Uncle Jack’s Gotten Pretty Busy In The Last 6 Weeks – I Wanted You To Know That It’s Making Me Extremely Optimistic
As I subtly mentioned last week, Very Vintage Vegas as a brand for me the real estate agent was launched a year ago. The launch was pretty successful. It’s kept me “kinda” busy all during the last year. I’ve told you that kinda busy in August, September and October turned into extremely busy in November. Much of that buyer activity during the fall was buyers who were making their last ditch effort to try to buy something with bad credit and or little or no money. The Credit Crunch officially Launched right about August 1, and many people who could have bought a year ago, realized that they now they couldn’t. -But I went thru the procedure with them, and had the lenders show them that there was no way.
A few real buyers stepped up to buy something because it was unique, charming, classic, retro, or one of kind. That’s how our listing at 1701 15th Street came to get sold. You remember, it’s the flat roofed mid mod spectacular home that just about everyone with any appreciation of mid mod told me they would love it have ONLY IF whatever. Myself included. During that fall, I also sold 2 other listings, and helped 4 people buy a home. Some of them I mentioned and some of them I didn’t. Some of them intentionally bought beat up crappy homes, and some of them bought nice ones.
I wrote a headline on November 13th 2007, which in retrospect was probably more true now than it was then:
Las Vegas Real Estate Market Seems To Be Stabilizing – Sellers Who Aren’t In Trouble Also Want To Sell NOW
As Murphy would have it…I should have gone away for the month of December. None except my faithful readers would have noticed. It was that quiet. No one called me. Almost. No one bought anything. No one sold anything. In fact only about 900 homes sold in December IN THE ENTIRE VALLEY!
But the phone started ringing in January. But something changed. I wrote about it around the 11th. The people who were suddenly calling were ACTUALLY CAPABLE OF BUYING!
Hallelujah!
But they weren’t all that excited to buy in January, but they were starting to think about it.
In February, a lot of the January callers started actually looking at homes with me as their agent. I started writing offers. My listings started to get good showings, and I was showing 1 or 2 of them almost every day. 1821 14th Street sold to someone who knew exactly what they wanted, and knew that the sellers weren’t in foreclosure, and didn’t have a crappy beat up home to sell. The same thing happened to our listing on 1720 Bracken.
NONE of my listings are crappy beat up homes. They’re not foreclosures. And there isn’t one even close to “just like it” right down the street. That’s true out in the barren foreclosure wasteland of the suburbs, but it’s not true in Vintage Vegas.
Here’s some gossip. Names are being withheld until appropriate.
- Right now there’s 17 buyers on my front burner . Each of them and I think they’ll be buying a home in Vintage Vegas during the next 3 months. If they all do it in the next 30 days, I’m really screwed, because I’ll have to stop sleeping, eating and blogging (in that order) to keep up with it.
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I know a real charming little cottage in an “undiscovered neighborhood” that just had it’s price lowered to $177,500!
- There were 5 Realtors – count them 5 at the Atomic Age Alliance Meeting tonight. One of them was brought there by their client who’s starting to look for the right vintage home. Her CLIENT told the agent about VeryVintageVegas. I was flattered, and uplifted when the agent told me that story tonight.
- I know of 6 “suburban realtors” who have called me in the last 60 days, sometimes with their own clients on the other line, because the client was making their agent (cousin, boss’s wife etc) learn a little or a lot about historic, or pre-1970 homes. That’s what the client wanted, and they weren’t about to be told to “go to the suburbs”, and they also had to or wanted to use their own agent. I make time to talk to everyone. You don’t want to see my cell bill.
- There’s some people that I’ve met, and many that I haven’t who are thinking they want to sell, and some who know they HAVE to sell. Maybe they took their home off the market in the last 6 months in order to “wait it out”.
- There’s this Realtor who specializes in
classic pre 1970 homes in historic and close to the strip neighborhoods of Las Vegas
- One of the people who I’ve mentioned on the blog has SOLD HER HOME in another city. She’s one of the 17, by the way. She not only can’t wait to, but now HAS TO BUY A HOME IN THE NEXT 30 DAYS. 1821 14th Street was her number one choice during the period she was waiting for her home to sell. Unfortunately, someone beat her to it.
There’s a bunch of LOFT STYLE, Nouveau Modernism new and almost new communities and properties around Las Vegas. When we talk mid century modernism, we not just talking about when it was built, but about the design! Some are high rise, some are mid rise, some are 2 or 3 story. All fall under the definition of “cocktail house”. Very Vintage Vegas is going to be talking a lot about nouveau modernism as well in the coming months. - Mortgage Guidelines, and Interest Rates and credit score requirements have become more reasonable, and new programs are being put into the loan market all the time, now.
- The guy who jumped onto the list today as number 17, called today to say his home sold yesterday, and is the home that he liked when he was here in January still available? It is, but it’s still Incredibly OVERPRICED. It’s not my listing, but I think the seller reads me now and then. Hint Hint.
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The cute young couple, I mean a real Barbie and Blaine, are STILL WAITING FOR THE BANK to decide whether to accept their short sale offer. It’s been almost a month. Frustrating!
- There’s this absolute mega cool Mid Century Modern home at 807 E. Oakey.
- Almost Every Realtor that Jack LeVine knows has similar stories to tell about the Las Vegas Real Estate Market.
- There’s a lot of great homes for sale. There’s even more really crappy, really cheap, ready to fix up ones, also. If you haven’t started to “get ready to get ready” to buy a home in Vintage Vegas, It’s probably a good time to start.
- Frank’s still waiting for an answer on an offer we made on a bank owned repo. It took 3 weeks for the bank’s agent to get around to telling us there were multiple offers. We sent back his best ALL CASH offer, with the stipulation the his offer went down 1000/per day till they responded. That was 7 days ago. Still waiting. Good thing Frank’s just doing it as an investment. He’s not emotionally attached or facing any kind of personal deadline needs. He’s not trying to time the market, and he’s paying cash, so he’s not worried if interest rates go up again because of inflation jitters.
- There’s this prolific real estate blogger in Las Vegas who vowed to improve his SEO skills, so he wrote this really long, unapologetic, self serving post in order to load it up with keywords and search engine phrases, as well as to try to demonstrate a really important point to his readers.
Feel Free to spread around some of the gossip. Also you can tell people who live in Vintage Vegas, want to live In Vintage Vegas, who ought to live in Vintage Vegas, or who have a home to sell in Vintage Vegas that Jack LeVine writes a pretty interesting blog, is “pretty” busy, but not too busy for them. Your referrals are ALWAYS appreciated.
