Latest / Connor with Honor: AI, Real Estate and Real Life / Decoding Santa Clarita's Real Estate Market: A Seller's Paradise, a Buyer's Challenge

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Decoding Santa Clarita's Real Estate Market: A Seller's Paradise, a Buyer's Challenge · Connor with Honor: AI, Real Estate and Real Life

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: When you're looking at the real estate news, make sure that you have it for this country.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: United Kingdom has a whole different market.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought I woke up this morning on the completely wrong side of everything.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: However, our market is not a buyer's market like their market is.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: So when I started reading this, I'm like, oh my gosh, I thought there was going to be deep fakes out there in the world.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: But ladies and gentlemen, that really threw me for a loop this morning.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: But here we go.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Today is, of course, March 4th, 2024.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: I am Connor with Honor, local real estate agent here in Santa Crita Valley.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to be doing some real estate news and talking about what's happening online.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not only that, we're also going to talk about the local inventory and then some items that I believe actually help buyers and sellers when it comes to making those kinds of decisions to buy real estate.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: But first off, I want to look at a couple different items here.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've been showing a lot of houses lately, and that really does change things, especially when you're on the buyer end of it, because then you see where other agents potentially could be falling short with advertising and marketing for their sellers.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, giving bad advice.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So for a real estate seller out here, I'll start with this before I get into the daily numbers.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: The buyers really want to come into your home without having to be having any obstacles placed in front of them.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now I understand if you have a house full of people, and I understand if it's very difficult to sell that house full of people, it's very difficult to get scope showing schedule with all those people.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really hard to displace everybody to have the house shown to people that may be interested in purchasing it.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I will tell you from past experience, being in this business since 1998, I have not seen a case where it was better to have people in the house that lived there, that owned it, that rented there, whatever, during a visitation than not having people there.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it would be best for you to at least talk to your agent about the best ways to schedule showings if in fact you're not in a place to be able to vacate the property.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ask them what they think is best in that market.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: In this market, either Santa Clarita Valley, Antelope Valley, or Greater Los Angeles, when people want to see a residence, they feel most comfortable, and I don't care who it is, when there's nobody there.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's always time for seller and buyer interaction.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the seller has a complicated system in the house that's everything's controlled by Wi-Fi.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he has all smart appliances, smart cameras, smart pool equipment, smart everything.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it takes basically a doctorate to understand how to work all of these different items in the house that you're buying.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: That might be a good time for you to sit down with a seller, but not when you want to see the property for the very first time because you're interested in potentially purchasing it.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: But that's how all viewings are.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So know this.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a real estate seller and you have your agent and you say, you know what, I really can't leave the house.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have these issues, make sure you have that heart to heart because people aren't going to like your house if you happen to be at home.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's just food for thought.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And give it a while, understand it, and understand this.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just like you, they really need time to think.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's why, as a real estate agent, you watch the TV shows where all the agents walk around, they're pointing out the obvious things that the house has.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of the other side of that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think anybody can see that the house has a fantastically well-done fireplace, or they have, you know, some kind of fancy mahogany that's been imported from another country, and some kind of marble and some kind of stone and some kind of fancy attributes for the house, things that the sellers have really put a lot of money into.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: People can see that.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know what people don't see?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see the problem with the wiring.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see burned outlets, they don't see dry rot typically.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see wood that's scarred and looks like there's actual termite droppings in there.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see soft wood.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see the elevation on the outside of the house.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see which way the water runs into the house.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: They don't see the line between the ground and the bottom of the stucco on the outside.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: They don't look for how the concrete footings were put in.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're not looking up at the cracking pattern of the exterior concrete.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're not looking at the grade.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're not looking at the shared fences, they're not looking at the potential mellows, they're not looking at potential liquefaction issues because the agent that they're using happens to know a lot about the area so they can shed light on what's going to be revealed later on through the regular disclosure process with the real estate dealings.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: They know this, so they should be able to explain it.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: But for a buyer to have all of that information and try to digest it when they have the sellers in the house wanting to follow, wanting to explain, wanting to educate.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And there's, like I said, there's a place for that.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not when they're looking at the house, potentially want to engage the house on a date and maybe work through that escrow process where it starts maybe with a coffee, then maybe with a lunch, and then maybe with a dinner, and then maybe a little bit more romance comes in, and then you you you see where I'm going with this.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: The same thing.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want to have that third party there blocking their move.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's the same thing in real estate.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So do yourselves a favor if you happen to be wanting to sell a house, make yourself gone and also do the best depersonalization you can if you have that house full of photos because you're one of those folks that has all the photos and all the family.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And God bless you for doing that, because I came from a world that didn't really have anybody except me.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if you do have that kind of a situation, great.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the people that come in and view your house, they want to look at it without that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: They want to look at it as a blank canvas that they can then hang their own personality on and be happy there for a long time.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I'm off my horse with that one.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about real estate inventory here in Santa Crita Valley and Greater Antelope Valley.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: So within the last 24 hours, a very non-exciting real estate market has transpired.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you knew that because we did a show yesterday.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: We are now over 300 units for sale in the Santa Crita Valley, which, well, historically, it's actually the first time in a very long time.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So let me pull up that number to see what it is exactly this morning, and then we'll be able to move on to some of the Antelope Valley stuff.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: So currently we're at 312, and last week, for most of the week, we were in the 200s, and that's been actually for several months.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't seen a breach of the 300 number in listings for quite a while.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you that our market, I started out the show with talking about reading other news cycles from different parts of the world.