It’s time for Albuquerque Real Estate talk with New Mexico’s number one Estate Team, Tego and Tracy Venturi.
The Venturi Team from Keller Williams Realty.
Tracy
Wow. Good morning, Tego. We love that new intro.
Tego
It’s an awesome new intro. That is great.
Tracy
So we are Tracy and Tego Venturi Venturi Realty group of Keller Williams Realty with Albuquerque Real Estate talk.
Tego
Yeah, we’ve been doing it now. Gosh. So we’re going to, like, Show 420. Been doing this weekly show, a half-hour show. It’s been great for us because it forces us to be a student of the Real Estate world in the Real Estate market. We learned so much that we’re able to pass on to everybody here every week. And it’s been great doing this show and appreciate Eddie and appreciate Kiva, and it’s a great resource for our community, too.
Tracy
So it’s holiday week. Hanka, Christmas. We’ve got a new year coming. I know everyone that listens and has listened to us for over eight years knows you always do your predictions for the year. So I’m sure we’ll have that coming up in the next few weeks.
Tego
My very cloudy crystal ball. Actually, I think my crystal ball is not quite as cloudy as other people, but there’s just so much going on with Real Estate and the economy in general, and Real Estate is such a big piece of the overall macroeconomic world and interest rates and all that stuff. So, yeah, we’ll look into it. I’ll give you my short version, which is I’m pretty optimistic about where we’re at in the housing cycle right now. Right, Tracy? Okay, we got to do one thing. Yes.
Tracy
I’m going to interrupt you.
Tego
Okay.
Tracy
So we’ve got to address the new facial hair. For those watching online, it’s a holiday.
Tego
It’s that time of year.
Tracy
I know you started over Thanksgiving when we basically had four days off right, over Thanksgiving. And now it’s almost the new year.
Tego
Last time I grew a beard that didn’t have all this gray in it. Now it does.
Tracy
Times have changed.
Tego
Everybody. You guys that are in that late 50s know what I’m talking about. Okay, we got to do that.
Tracy
What are we covering today?
Tego
Well, first off, we want to talk about Tracy, you and I have been here in Albuquerque, but we’re both Midwest implants. Right. I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You grew up in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. And I just thought, you know what? I got to look and see what the weather is in those two communities. And so in Ann Arbor today, it’s going to be high of 14. Low of twelve in Ann Arbor, where I grew up. And okay, take a guess for the forecast for today in Minneapolis.
Tracy
I’m going to guess it’s not even going to get above zero. Below zero all day.
Tego
Close. It’s a high of three.
Tracy
High of three. I remember those days growing up.
Tego
Yeah.
Tracy
And it was not good. I mean, we grew up on a farm and we would burn wood in the the, you know, in the living room to try to keep the house even warmer. I think that we were probably when I was that young, we were actually burning coal in the furnace in the basement and we’d go have to stoke it.
Tego
Wow.
Tracy
But anyway, I’m really thankful that we live in the Albuquerque area and get this beautiful weather. I know some parts of Albuquerque are not as nice right now with the northeast area being really cold, but we know that’s a fluke and it’ll change quickly. So we’ve got some fun things to talk about today.
Tego
Yeah. So I wanted to COVID a couple of things. First off, you had a story about what makes a house a home and cover that. I also want to talk about the home shopping checklist. We have one on our website. I just wanted to go into that a little bit. And then I pulled up a story that covers walkable neighborhoods and what that is.
Tracy
Albuquerque walkable neighborhoods? Yeah. Well, I could probably start guessing so we can play guess the neighborhood here.
Tego
Okay, let’s jump right into that one because that’s Albuquerque walkable neighborhoods. We’re not New York, downtown Denver, some of those communities that are really tied into walkable and don’t have not so spread out like western cities like Albuquerque and Phoenix and some of those other things. Yeah.
Tracy
So you actually have stats on it. So I’m not going to look at your stats.
Tego
I think a lot of people are familiar with walk score walkscore.com. It’s been around for quite a while now. And what they do is they basically put a score on every single address in the country on how walkable it is compared in comparison to others, and they give it a scale. And I think without a surprise, number one walkable neighborhood in Albuquerque.
Tracy
Wait, you were going to let me get it.
Tego
Well, I’m sorry, I just pulled it up. So you’re looking at it?
Tracy
I didn’t, but I looked and it’s exactly what I was going to say. Knob Hill area. Right. The whole University of New Mexico corridor, I’m sure, is up there. Right.
