 Hi, I'm Realtor Sara Mara with Cell State Peak Realty. I am so excited to chat current market activity with today's guest, Anthony Meisner, who does sales for land title. He's been in the industry for nine years and his focus is residential data and helping us Realtors use and distribute that data to serve our clients well and to create happy homeowners. Anthony is also a real estate investor who holds a degree in economics and he's the co-chair of the affiliate committee for Bolo Realtors. He loves geeking out on stats but presents data in a fun, approachable way on his own YouTube channel that is loaded with relevant and useful market content. He's committed to developing himself and others. He loves Longmont and he loves his wife who he's been married to now for eight years. He has two adorable young sons. He's always down for some kickball and some paddle boarding. And today we get to bend his ear on what's going on out there as the summer winds down. Good morning, Anthony. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. So let's dive right in. I guess the most burning question that people have and that I have for the expert is why buy right now? Like late August, early September used to be a great time to buy and it seems like this year is a little bit of an exception. Is it still a good idea for me to buy a house right now? Yeah. So I think one of the bigger things that you want to think about and this is what I tell everybody that's either buying or selling so much has changed this year because of economic uncertainty and because of rising interest rates. So all the timing of the market is really off. One of the bigger things you have to remember is usually we peak in our market with peak sales around June or May. This year it was really April. So the biggest thing about that is with buyers kind of pulling back early, it's created a rise in inventory which it's not extreme by any stretch of the imagination. So it's still a great time to sell a house, but if you're a buyer, you know, if you were looking back in February or you were looking last year, it might have felt so confined that like a house came on the market, you had to go look at a house. This year at least you have a few options and you're really going to be able to kind of take advantage of some of that inventory rise. Now is it still competitive? Absolutely. It's very competitive, but you don't want to wait till later this year where you might be priced out of the home you want or interest rates might have risen even more to where that makes stuff less affordable. So there's a lot to that question, we'll unwrap more of it obviously, but I think it's very important to understand that timing of the market is not always the same. It's not always the same. And I guess the same question, you sort of answered it, but sellers seem to be even more fearful right now than buyers. But you're saying there's enough activity right now that whether you're buying or selling, get out there. Yeah. So from a seller's standpoint, I think the big part to remember is inventory has been at the absolute lowest rate it has ever been at starting in like January, February timeframe, right? So by the time that we get to here we are in July, August, you know, there has been a lot more inventory come on the market. It's like this every year. It's very seasonal. The bulk of the listings come on between March and October, but that doesn't necessarily mean that this is a bad time to sell because a balanced market occurs around four to six months of inventory. We're at, you know, not even two. So we're way into a seller's market in any normal seller's market that we've seen in years past, call it 2016, 2017. We have less inventory today than we did then. So that's what's driving these bidding wars. That's what's driving a lot of this behavior. So as a seller, you're going to see inventory rise all the way through October because that's when we see all the listings come to market and we have reduced buyer activity right now, but this is a great time to sell because we're still in an extreme seller's market. Is it as extreme as February? No. Are we seeing bidding wars like we did earlier this year? Not nearly as much, but that doesn't mean that, you know, they aren't happening. Right? They're still happening. Could you clarify? You mentioned four to six months of inventory and balanced market. And I don't think that's a very household sort of a term for some of my viewers. Fair enough. So a balanced market really just means that the buyer and the seller are on even footing. So it means that like the seller is asking for some things. The buyer can come back and say, you know, I like this, but, you know, we need you to replace the roof because the roof isn't in adequate shape or, you know, there's other inspection objections that might actually get dealt with. When the buyer and seller on even footing, they need each other equally, right? So the big difference in a seller's market like we are today, there's not enough inventory out there. There's all these home buyers out looking and shopping and, you know, there's ten people coming to your house on the first weekend. Well, you wouldn't see that type of behavior in a balanced market. I see. So if four to six months' worth of inventory, what is that, like before we run out, like what do you mean? Yeah, that's exactly what it means. It means if no other listings came on the market, when would we run out of homes for sale? To reach the demand of the buyer. To reach the demand of the buyer. So four to six months' worth of houses sitting on the market at any given time is balanced. Cool. Thank you for that. