Tego: [00:00:00] Welcome to Albuquerque real estate talk episode 483 end of March 2024 almost the end of March Lobo, basketball weekend pretty excited about that And this week. Well, wow, we got a lot to cover. We’ve got Of course, the National Association of Realtors Settlement, we have to talk about that. That’s the big news in our industry, of course.
But there’s a little bit about mortgage rates. We’re going to talk about what are the hot zip codes in Albuquerque now for housing, what are more buyer’s markets versus seller’s markets. We’re going to talk. Okay, I got to do it
Tracy: now. I got to talk about septic system. We got to,
Tego: we’re going to do the poop on septic systems.
Tracy: Come
Tego: on. I’m a dad. I got to get, I get to do a dad joke. Don’t I? Okay, fine. Okay. Yeah. And there was a story about the lock in effect, which we’ll, we’ll get into that a second and what that means. So Tracy, here we are.
Tracy: So Tico, we’re going to start with,
Tego: well, let’s first off introduce ourself and how do people get ahold of [00:01:00] us?
Tracy: Sure. So Venturi Realty Group of Real Broker. Best way to reach us, 448 8888 is the phone number. Of course, we’re in the 505 448 8888. Welcome home, ABQ. Dot com is our website on
Tego: YouTube. If you want to watch this again or listen to this again, and we also have a lot of market stats we put up there, our Facebook page as well.
So,
Tracy: so on our website, welcome home ABQ, we have all sorts of resources. So feel free to utilize that or just give us a call. We’d be happy to like give you the. The CliffsNotes, the chat GPT version, the, you know, we’d be happy to talk to you in real, real life about stuff if you have real estate questions.
So thanks for listening. We appreciate you every week being here and we, we love when we get questions from you and one of them was about septic systems. So love to talk about that. I’m not going to [00:02:00] use that word you use though. So, so look, can we start there?
Tego: Yeah, of course. Thanks.
Tracy: So we are New Mexico. We have a lot of homes not connected to city services for sewer, right?
A lot of septic systems around, a lot of different kinds of septic systems. You know, we’ve got people who are close to the water table that might have a special type of septic system. People where there’s a lot of granite and rock or big slope where it takes an engineered system that’s different, but basically they’re all the same, right?
Septic system, things flow out of the house into a tank where the solids fall to the bottom, the liquids drain out of the tank into what we call a drain field. So it goes out through the drain field and filters through dirt until it gets to. The water table. Yep. Right? Yeah. So basically the soil acts as the filter, right?
For the liquids that leave from the tank. [00:03:00] So tanks need to be pumped every once in a while, and there’s a whole chart on the office of the state engineers site about how often you should pump your septic tank. Some people tell us, oh, it has to be pumped every year. The chart says, based on how many people live in the house.
How big your tank is, how often you should get it pumped, but every couple of years is a general rule, unless you have a lot of people in your property or you’re using it for an event or something. Every couple of years should be fine, but there’s probably could be problems with septic tanks and we see it a lot.
You know, upon sale of a property that has a septic tank, the state law requires us to To have it inspected requires that it has to be inspected upon sale and pass, right? Several years ago, the actual regs for those inspectors changed a little bit and we are seeing, I don’t know, we don’t have a percentage to throw out, but we’re seeing TGO, a lot of properties with septic tanks fail on that inspection.
And of course, as [00:04:00] residents of New Mexico, we don’t really want the septic tanks to be leaching in the wrong way, right? We want them to be in good shape and not contaminating the ground because it’s you know, contaminating or leaking or whatever, but most common is around the lid. We see roots going in because they know there’s liquid in there.
It’s not sealed properly, or it literally. Cracks, breaks, depending, you know, some are made of concrete to go. Some are plastic. I’ve, I’ve seen stainless steel tanks but in general
Tego: stainless steel, I can’t be cheap.
Tracy: Yeah. So I was at a actually it was a well inspection. So maybe that’s it. It was a well water tank and it was stainless steel.
