By Dennis Norman, on May 8th, 2019 During the first quarter of 2019, 14.5% of the homeowners in St Louis with a mortgage, were underwater on their mortgage, meaning they were in a negative-equity position, according to data just released by ATTOM Data Research. As the table below shows, this slight increase follows a decline in the rate for the two prior quarters. The St Louis negative-equity rate is about one and a half times that for the U.S. as a whole.
Search St Louis Homes For Sale Search St Louis Upcoming OPEN HOUSES St Louis Underwater (Negative-Equity) Homeowners – 2013-2019
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By Dennis Norman, on April 24th, 2019 For the 12-month period ended March 31, 2019, there were building permits issued for 748 new homes in St Louis County, a decline of 23.60% from the prior 12-month period, according to the latest data from the St Louis HBA. As the table below shows, St Charles County saw a decline of 11.23% during the same period. Last month, those were the only two counties showing a downward trend, but, this month, Franklin County and the City of St Louis have also seen new home construction trend downward. Warren County again showed the greatest upward trend in new home construction Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on April 23rd, 2019 According to the latest estimates by the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), there are approximately 2 million licensed real estate agents in the United States. Last year, according to the NAR, there were a total of 5.341 million existing homes sold which equates to one agent for every 2.67 homes sold during the year in the U.S. Wow, talk about competition! Granted, not all licensed agents sell residential real estate as many focus us on commercial real estate, including industrial, retail, office, multi-family, and land, and others focus on farms, large tracts of land, recreational property, etc. Nonetheless, there is Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on April 18th, 2019 Year to date, through the end of March, there have been 4,829 homes sold in the St Louis 5-County Core market, a decline of 6.3% from this time last year when 5,156 homes had sold. As the second chart below illustrates, the St Louis home sales trend (trailing 12 months and represented by the dark green line) peaked in October 2018 with 26,032 homes sold in the prior 12 months but then stalled and has begun a slight downward trend since with 25,583 homes sold in the 12 month period ending in March 2019.
Meanwhile, St Louis home prices continue Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on April 16th, 2019 During the first quarter of this year, there were foreclosure filings on 1,948 properties in the St. Louis MSA, which equates to 1 foreclosure filing for every 51 housing units, according to the latest data from ATTOM Data Research. As the table below, which shows data for the 20-largest metro areas in the U.S., shows, this foreclosure rate puts St Louis at number 7 on the list in terms of foreclosure rate.
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1st Quarter 2019 – Foreclosure Filings – 20 Largest MSA’s
Data Source: ATTOM Data Solutions -© 2019 St Louis Real Estate News
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By Dennis Norman, on April 12th, 2019 Home sales in St Louis are on a slower pace than this time last year. The St Louis real estate market is still performing well, but just not at the same sales rate as last year thus far. Find out more, as well as get information on some of St Louis’s best resources for home buyers and sellers in our just-released market update video.
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By Dennis Norman, on April 12th, 2019 While over the past few years we have seen a strong real estate market and easing mortgage loan guidelines, which is all good, unfortunately, mortgage fraud has been on the rise, according to a report just released by CoreLogic. According to their 2018 Mortgage Fraud Report, the CoreLogic® National Mortgage Application Fraud Risk Index was 151 for the fourth quarter of 2018, up 10% from a year ago when the index was 138.
According to the report, Missouri was one of the top five states for increases in fraud risk for each of the past two years, moving from number Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on April 11th, 2019 Real property tax in Missouri consists of taxes assessed by the state of Missouri, the County the property is located within as well as the municipality the property is located in. Not all municipalities charge property tax though, and the rate charged by county varies, so there can be a fairly significant difference in property tax rates from neighboring municipalities and counties. The table below shows the 20 Counties in Missouri with the lowest effective property tax rates. At the top of the list is Benton County where the effective tax rate is just 0.11%. Franklin County is the only Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on April 10th, 2019 Yesterday, I wrote about Missouri having the 27th lowest effective property tax rate of the 50 states, so today I decided to look at property tax rates for the largest MSA’s around the country. Included in my list are the 219 MSA’s with a population of 200,000 or more. As the table below shows, at the top of the list, with the lowest effective real property tax rate of the MSA’s is Laredo, Texas with an effective property tax rate of just 0.35%. The states of Alabama and Colorado both have 3 MSA’s on the list of the 10 MSA’s Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on April 9th, 2019 Missouri falls in about the middle of the states in the U.S. in terms of real property taxes based upon the effective rate. As the first table below shows, Missouri, with an effective property tax rate of 1.04% in 2018, comes in at the 27th lowest state. Hawaii is at the top of the list with the lowest effective tax rate at 0.37% and New Jersey comes in last with the highest property tax rate at 2.25%. Right behind New Jersey, is our neighbor to the east, Illinois, where the effective property tax rate is 2.22%, over twice as high Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on April 2nd, 2019 Homes that sold in St. John, Missouri within the past 30 days took an average of just 18 days to sell, putting St John in the number 1 slot of Fastest Sold cities in the St Louis MSA. As the table below shows, the cities that made the top 10 list are all on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, with 7 cities in St Louis County and 3 in St Charles County.