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: While those other markets could impact ours somewhat, that's not where our market is, and especially here in Southern California, where we have a total real estate seller's market.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: The sellers are in control of almost everything.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So when the buyers are going out, typically a home buyer in today's market is encountering competition.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Other people wanting to buy the same house that they're seeing.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry for the hiccups, the same house that they're seeing.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So they go into this with uh other people and actually viewing the houses with other people waiting outside, which we saw a lot of yesterday.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they approach the house, they start to work the numbers, and then eventually they move into it.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: But when they start to work the numbers and start to write those offers, they see, oh my gosh, there's other offers, or the response that they're given is in a multiple offer form.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's where our current market happens to be.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: So totally in a seller's market.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the sellers have a lot of power.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's Santa Clarita.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Antelope Valley is still a seller's market, but with a much more kinder end to the real estate buyers because it's just not as frenzied as the local market here in Santa Clarita.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to see even crazier, then go a little further south into the San Fernando Valley and Greater Los Angeles cities areas, and then you'll see even faster.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, as we get to even more expensive, then that stuff flies off the shelf like crazy.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we're watching as our real estate market is continuing a general trend.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're talking about real estate interest rates, which is something that you should be aware of.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, the interest rates haven't moved much, but there's many rumors on the market that that interest rate's gonna come down here in the near future, but that's not gonna change our inventory level.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Our inventory numbers here in Santa Crita Valley, Greater Animal Valley, Los Angeles are gonna remain pretty constant because sellers really don't have anywhere to move, so they're not gonna be selling right now.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And they're also holding on to these properties.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Even if they do need to sell, more than likely they're probably gonna cash out some funds to be able to go buy that next house because right now at their current interest rate, they're in the twos or threes.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: So they're incredibly low.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't really make sense for them, at least for most sellers that I talk to, to offload that real estate with that interest rate and move somewhere else, unless they're able to have that rate follow them, which in some cases that does happen.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, they might be able to transfer their current mortgage and low interest rate to another buyer.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then we might be able to find them wherever they're relocating to, if I have a connection with an agent in that local area, that local market that's willing to do this kind of work, search for a house that has also an assumable mortgage on that end.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's exciting, and there's a lot of moving parts in that, but that's how creative the market's being.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: But interest rates, they're high, but not historically high.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Look out for that.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And also, if you're going to be purchasing today, make sure you base today's buying decision on buying real estate at today's interest rate.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Don't base today's buying decision on the hopes of rates dropping in the next couple months.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so back to the Analog Valley.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's been more activity in the last 24 hours out there, but I did want to talk about the absorption rate.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Our absorption rate here in Santa Clarita Valley is very, very fast.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: If we had no more units added for sale at the current rate of sale, we would be out of real estate listings within about three weeks.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Everything would be at zero.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Antelope Valley is a little bit different of a market.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, if that were the same case, if they were to have every single real estate listing sell currently without any new additions, per the map here, they're about 2.3 months, a little bit better than that with regard to their absorption rate.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So there's still a seller's heavy market, but not as sellers heavy as we have here in the Santa Crita Valley.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: The best thing that you can do is make sure if you are ready to and poised to potentially purchase real estate, you definitely want to have that grounded advisor, somebody that's been doing this for a while, and then ask them the best strategies, the best things to look for, and then have them kind of teach you about it as if you might approach AI and ask them a question.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Ask your real estate agent the very same question.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, let me cover this.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: The real estate commissions have been historically paid by real estate sellers.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is starting to change a little bit where we're seeing sellers only wanting to pay their agents, so now the buyers have to pay the agent that they're hiring.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: When this comes up, there have been a lot of news articles talking about how to get the numbers lower.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's great.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: It is a free world, and you should be able to ask for a discount, no matter what service you are hiring somebody for, or even a product.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I go to buy something, if it's kind of a high value item, I might ask.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, hey, is there any coupons I can use?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have anything like that?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times you'd be surprised the person at the register is gonna pull out something that they use for their friends and family, and now they're gonna help you out with it.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't hurt to ask.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing in real estate.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can ask for the discount, but also understand that there is value in what people do in their livelihood.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody's really good at it, their value is gonna be more, right?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if somebody's not very good at it, hasn't been doing it very long, really you meet them, you're like, unspectacular.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe they don't need to earn as much.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: But you know this.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is all captain obvious type statements, but you deserve the quality representation.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're paying for it now, like you're paying your lender, if you're going to be paying your real estate agent, it's important that you make that selection even more carefully than you would have in the past.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Connor with Honor.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I can give you the questions to ask agents and other areas.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I can give you the questions to ask agents where I in my neck of the woods here, Greater Los Angeles and Santa Clarita.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever questions you have, reach out to me.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can find me online, ConnorWithHonor.com.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: New housing is really making a massive comeback, folks.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: They are trying to do their best to build as much new housing as possible.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the only thing holding them back from ruining the market is the inventory of lumber and the other items that's required to build housing.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: But that could be our next real estate slowdown.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: If they overbuild new housing, now we have way too much for sale if the market shifts, and then we're in another pickle.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I hope everybody's well.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Watch out for that.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be years from now, but they're trying.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Those hammers are flying.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Be careful, everybody.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Connor with Honor.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Be back tomorrow.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Over and out.