Albuquerque Real Estate | Venturi Realty Group

 

Welcome to Episode 492 of Albuquerque Real Estate Talk!

Hey everyone! It’s Tego and Tracy Venturi here, ready to dive into another engaging episode of Albuquerque Real Estate Talk. This week, we’ve got a mix of seasonal updates, housing tips, market insights, and exciting news about local zoning laws. Let’s get started!

Summer is Here (Unofficially)

We’re kicking off with a nod to the changing seasons. Sure, it’s still technically spring, but let’s be honest—Memorial Day weekend feels like the start of summer. Schools are out, the weather’s warming up, and summer vibes are in full swing.

Top Reasons to Own a Home

This week, we’re highlighting the top reasons why owning a home is awesome, beyond just the financial perks:

  • Investment Stability: Build equity and long-term wealth.
  • Personal Achievement: Live the American Dream and plant your roots.
  • Family Focus: Create a stable environment for your loved ones.
  • Housing Security: Enjoy fixed payments and be free from rent hikes.
  • Comfort and Customization: Personalize your space without landlord limits.
  • Community Connection: Get involved and build relationships in your neighborhood.
  • Privacy: Enjoy your own space with no landlord interruptions.
  • Generational Wealth: Provide financial security for future generations.

VA Loans Update

We’ve got some important news for our veterans! The VA has rolled out a temporary measure allowing VA buyers to pay their buyer’s agent directly. This change, part of a broader regulatory update coming in August, aims to ensure our veterans get the representation they deserve when using their VA loans.

Albuquerque Housing Market Trends

We discuss an interesting trend in Albuquerque’s housing market: there are more price reductions this time of year than in other years. Although list prices are higher than last year, the pace of these increases is slowing down.

We discussed data from the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA) showing an 8% home price appreciation in Albuquerque from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024 and up 2.9% from Q4 2023 to Q1 2024.

 

 

 

 

 

City Council’s Zoning Law Discussion

Big changes might be coming to Albuquerque’s zoning laws. On June 3rd, the City Council will discuss allowing duplexes on R1-zoned (single-family home) lots. This could impact about 14,000 parcels, mainly in the central corridor, potentially easing the housing shortage and offering more options in high-density areas.

Homes of the Week and Open Houses

We’ve got some great listings to share:

40-Year Real Estate Trends

Tego’s diving into some fascinating data on 40-year home price trends. Since 1984, home prices nationwide have jumped about 500%, compared to a 200% rise in inflation. States like Washington and Oregon have seen the highest increases, while New Mexico has experienced a 326% increase. This highlights the long-term value of owning real estate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wrapping Up

As we wrap up this episode, we reflect on the diverse housing options in Albuquerque and the importance of making informed decisions in today’s market. For more info on buying, selling, or exploring properties in Albuquerque, reach out to us at 505-448-8888 or visit our website at welcomehomeabq.com.

Thanks for tuning in to Albuquerque Real Estate Talk. Stay tuned for more insights and updates on the housing market!

 

Transcript:

Albuquerque Real Estate Talk 492 – June 1, 2024

Welcome to Albuquerque Real Estate Talk, episode 492, June 1st. Summer is started. Well, not officially. Well, I think we did, you know, we had Memorial Day. I think to me that’s official start of summer. Yes. It’s still spring officially, but school’s out and it’s June. And it is June. And this is Tego and Tracy Venturi.

Maybe this week. We are going to talk about 10, 10 reasons, top 10, no 10 reasons. You should top reasons to own a home. necessarily financial. Some of them might be, but there’s a lot of reasons besides financial. So we’ll get into that.

Okay. Loan update regarding the veterans loans, the VA loans. There’s been some changes there that are going to be pretty critical come August. And we’ll get into that. I’ve got the fresh data from FHFA, which is kind of the gold standard of home price indexes. So we’re going to talk about what, what the Q1 showed. And I, I’ve got a little bit of a prediction for quarter two.

And then Just some some data on what happened over the last 40 years in home prices in New Mexico and all over the country We’ve got some interesting data there And then one thing I wanted to hit on tracy is there is a meeting on monday at the city council And they are going to be talking about a change to some of the zoning laws regarding single family homes and duplexes So I wanted to get into that because that could have a big impact You On many neighborhoods in the city.

