The Mat-Su Borough says it’s going to raise taxes this year.  Rindi White wrote this piece in the Anchorage Daily News alerting us to this new hole in our pocket.  Surprisingly, the borough claims that the budget will decrease, but they need more money.  I’m not sure how that works.

What they don’t say is that they have been raising taxes almost every year since 1990.  When your assessment value on your house increases, your taxes increase.  So without having to increase the mill rate, the borough has been raking in more and more property taxes every year. 

In addition to that, the growth in the valley has increased the amount of houses from which they can gather taxes.  Raising the value of an empty lot that is valued at $30,000 to $230,000 with a house on it increases the change into the boroughs till by 6 times.  Of course, new homes equals a higher population, which does increase the work load for the borough…they need to hire more people to collect the money. 

Seriously, I do recognise that a higher population means that the borough needs more money.  But they should be receiving that money already with the increased property valuation of those new homes.  I am having a hard time understanding why taxes will need to go up this year unless they are in fact going to spend more money. 

I have a call in to the borough finance office and also to the employment office.  I hope they can help me understand why they want to raise taxes.  I’ll update this post when they help me clear the tax fog in my brain.

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Wasilla Real Estate statistics, including Palmer and the whole Mat-Su borough for the past week.

The market appears to be holding steady. There are more new listings, as expected in the spring.  The new pending and closed sales have been almost the same for the last 2 months. The following chart shows the stats for this week.

A very interesting phenomenon this week the stark difference between Days on Market, (DOM), for the pending and closed sales compared to the total active listings. I also notice that a lot of homes on my motivated sellers list turned up in the pending list this week…obviously they were good picks. I’m still updating the next one…it should be done soon.

Once more it is obvious that there are two markets out there.  There are 775 homes on the market with only 30 buyers a week willing to write offers on them.  Obviously, they only shop the houses that are priced and presented right, the other houses keep racking up DOM.

To get into the pending or closed category requires both price and presentation.  There are only so many homes that a buyer can see.  I showed 13 homes yesterday priced from $280,000–$380,000.  We started at 1 PM and didn’t finish until 8:30PM.   I don’t usually work on Sunday, but these people had come from outside and had a limited time schedule.  We found a couple interesting homes, but one was obviously priced better than the rest.  Guess which one interests them.

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Alaska Is Huge

Every spring I get inquiries from people “outside” who have never been to Alaska about finding a piece of their Alaskan dream.  They want to buy a chunk of Alaska where they can have peace and privacy.  They know Alaska is big so they expect to get at least 10–100 acres of beautiful wilderness.

Of course, they also expect this to come with maintained roads, electricity, and hopefully public water and sewer as well.  It takes them awhile to come to grips with how hard to find and how expensive land is in Alaska.

Alaska IS huge, click on the top map to get a feel for just how big Alaska really is.  You could almost put one tip on New York City and the other on San Francisco. 

But less than 1% of Alaska is in private ownership.  Here is a map showing who owns Alaska.  Click on it to notice that it is actually a pie chart showing that the US Government owns most of the state. 

Alaska Is Tiny

Here are some more details on how tiny Alaska really is.

You will find that there is about as much private land in Alaska that you would find in the state of Massachusetts.  But much of that land is either remote, (you can’t drive to it), or swampy, or mountainous.  If we are talking about quality land in Alaska on which you can actually build a home, drive to, have telephone service, or farm and garden; it may be as small as the state of Rhode Island. 

You can find land in the wilderness, or on the ocean, (alaska has more than 34,000 miles of ocean front), on a river, or in the mountains.  But if you want all that and also want to drive to work in the morning you better have some big bucks. 

I can find you a piece of the Alaska wilderness for a low price.  But I can’t take you to it.  I don’t own a helicopter.

Palmer and Wasilla Are The Premier Alaska Locations

If you are looking for a real nice property that is close to all of the above, you are looking for a home in the Mat-Su Valley.  Almost any home in the Mat-Su valley is within a 20–30 minute drive of good hiking, mountain climbing, fishing, boating, hunting, skiing and more.  That is why the Wasilla and Palmer area is the bedroom community for the whole state of Alaska.

And that is why I live here and have stayed here for 40 years.  The Mat-Su Valley is the best place to live in the whole state of Alaska in my opinion.  If you are interested in a home here…send me a note by clicking on my contact link on the right.

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This past week has been humming along at about the same rate as the month of March.  The market activity is better than the winter months have been, but it is significantly less than this time last year.   We seem to have a lot of people looking at homes, but not as many actually buying.

As you can deduce by looking at the chart above, the houses that are selling are the ones in the lower price ranges.  The average house on the market is price a lot higher than the houses that are selling. 

That means that the competition in the higher price ranges is fierce.  In fact for year so far, houses over $300,000 have been only 8% of  the total sales while they consist of 30% of the total inventory.  The only houses over $300,000 that are selling are the ones priced very competitively and that are presented very effectively. 

