Last night was opening night for the Christmas Carol at the Valley Bistro in Wasilla.  It opened to a full house in the Teeland Building.  The historic building was a perfect setting for this dinner theater. 

People who know me understand that I usually go in for camping, hunting, and fishing for my leisure activities but I admit that I thoroughly enjoyed this play. 

Because of the intimate setting you feel almost as if you are in the Cratchit’s dining room watching their Christmas meal. 

The dinner was also very good.  Grace enjoyed her prime rib dinner and I had grilled chicken.  I’m not sure if the same menu is every evening but halibut was also available as an entree last night.

It was very well acted by the whole cast and especially by the director AJ Seims who also played Mister Scrooge.

The dinner theater will be every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night between now and Dec 22, 2007.  Buy tickets at the Valley Bistro or call 357–5633 for more information.  If you are interested you might want to buy your tickets soon.  This same play was offered last year and sold out for the season fairly quickly.

For more information visit the Triumvirate Theatre website.

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I am reviving the “Deals Of The Week”, (DOTW), with a couple new rules.

• 1. Just because I say its a deal doesn’t mean that you should buy it “sight unseen”.  I am only looking at the MLS.  In most cases I am not physically previewing these properties.
• 2. To qualify for DOTW, within the past week the property must have either been newly listed, come back on the market, or had the price lowered.  This is based on the assumption that if a property was truly a “deal” it would not last more than a week on the market. 

Please keep these rules in mind when checking out these properties.

This past week was a slow one for listings so there are only two interesting properties

• 4150 N Barbara Street, $85,000, 2 bedroom, 2.3 acres with frontage on Cottonwood Creek, listed with Lou Kaminski, Distinctive Properties.
• 12235 Little John Drive, $159,000, 3 bedroom home, 4 car garage (quonset)  Listed with Dave Johnson, Fishhook Realty

Give me a call to see any of these properties.  907 232–7900

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Wasilla Real Estate News Statistics for the week of Nov 19–26, 2007

All the numbers took a drastic downturn this past Thanksgiving week.  There were only 8 new listings which is the lowest number since I started the Monday Market Memo last January.  I’m sure the holiday had a lot to do with this.  We will likely see slower activity between now and Christmas.

As you would expect, pretty much all the new listings are houses that people have to sell for one reason or another.  They are moving in winter, losing their home, or just finished a spec home.   There still are quite a few buyers out there ready to look at new listings so a good house entering the market at this time of year will grab peoples attention.

The total amount of listings is also down and probably will continue to drop until January or February. 

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A search for properties in the Mat-Su Valley for one acre or more will leave out the majority of the developed lots.  A little digging will turn up a curious fact, most developments are made up of lots that are just under one acre.  In fact, the lots are less than an acre but greater than 9/10ths of an acre.  We call that lot a “Mat-Su Acre”. 

A Mat-Su borough ordinance  requires any lot that uses an on-site well and septic system contain at least 40,000 square feet.  An acre is 43,560 square feet.  Most developers divide their subdivisions into lots that are just over the 40,000 square foot minimum size.  If they do that with 12 lots, they have another 40,000 square foot lot to sell.

Very little of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough is served by water and sewer utilities so the developers have to allow for private wells and septic systems.  My lot, shown above, has a well and septic system on site.  All my neighbors also have their own systems.  If you are hoping to find an acre or more of land in the Palmer or Wasilla areas that is on public water and sewer you are going to be disappointed.

Take a look at the google satellite map of the core area, almost everyone in the photo is on a private well and septic system.  Palmer is on the east edge and Wasilla is on the west edge of the map.  Both cities have city water and sewer, but most of us are not served by those systems. We need our own systems so we need at least 40,000 square feet of land. 

Make sure to look at lots of 40,000 square feet or more when you are doing your search. If you don’t you will eliminate many great properties. 

Related articles:

Alaska Land, How Much Do You Want?
Wells in the Mat-Su Valley

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The market continues to hum along steadily without a significant winter slowdown so far.  We will probably see the new listing numbers drop as people celebrate the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

As I have mentioned before, although the new listings usually show a significant decline during that time of the year, buyers do not stop looking.  If a good house hits the market buyers will be all over it.  This is actually a good time to put a well priced, clean home on the market.  You will have less competition.

New construction is still a significant part of our market.  In the last two months new construction homes have been about 1/3 of all the homes that have sold.  That is not down significantly from the hot new construction market of a few years ago…CLARIFICATION: After I posted this I realized that this is misleading.  While the percentage of new homes is not down significantly, the whole market, including new construction is off by about 20% or so from two years ago.