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about like you are so good at really getting down to the granular details of various parts of Boulder County. I love the way you send me the Boulder County stats and then also really hone in on Longmont. Let's, because, you know, I like to specialize in Longmont, let's talk about, you know, I have some friends who rent in Longmont and they're nervous that they've been priced out of Longmont. So they want to buy in Longmont. They love it here, but they're kind of starting to face the music. They might have to move to move east, move north. Talk about Longmont, what you're seeing as opposed to Boulder County and some of the neighboring town. Yeah. So Boulder County and Weld County, obviously, they're kind of coming together here in Longmont in many ways. The big thing about Longmont is its proximity to city centers, to jobs, and to a growing economy are really matched by not very many other cities, right? Broomfield's kind of in that position, but your proximity to Boulder's really good. It's drivable into Denver. You're drivable into Northern Colorado. You know, Weld County is booming in this area and the Southwest Weld County market. So all that being coupled has pushed a lot of infrastructure and a lot of building and a lot of jobs into the Longmont market. And the Longmont market's actually bigger than the city of Boulder at this point and it represents a large amount of this part of the area. I mean, Longmont is actually being considered part of the Denver Metro area in many ways, like from large-scale economic perspectives because people will literally drive from Longmont to work in the downtown Denver and that proximity really drives a lot of appreciation in the marketplace. That's why you're seeing 10%, 11% more expensive than this time last year in many ways. And that really is a major factor in Longmont, right? Longmont is this city center. It's an economic driver in the area where if you were going to move outside of Longmont, you're not going to see as much appreciation in your homes. If you ever wanted to move back into Longmont, you might be stuck out somewhere else, right? You see this a lot in metropolitan areas like on the front range here where the farther west you are, the more expensive things get. The farther east you are, the cheaper it gets. But you don't get the same appreciation over time. So the farther east you go, the less likely you are to gain that equity growth that you're really looking for. I mean, yes, we all make decisions in our housing based off of what we need. You know, we had a baby. We got married. That might be. And that kind of drives our decision making. But in the back of your mind, you still need to think about, okay, well, if I'm going to trade up in the future, you know, what decisions do I need to make and where should I really buy, right? Because location, location, location is what we always say in real estate. Longmont is one of those locations where you can really expect some long-term growth. And specifically right now, like, what about Longmont? I don't know. How many houses are going on market? How many are you selling? Can you give us some of the stats specific to Longmont just very recent in the last month or two? Yeah, sure. So last month, we had 221 homes come on the market. Those are new active listings to come to market. Now if we have 151 homes that went under contract, so being that we're in this transitioning market, right, economic uncertainty, rising interest rates, buyers have really pulled back, but we were at such a low inventory level for so long that that's not necessarily a bad thing. We're finally getting some homes that come to market and you can actually go shop for something, but there's still 151 active buyers last month that went under contract, right? That's not all of what came on the market, but it's the large majority of it. Homes that are not ready for sale or homes that, you know, need remodeled or those kind of things shouldn't necessarily sell right away, right? And we've been in this market for so long where people are willing to do anything just to get a house. It's good for buyers to have some selection. We don't want 20% appreciation in the marketplace over the next year, right? It's still not affordable here, right? Correct. Those Gen Z and Millennial First-Time Homebuyers aren't having a hard time finding stuff to live in because now cost of money is expensive or at least more expensive. Right. In retrospect, it's close to where it's averaged out over the last 40 or 50 years, but, you know, we really need to see that affordability come back to reality, right? The last two years have been so wild that we really need to see that come in. So the fact that we're talking 10%, 11% appreciation in the Longmont Market probably over the next year is a really different scenario than a year ago at 20%, right? But I think if you're a buyer, you really need to understand one thing. Am I going to make more money next year than I am this year to offset the price of housing if I go to rent, right? So you may not be buying your ideal spot in Longmont, but what you want to do is you want to buy so you can get on the appreciation escalator, which is going to allow you to trade in something you really want later. Sure. Appreciation is the thing that's moving the fastest. I mean, just get your foot into something. Right. Get your foot in the door. Build that equity, particularly in Longmont, if you can, and then play the long game. That's what I tell my clients all the time. So you touched on this, but can you say a little bit more about, I know COVID messed with a lot of this, but what are we seeing right now, August 22, as opposed to, you know, August of 21 and 20, and how are we comparing year over year right now with those stats? Okay. So, number one, those bidding wars that people were experiencing a year ago have really come down quite a bit. Now, earlier in the spring this year, we had a really vibrant sellers market because of the inventory shortage. That's really come down quite quickly, right? Our seasonality changed and shifted a couple months ahead of time, so it feels like we're in a fall market right now. Right. We're in August, we're not in a fall market, we're in the summer market, but it feels like we're maybe in October. That's just kind of how it feels. We have the rising inventory that's coming up. That inventory I think is a really positive thing for most people. Now, if you're a seller, obviously it's not a positive thing for you because you're not getting $100,000 over asking price and 100 people coming in and out of your house. 17 offers. 