Click on the chart to the right to see the MLS stats for the last 2 years.  Notice especially the bottom line.  this is the line showing total sales for every month.  We are still waiting for a significant bump in sales for this spring.  I believe it will come…but it’s not here yet.

Kristan Cole has some good stats over on her site here.  She shows that the total sales are down almost 30% from last year.    Total volume is also down, as is the average sales price.  The only thing that I might disagree on is her number of a -3% appreciation.  I don’t have enough information to say that yet. 

Even though the average sales price per home is down, that doesn’t say that the average value of each home sold is down.  It just shows that we are selling more homes in the lower price ranges and fewer in the higher price ranges.  We still don’t have enough real data to tell if values are going up or down.  But my opinion is that the lower price homes are appreciating slightly and the higher priced homes are doing the opposite.

If you would like help buying or selling…give a call.  My cell number is 907 232–7900. 

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I did the deals of the week a little differently this week.  I talked to a bunch of realtors and asked which property are they surprised isn’t sold already.

Here they are:

• 2980 S Aimee’s Circle for $290,000,  Brand New and lots of upgrades. Listed with Ray Wood, Prudential Vista Real Estate.
• 4500 S McKechnie Loop, $180,000 for a Duplex, Listed with Larry Ficek  RE/MAX
• 2634 W Stable Circle, $258,000, Listed with Dave Johnson, Fishhook Realty.
• 11727 Knik-Goose Bay Road. $750,000, Listed with Jo Sonerholm, Prudential Vista
• 4901 E Fairview Loop, $175,000 with a shop, Listed with Kevin Crozier, RE/MAX
• 8571 E Queensboro, $325,000 3460 sq ft home, Listed with Marty Van Diest…that’s me!
• 5155 N Kipling, $250,000, 1625 Brand New Ranch in Hart Lake.  I get two…

These are all very good houses for the price.  Obviously they don’t fit every buyer, but they are priced right for the property.  Check them out.  If you are interested but still think the price is high, these are serious sellers, make an offer.

Call me at 907 232–7900 to look at any of them.

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Whew!  We made it through another winter. 

 I’m officially declaring today the last day to worry about home freeze-ups this winter.

One thing that I think a lot of us Alaskans ignore is that we are extremely vulnerable to natural or man-made disasters. 

Almost all of us are tied to “the grid”.  We are dependent on the electrical grid and the natural gas distribution system. 

If we have a large scale failure in the grid the results will be disastrous.  Most of the nice new homes that I sell these days have no means to stay warm if they lose both gas and power. 

People brag to me about how their gas fireplace will keep them warm even if the power goes out.  But I have to wonder what they will do with that 5 star home when the power AND the gas disappear. 

How can that happen you ask?  One word…EARTHQUAKE… 

It seems almost inevitable that we will eventually have another large quake here.  When that happens there is a good chance that both the electrical and gas distribution systems will be down for weeks.  Can you imagine having to dig up and repair hundreds of broken gas lines throughout southcentral Alaska?  And if this happens in mid-winter the damage to homes will be huge.

We all need some way to keep our homes warm in a disaster.  You can go the cheap route…like me, and just store a barrel stove in the shed.  Or you can install a $30,000 masonry fireplace that will heat your home so efficiently that you can kiss Enstar goodbye.  Here are some good links:

• Craigslist…lots of used wood stoves that you can store in the shed, or install permanently.
• Frontier Heating Concepts…Palmer resident Andrew Good sells wood boilers.
• University site on wood heat…Lots of different ideas on how to heat with wood.
• Alaska Fireplace…Wood, Coal, and Oil stoves that run with or without electricity.
• Masonry Heater…Ned Rozelle article on masonry heaters.
• Cold Climate Housing Research Center…study on wood heaters.

Whichever route you choose…you have until mid-November to get it done.  That’s six months.

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Just South of Palmer, Alaska, and about 1/2 mile off the Glenn Highway is this beautiful log home.

It has 3 acres of beautifully landscaped land with a barn. The house is 2,868 square feet with 4 bedrooms and two baths. The living room has a high vaulted ceiling with nice hardwood flooring. There is a beautiful Vermont castings stove on a large stone hearth at one end of the living room. The other end is full of windows facing south.

Scroll to the bottom for documents.

Each of the photos are expandable.

  Google Map   Building Sketch    Well Log    Septic Report

Property Disclosure

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Wasilla Real Estate News market statistics for Wasilla, Palmer, Big Lake, Houston, Sutton, Talkeetna, Willow and every other little community in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

This update is for the week of March 24–31, 2008.

Although the statistics include the whole borough, about 80% of the real estate activity occurs in the Palmer-Wasilla Core area.  This is the area that is driving the market for the Mat-Su Valley

There were 60 new listings this week.  That is the largest amount so far this year.  We should continue to have a high volume of new listings come on the market throughout the spring.

The market has definitely picked up.  While the pendings and sales are a little higher than they were last month, the activity on showings and offers seems to be quite a bit higher. 