What has changed about new construction is the fact that more of those new homes are pre-solds.  Pre-solds are what we call new homes that are sold before construction begins.  A buyer contracts with a builder to have a house built.  The builder does not start on the construction until the home is under contract.

Pre-solds are contrasted with “specs”.  A “spec home” is one that is built on speculation by the builder hoping that he can sell it when it is finished.  About 20 percent of the current homes on the market are “spec homes”.  

It is obvious that a significant portion of the buyers are turning down the existing homes to opt for a new house.  New homes are still competing with the rest of the market although builders have had to sharpen their pencils to keep prices competitive.

We wrote an offer last week on a pre-sold and have a spec home on the market with hopes to have it finished by the end of February.  If you would like help with a new construction home give either Marty or Jay a call at 907 373–0999.  That number rings both of our cell phones.

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Cottonwood Shores is one of the largest subdivisions in the Mat-Su Borough. It is just east of Wasilla on the North shore of Cottonwood Lake. Click on the map to the left to get an idea of it’s location, or for a detail map with all the street names click here.

There are over 550 lots in this subdivision and most of them have houses on them. If you assume only 2 people per house that is more than 1000 people in this subdivision. That would make it larger than most of the towns in Alaska. Only 26 towns in Alaska have populations larger than 1,000.

Most of the houses were built in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The average price of the homes in Cottonwood Shores is about $180,000 which makes it a very affordable place to live. Most of the homes have at least 3 bedrooms and they are on 3/4ths of an acre or more. The homes along the lake are much more expensive and are also much larger.

Finger Lake Elementary School borders Cottonwood Shores on the East. Many students walk to school. The middle school and high school are both Colony Schools. The bus does come through the subdivision to pick up children.

Our family used to live in Cottonwood Shores and one of the most enjoyable things was to take the canoe out on the Cottonwood Lake. The lake is fairly large with Cottonwood Creek flowing in one side and out the other. Some nice wild rainbow trout are in this lake if you like to fish. Salmon also run through the lake in the summer but are not legal to fish for because they are spawning.

There are currently about 10 homes for sale in Cottonwood Shores. Give me a call if you would like to find out more about this great subdivision. My cell is 907 232–7900

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People moving to Alaska from Midwest states usually want a house with some “land”. By that they mean they want to have at least 5 or 10 acres along with the house. They are always surprised to find that is very hard to find “land” in the Alaska.

Alaska has more land by far than any other state in the United States. It is more than twice as large as Texas, but only about 1% of the land is privately owned.

Actually more than that is privately owned if you count the huge expanses owned by Alaska Native Corporations. For example, Doyon Ltd., one of 13 regional native corporations, owns 12.5 million acres by itself. There are many smaller village corporations that also own large tracts of land. In general, they aren’t selling. The land is their heritage and they are keeping it.

The Federal government and the State government own the rest of the land. Most of the Federal land is National Parks, National Forests, or Wildlife Preserves. The state owns a lot of land and does sell it in a very slow and methodical manner.

That leaves the rest of us on less than 1% of the land. That means about 3,750,000 acres are privately owned. That’s quite a bit less than the size of the State of Massachusetts.

Couple the small amount of private land with the fact that the transportation and electric utility grid in Alaska is extremely small, you reduce the available land even further.

People don’t realize that Alaska is still a pioneer state. Most of the state is not reachable by road vehicle. I don’t care how good of a 4X4 you have, you can’t drive there. And then, there are a lot of places you can drive to, but you can’t connect to power once you get there.

So, you have a choice. You can buy a lot of land out in a remote area, set up a tent, and commute by plane, you can pay a high price for the few available pieces closer in, or you can settle for a smaller parcel. Most of us choose the latter. We actually want to be able to afford a house with our land so we end up settling for about an acre of land.

But just think….our acre of land is only 10 minutes or so from Alaska!

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These statistics include all residential listings in the Mat-Su Borough.  This includes Wasilla, Palmer, and all the outlying areas between Talkeetna and Eureka. 

There are several surprises this week.  First, we had 35 new listings come on the market this week, 36 pendings, and 22 closed sales. Those are all healthy numbers for this time of year. 

Notice the high average price for closed sales last week.  That number has been hovering around $200,000 for months.  Last week there were several higher end homes that closed edging the average higher. 

But the record breaker was a $1,500,000 sale of a listing by Lee Mitchell at RE/MAX of Wasilla.  I checked several times and we have no closed sales over one million dollars for the valley on the MLS…until this one.  Congratulations Lee, maybe this will break the ice and we will see lots more million dollar sales in the Mat-Su Valley.