It wasn’t one of the things that
Tego: I’ve seen very common. There’s an era of septic tanks that were made out of concrete. And what happens is the, let’s just call it what it is, acidity in the tank starts to break down the concrete. So it’s just one of those things that if you’re, you know, [00:05:00] you, you want to make sure you’re getting it checked every once in a while if you’re a homeowner.
Tracy: Let’s talk about that. Okay. Because when you get your septic tank pumped does not mean they’re inspecting it.
Tego: They’re just
Tracy: pumping it. They’re not going to tell you that it’s got a problem unless you ask, right? They’re not doing an inspection. That’s two separate things, pumping versus inspection. So on inspection, now newer tanks have two openings, front of the tank, the back of the tank and inspectors are required to open both sides.
You know, if you’re just going to have it pumped, they’re going to just open one, pump it out and, and call it good, right? They’re not going to look to make sure that everything’s flowing properly in any event, you know for those people that have septic tanks, they probably already know this Tego, but caring for your septic tanks, pretty important.
So some of the don’ts with the septic tank, right? Most people with septic tanks don’t have a garbage disposal. They don’t want to put extra things in that tank, right? Like Sewer line. Great. You [00:06:00] know, grind up those things in your garbage disposal. But for septic tanks, most people don’t even have one in their kitchen sink.
They just don’t want to get all that extra stuff in their tank. Grease. I’ve, I’ve heard, you know, you don’t want to get a lot of grease down there and get it in your tank. It’s like a biome. It’s like your gut, right? It’s, it’s got its own bacteria that helps break everything down. So along with that, Not putting like a lot of bleach or using a lot of antibacterial products, which I would assume that during those years where we were using a lot of hand sanitizers and a lot of disinfecting products that a lot of the septic tanks, probably their biome got messed up a little bit.
Tego: So if you’re, if you’re a buyer, you’re, you’re looking at a house, do you want to buy a house? And it has a septic tank. What do they need to be thinking about?
Tracy: So just learning about septic tanks, really, you know, I mean, it’s a, it’s not a very sophisticated thing generally some of those engineered ones that [00:07:00] we have to put into Harris or where there’s a lot of granite or steep slopes are a little more technical,
Tego: small
Tracy: lots have an engineered system so that they’re not, they, they need that space for the liquids to be flown out, but yeah, so.
Really, it’s, it’s learning about and making sure you don’t throw paper products unnecessarily, sanitary products, things that, you know, you don’t want to put a lot of stuff down there that isn’t going to decompose readily. And remember that an inspection is different than getting it pumped, but get it come pumped.
We just had one couple of weeks ago where they said septic tank pumping, it’s, we’ve been here 10 years. We’ve never pumped the septic.
Tego: Yikes.
Tracy: Yeah. So anyway, that’s, that’s the scoop on the poop Tego.
Tego: Ah, you did it. Thank you. Thank you.
Tracy: Next topic.
Tego: We’ve got to talk about it. It’s all in the news. It’s all over the place.
Of course. In our world, you know, basically real estate professionals, it’s this, this big lawsuit, this [00:08:00] settlement that, that broke last Friday. And wow, I cannot believe that there’s Tracy, I, I posted this and you probably saw it on my Facebook was this thing called the, the gal man, amnesia effect. You ever heard of that?
Nope. And I didn’t see it. Oh, you didn’t. Oh man, there you go. See, she doesn’t even follow me on Facebook. It’s not true. It’s the, it’s a phenomena. Of people trusting news for topics, which they are not knowledgeable about Despite recognizing them to be extremely inaccurate on certain topics on which they are very knowledgeable about That one hit me big time Over the weekend with all the news reports about this n.
a. r national association settlement regarding this lawsuit about about commissions and I, I, I don’t want to get into weeds too far in this. I know you don’t want me to get into weeds on this too far. However, I think consumers need to know that there’s been tons and [00:09:00] tons of really, really poor reporting on this, on, on what’s going on.
And one of the things that, that seems to be getting repeated over and over again is that commissions are, were mandated how much we’re charged by the, the association, which is, you know, I mean, it’s just, that’s just a flat out lie. Now, do a lot of people, realtors, brokers charge a similar amount and have for years?