So I wanted to talk about that. So we are Tego and Tracy Venturi Venturi group, real broker here in New Mexico. And again, for 92, we’ve been doing this episodes and you can reach us at five Oh five, four, four, eight, 88, 88. Tego. So we’re coming up on 500 episodes of doing this for 10 years, right? Eight more, eight more. So we should do something really special for number 500. Maybe all of you listeners. Would like us to do something, any topics that might be of interest to you. You know, 500, that’s a lot of real estate talk, a lot of rap yapping about real estate. That is, but anyway, it’s only four 92 today, but we’re getting close.

We’re getting there. We’re getting there. Tracy, do you want to jump into the story about the veterans of loan and what’s changed? And let me just kind of set it up a little bit because. Currently the way the system works, if the VA loan, first off, it’s the best program out there. And it should be. And it should be. Of course. You qualify for a veteran loan because of your military service. You deserve it. Exactly. And it’s, it is the best loan program in that it’s a zero down program. There’s not a lot of. Additional costs associated like mortgage, I don’t want to get into it too much, but there, you know, it, it’s a good program and it is the best program if you qualify for it.

So the veteran’s loan currently Tego would not allow a veteran to pay the real estate commission for them to buy a home. They’re, they’re broker, they’re representative. Whoever’s working with them to help them buy a home is not allowed. They are not allowed to pay them directly. And as we all know, Typically for years and years and years and years, the real estate commissions have been covered by the seller, even for the buyer’s broker, right? So that’s part of that, all the news that’s been going on for a few months about real estate. So the seller can still offer to pay the buyer broker, but they can’t put that out in the multiple listing service come sometime, maybe in August. It’s we’re looking, we’re looking at. Probably early August is when we’re really going to see some big changes in how that happens. Right. So the, the Veterans Administration, Deputy Director of Policy commented that the Veterans Administration is going to temporarily put in place a measure to allow VA buyers to directly compensate their buyer’s agent. And they’re working on a permanent fix, but they’ve at least put something in place temporarily ahead of this possible change with our multiple listing service where we don’t just get to put out in the MLS what the buyer broker is being compensated. What one thing I’m not clear on this yet, and I’ve read a little bit about it, but I haven’t seen it is. Can that brokers fee, you know, service fee for the broker that helps the buyer, can that be financed into the loan? And I think that discussion is not clear yet. But that’ll be interesting to see too, if anything comes at that. But anyway, it is good news for, for veterans. They can now get rep, you know, make sure they get representation and can actually pay for it and still get a VA loan.

Correct. And I’m sure more rules will be coming out on that and we’ll certainly update you all as soon as we know. And if you qualify for a VA loan and you’re interested in buying a house, give us a ring. It’s a great time. To use that program.

Speaking about a great time I just want to talk about the market. I know, I know it’s unusual. I want to talk about the market. There’s been last week we talked about it briefly at the end of the show where I was talking about, we’ve seen a lot of price reductions. Unusually high number of price reductions on the homes that are on the market this time of year compared to other years and been trying to figure out, you know, what, what’s going on there? And it’s, it’s not exactly clear, but to me, it looks like there’s a lot of sellers that have maybe gotten a little bit ahead of the market and and I’m going to segue into the, the first quarter data. We’ve, we’ve still seen, and you know, again, unusually high number of price reductions list prices are higher than last year, but not substantially higher. , last year at this time, list prices were maybe 8 percent higher than the previous year. But this year list prices are only about 3 percent higher than last year. We’re talking list price, not what things sold for, but what they’re on the market for right now. So I just think that the pricing appreciation is still going on. In real time, it’s just not as elevated as we’ve seen over the last few years. I just, I wanted to put that out there. That’s my, that’s my crystal ball for the day.

That’s great. You always have a good crystal ball. We appreciate that.

