Last week I got to do something that makes me both happy and sad that I am in this business: I told a potential client what I found on the market. They had a house that they were hoping to get sold at a specific price, and all of the evidence that I found ended up showing that their house was worth  about $30,000 less than they were hoping for.

This act makes me sad because I never want to be the one bearing bad news. If I could do this job and only tell people what they want to hear, my job would be much easier. 

The reason that this makes me happy is because I think that I am unusual in telling people what they don’t want to hear, but need to hear nonetheless. If every house out there that is like yours is selling within a $10,000 range that is $30,000 lower than you were  hoping for, then the market is setting a pretty specific value on properties like yours.  You can find this out upfront and get your house sold.

Or someone can tell you want you want to hear and you can find out months down the line. Months of frustration. Months of holding you back from getting to where you want to be. Months of being upset. 

I believe that this is a part of my job, and a part of what makes me a great realtor. I am going to tell you what I actually find. I am going to tell you what is actually going on in the market based off of facts and numbers that are happening to houses that are strong comparables to yours. I am going to tell you what I actually think, instead of what I think you want to hear. I know that that automatically disqualifies me from being some people’s realtor. I also know that it automatically makes me a better realtor for the people who want a realtor that is more  interested  in getting them where  they want to go than just getting another listing.

So that this is not all doom and gloom I will tell you that this situation is still the exception, and not the rule in today’s market. As of the end of November, 2018 we had closed 13,270 deals in the Des Moines Area Association of Realtors (DMAAR). That is a huge number in the Des Moines area market. At the end of November we still are in a Seller’s Market in Resale Properties. (We have 3.4 months of inventory as of November 30th, and up to 4 months is a Seller’s Market.) In November, 2018 689 listings were taken, and 894 listings went under contract. It is still  a great time to sell and buy a home.

I love doing what I do. I love looking at the market, and I love building relationships with the people that I get to help. Let me know how I can help you. Call me today. You can reach me at 515.639.0047 or RyanLynch@KW.com. I am good at what I do, and I want to help you.

~Ryan Lynch

I always ask everyone that I work with how I can add more value to them. One way that just came up was helping a client find a home in Marshalltown. I am not licensed in Marshalltown, and I don’t have access to the Multiple Listing Service(MLS). That being said, anytime that I can help in any way I very much want to.

I called a trusted contact in Marshalltown who is a realtor and we sat on the phone for a while while she looked at the MLS and answered questions about how we could help my client. I gathered a lot of information and was able to get it to my client so that he has a better idea of what is available and how specific he can be in looking for what he is looking for.

The point that I am trying to get across is that if you have a question on anything (I really don’t even care if it is even real estate related), I like to help people in any way that I can. I still get people that are confused as to why I am calling when I call every single one of my clients quarterly. I am just checking in to see if there is anything that I can do to make your life easier. Try me out.

Market Update:

As I wrote earlier this year, we are still seeing two different markets throughout Central Iowa and the Des Moines MLS. Just look at months of inventory by price point (all numbers are as of October 31st, 2018):

$0-$100,000 – 1.9 Months
$100,000-$200,000 – 1.6 Months
$200,000-$300,000 – 3.9 Months
$300,000-$400,000 – 7.9 Months
$400,000-$500,000 – 10.7 Months
$500,000-$600,000 – 9.1 Months
$600,000-$700,000 – 24.3 Months
$700,000-$800,000 – 14.7 Months
$800,000-$900,000 – 10.0 Months
$900,000-$1,000,000 – 10.5 Months

Look at that huge jump from a Seller’s Market (0-4 Months) to a Buyer’s Market (6+ Months) over $300,000. This has only become more pronounced. A large part of this is still that over $300,000 is where new construction gets into the game for most of the MLS. We are seeing two very different markets. Below $200,000 is still a strong Seller’s Market. $200,000 to $300,000 is almost a Balanced Market (4-6 Months), and then as high as TWO YEARS of inventory at the $600,000 to $700,000 levels.

What does this mean to you?

