Home Sales Are Up in Santa Fe Region

Realtors: Sellers May Be Waiting

By Bill Rodgers

Journal Staff Writer

Home sales in the Santa Fe region in the first quarter of this year are up from a year ago, while the median sales price and the number of properties awaiting purchase have gone down. That information comes from data collected by the Santa Fe Association of Realtors, whose president, Dan Wright, said at a news conference Wednesday that data for the first quarter of 2012 suggest the housing market in the region is stabilizing and currently favors home buyers. He added, however, that homeowners may be waiting for a better market before selling.

The association’s chief executive, Paco Arguello, noted that new listings for homes fell again this quarter. “I think the new listings (figures) are people waiting it out,” he said.

Closed sales for the region rose about 14.7 percent from the first quarter of 2011, from 273 properties to 313 properties this year.

Those homes are selling more cheaply than this time last year, according to the statistics. Median sales prices for a home dropped about 8.6 percent, from $328,080 to $299,900.

The average price of a home sold in the region also fell, according to the figures, from $500,562 to $419,447, a drop of 16.2 percent. Reed Liming, the long-range planning division director for the city, said averages can show more change than medians through the sales of only a few high-value properties.

Associate broker Victoria Murphy said she has seen people buying a retirement home in Santa Fe while still owning their current home. Wright said many of these new home buyers he encountered were from out of the state.

On the seller’s end, Wright said, anecdotally, that some homeowners who would otherwise be interested in selling were instead waiting for a better market by choosing to rent out their property. Charles Goodman, CEO of Kokopelli Property Management, which manages about 500 properties in Santa Fe, said he has noticed this trend since the housing market crash of 2008.

“There are a lot of owners who have taken homes and placed them in the long-term rental market because prices at this point in time are depressed and they’re waiting for a price improvement that allows them a way to hold the property,” Goodman said.

Those who did elect to sell had to wait less time and earned close to 87 percent of their list price, according to the figures. Homes in the first quarter last year spent an average of 270 days on the market, compared to 247 this year, a drop of about 8.4 percent. The percent of original list prices these sellers received went up only slightly from 87.1 percent last year to 87.3 percent this year. “People are getting what they’re asking for now, probably because the prices are so low,” Arguello said.  The Santa Fe Association of Realtors is a made up of 650 members throughout the region. A news release notes the median sales price is pulled from association data and does not include every sale of property in the area.