Yes. Does some charge lower amounts? Absolutely. Does some charge higher amounts? Absolutely. And, and let me just break this down and really what, what people need to know. If this goes through, which is not settled yet, but if this goes through, come July a, a buyer looking to buy a house is going to make an agreement with a buyer broker or realtor, and they’re going to decide on what that buyer broker is going to get paid to serve that buyer.
That’s different from what we’ve done in the past. And then at the same time, the [00:10:00] seller is still going to work with their listing agent to decide what the listing agent is going to get paid to serve them on their home. And that’s a little bit of a, I’m going to call it a disconnect from what we’ve done in the past, where it was the seller would, would decide if they were going to help out the buyer broker and pay them help cover the buyers.
Brokers cost the seller would pay it and that was decided up front. That’s what’s going away but the seller can still you know pay for the buyer brokers a fee if they feel like that You know something you want to do to help help put the deal together because the the challenge is there’s a lot of buyers That have no money Let me rephrase that.
They
Tracy: have enough to buy a
Tego: house. Right. Maybe they’re a little strapped for cash. And so, you know, that was the thing. Now, is this going to open up a lot more [00:11:00] negotiations in real estate deals? Absolutely. That’s, that’s one of the big changes is that there’ll be a lot more negotiations in, in the real estate deal, both on what brokers get paid and how they get paid.
And even up to the time of when you’re, you know, doing contract negotiations, you’ll be also probably negotiating what the, the brokers get paid and how they get paid. So. Lot to unwrap there. And I, again, I could get in the weeds on that, but I don’t want to, but that’s really what people know. It’s just kind of separating the, the representation and how people get paid.
Tracy: Okay. Thanks for that. Tego, can we talk about some homes?
Tego: Yeah. I
Tracy: mean, this is the real estate Albuquerque real estate show. Two houses went on the market. Hot off the press one, one, two, three, one Mira Vista place Southeast. That is near. Southeast sort of by four, four hills, it’s Southern and want to [00:12:00] bow Southern and yeah, Southern and want to bow.
So it’s a neighborhood sort of a variety of townhomes right there. And this one just came on the market. It’s going to be open Saturday, 11 to one. So if you want to see it, hurry over there, 11 to 1 1 1 2 3 1 Mira Vista Place, Southeast 87123. 270, 000. It’s a three bedroom, two bath, two car garage nice single story house.
It’s got a monthly fee for the Homeowners Association of about 140, 000 for a month. But you know, really great location, especially if you work in Southeast Albuquerque Bay on the base or you know, private businesses there, whatever. So that one is open 11 to one Saturday. We also have another one, two blocks south of UNM, right at university and silver.
Silver, yeah. 1721 Silver Avenue Southeast listed for 319 nine. And that one [00:13:00] is, yeah, two blocks away. So it’s a two bedroom. One garage space, really cute, cute house with the original wood floors. It has a basement area with some, you know, kind of has some versatility of how you might want to use that space if you need office or something like that.
So 1721 silver Southeast. Call us right away if you want to see either of these houses at 448 8888 and we’ll get you in. Yeah, they’re pretty exciting. I love, love those properties, those
Tego: price points, anything in the 300, 300 under low 300 is a rarity these days because just, you know, what, what’s happened with price appreciation over the last two, three years.
So yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Tracy: I’m going to mention one other that we have now that it’s warming up. I know it’s been on and off warming up for the last couple of weeks. 7405 San Juan court Southwest, like San John J O N. [00:14:00] Southwest it’s 514, 900 and it has a swimming pool. So if you’re looking for a swimming pool for the summer coming up look at this property.
It’s listed at 514 nine. It’s a five bedroom house. Three bathrooms, three car garage Southwest Heights. So 7405 San, I say San Hon, San Hon, but J O N port Southwest San Hon. Anyway, call us if you want to see that one, if you’re ready to have your own swimming pool. You got it.
Tego: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let’s talk about what are the hot zip codes in Albuquerque right now tracking this week in the, in the market.
