Green Real Estate Appraiser

Aussies share how to upgrade your home to keep cool during summer

Posted on June 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

The key to affordably cooling a home is diagnosing why the building is hot, according to architect and Envirotecture director Andy Marlow.

“Normally, it’s because you’ve got poor shading over the windows,” he says. “The sun getting into the building has a huge impact.”

Marlow says windows are a major source of heat gain into a home, and protecting these surfaces from direct heat is the upgrade that delivers the most bang for buck for home owners.

“Fundamentally, the aim is to keep the sun off the windows in summer. It’s the single most cost-effective thing you could do.”

Options for shading windows include fixed or retractable awnings, shutters and blinds, but exterior protection is best.

“Blinds are much more effective when they’re outside the glass than inside the glass,” he says. “Once the heat passes through the glass, it’s inside your building.”

Marlow says home owners should also investigate the quality of their windows and doors, and replace ineffective components that are letting heat in.

The economy is tanking so why aren’t home prices dropping?

Posted on May 29, 2020 | Leave a comment

Why isn’t the tanking economy bringing home prices down with it? It’s a reasonable question given that so much of the economy moves in lockstep, and the last economic crisis in 2008 sent the housing market into free fall.

So what’s different this time around? Let’s break it down. The price of anything is a function of the relationship between supply and demand. Generally, home prices have been pushed up over the last 5 years by high demand created by a then-booming economy and a low supply of housing for sale, due in part to relatively low levels of housing construction and available land on which to build.

After the outbreak of the pandemic, housing demand fell as buyers lost their jobs, part of their income, or simply didn’t want to be shopping for a house in the middle of a viral outbreak and what figures to be a period of great economic uncertainty.

Demand dropping was evident in a number of metrics. Although a weak indicator of buyer demand, traffic to real estate portals like Zillow and Redfin dropped significant in the beginning of the outbreak, as did more reliable indicators like pending home sales and weekly mortgage applications.

Usually, a huge drop in demand would put downward pressure on prices; home sellers would be competing with each other to attract a limited number of buyers by dropping their asking price. But while housing demand has dropped substantially, housing supply also dropped in lockstep as potential home sellers pulled out of the market for many of the same reasons buyers are.

New home listings is a good indicator of housing supply, and after stay-at-home orders were enacted, new home listings cratered by as much as 80 percent year-over-year. Redfin reported that 41 percent of offers were subject to a bidding war over the last month, suggesting demand is outpacing supply—just as it was before the pandemic.

While both supply and demand have dropped, the relationship between the two went largely unchanged, meaning the drops in supply and demand were generally proportional to each other. Furthermore, home sales also dropped after the pandemic hit, and it’s hard for prices to move when there aren’t as many housing transactions to make prices move in aggregate. Together, this leaves prices much where they were before the pandemic.

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In Covid first month, San Diego home prices rose fastest in California

Posted on May 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

San Diego County not only saw prices increase in March during the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic, it outpaced all markets in California.

Home prices in the San Diego metropolitan area had risen 5.2 percent in a year, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices reported Tuesday. It was the highest annual increase since last summer.

Prices increased 4.4 percent nationwide even as millions of people started losing their jobs. All 19 cities in the index showed gains. Detroit was not included in March’s data because its recording office closed because of the pandemic. Also, many of the transactions covered in March’s report began before the virus caused widespread closures.

Analysts largely attribute gains to plunging mortgage interest rates and decreases in the number of homes for sale. For a 30-year, fixed-rate loan, the rate was 3.45 percent in March, said Freddie Mac, down from 4.44 percent at the same time last year.

“Housing prices continue to be remarkably stable,” wrote Craig Lazzara, managing director and global head of index investment strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Regardless of who is buying, many analysts say expecting a drop in prices — even with unemployment reaching Great Depression levels — is unlikely with potential buyers outnumbering sellers in many markets.

“Unless there is a major shift in the amount of people looking to buy a house, it seems owners will continue to see their home’s value increase every month,” wrote Bill Banfield, the capital markets executive vice president of Quicken Loans.

Aussies share how to upgrade your home to keep cool during summer

The economy is tanking so why aren’t home prices dropping?

In Covid first month, San Diego home prices rose fastest in California

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