Tego
All of it. All of that Knob Hill and what they call University Heights, which is kind of where the frontier is. Kind of that area. We kind of think of that as.
Tracy
Knob Hill, too, but Carlisle and Central area.
Tego
Exactly. And then it’s the Huni areas.
Tracy
So that’s down by Albuquerque Country Club, old Town, Central and Rio Grande area. You know what’s funny is downtown isn’t one or two, right? No, it’s lockable because there’s not a lot of housing downtown.
Tego
No, there’s not a lot of residential. But, I mean, you think about the Knob Hill and University area, that’s top of the list.
Tracy
And then what about in the Old Town area northeast? Is there anything on the list?
Tego
Not much except well, yeah, number seven there Jeannie Bellama.
Tracy
Jean Bellama. That’s Eubank and Constitution or Manal. Probably somewhere in there.
Tego
Yeah, Constitution a few years ago.
Tracy
Well, we talked about walk score. I can remember back when Eddie was two station locations ago. So we’ve been talking about it for a long time. But I remember about five years ago I had a client who came from a very highly populated downtown city that lived there. And boy, the walk score was huge. And I remember wanting to be walkable to a coffee shop, walkable to a grocery store. Some of the neighborhoods that I showed, one of them was Old Town. The nearest grocery store at the time was Central and Atrisco, or the La Montene to co op at Rio Grande and Indian School. But another one that came up quite a bit was right. Montgomery and Eubank. There’s a satellite coffee in the area there’s at one Taboo, there’s a Flying Star. And there was some nice properties in walking distance.
Tego
Well, and it’s interesting. And the other one that’s high on the list is the Burles area. Again, not a surprise there. So the thing is Albuquerque, it is a very sprawling city, right.
Tracy
We’re the wild west. We had a lot of room to spread out when the city was growing.
Tego
Right?
Tracy
Yeah.
Tego
But it’s an interesting thing. So if you’re ever curious about that, you can go to Walkscore.com and plug in any address and it will give you an idea of what it’s like and then show you what’s in the area as well as transit and buses and stuff like that as well.
Tracy
Perfect. It kind of made me think about a different client I had a few years ago when we’re working with home sellers and helping them market their home for sale. We talk about the Peas, the three P’s, the price, the property and the location. But what’s that? A P? You always say three PS. Anyway, it’s location, price, condition. Right. So a lot of times when people back to busy roads here, it’s a bit of a difficult sale because we don’t have a lot of homes back into really busy, loud roads. And it’s interesting because when I was working with somebody from New York City, they wanted that. Right. That was comfortable to them. That was what they were used to. So we were actually seeking out homes. It’s just so odd to me to think about how fun that was. They ended up buying a house backing to Unser near the Lidara area, near a stoplight. Even when people stop and start, it’s even louder. And they had huge views because of it looking out over unser. So it was really nice.
Tego
The other place that’s interesting, it’s not on the list when we talk about walkable communities, is the Wind Rock area. There’s so much going on there with the redevelopment and uptown and all of that.
Tracy
And they’re building residential there now at the Wind Rock property. Yeah.
Tego
Okay. So, Tracy, what makes a house a home?
Tracy
That’s a good one. Tego, there’s a lot of things and a lot of times we talk about the financial reasons to have a house.
Tego
Some of us do a lot.
Tracy
Some of us do a lot, right. But what really makes a house a home right. Is being able to customize it, to have pride of ownership, to be able to make your happy place. Right. Kind of create the space that makes you most comfortable. Even if the color is purple that you want on your walls, if that’s what makes you happy and you feel comfortable, you can do that. It’s something to be proud of. Homeownership is a big deal, right. And a lot of people really aspire to it, and it is something to be proud of in addition to the wealth building benefits of it. Right. And you can choose to pick a place that really meets your space needs. When you’re buying a house, when you’re renting a property, a lot of times you have to settle and the space needs don’t really match for you. If you’re in an apartment, you might not have a garage, or you might have to go to a laundromat to do your laundry if there’s no laundry on property. Right. Depending on how small of a complex you’re in or something, buying a house or a condo or a town home, you get to choose what you want and make sure that it fits your needs.
Tracy
You might need a nine car garage, like a house I saw come on the market a couple of weeks ago. And you might need a workshop, or you might need backyard access to store a boat or an RV or something, or you need higher walls and fencing for your animals, whatever it might be. But you can also customize your surroundings so you can make the outside as decorative as you want within guidelines. Right.
Tego
Yeah.
Tracy
It’s kind of part of the benefits, besides wealth building on how to make a house a home, make it comfortable for you.