In, in, in what I look at when I’m doing this is we look at supply versus demand, good old supply versus demand. You know, what, what areas have the. You know, are more favorable for homebuyers and what are more favorable for home sellers in the sense of, you know, tight supply in, in versus demand. [00:15:00] So a higher numbers indicate that it’s much closer to a seller’s market.
So the hottest markets from a seller’s market standpoint right now in Albuquerque is eight seven one one two. And, and that’s
Tracy: near, near northeast, sort of like
Tego: little town. Yeah, a little bit more moderately priced, you know, homes in that area. But the next one is a 7111, which is far northeast heights, all the way up to the foothills, all the way up to high desert tramway.
Or not tramway. I’m sorry. Yeah, but through tramway and Spain, Tabazon or what did I say? Yeah, I don’t know where I don’t know where that came from. But anyway, Tanawan, I was thinking about Tabazon and Durango for some reason. And then I said
Tracy: anyway,
Tego: yeah, so, so
Tracy: eight, seven, one, one, one.
Tego: And then 87121, which is west side.
And again, a little bit more moderately priced [00:16:00] 87109 is next. 87114, which is west side. And, and so
Tracy: 87109 is kind of the Del Norte high school area. Yep. There we go.
Tego: And then if we go through the list. It, you know, it kind of goes down, but what we’re finding is just about every market in Albuquerque is still indicating as a seller’s market.
Of course, these are averages, not every home, you know, not every neighborhood. It’s, it’s, it’s very dependent. But the markets that are not quite as strong that are closer to a buyer’s market are the Edgewood market, 870, yeah, it’s a, it’s a more balanced 87015 Sandia Park also in the East mountains, 87047 Perales.
I found that interesting, but Corrales is by far the most expensive. No, I take that back. A7
Tracy: 1 2
Tego: 2. A7 1 2 2. Sandia Heights. Sandia Heights is more expensive. But, you know, it’s one of the more expensive markets. There’s not a lot of [00:17:00] homes. You know, if you look at Corrales right now, there’s maybe 20 homes in entire market, I guess, I’m just guessing, but so it’s interesting, you know, and it’s, it’s one of those things when people say, well, is it a, it is a buyer’s market or is it a seller’s market?
And I said, well, it depends. And I’m, I know that’s a cop out answer, but it’s true. It’s that depends on the price point. It depends on the part of town. It depends on the age of the home. It depends on, you know, what side of the street it sits on. You know, when you’re talking about specific homes, so but for the most part, we’re still in a seller’s market.
Tracy: I have some other stats.
Tego: Okay. You have stats.
Tracy: Different topic. Okay. New subject.
Tego: You’re stealing my thunder.
Tracy: Yeah. Well, don’t worry. I won’t, I won’t be posting like market updates online on your YouTube channel or anything. So just, just to kind of throw out one week in our multiple listing service.
One week back, we’ve had 284 new listings, new properties come on the market and this is residential 284 came on the [00:18:00] market. 243 properties went pending sale in the past week. 166 of the properties on the market have had a price reduction in the last week. So when you’re talking about pricing a home, What you price it at really does matter.
Even if it’s a seller’s market, if it’s overpriced, it might need price reductions until it gets into the right price where a buyer feels like the price is right for that house. The price is right. That sounds like a great TV show. We have 64 properties in what we call coming soon status, meaning they’re in the hopper, they’re not ready to be shown yet.
The broker has put them out there on multiple listing service saying, Hey, these are coming. These do not go out to the public. Only the realtors can see them in our multiple listing service. So if there is something you’re looking for, there are 64 coming soon listings that are not yet out on Zillow or Trulia or realtor.
com, all those different websites. So that’s where, you know, give [00:19:00] us a call and make sure that we’re watching that for you. 54 properties in the last week fell out of contract. They were under contract and something happened and they came back on the market. So I just thought it was kind of interesting because new listings 284 under contract during the week 243.
That doesn’t mean it’s of the 284. Those are all the properties that are in our multiple listing service. So things are still coming on the market. Things are still getting under contract and we’re still seeing closings. So,
Tego: so just, just to. Put a bow on what you were just talking about. Everything you just said is very normal for this time of year.