After you’ve been looking at this for so long, you just kind of, Start to just see it anyway, the FHFA, which is the federal finance, federal housing finance authority, that’s oversees Fannie and Fratty, Fannie and Fratty they put out their home price appreciation chart, which is their home price index. And they do give us data on the Albuquerque market. And I posted it on my Facebook so you can find it there. It’s but from. The first quarter of 23 to the first quarter of 24, we saw a 8 percent home price appreciation in Albuquerque from quarter four of 23, stay with me to quarter one of 24, it was about 3%. Which is still pretty elevated. I mean, you, you multiply that out. That’s 9 percent considering the time of year to go. And that was over winter when we don’t typically see things appreciating much. Yeah, but it’s not uncommon that we see that the dip in prices, you know, through the winter and then it starts to kick back up in spring. Right.

But back to what I was just talking about. I don’t suspect that for second quarter. I suspect I’m going to put my prediction out there. Okay, here we go. We’ve got to bookmark this and see if I got it right. But I suspect quarter two of 23 to quarter two of 24 to be closer to 4 percent maybe, you know, a little more, more moderate, which is actually brought back to historical norms because we’ve been so elevated over the last five years. So anyway, there, there’s my, there’s my crystal ball. Look at, at the the market and, and where we may be going.

Let’s talk. Homes of the week. Okay. And open houses. We have a couple newly listed properties, one at 2509 Vista Manzano Loop, northeast in Rio Rancho. It’s a really beautiful single story home in the Mariposa subdivision. For those of you who might not know, Mariposa is out 550 and down past the armory. It’s It’s a planned community, the same developers as high desert in northeast Albuquerque. This house is 20, almost 2, 500 square feet of four bedroom. It backs to some open space with big views, really great single story floor plan. So if you’re interested in that, it’s 530, 000. 2509 Vista Manzano in Rio Rancho. We also have Camino Cerrito in Four Hills. 1433 Camino Cerrito in Four Hills is available. It’s 659. 9. A really great four bedroom could even be five. It’s on a pretty large lot, like 0. 35 of an acre. So more than a third of an acre really gorgeous, beautiful upgrades. I’ve looked through the photos, so if you’re interested in that one in four Hills, give us a ring and we can get you in a couple open houses this week. 58 0 1 Lowell Street, Northeast number 15 D. It’s a really nice condo complex. That one is 225,000 and it’s going to be open on Sunday.

Lowell is kind of up in that Tanawan area, right? Yeah, yeah, it is

. Sunday it’s open from 11 to one. Okay. So if you wanna go see that, or of course any of these properties, if you’d like to see them on your own schedule, we can definitely schedule that. We also have 72 0 4 Fox Ford. West. Foxbirds having open house 11 to one today, Saturday this house came on the market and immediately we had an offer on it and that buyer, something happened and they couldn’t move forward. So it just came back on market. It’s a three bedroom, two bath, two car garage, Opal Jenkins. A lot of us know that builder kind of, always have some beautiful features in that home. That one’s 350, 000 very nice central location on the West side. So, we have every part of town covered. We’ve got the extreme Northwest and Mariposa. We’ve got the Southwest with high debt or not high desert. I’m sorry. Southeast. Yeah. Mariposa with four Hills. With four Hills. That’s the height.

Yup.

And we got west side.

And we’ve got the one off Lowell, so northeast, southeast, west side, yeah, northwest. We do have them all covered. We have others, so if there’s something in particular that you’re looking for, let us know. If you’re thinking of selling your house, we have some great deals. Seller tools and a great strategy that we put in place to make sure that when we represent your property that you get great care and great marketing and we we love to help you with that goal.