Tego
I always go back to what you would say many times, especially when the kids were younger. Tracy was making memories, right. Making memories with your families. And to me, that’s really what home and that security that you get with the home is all about. You get the security and then you get the relationship piece of it, the social piece of it as well. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to own a home to get those things. It’s just when you own a home, it just seems like this higher level of pride in having it.
Tracy
Yeah. It brought up sort of a sadness thought for me, what you’re talking about, because we see and we help people often that are downsizing or selling a family home with so many memories and so walking through that with people and that life change. It can be really hard. And there’s a lot of memories. We have that wall in our closet, right, where all the kids heights at different ages are on the wall. And we’ve helped people who’ve gone through that, and we give them solutions for how to capture some of those memories that they have in a home and that other people have in their home and to make sure to take the time to do that before the sale. Right?
Tego
Yeah. I think for most of our audience that listens, they kind of understand. They get it, the homeownership thing, and there’s the whole financial piece of it. But we didn’t want to talk about that because I talk about that all the time. But the financial piece is a really important part of it because of the security, and that’s the emotional piece of it is the financial piece ties into that because you’re locking in your housing costs for, let’s say, 30 years.
Tracy
Right.
Tego
So there’s some stability there as well, which adds to that sense of security.
Tracy
You just couldn’t not go there.
Tego
I couldn’t not go there. I had to bring it all together. I had to do it. I could not do it.
Tracy
Good job.
Tego
Okay, Tracy. We work with a lot of first time home buyers. We work with a lot of people that haven’t moved in a long time and are, you know, thinking about what they need in a home. And by the way, if you’re you’re just tuning in, it’s Venturi Realty Group. We’re with Keller Williams Realty here in Albuquerque. It’s Tego and Tracy Venturi, and we’ve been doing this show for 420 some shows now, but I just wanted to get back to that. One of the things that we always recommend people do is a home buyer wish list, right.
Tracy
And we sit down and do sort of a buyer consult and help people kind of focus in on that list. Right. A lot of times, people have a list in their head, or one person that’s buying the house with another person has a different idea of what’s important in their next house, and they may.
Tego
Not have communicated it with each other right.
Tracy
Or even recognized it until you really focus, take some time to set aside and really talk about it. Right. Because sometimes it’s all in our heads, and we assume the other person knows what’s important to us. But that’s where we like to do a buyer consult and help bring the decision makers and the occupants together.
Tego
Because we’ve been married 25 years, almost.
Tracy
24 and a half.
Tego
Okay. Yeah. The list we have is kind of general. It’s on our website at welcome homeabq.com, and you can just walk through it, and it’s basic things like what’s your timeline? How many bedrooms, how many bathrooms? Those basic things. How large? What’s your financing plan? How are you going to finance it?
Tracy
Our school is important. Just being near like I said, that one client coffee shops. But a lot of times we have you go through it and fill it out, but then to go through it with you and talk about it, because sometimes people will say, I have to have four bedrooms. And we go, okay, tell us how you use those four bedrooms. Is it four bedrooms or is it three bedrooms and an office to make sure we don’t miss a house? That’s three bedrooms plus an office. Or sometimes it says I must have a fenced yard or a big yard. Right.
Tego
And that’s what I want to address. That is what I would recommend people do. And a lot of people do this. I mean, it seems common sense once you hear it is obviously you’ve got the basics, right? Bedrooms, bathrooms, size, number of garage, spaces and stuff like that. But then you have to go through and say, okay, what are the must haves? What are the things I have to have? I have to have a two car garage. I don’t want to park my car in the street. Right, right. And those are the must have. Those are the no compromise. And then there should also be the list. That’s the stuff that I definitely do not want in my home. So that could be we hear it all the time, a swimming pool, for example, right? People are like, well, sometimes you get both extremes with swimming pools.
Tracy
Must have or must not have.
Tego
And then what happens is what we find is after people make these lists, when they start shopping, they realize that maybe they’re not going to get everything and there’s going to have to be compromises. Right, right. They’re always there.
Tracy
And one of the things that I’ve seen a lot where people say a must have is like RV storage on property. And once they find sometimes that really limits them finding the right house, they go, okay, I’ll pay for storage for my RV. Right. Sometimes it changes once you start looking at houses. And that’s part of the process we expect that, right?
Tego
Yeah, for sure. The other thing I would recommend people do is think about what does it mean to you, these features or stuff, and the move, not just the feature, but what’s the benefit, how’s it going to benefit you and your family. And that’s a good way to think about, again, how important something is. Is it a wish or is it a got to have kind of thing, right? Yeah, it’s a good exercise to go through and obviously your realtor can help you with that and maybe bring up things you hadn’t even thought about. For sure.