This is none of that was like, oh my gosh, there was that many price reductions. It’s very normal. It, you know, oh my gosh, there was that many deals that fell through. No, that’s very normal. This is all normal stuff. And, and right now what I’m tracking from a big picture standpoint is. You know, we’re starting to get a little bit more, you know, homes coming on the market, like you just said, we’re, but we’re still [00:20:00] seeing a steady stream of, of buyers out there looking for homes.
Tracy: We definitely are. There are buyers looking, you know, the 166 that went closed in the last week. Our listeners probably know that a lot of people want to close on their new home at the end of a month, right? So it wasn’t last week, wasn’t the end end of the month. We’re in the end of the month right now.
So at end of month, why do people want to close at the end of the month? Well, one, they probably have housing through the end of a month. If they’re renters or even if, you know, if they’re owners somewhere, most people have housing through the end of the month, so they don’t necessarily want to pay for.
Two houses at the same time, rent and a new mortgage at the same time. So they like to close at the end of the month. The other reason is because when you close early in the month, you pay interest on your new loan for all the days left in that month. So your closing costs are a little bit higher. The, the.
The earlier in the month [00:21:00] you close. So a lot of people push it so that their amount to bring to closing is a little bit less. Yeah.
Tego: In the end, it’s the same amount of money. It’s just the way it’s calculated. Pro tip, Tracy. If you’re selling your home, if you’re buying a home and you’re doing contract negotiations, don’t schedule your closing for the last day of the month.
Don’t schedule your closing for the last couple of days of the month because you’re, you’re everybody else’s as well. And you’re, you’re setting yourself up for extra, Just, but you’re, you’re increasing the odds that something is going to go sideways.
Tracy: Well, and don’t, don’t schedule your closing, your final purchase for the day.
You absolutely have to be in that house and out of wherever else you’re living because sometimes things get delayed. And if you’ve given yourself a little buffer, a little crossover or carry over, you’re going It’s a lot less stressful. It’s stressful enough. So, yeah, what,
Tego: what happens [00:22:00] is since, since, you know, a lot of closings and or signings as we call them here in New Mexico happen, you know, at the end of the month, all the title companies, all the lenders, everybody’s crunched at that, at that last week of the month.
So if you can, you know, put it back like one week, you’re going to put your three days. I mean, just put yourself in a much better position. All right. There’s been a lot of talk of the lock in effect in housing, and, and we’ll go into what that is here in a second, but, and many of you probably know this because we’ve talked about it before, but there was a study done now by FHFA, which is the Federal Housing Finance Authority, yeah, the
Tracy: agency,
Tego: yeah, they, they’re Fannie and Freddie basically, and, and so they wanted to know how many homes did not sell Because people are in these low interest rates and they’re not too motivated to get rid of their 3 and 4 percent mortgage to get an 8 percent or 7 percent or, you know, high 6 percent mortgage.
So what did they find?
Tracy: Oh, Tico, I want to jump right to the answer. But [00:23:00] first, let’s talk about, you know, there’s the, the lock in limits. It really, you know, has made it a little less flexible for people who want to sell and buy, right? Because the house price is more and the interest rate is now more. We did talk about you know, people assuming mortgages last week.
So if you want to know more about that, go back and listen to two weeks ago when we talked about assumable mortgages. But. Higher rates reduce the probability of home sales they found by 18. 1%. So that’s pretty significant. They say that in Q4 of 2023, mortgage rate lock in caused a 57 percent reduction in home sales with fixed rate mortgages.
That’s huge. Yeah. In one quarter, 57 percent didn’t sell their house because of their mortgage. I don’t know how they found this out, but between Q2 2022 and Q4 of 2023, 1. 33 million sales were [00:24:00] prevented due to mortgage rate lock in.
Tego: So we talk about 2023 was one of the slowest home sales years on record, and that’s what some of the people that are pointing to, you know, a housing crash, a housing bubble, blah, blah, blah.