Okay. See I want to that that just brought up a Something that I I think we overlook a lot of us that live here or have lived here forever or a very long time We don’t realize how diverse We have it in, in our housing choices in the Albuquerque market. You know, we have, I mean, you can go to the East mountains and get really kind of almost that Alpine feel if you want to get up, you know, in, into the Sandias, there’s some beautiful places there. You can go farther East and get in, you know, the Plains, right. You can get along the river and get, you know, that, that whole Valley thing. You’ve got the Heights, which is you I don’t know. How would you describe that? You know, it’s a little more residential, residential, suburban upscale kind of, I guess. And then it could be anywhere, but not, not when you see the stucco. It’s very Southwest. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, it just, it, it reminds me of how diverse our housing options are all over the city. However, speaking of housing options, I want to talk about this, this story regarding what the city council is looking at on Monday, whatever day that is the third, I think it is. The June 3rd city council is having their meeting and there is a proposal going to be coming in front of them. So if you’re interested in, you know, housing issues. In the Albuquerque area, or actually, this is, you know, this Albuquerque, the city proper it may be something you want to check out what they’re what they’ve been doing is changing some zoning rules. So, last year, we had a change in some zoning rules that allowed. ADUs, Accessory Dwelling Units, to be built on R1 zoned, you know, single family home, residential R1 zoned properties. Right. And that, that passed. It’s unclear, you know, how popular that is and how many people are doing it, but it is now allowed on, on a fair number of homes in, in the market. That same proposal had a part of it, which had to do with allowing duplexes to be built on R1 zone, basically residential single family home zoning. Well, that didn’t make it last year. It was pretty broad. It’s coming back this year again, Monday, and they’re going to be deciding if they’re going to allow duplexes on our one zone, single family home zone lot. It’s very limited though. So I’ve got the map in front of me. And when you look at the map, it’s, it’s pretty much the central corridor from let’s say about Wyoming. All the way down to, or all the way across the river over to Lake Coors, for example, so it’s the whole central corridor, central avenue, central avenue corridor, central and sort of north up towards I 40, right? Yeah, and then there’s there’s a few other areas. There’s one area kind of like in the Louisiana, what do we call that area? Mid, well, where, where Coronado is. I can’t think of it. Oh, Uptown. Uptown. Thank you. I couldn’t think of the board. So some in the Uptown area, there’s a little pocket over in Taylor Ranch on the West side. And then there’s a, a big area all up and down fourth street as well, all the way down south of downtown and north of downtown all the way up to Osuna. So go ahead. This just Albuquerque, not like Rio Rancho or outlying areas. This is just Albuquerque, Albuquerque. So it’s, you know, it’s Albuquerque proper. It’s a city. And you know, we don’t want to get into all the overlaps with the city and the County and Los Ranchos and all that. But this is going to affect about 14, 000 parcels in the city that would be allowed to. Build a duplex on an existing single family home or build a duplex on, you know, piece of land that doesn’t have anything on it right now or allow for, you know, a teardown of an older home and then build it back as a duplex. So it’s not a lot of lots, but it’s, it’s a solution for. There’s a conversation or a term out there in the real estate world called the missing middle and the missing middle is you’ve got single family homes and then you have apartments. You know, Tracy, we get people calling all the time, Hey, I’d, I’d like to buy a duplex or I, you know, I’m looking for a duplex, I can’t afford a, you know, a single family home. And we’re like, well, you know, we don’t really have any, a whole lot of those here in Albuquerque and any that have been built were years ago. It’s one more little thing to help with our housing shortage.

I don’t know if you know the, inner workings of this, but do you think that it’s for rent or does it have to be for a family member or not for rent? When I read through the bill, I didn’t see anything like that. It was just, it could be whatever, is allowed use for residential housing.

Okay. So you reported it. This is what’s happening. It’s on Monday. The city council’s looking at it, but you didn’t give an opinion. Do you want to give an opinion about what you think? I’m for it. Yeah. So, so people who still have an infill lot next to them and they’re in these areas A duplex could end up next to you. Right. Well, and see, that’s just it. It’s it’s, and I’ll be just perfectly honest here. It’s easy for me to sit here, not living in one of these areas saying, Oh yes, I’m for it. We need more housing. That’s my point. Yeah. And, and. And, and I get it, right? I get it. However, I think it could be a big benefit for somebody that has one of these properties that are in these areas. And, let’s be honest, these are some areas that could use that, that could use some more hou housing. These are, high density, high populated areas that need more housing and somebody that has a property and they want to turn it into duplex, they would be allowed to do that. They could rent it out. They could use it for a family member.

It’s probably, like if it’s a vacant lot, it’s going to be beautiful new construction, right? Even if it’s a duplex, if it’s somebody adding on to have, A current existing house have a duplex. It sounds like that would be really hard to accomplish because the lot sizes and the space Might be awkward. , that’s on monday keeping us current here.

