Real property tax rates in St Louis County effectively cost homeowners in that county about 1.43 percent of the value of the home which is 57 percent higher than Jefferson and Franklin counties were property taxes cost homeowners about .91 percent of their homes value. Continue Reading →
Section 347.057 of the revised statutes of Missouri state “A person who is a member, manager, or both, of a limited liability company is not liable, solely by reason of being a member or manager, or both, under a judgment, decree or order of a court, or in any other manner, for a debt, obligation or liability of the limited liability company, whether arising in contract, tort or otherwise or for the acts or omissions of any other member, manager, agent or employee of the limited liability company.” So, like a corporation, LLC’s provide protection to the individuals, (or other LLC’s, or corporations) that own the LLC from personal liability for business conducted by the LLC. This is not by accident as, without the ability to protect one’s personal assets from liability from business operations, many businesses wouldn’t exist nor would the products and services they provide. For example, perhaps you own stock in a company such as Ford. Would you be willing to buy that stock, and invest in that company, if you were going to be personally named in all the lawsuits brought against Ford? I doubt it. Continue Reading →
Seriously underwater homeowners, those people whose mortgage debt is 125 percent or more of their current home’s value, increased to 13.2% of all home loans during the 1st quarter of 2015, marking the first increase in rate from the prior quarter since February 2012, according to a report released this morning from RealtyTrac. Continue Reading →
RealtyTrac published a report earlier this week that prompted an article on Bloomberg Business with a headline of “U.S. Home Prices Are Surging 13 Times Faster Than Wages”. RealtyTrac’s report included a chart (below) showing several metropolitan areas throughout the U.S. where, over a recent two year period, home prices were outpacing wages and that “either wages are going to need to go up or (home) prices are going to need to at least flatten out and wait for wages to catch up”. Continue Reading →
St Louis home sales jumped in February to 1,633 homes sold in the St Louis 5-County Core market (the city of St Louis and counties of St Louis, St Charles, Jefferson and Franklin), an increase of almost 15 percent (14.8%) from February 2014 when there were 1,423 homes sold, and an increase of over 22 percent (22.3%) from the month before, according to the latest data available from MORE, REALTORS Continue Reading →
The U.S. Census Bureau this week released a report titled “Desire to Move and Residential Mobility: 2010-2011” in which some interesting facts were revealed about what makes people want to move, who actually acts upon that desire and how this varies between homeowners and renters. Continue Reading →
This week FNC, Inc., a large company that provides real estate market information to mortgage lenders across the country, published their FNC Residential Price Index™ report which showed St Louis home prices declined slightly in January from the month before (0.4%) and were also down slightly (0.7%) from a year ago. Continue Reading →
Renters are feeling more optimistic about the St Louis housing market as well as about the thought of home ownership with 23,721 renters in St Louis saying they are looking to buy a home in the next year, according to a report just released by Zillow. Continue Reading →
Almost half (42%) of the residents in Missouri plan to buy a home within the next five years, according to the recently released BMO Harris Home Buying Report. Buyers surveyed indicated they plan to pay an average of $242,000 for a home when they move and almost half of the potential home buyers have indicated they are willing to get into a bidding war to get the home they want. Continue Reading →
If you are like a lot of people and see St Louis foreclosures, or REO’s (real estate owned by banks and other lending institutions as a result of foreclosure) as a good opportunity to buy a residence for yourself or as an investment either for rental or for “flipping”, you best have cash and be prepared to “buck up” if you want to succeed! I say this because cash buyers continue to dominate the REO and foreclosure market with 61% of all REO and Foreclosure sales this year in St Louis being cash sales thus far. As the table below shows, while the number of foreclosure sales has declined this year from last year at the same time, the percentage of them going to cash buyers has not. Continue Reading →
Reminenscent of the “good ole” days in the real estate biz, homes in St Louis are selling quickly, often within a day or two of hitting the market and frequently at full price or close to it! Continue Reading →
When I entered the real estate industry 35 years ago, I quickly learned that there are three things that affect the value of a home; location, location, location. Well, it appears that, while a lot of other things have changed, such as the manual typewriters and carbon paper in our office have been replaced with Mac Book Pro’s and electronic documents, nothing has changed when it comes to what is important to home buyers, it’s still location! Continue Reading →
Traditionally the only Rental history that gets reported to the credit bureaus is negative! If you fail to make your payment to your landlord…look for a collection account or even a judgment to show up on your credit profile and potentially drop your credit score like a rock! Continue Reading →
Two zip codes in St Louis made RealtyTrac’s list of “Zips with the highest gross returns (from flipping property)” for 4th quarter, 2014. The 63139 zip code, which includes the Dog Town area of St Louis, came in number 2 on the list with an average gross return on investment of 163.9% and the 63116 zip code, which includes Tower Grove South, Holly Hills, Dutchtown South and Bevo, came in 9th on the list with an average gross return on investment of 127.7%. Continue Reading →
As of the end of last month, there were 4,873 active listings of homes and condos for sale in the counties of St Louis and St Charles, the lowest inventory of homes for sale for those two counties in over 10 years. Continue Reading →
The St Louis real estate market is definitely recovering from the housing bubble burst that sent it into a tail spin about six years ago. With the recovery, home sales have increased, although at a slower pace in 2014 than the year before, and St Louis home prices have increased but, in spite of this, are St Louis home prices too low? Continue Reading →
St Louis home sales slowed in January to 1,322 homes sold in the St Louis 5-County Core market (the city of St Louis and counties of St Louis, St Charles, Jefferson and Franklin) which is a decline of over 36 percent (36.65%) from the month before, and a decline of almost 3 percent (2.94%) from a year ago, according to the latest data available from MORE, REALTORS. As the chart below shows, the median price of homes sold in St Louis in January was $144,498, down from $159,500 in December but up from a year ago when the median home Continue Reading →
Institutional investors (entities that bought at least 10 residential properties in the last 12 months) are having much less of an impact on the housing market throughout Missouri than they were a year ago, according to a newly released report by RealtyTrac. Continue Reading →
Mortgage Delinquencies (borrowers that are 60 days or more late on their house payment) declined in the 4th quarter of 2014 marking the 12th consecutive quarter of declines in the mortgage delinquency rate, according to data just released by TrasnUnion. As the table below shows, the mortgage delinquency rate for the 4th quarter of last year was 3.29%, a decline of 2.1% from the quarter before and a decline of 14.5% from the 4th quarter of 2013.