If you are in the Seller’s Market range, you are in a great time to get your house on the market, because you have less competition and motivated buyers. I say they are motivated, because if you are looking to move in Iowa in the Winter, you are motivated to move. Even better, if you are selling your home at below $200,000 and then looking to buy a home at above $200,000 you are in the ideal position to take advantage of both markets. Low competition as a seller, and excess inventory as a buyer.

I love doing what I do. I love looking at the market, and I love building relationships with the people that I get to help. Let me know how I can help you. Call me today. You can reach me at 515.639.0047 or RyanLynch@KW.com. I am good at what I do, and I want to help you.

~Ryan Lynch

Hello my friends! This week I was helping a client through a “fun” challenge that came up and at the end of the call he said “I am so glad that you are my friend!” He wasn’t glad that I was his realtor, or even that I was there to help. He was glad that I am his friend. That is the ideal situation for me. You are not a number. You are not a transaction. You are someone who is going through one of the most stressful, largest financial transactions of your life. I want you to know that you have someone there who knows what they are doing and who is thinking about you and what is best for you. On top of that I will always tell you why I think the way that I do, and even if you choose something completely different, I will work to get it for you. My goal is that you are my friend years from now.

The market:

The main thing that I am hearing clients ask about now is interest rates. Rates are going up. I believe that rates will continue to go up. I also believe that rates are still at historically low levels. We are still below 5%, and 5% was an unheard of low just a decade ago. We have all been so happy with our tiny interest rates of the last few years, that now a number as high as 5% can seem big. It absolutely can affect your buying power. That also means that it can affect the buying power of people buying your home as well.

What does that mean to you? As a seller it means that the higher priced your home is, the pool of buyers who can afford it is very slowly getting smaller over time. As a buyer it means that you might be losing buying power the longer that it takes you to buy. (Depending on if your income changes, and how the market affects prices as well.)

An interesting note is that according to GoBankingRates.com it is cheaper to buy instead of rent in 38 states (including Iowa = Average Monthy Rent of $1,089 vs. Average Monthly Mortgage of $895) right now in the United States. That means that if you are currently renting, you might be able to save money by buying, and you would also have a property that appreciates and that you are paying down over time. That means that instead of rent going out of your bank account every month, it is going towards buying you a house.

I love doing what I do. I love looking at the market, and I love building relationships with the people that I get to help. Let me know how I can help you. Call me today. You can reach me at 515.639.0047 or RyanLynch@KW.com. I am good at what I do, and I want to help you.

~Ryan Lynch

I have been working on changing how I communicate with you because I have been focusing solely on sharing market information with you, and I have gotten a lot of feedback about how I do more than that. I get positive feedback about the market information, so that is not going away. I just tell everyone that my goal is to build a long term relationship with every person I help, so I believe the best way to do that is to share more about myself. It might not be a fit for what you want in a realtor, but I give you the opportunity to make a more informed choice by giving you more information. I am continuing to split my communication into two parts: info on me and info on the market.

I believe that a great example of me being most interested in your long term happiness rather than my short term gain is to tell you about the conversation that I had last night. I spent a couple of hours yesterday putting together information for clients of mine that were thinking about selling their house. Then I sat down with the husband last night and ended up talking to him for an hour about why he shouldn’t sell his house. He let me know that they were considering whether to sell the house or turn it into a rental property. After asking some clarifying questions about what their goals were I started to point out the great position that they were in with turning this into a rental property. They have a property that they have a primary mortgage on (low interest rate), is in a good rental location, and is in good shape. He likes the rental properties that he already has and will want to buy more rental property.

For me it made a lot of sense to hold on to a good property that they already own with such favorable terms instead of selling it and going to look for other properties. I don’t know what they will decide, but I know that they are happy that I looked out for their best interest (investing for the future) instead of mine (getting commission from selling their house).

Now onto the market:

The first thing to look at is the market levels. As of this writing (October 10th, 2018) there are currently 3,899 active listings on the Des Moines Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and 2,062 pending listings (houses under contract) on the MLS. That is a huge swing from earlier this year where both were around 3,000 units each.