I wanted to mention just one more thing There is a group in town if you’re really, into the housing issues and want to deal with that There’s a group called strong towns It’s ABQ and it’s StrongTownsABQ. org if you want to check out what they’re doing. If it’s just something that really motivates you on, dealing with some of our housing challenges,

check them out. Great. Let’s move on. Top reasons to own a home.

Oh man. Okay. That was quite the transition, right? Yeah. Buying a house, it can have powerful financial and non financial benefits, right? We all think about the financial reasons. But it’s really, there’s a lot of stability in owning a home typically. And some of the reasons, in addition to financial and financial accomplishment, think about how accomplished you feel with, owning the home. It’s the American dream, right? Owning the home and feeling like you’ve accomplished something and you’ve set down roots, that type of thing. And the other, another loved ones, prior prioritizing the needs of those you love. and are closest to you, you’re giving them a stable place. It’s not like I’m a renter and I might have to move at any point, especially if the rents go up too much or the property we’ve had several people actually this week calling who are renters who are saying that their landlord isn’t keeping up and they have problems with their place and they’re not fixing it and they’re looking for a different one. You think about when you own your, your pride of ownership. But the stability of your monthly housing payment is another one because when you lock in your rate, you can refinance for a lower rate, of course, but once you

lock in your mortgage rate, Tego, that’s typically for 30 years and the cost of housing doesn’t go up except for any property tax or insurance increases, right? There’s again, in kind of a housing. There’s a term called housing insecurity, but it’s also housing security, meaning, you know, what your housing cost is going to be, next year, the year after the year after the only thing that’s going to change is your taxes. and your insurance. Otherwise, your housing costs, at least your mortgage payment is set, which is very different than renting. Another thing, financial investment, you’re gaining equity and growing your net worth over time. Every time you make a house payment, you’re bringing down what you owe on that property and increasing your equity in it. Along with over time, we know the property values go up. Sometimes they go down. But it’s usually temporary and they go up in the long run. Right. The comfort to living your best life and enjoying your home’s features. We’ve talked about it on this show many times, Tego, the beauty of being able to add that pergola or paint your room, whatever color you want, or do a tile backsplash, you’re doing things for your enjoyment in a home. That’s yours. Not I have a landlord, so I’m not going to paint it, or I can’t put in that dog run that I want, right. It’s being able to personalize it and customize it to your unique style and just the community, right? You’re an owner. You feel like you’re a part of the community versus a renter. Some renters say they don’t know any of their neighbors. It’s, I don’t know how long I’m going to be here and it’s not my house and they live there, but they’re not a part of the community. Another is basically privacy. You have a space that’s your own. You don’t have a landlord that might want to come and inspect it regularly. Whatever you do, it’s yours, right? You don’t have to worry about a landlord. We’ve talked about something else on this show a lot to go and it kind of goes in line with what we’re talking about here is the ability to have the house, make it your own, but also. To, maybe it’s that time in your life where you’re in a position financially to help a family member become a homeowner. And we’ve seen that this week. It’s really awesome. I love it. We have parents helping a child moving back to Albuquerque, it’s not a, not a teenager. We’re having an adult child where they’re supplying the down payment for this child to move back to Albuquerque, go to work at Sandia labs and get into homeownership right away. And, there’s a lot of people that are our age and beyond, you had a birthday last week, our agent beyond Tego, who are in a position that they’re going to be leaving wealth behind. And it might be the right time for them to think about helping somebody get into home ownership that maybe can’t afford it or help them with a down payment. So their monthly payment is more in line with what they can afford. I know you, a lot of our listeners probably have financial planners they don’t need me to tell them to help somebody buy a house, but it’s just the, the family wealth legacy, right? And homeownership.

Yeah., that’s obviously a conversation, not obviously, but it’s been a conversation that’s been around for a long time is that, wealth. Generational wealth, most of it has come from real estate, from housing over the years. And, and to get to the negative side of that, there’s that legacy of redlining where they were. Basically, a certain group of people, I’m not going to, we all know what we’re talking about. a certain group of people at a certain time back in the day were not allowed to purchase homes basically. They weren’t granted loans. They were segregated to certain areas and that carried over general, generationally year over year over year. And so, yeah, building wealth over time with real estate is tried and true. Yeah. And even when you think about what happened during the great financial crisis. Like, okay, yes, you look at it from a long term, that really was just a blip. I know, I know for people that lived through it and had a hard time, it didn’t feel like it. It was tough. It was tough. But I mean, again, it, it was. You know, we got through it.