Foreclosures and better borrowers are the reason…
Ezra Becker, vice president of research and consulting at TrasnUnion, said the improvement in mortgage delinquencies Continue Reading →
The seriously delinquent mortgage rate (90+ days late) fell to 1.91 percent of all outstanding mortgages in November, the lowest level since December 2008, according to a report just released by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Continue Reading →
The St Louis real estate market is off to a good start and homes and condos in many neighborhoods are SELLING FAST! Find which St Louis neighborhoods are hot markets and selling fast as well as which are not and much more in our newly published, 5-minute, market video update for February 2015, below.
If you have considered selling your home, or perhaps tried and failed in the past year or so, now is the time to consider it again. Give us a call and we’ll be happy to let you know the value of your home in today’s market or, try our new online Continue Reading →
Down payment help is available for 87 percent of the homes in the U.S., according to an analysis completed recently by RealtyTrac and Down Payment Resource. This analysis looked at the geographic location of homes to see if they were within areas where down payment assistance are available to purchasers meeting the qualifications of the program. Continue Reading →
Flood zones are land areas identified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Each area of land is mapped and labeled into a flood zone. FEMA flood maps include zones that are broken into several areas. Here are the most common flood zone areas that you will see in Missouri: Continue Reading →
The city of St Louis made the list of the top 50 markets to rent to Millenials, published by RealtyTrac. In determining the best markets in the U.S. for renting to millennial (most of whom are in their 20’s or early 30’s), RealtyTrac looked at rental markets where the gross annual yield on rentals was at least 9 percent, where Millenials make up more than 22 percent of the market (the national average) and where the Millenial population had increased at least 5% from 2007 through 2013. Continue Reading →
According to the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) 2015 Profile of Home Staging (the first ever by them), over 50 percent (52%) of real estate agents representing buyers said that a staged home will increase how much their buyer client is willing to pay for a home. For those not familiar with the term a staged home is one that has been prepared, usually by a professional, to help make the home show as well as possible and appeal to as many buyers as possible leading to ultimate goal of selling the home quickly for the highest price. Continue Reading →
So you may be asking, why am I writing about crime here, after all isn’t this site about real estate? Correct but there are few things that can affect property values more than crime rates and school districts. Not to mention, from an economic development standpoint, crime also plays a role in the success we have as a region attracting businesses to St Louis to create jobs which also has a major impact on home prices. Continue Reading →
Last summer I wrote an article addressing the issue as to whether paying a higher rate of commission will help a seller sell his or her home faster. My research for that article, in which I looked at a years worth of home sales in the St Louis area, showed that a higher than normal commission rate in fact did not lead to faster home sales. Now that we are seeing the market heat up I decided to take another look at this topic and this time focus on whether paying a higher real estate commission results in getting a higher price for the seller. Continue Reading →
St Louis home sales for 2014 fell 2.4 percent from 2013 with a total of 30.557 homes sold in St Louis (in the 5-county core market) during 2014, shy of the 31,329 homes sold the year before. St Louis home prices, on the other hand, increased 5.6 percent during the same period, increasing from a median price of $142,000 for homes sold during 2013 to $150,000 for homes sold during 2014. Continue Reading →
There were 119,936 St Louis homeowners with negative equity, or in a seriously underwater condition on their mortgage meaning they owe more than the current value of their home, in the St Louis MSA during the 4th quarter of 2014 which is a 21% improvement from the prior quarter when there were 152,025 St Louis homeowners seriously underwater, according to a report just released today by RealtyTrac.
As the table below shows, for the immediate St Louis, MO area, the city and county of St Louis had the highest percentage of underwater homeowners at 22% and St Charles county had Continue Reading →
The 63376 zip code area of St Charles County, which includes the City of St. Peters and a portion of Cottleville, had the most homes sold in 2014 of any other zip code area in St Louis with 1,145 homes sold. For the zip area with the second most homes sold in 2014 we jump to the east side of the Missouri river with the 63021 area of St Louis County, comprised of Ballwin, Manchester and Ellisville, with 856 homes sold. The chart below shows the top 20 zip areas in the St Louis area and then the charts that Continue Reading →