The Bargains Continue

What a busy time! It’s so busy on the Cape! The weather has been fantastic, the Cape League baseball is in full swing, and the bargain hunters are out in full force. And the bargains are to be had. Reading the sales report for today, final selling price is nowhere near the original asking price. Sellers: wise up!! Price your property correctly from the start. The Boston Globe had a great article on this on Sunday. Buyers: work with a competent agent who will do the necessary research to bring your offer in at the right place. Don’t just “take a stab at it.” The market “correction” continues and prices are falling, not yet stabilizing. It’s still a great time to buy on Cape Cod.

New Listing: Corporation Beach Antique

This is a fabulous c. 1830 home with five bedrooms near ( 1/10 mile) Corporation Beach in Dennis. Once part of Camp Nobscussett, it has .75 acres of land. The home has two fireplaces, a kitchen, living room, enclosed porch, dining room. and the 5 bedrooms. Just five houses back from the beach. Offered by oldCape Sotheby’s International Realty see www.LisaMorales.com for more information. New Title 5 septic in 2007.

Idylls

The amazingly warm, ok hot, temps this past week have been extraordinary. The ocean has been so warm, and we’ve been swimming along scooping up sand dollars at Mayflower Beach ( please put back the live ones.) The Village Garden Club of Dennis has planted the various gardens throughout town to beautify our public spaces. It takes the efforts of many volunteers to keep the gardens planted, watered and weeded.

The Boston Globe on Sunday featured a home in Wellfleet along Black Fish Creek. The owner, poet Alan Feldman, spoke about the ways of old houses. “A house should be old enough to have a soul,” he said. He preserved his home’s “escapist novelty,” noting that “We’re always trying to get somewhere in life, and Summer is about getting back. You slip into the same old clothes, take the same walks…It’s a return to cyclical time, as opposed to the linear time in which we live.”

That’s what your Summer home on Cape Cod should be about. Some of us are lucky enough to have endless Summer.

$ 2.675 million cash: a trend?

Previously I wrote: “Yesterday while perusing the sales I saw quite a few cash sales, including a $ 1.4 million sale in Orleans.” Today I saw a $ 2.675m cash sale, again in Orleans. Maybe a trend is indeed building. The recent $ 10 million cash sale in East Dennis I would consider an anomoly. I also saw a FHA sale yesterday. It’s been said that FHA is the new subprime, it will make homeownership available to many with as little as 2% down. I remember my first home was purchased with an FHA loan. I believe in homeownership for all qualified people, but hope that people don’t overextend in a whole new way. I don’t believe that there are a spate of million plus cash buyers, but there seems to be an increase in the $ 200-300,000 range. Will you be financing your home purchase or paying cash?

Roll the Numbers!

This bucolic scene in West Dennis belies what’s ahead. Do you remember Jerry Lewis yelling “Roll the Numbers!” at the Labor Day telethon? Here are the latest figures from The Warren Group, 6/2/2008.
For Barnstable County as a whole: Number of Sales: April 2007 Single Family: 299, April 2008 Single Family 308, an increase of 3.01%. Year to Date (YTD, or January to April) 2007 Single Family: 1,039, YTD 2008 945, a decrease of -9.05%. CONDOS for this same period: April 2007: 97 sold, April 2008: 72 sold, a decrease of -25.77% while YTD 2007 sold 301, YTD 2008 sold 288, a decrease of only -4.32%. Putting this all together all sales, in numbers, are down YTD —9.25%.
What did this mean for prices? In April 2007 the median price for a single family home was $ $377,000. In April 2008 it was $354,350, a decrease of -6.01% (can you see your equity dissolving?) It gets worse, the YTD figures are $375,000 for 2007 and $347,000 for 2008, a -7.47% loss. The median condo price in April 2007 was $247,000. in April 2008 $256,450, an increase of 3.83%. Bravo! But the YTD figures of $252,500 for 2007 and $249,950 for 2008 show a -1.01% loss. Overall, all sales for April 2007 showed a median price of $355,000 in 2007, and $333,250 in 2008, a -6.13% loss. YTD for 2007 it was a median of $355,000, and for 2008 $330,000, a loss of -7.04%. Whew.

Different communities have suffered or gained in disproportionate ways. Looking just at price changes YTD, Barnstable -10.5%, Bourne -15.27%, Brewster -9.32%, Centerville -6.13%, Chatham -13.13%, Cotuit +2.62%, Dennis -9.59%, Eastham -22.80%, Falmouth -4.04%, Harwich -0.42%, Hyannis -31.75%, Marstons Mills -13.51%, Mashpee +8.53%, Orleans +7.53%, Osterville -17.56%, Provincetown -10.06%, Sandwich -8.16%, Truro -14.89%, Wellfleet +6.10%, Yarmouth -12.25%

I welcome your questions and comments. What do you think the future holds for us here?

A Bit of Old Cape Cod

This past weekend we visited the Taylor Bray Farm in Yarmouth Port. They had their big Sheep Festival, with herding by dogs, hayrides, spinning, and more. It’s a great family event in a beautiful spot. We visit often (and are supporting members) to see the animals including Highland cattle, sheep, goats, chickens, and miniature donkeys. In the summer you can pick your own blueberries. In the Fall there is a Harvest Festival and a big pumpkin patch. If you just stick to Route 6A (or gasp! Route 6) you will miss these terrific Cape Cod cultural events. Get off the main drag, taste some honey fresh from the hive, wear a sweater right off the lamb, and experience the countryside by the sea.

Turn the Page: June

The end of the month brought those closings again, as I mentioned before, but yesterday had a phenomenal 44 closings reflected in the Cape and Islands MLS! More pendings and pendings with contingencies, too, that outpaced new listings. Translation: More properties leaving the market than coming in, shrinking inventory. Were that to translate market-wide my Smith College Economics degree tells me that means increasing prices. Let’s watch for a trend.

Did You Know?

Shingle/shake: Wood shingles are sawn by machine and are relatively thin. Wood shakes are larger and thicker than shingles, and are split from a solid block of wood rather than sawn. So when you are driving around the Cape, are those silvery houses covered with shakes or shingles?

New Listing: Four Bedrooms, Nearly 3000 sq ft

It has settled down from the glorious Memorial Day crowd. I can’t remember better weather. This new listing abuts the previously blogged-about horse farm listing. It’s a terrific four bedroom, three bath home on a quiet street 1.1 miles from West Dennis beach. See it at my website www.LisaMorales.com. There’s just tons of space in this house, a large deck, newer water heater, not-the-original boiler. It certainly needs cosmetic updates, but that’s the fun part, right? Priced well below the assessed value to sell quickly.

The big news here, of course, is Senator Kennedy. He came to the Cape to recover after his recent diagnosis. He has been “my” Senator my whole life (even when I moved out of Massachusetts I still considered him my Senator) and it is unsettling to think that he may be forced to retire. I refuse to think anything worse. It was fantastic that he raced in the weekend’s Figawi race from Nantucket, coming in second on his boat, Mya. I of course think of his brother racing the same waters alongside him. That tradition runs deeply here on the Cape. My grandmother was a real Kennedy fanatic, and three years ago when my mother passed we came across all of the newspapers collected up that had JFK headlines, collected by Grandma. It’s a real Massachusetts passion, even today. I wish Senator Ted the best on his tough road ahead.

Memorial Day Madness

The onslaught has begun, and children are swimming in the frigid waters. What glorious weather and loads of visitors! If you are coming down, stop by and discuss the discounts and possibilities, 2404 Route 6A Brewster.