Last Tuedsay Oct 1, the Houston Association of Realtors held a city wide CIPS networking event! CIPS stands for Certified International Property Specialist. It is a special designation that realtors can get to show their customers that they are specialist when working with international clients. CIPS is one of the most difficult designations to obtain, as it requires 5 full days of 8 hour instruction (40 hours) and an application to the National Association of Realtors denoting experience and participation in international activities and conferences. Susan is a CIPS instructor and many of the designees in Houston are her students! The group often travels together to international real estate conferences, making new contacts with realtors from all over the world. These relationships give birth to partnerships and referrals, whereby Houston realtors can market international properties to the Houston market and vice versa. It was fun to welcome in a new class of CIPS designees at the party last Tuesday!
Are you wondering how the Houston real estate market is doing these days? Interest rates were cut a couple weeks ago and we were hoping that would help move inventory along. But the data shows the market has drastically slowed compared to this time last year.
The FRESH report is brought to you by HAR.com and it is prepared the first day of the month as a snapshot of the local real estate market conditions to keep the media informed. Today’s report shows an accounting of the single family homes activitiy for the full month of September 2024 compared to September 2023. All data is captured from the Houston MLS (multiple listing service) which is the most accurate source of real estate data in Houston.
New listings were 11.7% higher, meaning more people put their houses on the market to sell compared to last year. There could be many reasons for this. My guess is that the market was SO slow the past few months that sellers were waiting for interest rates to go down so that buyer interest would go up, then when the interest rate was finally cut, the sellers decided to finally list.
Active listings were an astonishing 25.7% higher, meaning houses are not selling. When a house gets a contract, the status of the house changes form Active to Pending. But when a house doesn’t sell, then the status stays in Active. The fact that there are 25% MORE houses on the market now means that houses are not being picked up by buyers and are sitting on the market in Active status not moving. This is a bad sign for sellers.
Average list price is almost the same as this time last year. This is a strange statistic. In my opinion, if things are not selling, the sellers should reduce their prices and the average list price should go down. The fact that the average list price is only down 0.1% means that sellers don’t care that their houses are not selling or are unwilling to accept the fact that the market is slow, and are still dreaming to get the same high prices as last year and the years past.
With the data out, sellers may need to adjust their mindsets and understand that they are competing with more listings than ever and that they may need to reduce their prices in order to sell their homes. Staying at the same price when there is so much inventory to compete with will make the home take longer to sell. We are actually seeing and feeling this phenomenon with our own listings now.
Welcome back to another edition of Annoura Family news! Koh is still in France and by the time you read this, Susan should be in France as well. The past 2 weeks have been pretty crazy with Susan playing a single mom and juggling many things at the same time. Zachary’s carpool schedule morning and afternoon plus all of his extra curricular activities like Spanish, choir, wrestling, and boy scouts have been a logistical nightmare so last week, a family driver was hired. Welcome, Starlyn! She was a babysitter for Zach when he was born and the timing worked out for her to help do some of our driving, so this has been a blessing to us the past couple of weeks. Meanwhile over in France, Koh’s athlete succeeded in his quest to make a Guiness Book of World Records, so congratulations to Mr. Kanno! In other exciting news, Koh himself will be competing in the Masters Track World Championships (https://mtwc-roubaix.com/) in the sprint category. At age 57, he still loves racing and has been training hard for this competition. Susan flew over there on Sunday (yesterday) and will cheer for him in Robaix before the two of them return to Houston on the 13th. Meanwhile, with Joe and Ty at college, Zach is flying solo in Houston. Thank goodness for Susan’s parents living nearby to let him stay with them. Thanks, mom and dad! Joe is applying for summer internships already and Ty is enjoying his Naval Academy life. The Annoura Family home in Fukuoka FINALLY broke ground and is making progress. The foundation is poured and the building is going UPPPPPP! Whenver possible, Susan and Zach squeeze in a few holes of golf and the weather sure is getting nice outside in the evenings, although the evening skies come quicker than we like. We hope you are all doing well too!
Closings are happening but more sales than leases. Last Monday Susan closed her Corpus Christi deal, representing Takuya’s company as the seller. The deal entailed two apartments, 47 units, seller financing, FIRPTA, and a remote online notary with the seller signing in Tokyo. A few days later, we closed another deal representing the sellers, with the wife being in California and the husband being in Sapporo, Japan (with Matt and Takuya!). Sam and Megumi did a great job on their investment home. Holding for only 3 years, they cash flowed 6% (net) the entire time, then sold at a healthy 17% appreciation! On the lease side of things, we welcomed a new expat from Nippon Chemical Texas, Mr. Asano and his wife (and dog, Will). We also look forward to a new wave of expats coming in October! We will have a busy week ahead as we prepare to bring to market for sale four more homes. With the yen weak and the dollar still somewhat strong, many of our Japanese investors are seeing the benefit of selling their assets here and sending the money back to Japan in yen.
Politicians who fight for issues that are important to realtors and homeowners are supported by the realtor family. The Texas Real Estate Political Action Committee collects the money through donations and one fun way to do this is through our Global Dinner series. Every few months, donors attend a dinner featuring a particular country, and last Wednesday that country was Germany! The party took place at a German restaurant called Rudi Lechner’s. There was German food, German beers, German music, and even a German fashion show! Everyone had a great time and it was a great way to raise money for a great cause.