Tracy
So is now a good time to buy a house? Well, I know the answer to that. We’re in the holiday season. People have some time off from work right now. Some kids are out of school. A lot of times we see people looking at properties that go up this time of year. So if you want to sell your house and you think it’s not a good time to be on the market, it might be, right?
Tego
Yeah, well, and, and I’ll tell you what. What’s happened now, just in the last few weeks, is we, we’ve seen the number of homes on the market drop quite a bit. We went from about 1700 homes in the greater Albuquerque area on the market just a few weeks ago to now I think it’s under 1500. So percentage wise, that’s a pretty big difference. Very common this time of year, needless to say. I would suspect people just common sense would tell you, yes, a lot of people aren’t going to list their homes for sale right. During the holidays. So that is common. We do see some homes coming off the market this time of year where maybe it was on the warp. Market didn’t go under contract, didn’t get a buyer. And so now they’re just going to put it on pause until maybe after the new year.
Tracy
So we’ll see, we’ll see an influx of property after the new year, which right now, if you are thinking of buying a house, the competition is less. We are still seeing we had a couple of our agents on our Team this week get in multiple offer situations for some houses.
Tego
Wait, how can that be? I thought the whole housing market was crumbling.
Tracy
Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m bringing it up, because I know, I think we have to make sure people realize that the nice houses and the lack of a lot of houses on the market means it’s still tight. Right. The good houses priced right are still getting a lot of interest. So as a buyer, we expect March, February, March, April to be a very busy time for home buying and maybe getting ahead of it would be wise. Yeah.
Tego
Generally we see a good influx of homes coming onto the market and we see inventory. I don’t like using that term because they’re homes, but inventory increasing in early spring is usually when it happens. If people are thinking about getting their home on the market, I’m just going to probably you need to start thinking about it now. Right?
Tracy
Well, they say the biggest mistake people make in getting their house sold is waiting too long to get the house ready. It just takes longer than people think it will.
Tego
Yeah. So you need to start thinking about that now because getting your house, I think, cleaned out. The best time if you were to say, okay, if we look at historically, year over year, what’s the best time to get your home on the market to get the most money for your home? First off, if you’re selling and if we break it down and say, okay, usually the highest prices are April and May and June, that means you need to get your home on the market for closing. That means your home should be on the market probably in February, March to hit it, right? So you need to just kind of think about that even in January as well.
Tracy
Right. So if you’re thinking of selling this coming spring or after the new year, we’d be happy to meet ahead of time and help you plan out what should be done ahead of being on the market. A lot of times, home sellers have a list that’s a little different than what we have. They might say, well, I need to paint this or that, and I’m going to take care of this. And we’re like, you know what? This might be more important. Maybe it’s just a deep cleaning, something like that, but just meeting with us so we can tell you what homebuyers are going to be most concerned about.
Tego
So let me say this. The peak month that we see homes coming on the market is July. And if you wait that long, you’ve missed the peak of it. Now, I’m not talking a huge difference here. We’re talking maybe one or 2%, but we always get a one or two 3% fluctuation in home prices throughout the year. Now, when you look at it on a year over year basis, we’re generally always increasing, except back in the day. But even now we’re seeing year over year gains on home prices in the Albuquerque area.
Tracy
Right? Okay. I know there was more things to talk about. We have several homes. I usually do homes of the week because it’s a holiday weekend. We’re not doing open houses this weekend. And we do have some sellers who are ready for us to put their house on the market right after the first of the year. So if there’s something you’re looking for, give us a call. We might have it. In the process of being ready to be on the market, happy to see if we can help you with that.
Tego
I wanted to just make a request. If anybody out there listens to us, hears us, and get on our Facebook, get on our YouTube and like the page, it really helps us out. I’m just going to make that request. We’re really focused on just putting out good information, not, look at me, I’m so great. It’s not that kind of stuff, right? We’re just trying to put out good information about what’s happening in the Real Estate world because that’s what we do now. Tracy, I saw something the other day and I posted it on my Facebook. Speaking of keeping up on the market, if you want to follow me on Facebook, I always put stuff up there about the market, but there was a headline, and the headline was, 15 years ago, the housing market crashed under similar circumstances.
Tracy
Yeah, right.
Tego
So that was a headline that was circulating online.
Tracy
Yahoo. Finance.
