For current information on homes for sale in the Mat-Su please click Mat-Su Homes for Sale or if you would like to find out how the Boomerang Buyers entering back into the market can impact your home's value, Click Here and fill out a short form.
A "Boomerang Buyer" is someone that has lost a home through the foreclosure process or other credit damaging event, and is working on repairing their credit (and in many cases already has) and wants back in to the home ownership arena. The following illustration is from AfterForeclosure.com and highlights where we are currently at in the recovery process for those buyers and is an absolute bright spot for the real estate market in the coming years.
There is also a very informative article on their webpage that you can read here 2014 Needs the Boomerang Buyer.
Why do we at Alaska Home Sellers feel that it is especially applicable here? We have seen an influx of in-migration into the state over the last few years as the employment opportunities here are greater than where they are moving from. Many of the residents that have moved here over the last 3-5 years did so to seek a better financial environment, but due to the financial hardship where they were at either have a foreclosure, a short sale, or a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure and have been forced to rent once they arrived here.
For many of our new arrivals, they fit the above illustration to a "T" and we are already starting to see evidence of them coming back into the housing market. Something that the illustration doesn't address is how they will view the current interest rates. Don't think for one minute that it went under their radar when interest rates were around 3% a year ago! But for many, they were helpless to do anything due to the prior blip on their credit. If you also think back to where we were at in 2006 when the housing market started it's collapse, interest rates were around 6.5%. At 6.5%, it was still well below the 40 year average, but yet it's nearly 50% higher than where they are at today. The following graph represents a snap shot of mortgage interest rates dating back to 1971 from Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey and compiled by www.calculatedriskblog.com.
What does all of this all mean?
We are convinced that not only did we see a substantial increase in the number of transactions last year in the Matsu Real Estate Market, but it was also combined with a healthy 2% increase in average pricing. We feel that as the Boomerang Buyers continue to gain financial traction, that they will put even further downward pressure on the declining inventory levels locally, creating an even larger increase in pricing in 2014.
We also know that there are buyers that opted out last year thinking that mortgage interest rates were going to stay around where they were, and hoped they might even go lower. But that have now realized that the "Mortgage Interest Rate Horse" is out of the barn and may be nearly impossible to put back in.
You can obtain real estate market information on the various communities in the Matsu Valley in Alaska by visiting this link Wasilla, Alaska Housing Market Insider Data. Based on the last quarter of 2013, it appears that the trend is clearly toward higher pricing in 2014 as you can see by the illustration below. Once there you can enter other zip codes in Alaska that you would like to obtain similar data on as well.
We see some definite trends starting to emerge as we hit the 2014 season and welcome you to come back to gain valuable local information presented in a logical format that you can use to determine what the best options are for you.
For current information on homes for sale in the Matsu please click Matsu Homes for Sale or if you would like to find out how the Boomerang Buyers entering back into the market can impact your home's value, click here and fill out a short form.
You can visit our website at Alaska Home Sellers or call our office at (907)352-1828 to privately discuss your real estate goals.