Well, there’s a reason. I mean, people, it wasn’t that people didn’t want to move, but they looked at the numbers and said, well, that doesn’t make any sense. I’m going to get a less expensive house with maybe a smaller house and my payment’s going to be higher. So like all the downsizing that we’ve been kind of expecting, just it didn’t happen in the last year and a
Tracy: half.
Yeah. So what they said was mortgage rate lock and leads to people not living in their preferred homes. Inflate inflates prices prices and worsens affordability.
Tego: Yeah. So there we go. Good. But speaking of mortgage rates, let’s just wrap on, on this this week, Tracy. Well, no, I’ve got another story we got to talk about that Rio Rancho story.
It was pretty interesting, but mortgage rates, we had a little bit of good news this week on mortgage rates. We’ve [00:25:00] been hovering around this 7 percent range, you know, when they when they just kind of look at the across the board. And now it’s it’s back down into the high sixes again. That’s for.
You know, perfect credit, good down payment, all that stuff. Right. I’m just saying that’s, you know, what you’re getting. So mortgage rates are a little bit better, a little bit better. There are some people projecting them to go even lower. Well, the fed
Tracy: announced, you know, that they’re still planning to do some rate cuts on the fed rate, which isn’t exactly the same, but it does typically help with mortgage rates.
Let’s switch to that story to go. Okay. Okay. So the story came out and I don’t know the hometown register, but single family housing by location. So it was saying the, the number of single family homes state by state and what states rank with the most single family and the least single family. So like the percentage,
Tego: the mix, like single family [00:26:00] versus multifamily, like apartments and.
Tracy: Exactly. Okay. That’s exactly it. So what we, what we probably could all guess is the state with the lowest number of single family homes is New York. You know, you think about New York City, Manhattan, all the boroughs and all the multifamily they have there makes New York. But
Tego: you think about upstate New York, how rural it is, very rural.
So I don’t know. I mean, I guess it’s. I guess it’s just New York City is so dominant in the demographic,
Tracy: right? It makes
Tego: sense. Yeah. So
Tracy: New York is the only state in which single family homes account for less than 50 percent of the total. Interesting. But the reason we love this story is because as you go through it and you’re going, okay, so here’s some of the states that have.
The most single family units of 70 percent or more Idaho at 78 Iowa at 78 percent in Kansas at 78 percent leading the way, but then you go in the story goes on and it says [00:27:00] the, the Rio Rancho is one of those that has over 90%. There’s only a few cities. That are over a hundred thousand people, which I don’t know that Rio Rancho, but they’re looking at Albuquerque and they say, I think it’s
Tego: just around that if I recall about a hundred.
Yeah,
Tracy: so they said they’re saying that Rio Rancho has over 90 percent single family homes, which is true. There are not a lot of apartment buildings, multifamily in Rio Rancho. There’s a few. But not very many. Well, if you go,
Tego: if you go back, I mean, if anybody knows the history of Rio Rancho and the platting, how it was done back in the sixties and it’s all, you know, a lot of it was just half acre, single family homes.
That’s what it was built for.
Tracy: Yeah, but there’s
Tego: not a lot of multifamily. There are some, but there are
Tracy: some, a couple apartment complexes. There’s some fourplex areas. There’s some active adult complexes that were built in the Loma Colorado area, not long ago, but in general, It’s a single family city, so yeah.
So there you go. All right. So [00:28:00] enjoy your weekend. You know, next weekend is Easter. Good Friday. Then you know what next a week and a half Monday is Tico?
Tego: No.
Tracy: April fool’s day. Start thinking now about your April fool’s jokes and don’t let people fool you on April fools. Well,
Tego: I, I get got every year. So I know, I know.
I kind of like it. I kind of enjoy getting got. Getting got we are the Venturi realty group with real broker here in Albuquerque. If you want to reach out to us, need any help with your real estate, just want to ask a question. If you’ve got questions about market, what’s going on in a real estate market, I’m, I’m your guy.
I’m Chico Venturi and I’m with my cohost and business partner and life partner, Tracy Venturi. And we’re at a five Oh five. 448 8888 here at our office in the North Valley. Thanks for listening everybody.