17 offers, right? But what you are getting is you're getting consistent traffic, you're going to, if you price it right and it's buttoned up, it'll sell right away. Is it going to sell in one week? Maybe not. Maybe it's selling in, I think, long months at 13 days on average, right? So that active to under contract time has extended a little bit, but, I mean, let's be realistic, 13 days is amazing. There's times where even two or three years ago, 2019, we were talking 30 days, 40 days, right? So when we're talking those kind of differences, it's important just to understand perspective. Totally. Because historically, 13 days is the fastest market anyone's ever seen outside of last year. Right. Yeah, that's the other thing I've been telling people is like, because of the proximity of the insanity and because it was so recent that we saw some of this banana's behavior, people, they want it. They want it now, but it was right here, it was just there. I could have touched it. Anyways, thank you for those particulars. So I guess just another thing, what would you tell a seller? You mentioned like, price it right, button it up. Can you go into details about, okay, let's say I really want to sell my house. Maybe I'm regretting staying on the fence because I knew I needed to sell it back in February and I could have made a killing. What can I do now still to get top dollar and how can I reset those expectations a little bit? I mean, a lot of this is your expertise, but I'll give you the highlights that make the most sense. So number one being the fact that if the home is priced correctly, we're talking about markets here. So if it's priced right, it will sell. That doesn't necessarily matter about condition. If the condition is terrible and you price it correctly, it will still sell. If it's the most beautiful house in the block and it's priced correctly, it's going to sell too. So I think if you want to get top dollar, first of all, you have to price it right because you want it to move in the first weekend or at least in the first month. Because before it feels stale or stigmatized. The other thing is, all those things like fresh paint, curb appeal, like just button up the landscaping, they're just those little things that make a home feel like, oh wow, I really want this. This is the nicest one. It doesn't have to be amazing. And even something like staging, staging goes a long ways because it feels livable and then you take all your personal stuff out of it so you don't have pictures of your family and your kids in the wall because you want people to feel like they can live there. But I mean, that's your set of expertise. Those are just the highlights that absolutely have to be done if you want top dollar. Sure. Awesome. Well, I pretty much exhausted my questions. I guess I also am curious, you mentioned this multiple offer scenario. We aren't seeing 16 offers first weekend. Can you tell us, I know we were at 103% over asking. Can you explain what that means and how much things are going for in terms of what the asking is, the purchase price, if it's going over or if it's going under. That tends to be a lot of buzz. Yeah, so in a traditional market, the peak of the market usually tops out somewhere around 100%. 100% being, if you're asking $500,000 for a house, the buyer is going to offer $500,000 or maybe even a little bit more and then kind of negotiate back down to that $500,000 level. Back in April was the peak of the most crazy sellers market we've ever seen. We had 108% less sale price around here. Certain markets were even above that. And that was like bidding wars on every house. That was that, oh, it felt like I was getting 17 offers on a home or I had 100 people come to my house over the weekend. That's completely unsustainable. But when inventory is at rock bottom, that's what we see. So we go from one huge swing of the pendulum to the super seller side of the market to where now in June, we were at 103%. In July, we just got the data. We're at 100.7% or something like that. It's finally coming down, but that is really indicative of the supply line. So as supply rises, that's going to start to fall. In a traditional market, peak around 100% in the May timeframe. That's the hottest part of the market. And then people negotiate. If you want to sell a house for $500,000, they might offer you $495,000 or they might say, hey, you've got to throw in a new roof on this house and I'll give you $500,000. So that really brings your purchase price down just a little bit, but not a lot. And that gets you that 98, 99%, which in a fall market, we are traditionally around those levels. So nothing to be concerned about. This is just finally getting back to reality instead of what I've been dealing with through the COVID years. So a couple of personal questions. You recently bought a home. Yes. And that was, I mean, did you buy it in the summer? Did you buy it in the spring? You seem to be. You got your finger so on the market stats in the pulse that I wanted to know. Yes. So the funniest part about this is I actually traditionally prefer to buy houses in the fall. But then you make those emotional decisions. And as much as I keep my eyes on the data, we still are impulsive and make emotional decisions. So we purchased at the height of the market last year. It felt insane. We bought over asking price, but we sold over asking price. So I don't know. It's just kind of is what it is. I mean, in all reality, people buy and sell real estate when they need to, right? Totally. Yeah. And I like the way you're giving us perspective. As much as we attach ourselves to these buyer's market phrases and these percentages, we're not talking about that much money, really. Are we? I mean, yeah, the monthly payment each month when these percentages tick up does make a difference. But you found the house you loved. You could afford it. And in the grand scheme of things, it was probably the best financial move you could have made. Absolutely. It was a brilliant decision and retrospect, right? Little did we know what that would really mean for us. But you buy it when you can and when you need to make a change. And yeah. Right on. And how do we reach you? You are a title rep in Salesperson. Yep. Tell us about what you do. So I work for LandTitle. I am our Boulder County residential salesperson. So if you need information on the markets or the data, you can always reach out to me. Easiest way to get me a cell phone, 303-968-9868. Or you can reach me on my email at amysner at ltgc.com. LTGC. So LandTitle, guaranteed company. That's it. I love Land. You guys do such a great job. Thank you. You close all of our deals on time, at least you have for me. And that, my friends, is the proper tea.