Real estate has been extremely quite over the last few
weeks. September home
sales in New Hampshire were up about 3% and it looks like we
will also see home sales up in October versus last year. However, the
number of homes put under agreement in October is looking like it will
be down. Despite this I think we are set for positive news in the following months.
Merrimacks Retail Complex Finally Approved
Written by Administrator, on 18-09-2008 15:43
The Merrimack,
NH planning board approved, on Tuesday,
Chelsea Property Group's proposal for Merrimack Premium Outlets. The approval
was the culmination of a four year approval.
Merrimack Premium Outlets will be 550,000 square feet, with
135 high-end clothing and home-good stores located off Exit 10 on the F.E.
Everett Turnpike.
Chelsea Property Group is attracted to the 170-acre property
because of area demographics, location and the market in New Hampshire. The company estimates that it will invest $150
million in the project.
Groundbreaking is estimated to begin in the next four to six
months. After that, the outlets will take 18-24 months to complete - which
falls between summer and Christmas 2010.
Although the project has been controversial, it is expected
to bring a lot of jobs to the area and bring in substantial tax revenues for
the town of Merrimack.
This could help offset the losses due to some other local businesses that have
shut down. Certainly it will bring in a lot of people from Massachusetts
and surrounding New Hampshire
towns. The increased traffic should also help other local businesses.
Have you heard about the guy who bought
a house at 60% of what is was worth? Lots of people seem to have
heard something similar to this and are out looking to get a great
deal like this one. This is OK. But what really concerns me is that
most buyers do not understand what that "great deal" really means......
Is our market still in decline? or are we close to the bottom? I think I see some daylight. Little bright points that are illuminating a market change. You have to look hard to
Free at Last!!
Written by Administrator, on 25-07-2008 00:47
Over the past 2 months my computer has started to act up. You know, it runs really slow, gives errors that the 10 billion gigabytes of memory is not enough, stopped talking to my printer. Typical Windows stuff. It seems to start happening about every 3 years.
Are banks really anxious to sell?
Written by Carl Johnson, on 16-07-2008 11:35
You would think the way the market is that banks would be anxious to sell. Bu so far, I have not seen the banks
negotiate like they really want to sell....
Now that the site has been rebuilt and we moved to a new, more powerful server, I thought I might as well give the site a new look! I stayed with the familiar red theme but tried to dress it up a bit and use a larger, more easily read font....
Getting Back to Normal
Written by Carl Johnson, on 11-07-2008 11:03
Well.... finally I am getting back to normal. I have the Souheganhomes site switched over to a nice new Xeon server. This is a server with dual quad core processors. It is part of our commitment to marketing New Hampshire real estate on the web.
We felt we could not be effective on the internet...
It took about a week after the catastophic loss of my web site, but it is back up and running! For those looking for this months market report, I will have it posted this weekend. There was some good that came out of this whole incident
1) it gave me the opportunity to clean up the site. After several
years of adding and deleting functions the site needed a good cleaning.
2) We decided to upgrade the server to a new, high end, dedicated
server on which to host all of our sites. Hopefully this will improve
the performance for the site visitors.
I recieved a few emails from some site visitors asking if I was
going to continue to make the Market Reports available on the web site.
The answer is YES.
This months report will be completed in the next couple days, so look
for it here this weekend. I will post a link on the front page when it
is ready. I will also get a report completed on the entire New
Hampshire market. I generally write these reports once per quarter and
June marked the end of Q2.
If you have any questions or problems, by all means contact me and let me know.!
Web Site Problem
Written by Carl Johnson, on 04-07-2008 14:26
This past week my site went down. It was a very stressful day made even more stressfull by the fact that 3 backup files, used to restore the site in case of a problem like this, were corrupted or empty.
This was a catastrophe for me since it meant that I would have to rebuild my entire site, almost from scratch.
Please bear with me while I get my site back up and running
properly. On the bright side, it is a great opportunity fo rme to make
some improvements. We are limplementing a new, much more powerful
server. I will also be adding som enew content to teh site. You may
even see a slightly new Look.
Keep checking back over the next couple weeks. By the way, this does not affect the Property Finder search service that I offer.
Land Prices in the Amherst area
Written by Carl Johnson, on 20-11-2007 05:00
Home prices in the Amherst New Hampshire area have dropped about 8%
from last year and sales of single family homes are down 5% from last
year. Land in the area, however has faired far worse this year. Land
sales in the area have dropped 10% and prices on average have dropped
24%.
Existing home prices have declined from their peak in late 2005 but
builders have not been able to stay competitive on pricing of new
construction. There are three major cost components in the construction
of a new home. Land, labor and material. The builders have little
control over the cost of material which are now influenced by national
factors and the price of fuel. Material costs over the last 3 years
have increased about 10% per year. Labor costs can be controlled to
some degree but they can not be brought down to the point where they
have a significant impact on the overall price of a home. This leaves
land as the one variable that can be controlled.
With the cost of building being so high there are fewer home buyers
in the area willing to build. This has decreased the demand for land in
the Amherst area. Of course with decreased demand comes lower prices.
However, land prices did not start to come down until very recently.
Why? Land in Southern New Hampshire has become a commodity. There is
less developable land in the area and the people who held it were not
in a hurry to let it go, even as the market slowed, hoping the market
would come back. Builders especially have been holding on to the land
since a good building lot has been hard to come by. If a builder does
not have land available, then they can not build and if they can not
build they can not earn a living. So they have been slow to sell it
off. It seems that sentiment is changing and land prices are coming
down.
With land prices coming down the cost of building a home should also
come down. We are in an adjustment period right now and new
construction is a little bit behind the existing home market in terms
of price adjustment. But it is starting to happen. The one unknown at
this point is how high fuel prices will go and the affect of on the
cost of building a home.
You would think the way the market is that banks would be anxious to sell. Bu so far, I have not seen the banks
negotiate like they really want to sell....
Well.... finally I am getting back to normal. I have the Souheganhomes site switched over to a nice new Xeon server. This is a server with dual quad core processors. It is part of our commitment to marketing New Hampshire real estate on the web.
This past week my site went down. It was a very stressful day made even more stressfull by the fact that 3 backup files, used to restore the site in case of a problem like this, were corrupted or empty.
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