If you are a homeowner thinking of selling and see your city on this list, now would be a really good time to consider listing your home Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on April 1st, 2019 For the 12-month period ended February 28, 2019, there were building permits issued for 785 new homes in St Louis County, a decline of 21.11% from the prior 12-month period, according to the latest data from the St Louis HBA. As the table below shows, St Charles County saw a decline of 13.05% during the same period however the other counties reported on by the St Louis HBA are all showing increased new home building activity for the period. From a percentage standpoint, Warren County saw the biggest increase at 30.04%.
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By Dennis Norman, on March 31st, 2019 During the first quarter of this year, homebuyers in the City of St Louis needed to spend a median of just 16.9% of their annual wages to buy a median-priced home, according to data just released by ATTOM Data Services. This makes the City of St Louis the most affordable county to buy a home in the St Louis area. As the table below shows, St Charles County, where it takes 37.7% of annual wages to buy a median-priced home is the least affordable county for 1st quarter 2019.
On a positive note, St Charles County had an affordability index Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on March 25th, 2019 Some new home buyers believe that if they buy a new home directly from the builder or the builder’s sales person, they will get a better price. But is this true? Do you get a better deal buying a new home directly from the builder?
First, we should address a “better deal” and what constitutes a good “deal”. If it is strictly price, then, while I think it is somewhat short-sided on the part of the buyer and falls in that “penny-wise, dollar-foolish” category, in some instances, with some builders, the builder will save some cost by you buying from Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on March 22nd, 2019 I saw an article recently about the results of a survey done of home sellers that found that nearly half of them didn’t realize they pay the buyers’ agent commission when they sell their home.
Sellers pay the buyers’ agent in almost all home sales in St Louis…
While I don’t know for sure, I would guess that the people surveyed were homeowners that planned to sell their homes, rather than sellers that already had their homes listed for sale. I say this because the standard listing agreement used by St Louis REALTORS® spells out the total commission being charged Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on March 19th, 2019 Year to date, there have been 2,903 homes sold in the St Louis 5-County Core market, a decline of 3.6% from this time last year when 3,010 homes had sold. As the second chart below illustrates, the St Louis home sales trend (trailing 12 months and represented by the dark green line) peaked in October 2018 with 26,032 homes sold in the prior 12 months but then stalled and has begun a slight downward trend since with 25,756 homes sold in the 12 month period ending in February 2019.
Meanwhile, St Louis home prices continue to rise with the median Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on March 14th, 2019 The St Louis real estate market is still doing well however, home sales are off to a slower start this year than last year. Find out more, as well as get information on some of St Louis’s best resources for home buyers and sellers in our just-released market update video.
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By Dennis Norman, on March 8th, 2019 Since the announcement of the Better Together plans to merge the County and City of St Louis together into one big “Metro City”, there has been a lot of talk about the impact this would have on the St Louis real estate market. I’ve had several conversations with people in the real estate industry that feel St Charles County, as well as some of the other surrounding counties, will benefit if the Better Together plan succeeds. Their optimism is based upon the belief that, given what appears to be a tremendous groundswell of opposition to the plan from residents of Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on March 7th, 2019 For the 12-month period ended February 28, 2019, there were 37,427 homes sold in the St Louis metro area, a decline of 1.22% from the prior 12-month period when there were 37,889 homes sold, according to our STL Market Report below. During the same period, the median price of homes sold in the St Louis metro area increased by 4.11% from $172,900 to $180,000. As the table shows, there is currently a 3.19 month supply of homes for sale in the St Louis metro area.
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By Dennis Norman, on March 6th, 2019 The median rental vacancy rate for the St Louis metro area during 2018 was 6.8%, according to data recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau. This rate marks the lowest annual median rental vacancy rate for St Louis since the U.S. Census Bureau’s reports which began in 2005.
