to try to pad their fiscal year end numbers.

One bright spot is pending sales in September are WAY up year over year so we will see higher sales volume in next month's report.

I am really looking forward to moving past the election next month and seeing what effect it has on our local market.

I am here to serve you when you have a Real Estate need.

Please call me anytime if you've got questions about the market or if you'd like to have any kind of Real Estate conversation.

For the first time this year, the average list price in Houston dropped a fraction. Don't be fooled though, we're still basically flat to where we were a year ago as the average list price only dipped by $289.

The big difference now is that the inventory has grown. Last year there were 6,200 fewer properties to choose from at this time.

So as a supply increases, if the demand does not increase in turn, you should expect to see some lowering in the average price, but factors such as the looming election could be having some influence as well.

I am looking forward to getting past November because markets have historically shown to get a small bump in activity once the election is determined.

Nonetheless, a simple fact of life is that some portion of the American population will always need to move for one reason or another; job changes, deaths, births, marriages, divorces and new babies. All significant life events that drive a minimum of 4 million transactions per year in the USA.

I am so grateful to live in a growing market like Houston.

If you consider the past 20 years, this been a great place to own a home and or rental properties because the population increased enough to raise property values dramatically, and yet compared to the east and west coasts, our property values are still a bargain.

I think the 20 year future outlook is just as bright for Houston and the surrounding areas.

Please call me anytime if you've got questions about the market or if you'd like to have any kind of Real Estate conversation.

We love talking with people about Real Estate.

The Full July numbers for the Houston Market have been published by HAR. 

Sales were slightly up Year over Year for July with 7,635 properties sold and July average sales price is up across Houston almost 5%. 

This has been the most fascinating phenomenon to watch over the last 2 years. We have had basically record high interest rates (for the last 15-20 year timeline) and yet the average home value has still managed to inch upward. The demand for housing in Houston has been remarkable and has kept our market pretty stable in the face of some eye watering interest rates.

That said, we are now up to 47,348 properties actively listed, representing a 4.3 month supply of homes. This 4-6 month supply range is the level of inventory that economists call a "balanced market," so if the overall available inventory continues to grow, this should cause us to begin to see a leveling off in the average sales price.

Of course, these are city wide numbers. Every section and subdivision has its own unique supply and demand figures so if you're thinking about selling, you really need to look at your hyper local market.

Key stats to look for are:

=> What is the average price per SF for homes within 10% of your square footage?

=> How many days on market is it taking the homes in your area to go under contract?

=> How many active listings are you competing against to get a buyer to write a contract on your home?

If you're curious about any of these, feel free to reach out to us anytime!

On August 17th, a new practice will be going into effect across the country. As of that day, buyer agent compensation will no longer be published on any listing that is active in the HAR MLS.

Currently you will find a buyer's agent compensation being published. The way the industry has worked up until this point is that the listing agent signs a listing agreement with a seller, with a negotiable total compensation for getting the home sold. They also decide what portion of that to offer out to the buyers' agents of the world to bring a buyer.

The biggest misconception I have been seeing and that the news has been pushing is that agent commissions will now be negotiable between all parties.....but this has always been the case. People have been offering above and below 3% for lots of reasons forever.

So I've been thinking about this and reading lots of articles since the announcement. Other than the field leaving the MLS and giving buyers' agents a little more research legwork, I am not anticipating a huge change. Sellers are still able to offer $ concessions that would help a buyer compensate their buyer's agent. They just aren't able to publish the figure. Agents can talk about it. Agents can text about it....it just can't be published in the MLS. I'd like to point out that this change is supposedly to increase the transparency of how Realtors are paid....and ironically it seems like its going to do anything but.

The most concrete change that is going to happen will be on the BUYER's side of transactions.

Historically buyers could look at a home or two and agents would not need any sort of formal agreement, although it was advisable to get one.

NOW, you will need to have a signed buyer representation agreement in order to even book a showing on a house. Also the terms of the buyer's agent's compensation will be agreed to up front in that document and the responsibility of the buyer to compensate their agent, whether on their own or by using a seller "concession" (which is basically how it had worked for the last 50 years.)

The truth is, this will force buyer's agents to begin performing a buyer's consultation presentation where they can educate their clients on the homebuying process and hopefully the buyers will actually see their service level go UP.

Time will tell if some sellers will want to try their luck at not offering a buyer's agent commission at all. I can't see this being an effective strategy because it will:

A) reduce the exposure on the home and

B) cause the buyers that do come....to write the offer a certain percentage lower so they have some ability to compensate their agent per their buyer representation agreement.

The net proceeds to the seller seem like it will ultimately be the same....if not potentially lower thanks to the lack of exposure.

If you have any questions about what's about to happen, you're welcome to call us anytime!

HAR has published the initial results for the Houston Market in July.

A couple trends that I am noticing here; the list prices are still creeping upward, and at the same time the total inventory is also growing. We now have nearly 30,000 properties for sale across the city.

List price growth has been hanging out around a 1% growth rate Year over year for the last 12-18 months so this is a pretty big jump up to 5%. I am seeing some homes sell right away and others are taking a little bit of time.

It seems that the key is how much inventory is currently available around any particular active listing. Just because overall inventory is up across town doesn't mean it's up everywhere.

Some areas are still lacking homes for sale, although our team here at Apex Properties is working to change that.

If you are thinking about selling and you're curious what's going on in your immediate market area, please feel free to call us anytime!