Livermore Homes Blog

As I mentioned in a recent blog, although bank owned properties (REO’s) make up 10% of all active properties, and short sale properties, where homes are worth less than than their loans, represent 18% of all actives, these two groups make up at least 40% of all pending and sold homes in  Livermore so far this April.  Currently the MLS  does not  show short sales as pending until they sell.  Overall sales are up in April, year over year, but distressed properties are making it happen.  The home above is a perfect example.  It was over 1700 square feet, completely updated, with a pebble tec pool and a 10,000 square foot lot.  This home last sold three years ago for $705,000 and the new owners really did a nice job of upgrading the property.  The listing agent hoped for a quick sale and priced this totally updated south side home at $499,000.  Well guess what happened?  He got 26 offers and at least $75,000 over asking.  OOPS, boy was he working hard getting all that paper work in to the lenders.  Bottom line, if the price is too good to be true, it is.   Think Auctions.  Remember, the object of auctions is to get you over excited and forget what your maximum bid should be.  So I bring you this blog as a cautionary tale that real low offers or prices that are probably to good to be true  ARE.  However the number of sales of distressed properties hopefully will chew up the current inventory to get us back to a more balanced market.  Right now Livermore has a 5 month supply of homes versus a national average of 11 to 13 month supply.  Could be worse.