Interest rates are still at historic lows, just over 6% with some special loans coming in in the high 5% ranges.  One of the reasons for the low value of the dollar is the low interest rates pushed by the Federal Reserve.  This, along with $800+ gold and high oil prices risks inflation.  If inflation kicks in, interest rates will rise very quickly.  Buyers who wait for lower house prices may be shooting themselves in the foot by not locking in these low interest rates now.

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I have had quite a few questions about what happened to www.matsumls.com.  If you click on it, it will go to an error page.  That is because it was bought out by AlaskaMLS inc.  MatSuMLS was owned by the Valley Board of Realtors who ran the Valley MLS system.  Most Mat-Su valley real estate companies belonged to both MLS systems.  Now there is only one MLS system for Valley Realtors, and that is the Alaska Statewide MLS system.

Alaska MLS inc. is a  broker owned, not Realtor owned, MLS system that has all of the Anchorage, Kenai, Kachemak, and now the Mat-Su Valley listings.  There are additional listings from many other areas of Alaska on the Alaska MLS system. 

The new place to search is the public website for the Alaska MLS.  That site is www.alaskarealestate.com .  Don’t go to MatSuMLS.com any more, it doesn’t work.

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Foreclosures Part One was about pre-foreclosures,Part Two was on foreclosure auctions, this article will be about the most common foreclosure purchase.  That is purchasing a foreclosed house that is represented by a Realtor.

Many people assume that foreclosures are automatically good deals.  The truth is that most foreclosed properties are sold for exactly what they are worth.  You can’t expect to buy a foreclosure that is listed by a Realtor and immediately make a profit on it.  By definition, lenders are professionals in financial matters.  It is in their best interest to receive the highest price possible out of every house in their possession.  They usually accomplish this through time tested methods.

After an institution takes possession of the property at the auction they immediately secure the property and change the locks.  Occasionally, if the property is abandoned before the auction they will do this previous to the auction.  The property will be winterized and inspected by a property manager. 

An appraiser and a Realtor will provide a value to the lender.  The lender will occasionally get more than two opinions on the market value of the property to help them determine their initial asking price.  The initial list price is often slightly higher than the real market price.  The lender will then go through a series of price reductions at regular intervals. 

The property in the top photo is currently listed with Elizabeth MacMullen of RE/MAX of Wasilla for $283, 500 and it initially had a ten day hold.  The ten day hold means that the seller will not open any offers for ten days.  That is too ensure that if they undershot the price, more than one buyer will compete for the property and potentially bid the price up.  If the property doesn’t sell for a period of time, usually about 45 days, they will drop the price by a fixed amount.   There will be another ten day hold after every price reduction.  This will continue until the price and the market value will eventually meet and the house will sell.

Although this is not the best strategy in a declining market, private sellers would be wise to take a hint from the professional sellers.  The foreclosed homes always eventually sell, and they sell for their value without leaving a lot of money on the table.  The only problem is that in a declining market if the lender initially overpriced the property, they will chase the market price down, eventually selling for a lower price than they would have if they would have started out at a lower price.

I had a lender do exactly that last year.  I suggested a price of $170,000 but they listed it for $199,000.  We got seven offers on the property before they eventually took $155,000.  The crazy thing is that all six of the previous offers were for more than $155,000.  Like most lenders, they have a previously determined margin in which they will entertain offers.  All of the previous offers on this house were just outside that margin and were rejected.  Then the lender would drop the price and someone else would make another offer for a little lower than the margin, we slowly marched down in price until we finally had someone step in at $155,000. 

It is important to realize that lending institutions aren’t your normal everyday sellers.  For example, they are not as willing to pay the closing costs most sellers agree to pay.  They will usually not pay for an appraisal, title insurance, or asbuilt surveys.  They usually do not pay for any repairs needed on the structure.  Sometimes they will not pay any closing costs at all so that the buyer needs to pay all of their own closing costs and also the costs normally paid by the seller.

Most of the time you will need to patiently wait for the wheels of bureaucracy at a big bank to slowly turn.  You might write an offer hoping for a quick response only to find out that you will be lucky to hear anything at all from the bank for up to two weeks. Sometimes it will be much longer than that before they will respond to your request.

If you would like to take a look at any foreclosed properties, give me a call.  I enjoy comparing these properties to others on the market.  The nice thing is that you know the bank will eventually come down to the market value.  Many, and perhaps most, current private sellers refuse to come down to the market value and let their listing expire.  They hope to wait for anther sellers market before selling at a reduced price.  A bank is going to sell their property, no matter how low they have to go to get it done.

My cell number is $232–7900…  Or just click the contact button to the right to send an email.

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