As the table below shows, the vacancy rate for the 4th quarter of 2018 was 6.6%, down from 6.9% the quarter before and down from 9.2% a year ago.
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St Louis Rental Vacancy Rates
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By Dennis Norman, on March 5th, 2019 During the 4th quarter of 2018, the homeownership rate for the St Louis MSA was 70.5%, the highest level since the 2nd quarter of 2015, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. As the table below shows, the 12-month rolling average for the St Louis homeownership rate was 66.0% in the 4th quarter of 2018, the highest since the 4th quarter of 2016.
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By Dennis Norman, on March 1st, 2019 Homes that sold in Maplewood, Missouri and closed within the past 30 days took an average of just 13 days to sell, putting Maplewood in the number 1 slot of Fastest Sold cities in the St Louis MSA. As the table below shows, the cities that made the top 10 list are scattered throughout the area from Granite City, Illinois to Washington to Hillsboro as well as several places in between.
If you are a homeowner thinking of selling and see your city on this list, now would be a really good time to consider listing your home for sale!
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By Dennis Norman, on February 28th, 2019 There were 3,143 home “flips” in the St Louis metro area during 2018, according to data just released by ATTOM Data Research. With 7.4% of homes sold in St Louis being a flip in 2018, this is a decline of 3.7% from a year ago. The peak number of flips in St Louis came in 2005 when there were 4,426 homes flipped.
What is meant by “flipped” home?
ATTOM Data considers any home or condo that was sold during the third quarter of this year in an arms-length sale that had previously had an arms-length sale within the prior 12 Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on February 27th, 2019 There were 4,471 building permits issued for new homes in the St Louis area during the 12-month period ended January 31, 2019, a decline of 5.20% from the prior 12-month period when there were 4,716 permits issued, according to information just released by the Home Builders Association of St Louis & Eastern Missouri (St Louis HBA).
As the table below shows, St Charles County continues to see the largest decline in new home construction with 1,489 new home permits issued in the most recent 12-month period, down 13.03% from the prior 12 month period. Four counties in the St Louis Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on February 23rd, 2019 I promise not to turn this article into one of my boring, lengthy diatribes that only a data nerd could enjoy, however, I do want to discuss something that I think is very important for all home buyers, sellers and investors. Given that today there is a plethora of “data” and “information” available to us thanks, in large part, to the internet, and that home buyer, sellers, and investors (as well as the real estate agents working with them) make decisions based, at least in part, to those things, it is imperative to know you have the right data and Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on February 22nd, 2019 The real estate market in St Louis continues to do well although the home sales trend, as our chart below illustrates, has flatlined over the past year. On our chart, we plot the home sales for the prior 12 months for each month thereby making it easier to see trends in the marketplace. As you can see, over the past 5 years, the trend line consistently increased from about this time 5 years until about a year ago where it leveled off. This is not surprising as it is not realistic for our market in St Louis to be able Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on February 21st, 2019 Even though it’s that time of year when the real estate market in St Louis slows down, we are still in a seller’s market in most of the St Louis metro area based upon the supply of homes for sale. Historically, a 6-month supply of homes for sale would be considered a “balanced” market, not favoring sellers nor buyers. If the supply drops below 6 months, it favors sellers as there is less competition for them and above 6 months it favors buyers.
Currently, 14 of the 17 counties that make up the St Louis MSA have a supply of Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on February 19th, 2019 After mortgage interest rates on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage nearly hit 5 percent back in November, they have steadily declined and this past week fell to an average of 4.37% according to the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey. Last weeks 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate of 4.37% was the lowest average rate report by the survey since Feb 8, 2018, when the average rates were 4.32%.
The outlook for mortgage interest rates looks promising as well with the most recent Fannie Mae Housing Forecast predicting the 30-year fixed rate will stay at 4.5% through the end of 2020.
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By Dennis Norman, on February 18th, 2019 At the end of last month, Better Together, a not-for-profit group aimed at combining St Louis City and St Louis County into one big “Metro City”, released their plan for doing so. To say this is a hot topic among residents of those two areas would be an understatement.
Proponents of the plan say it will make St Louis the 9th largest city in the U.S., will streamline government, dilute the city crime stats making them appear to be better and, in the end, lead to increased economic development and growth for the region.
Opponents, such as the Municipal League Continue Reading →
By Dennis Norman, on February 15th, 2019 The St Louis real estate market is off to a little slower start this year and there are some indicators that we may be in for a little price correction in some areas. Find out more, as well as get information on some of St Louis’s best resources for home buyers and sellers in our just-released market update video.
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