Right now, there still seems to be a reality gap between buyers and sellers.  I think that many on both sides are not understanding the reality of the market.  

Many sellers are not pricing their home to sell.  They are still in the mentality of a sellers market where a rising tide lifts all ships and even if you are overpriced, the market will eventually catch up.  Read yesterday’s post here.

But there are a lot of buyers that are also out in never-never land.  Remember…this is Alaska and you know how the bumper sticker goes.  Just because prices are free-falling in other parts of the country doesn’t mean that is happening here.  Take a look at this Fortune Magazine article about how much they are expected to continue falling in some places.

But prices are not falling here.  In fact at this point the average price is still raising, slowly.  The borough and others feel that the prices rose last year by 2%.  I think this is about right.   So just because prices are dropping dramatically in other parts of the country, it doesn’t mean they are dropping here.  In fact, at this point it appears as if prices will continue to hold steady or raise slightly in the future.

So, between sellers listing their homes at too high a price, and buyers offering too low of a price we are seeing a lot of paperwork flying around before we get the contracts signed off.  Buyers need to shop enough to know the market, and if a house is priced right…just buy it.  If you don’t, someone else will.  

I’m working on the Motivated Sellers list for the week.  It should be out tomorrow. Drop me a line if you want it.

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I once had a call from an out-of-state owner telling me that he wanted his house sold by the weekend.  It was Wednesday.  When I told him that could be done for the right price he asked me to fax the listing papers.  We had the house sold by the weekend.

He was a MOTIVATED SELLER.

Some sellers are not motivated.  How do you know they aren’t motivated?  Here are a few clues.

• The house has been on the market for 600 days with no price reduction.
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• They don’t want to show the house today…how about next week?
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• It’s still a mess, even though they had a 24 hour notice for showing.
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• You make a good offer which they reject with no counter.
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• When you show up to the house you are greeted with a snarling pittbull

On the other hand, there are sellers who are very intent on getting their house sold.  A motivated seller will always try to find a way to make a transaction work.  They won’t balk about a $2,000 difference between the offered price and asking price .  They will make the reasonable repairs to get the deal done.  They will even change their plans to move early to help a buyer out.

How do you find these motivated sellers? 

• Sometimes you can tell immediately by the price.  If a new listing comes on at 10% below the competition you know that is a motivated seller.  Buy the place for the asking price before someone else does.  That seller will be a willing partner throughout the transaction.
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• Sometimes the listing will say “motivated seller”…that’s a good hint.    Actually, that seller often owes more on the loan than the house is worth.  The seller is motivated but not able to do anything about the price.
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• It’s been on the market a while with a recent price reduction.  This seller is still serious about selling, but is trying to find the right price.  Make them an offer.
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• It is owned by a relocation company, or is a foreclosure.  These people are going to sell…period.  But they aren’t going to give the property away.  Read this on foreclosures. 
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• It’s a divorce sale.  They need to sell so that they can get on with their lives.
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• Last, but not least, get my MOTIVATED SELLERS LIST.   I  go through the MLS system and actually read the listings to see if it’s a Relo, Foreclosure, Divorce etc.  I also include those that have been on the market a long time but have had recent price reductions.  Occasionally a realtor will call and ask to have a house on that list because their seller is genuinely motivated.

Just drop me an email by clicking on my contact button.  Ask to receive the motivated sellers list. I just updated it.  There are 43 homes on the list right now. 

And here is a bonus that didn’t make the list.  This guy is really motivated.  He has only been on the market 10 days and has lowered his price three times already.  Click here to see the listing, call me to get in.  My cell phone number is 232–7900.

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I took a drive up Wolverine Road this evening to put a sign on a new listing.  Wolverine Road is one of Palmer’s secrets. 

Wolverine Road starts out as Clark-Wolverine Road from the Old Glenn Highway about one mile east of Palmer.  About 3 miles up the road, Clark and Wolverine separate, turn left to stay on Wolverine.  I found that someone else liked Wolverine Road as well.

I saw three moose on the 8 mile drive, this young one was munching on Willows next to Wolverine Creek

Just a mile up the road were some of our strange Alaskan Cattle. 

These shaggy beasts definitely look like they were made for an Alaskan winter.

Just across Wolverine Canyon is the giant carrot marking Wolverine Farms, home of the largest herd of Galloway Cattle in Alaska.

Someone who knows more than I do can tell us why every mountain peak has a puffy cloud above it.  There were no other clouds in the sky.

All this was to put a sign at the very end of Wolverine Road.  If you know anyone interested in a 69 acre parcel with about 20 acres in Hay and a 2200 square foot home let me know.  It’s a rare find, there are trails galore from this location.  You can leave right from your home straight into the Alaska Wilderness.  Here is a google map to the location.  Click on the satellite view to get a feel for this unusual opportunity.

Or you can call me for more info… 907 232–7900 is my cell number.

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