Now to better understand what that means to you is that you really need to know what is going on in your market segment. I have analyzed addresses where the number of sold listings has been steadily dropping since mid-Summer. I have analyzed addresses where there has been almost no change in sales levels. I have even had a few where the sales levels have been steadily increasing. Right now the market depends solely on what is going on in your area and how you are positioned in said market. Meaning that you need to know who your competition is, what your market is doing, and how to put your house out there to sell instead of for sale. There is a big difference in those two approaches.

I know what I am doing and my greatest motivator is to get you what you want. That means that I am going to tell you as much information as I can so that you can make the most informed decision possible. I love doing what I do. I love looking at the market, and I love building relationships with the people that I get to help. Let me know how I can help you. Call me today. You can reach me at 515.639.0047 or RyanLynch@KW.com. I am good at what I do, and I want to help you.

~Ryan Lynch

I have been thinking a lot about what value I add to my clients as a realtor lately. I understand the market and am able to pass that information on in a way that makes it relevant to you. I promise that I will go back to doing that in my posts as well. What I think I am going to do is split my posts so that it is half about the market, and half about what I am doing with my clients that I believe is above and beyond what the normal realtor does.

I think it is important to know that you are not just a transaction to me. If you become my client, my goal is to make you my client for life. Whether or not you have bought or sold a house from me recently you will get a call from me every quarter to check in and see if there is anything that I can do to add value to you. That question can mean anything. I have some clients who ask me for referrals. I have some clients who talk to me about what is going on in their lives. I have some clients who ask me questions that I never thought I would have been asked.

I have clients who celebrate with me. Just this week a client who I helped buy his home texted me several pictures of the kitchen remodel that I knew he had been working hard on. It is beautiful! I love getting to celebrate with my clients. I think a huge differentiator for me is that I will check in with you long after you have done business with me just as much as I did before you did business with me. You are more than just a sale to me.

Now on to the market:

Things slowed down in August, as they always do. With back to school and the State Fair in play, everyone is focused elsewhere unless they have to buy a home now. What is interesting is that usually once September hits and kids are back in school things have been picking up in years past. So far, 2018 is hitting the pause button longer. A simple indicator of this is our housing stock. As of today (September 19th, 2018) there are currently 3,921 active listings on the Des Moines Mutliple Listing Service (MLS) and 1,921 listings under contract on the MLS. These numbers are significant for a couple of reasons.

1. That is the widest gap we have had since the beginning of the year. For most of 2018 listings under contract have only been trailing listings on the market by three to five hudred units. Many times they have been within 100 units of each other.

2. That is the highest number of active listings that we have seen in months on the Des Moines MLS.

What does this mean to you?

If you are a buyer you have more to choose from and you are less likely to get into multiple offer situations. You can take your time (in most instances) and not be frantic at every moment.

If you are a seller you have to pay attention to your competition even more and make sure that you are positioning yourself in the market to be the home of choice. We are still in Seller’s Market inventories for more areas than not around central Iowa. We are trending more towards a balanced market in the last two months though. If you are thinking about selling, it would be good for you to get on the market sooner, so that you don’t have more competition later.

I love doing what I do. I love looking at the market, and I love building relationships with the people that I get to help. Let me know how I can help you. Call me today. You can reach me at 515.639.0047 or RyanLynch@KW.com. I am good at what I do, and I want to help you.

I would love to hear your feedback on this new format. Anything you like or not? Anything you would add or change?

~Ryan Lynch

Are you thinking about buying a new home before the end of 2018? If you are a first time home buyer, you could be in luck. Wells Fargo is doing a program called NeighborhoodLIFT that could give you $15,000 (or more) to buy your first home. If you are buying in Polk County and a first time home buyer, you could be eligible.

If you are active military, a veteran, eligible surviving spouse, law enforcement, firefighter, emergency medical technician, or a teacher, you could be eligible for even more on top of that.

This is a really cool program that is first come, first serve. I know that you will need to apply for it at the end of September, and then you will have 60 days to find a home if you are eligible. If you think that you fall into these criteria (buying a home in Polk County in 2018, primarily first time home buyers) let me know. I can connect you with the people who can help you move towards this amazing opportunity.

Call me today. You can reach me at 515.639.0047 or RyanLynch@KW.com. I am good at what I do, and I want to help you.

~Ryan Lynch