Tego
Yahoo. Finance. It was a bunch of different places, and it’s a typical clickbaity type headline, right? It’s like, okay, we’re going to serve up this fear so that you click on it and read our story. And again, the headline was, 15 years ago, the housing market crashed under similar circumstances. And so, of course I went, well, that’s a bunch of, you know what, barber STRI. Sand, I read the story. Did you get the reference? No. Anyway, yeah, sorry, you’re shaking your head at me like, oh my gosh, I’m so embarrassed. So I, I read the story and you know what the story was about? It was about if you own home builder stocks, you should sell them. That’s what it was about. It was about stocks. It wasn’t really about the housing market crashing, even though that’s what the, the story headline implied. And I know, I know Kiva listeners, I know they’d be shocked to know that news stories, the headline doesn’t always tell the story. And that’s true across the political spectrum, I would say, probably. But anyway, neither here nor there. So I just wanted to go through some things. How the housing market today is very different than nothing like 15 years ago, I would say.
Tego
And I’ll just start with this, to be fair, the only thing that I see that’s very similar is that home prices escalated very quickly over a short period of time. We saw that from 2004 to 2007, and we’ve seen that now in the last couple of years as well, right. However, the difference in that cycle was there was 8 million jobs lost during that cycle. This time there really isn’t.
Tracy
It we’ve been hearing news about job losses, but nothing like 8 million.
Tego
And this is big picture. This is national the data I’m talking about here. Total people that are working back then was 138,000,000. Today it’s 158,000,000. Again, very, very different from that standpoint. Now, when we talk about the housing market, the subprime loans, we used to joke, we used to call them liar loans or stated income loans, but we call them liar loans. Basically, stated income loan says, oh, I make this much money and you get a loan. Well, those days are long gone. Since 2008, all those crazy loan products and adjustable rate mortgage products are gone. We don’t have any. So the loans that are on the books right now are very, very solid compared to back then. This is an interesting one, and we’ve talked about this before, Tracy. We talked about the last decade of home construction. And in the previous five years before the cycle went down, back in 2008, there was 7.65 million homes built in the United States in the past five years. Now it’s been 4.6. So a little more than half. But again, we’re, we’re supply constraint. We don’t have overbuilding like we saw in 2007. This is the big one, the number of homes on the market nationally.
Tego
Back then, there were about 4 million homes on the market today, it’s about 1.2 million that’s total in the entire United States.
Tracy
One fourth.
Tego
And I can give you Albuquerque’s Data. I told you earlier, there’s about 1500 homes on the market right now in Albuquerque. And I think at one point this year we peaked out at about 1700 homes on the market. Back in 2008, I think it was, or was it seven? We hit about 6000 homes on the market. So very different than back then. And then the last thing is mortgage delinquencies were 10% back then. Today it’s 3.6 and almost all time low. And number of homes in foreclosure was almost 5% back then. Today it’s like a half a percent.
Tracy
Right.
Tego
So just a very different picture. And so when you see those doom and gloom headlines, it’s really easy to pick out a couple of little data points that tell a story. I know, Eddie, people don’t do that. They don’t just pick and choose one little thing that backs up their argument. Right. People never do that.
Tracy
Sarcasm.
Tego
In the housing market, it’s no different, especially in the financial world. People love to pitch doom and gloom. It’s good for business.
Tracy
So there we are, another show in the books.
Tego
Another show in book.
Tracy
We can talk about Real Estate all day long. Yeah, actually we do.
Tego
Now is a great time to start thinking about what you’re doing next year, especially with time to sort of setting up the show. Remember, early spring, about March, or April, start eating up and start having that conversation now. You don’t know what to do with your time during this downtime. Go to welcome, see what is available, see what is out there. Start with the market and understand what you want to do in 2023. Those rates are right perfect right now. It’s a nice way. I’m glad that you guys stayed with it and really kind of showed what was happening. It looks like that is plenty stabilized. That’s really good, I think, for the market for the year. It seems like there’s a lot of balance out there.
Tego
Yeah, it is. Rates got kind of nutty. We are up over 7% there for a short period of time. Now we’re in kind of the mid to low. Six and a half, 6.25.
Speaker 1
Honestly, I think it’s been really good for a really long time. So six and a half, six and three quarters are pretty good.
Tego
Well, we’ll see what the Fed does. There’s a lot of, you know, I don’t want to get in that whole macro world, but there’s a lot of indications that rates are going to come down. But then again, you can also find indications that rates are going to go up. So really what it comes down to is do you want to be a homeowner or not.