I have been working to explain seller concessions recently. Those are the pesky dollars added on to a purchase offer to help the buyer with little cash to finance a house. They are limited - 3%, I believe, for a conventional mortgage and 6% for an FHA mortgage. This means that if the purchase offer is $207,000 and the concessions are $7,000 then the seller will net $200,000. The $7,000 will go back to paying the costs by the buyer of buying the house: appraisal fees, escrow, attorney's fees and others spelled out in the contract. The seller never sees the $7,000 - and neither does the buyer, usually, with the expenditure automatic at closing. This is a difficult concept, stumping other agents sometimes and certainly confusing sales. The first page of the contract says one number, i.e. $106,000 for an FHA loan and the second page says the $6,000 is going away. And then because the higher number is financing the deal, that is both the number the appraiser has to say the house is worth and the number reported in the paper! Plus we are seeing more seller concessions being written. (Brokers' commissions are based on the net.)
But in the event you want to buy a house in Skaneateles with or without seller concessions, then there are 123 actively listed homes. Thirty-two are in the village, and 28 are considered waterfront.
Six "new" listings came on this week. Only one was a true re-list, with a new agent and new price. The others range in price from the low $100,000 to about $700,000 for a home and acreage, plus other amenities. In-between are three village homes.
In the contingent category there are 19 homes. The recent ones are mostly village and except for one stunning waterfront property are listed around $300,000. One home was sold recently at auction.
The best news, however, is that the number of homes closed year-to-date is now 41. That doubles - DOUBLES - the number of homes closed in 2011 by this time. Amazing. The Second Twenty list will come out this week. You can go back into the archives of this blog to check it against the First Twenty filed at this time in 2011. Yes, I would say the recession, in Skaneateles at least, is receding. Hooray!
