Update on Two-Year Itchers
Posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 6:36am.
Now and then MBC checks in on the fates of listings in which the homes had been held by their owners for about 2 years.The main benefit of tracking same-house sales like this over a relatively short period of time is to gauge the overall market's rate of appreciation. (Click to download the 1-page PDF of our tracking data.)
We started this series by noting that some sellers might get the "two-year itch" to sell in part because they would hope to grab their big tax-free profits and move up. (The gubmint allows up to $500k in home-sale profits to be tax-free for a couple who used a home as their primary residence for 24 months.) This phenomenon was pretty common in the 2002-06 period, and visible at times in 2007.
In MBC's most recent update (Oct. 2007), we had closed sales in which the appreciation ranged from 2%-25% for homes that were left as they were, and up to 61% for big-time remodels.
Since then, we've added only 2 sales to this list – both losses (5% at 3011 Elm, and 15% at 601 Larsson). That's a lot of itches not being scratched. (Click the graphic for a bigger view, or click here to download the 1-page PDF.)Meanwhile, we've seen reduced ambitions by new sellers:
- 1019 11th started just 3% above its July 2005 price;
- 794 27th started 4% above its May 2006 price;
- 2901 Blanche started 4% above its Sept. 2005 price; and
- 701 Dianthus started 10% above its Feb. 2006 price.
- 528 6th, whose square footage is baldly overstated in the MLS listing, started at 15% above its Feb. 2006 price.
- 468 33rd started out at 26% above its May 2006 price;
- 872 MBB began by asking 30% more than its Sept. 2005 price; and
- 939 Duncan, after a big, big remodel, is asking for $3.895m, a jump of 54%.
This data set gets more interesting as we have more entrants, but we still have very few sales to go by. Maybe that's part of the story, too.
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