Right. You know, it’s sort of that time of year to go different topic where we see a lot of military people moving around and PCSing. It just dawned on me that that VA loan that we talked about earlier, kind of good timing that they did that. I don’t think we have an issue in our community right now of sellers not agreeing to pay the buyer broker. But June is typical. We see a lot of people coming in and I know even cannon air force base in Clovis has got a lot of people moving in. There’s some new division moving in there and we have a division moving in here. So a lot of, a lot of VA borrowers out there.

So speaking of generational wealth, I want to talk about this story. One of the the people that I subscribe to that puts out a bunch of real estate data, I subscribe to his information. He put together a chart of 40 years. home prices.

Across the United States. Across the entire United States. And, how much homes have appreciated. And the interesting thing is that as a whole, across the United States, home prices in 40 years, so we’re going back to 1984. Remember 84? Yeah. I was in college. Yeah. I was graduating college that year. I remember. I was kind of bumming around. I think. In 1980 from 1984 to 2024 home prices appreciated 494 percent or about 500 on average across the entire country. Yeah. That’s so, but it’s not equal everywhere, but I want to,

highs and lows. Let’s hit them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to put a different. Another piece on that is that inflation rose 200%, that the value of the dollar. So if you had it in the bank, it’s as just cash, you, you lost money basically. Right, right. So anyway, but yeah, so if you, if you, if you, Put it up against inflation. Inflation was 200 percent. Home prices were about 500 percent. But let’s look at around the country. So

Tego, it’s so interesting to me. There are only two states where the 40 year change was less than 200 percent. And one of them I go, oh yeah, Louisiana, 196 percent up in home prices over 40 years. But the other one is so surprising. That is surprising. Alaska. Alaska. Yeah. Yeah.

182 percent Alaska has a pretty booming economy at times. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know enough about to comment on why that is, but okay. So New Mexico, we got to talk about New Mexico, New Mexico over the last 40 years, it’s on the lower end.

Yeah, it is 326 percent over the last 40 years. So that’s, that’s how much home values, home prices have gone up over that time. Compare that to.

Arizona,

500%.

5 0 1,

compare that to Texas three 20. So we’re about equal with Texas.

Think about Washington State. I think it’s the high, high one on the chart, right? It’s

the high one on the chart.

800%.

828%,

yeah.

Yeah.

California 660%. Oregon, 700% Idaho. 607%.

Montana. Six hundred and eight. Six hundred percent.

This is pretty good, Tracy, because, you know, our maps that we’re looking at, they don’t have the names of the state on them. So we got It’s

a geography quiz.

It is. I feel like There’s Maine

up there in New England at six hundred and five percent, Massachusetts, six hundred and sixty four. I never realized how small a state Massachusetts is. Well, look

at Rhode Island. It’s six hundred and 68 percent and you can barely see it on the map, but it’s there. It’s there anyway. So it’s interesting if you, sorry, we’re looking at a map and we’re on a radio. So it’s kind of unfair, but when you, when you look at the map, you can see that the East coast, West coast, they’ve seen the biggest appreciation middle of the country, kind of where we are sort of kind of most

of the Midwest and middle of the countries in the three hundreds. Yeah. The, you know, the, the more flat States, you know, Louisiana, Oklahoma. Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois,

Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota. All of those kind of middle of the country.

40 years across the entire country, home prices went up 500%. So there’s your, there’s your trivia question for the, for the day. And we got to leave it there, Tracy, we’re out of time.

What do you have? That went so fast. I have more, but we’ll talk next time.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Thanks for listening. As always, it’s Tego and Tracy Venturi with the Venturi Group of Real Broker. You can reach us at 505 448 8888 and our website is welcomehomeabq. com. Just did a few updates on the website too. So check that out.