KPLU Local News
(2009-04-19)
PIKESVILLE, MD
(wypr) -
There's a buzz at the Jewish Community Center on Park Heights Avenue. It's Live Baltimore's Smart Homebuying Night. Tiffany Williams is here to bone up on home buyer ABCs. She works for Johns Hopkins University Press, and now, at 29, she's ready to settle down:"I've moved around an awful lot. I finally found a place I'd like to stay for a while, so now I've got the house bug."
Wilson is on the hunt because she feels prices are down to a level she can afford. Her ceiling? One hundred-fifty thousand dollars. Her goal is to buy in the next year or so. But if the right house, at the right price, pops up over the summer, she wants to be ready.
"I'm going to, hopefully, get myself into position where if something comes up, I can move pretty quickly."
Getting first-time buyers off the fence is crucial, says Ken Wenhold, who covers the mid-Atlantic for research firm Metrostudy.
"It's really a trickle-up effect, where you see the first-time home buyers moving into the older homes that are being sold by families that wish to move up. They, of course, move up into the next tier of move-up homes, and then so on and so forth, up the food chain."
First-time buyers are a big target for Live Baltimore, which promotes city living. Prospective buyers who attend events like tonight's get certificates that they've completed, in effect, basic training. And that can give them access to money, says executive director Anna Custer:
"There s a lot of different home ownership incentives that are out there but you have to have that home ownership counseling certificate Basically the city, the state, they've all moved toward having this certification as a prerequisite to get any kind of home buying incentives."
Many believe the tax credit will be a big help. The government will give most people who settle on that first house by November 30th eight-thousand dollars; that's a dollar-for-dollar tax refund. And if a buyer's tax bill doesn't hit that amount, Uncle Sam will send a check. News of the credit got the attention of Don Miller, who's looking for a house along with Sarah Cowie.
"Wow. Whoo-hou."
But affordability is still Number One. When the market was booming, Miller adds, prices were out of reach.
"They were pretty blown up to start with for a long time, and they make a lot more sense now, for us to actually have a home."
Corina Froelicher thinks so, too. The 28-year-old Coast Guard veteran first looked around a year ago, and then resumed her search in March. She's scheduled to settle on a three-bedroom house in Hampden this month. She put in a contract, at the full asking price, of 159-nine.
"I was actually close to giving up on searching altogether, because I'd seen about a half dozen, and I was thinking, Oh well. Maybe prices still haven't come down enough.' And then I just went to that open house, and I thought, pops I think this is the one."
David McIlvaine, who's president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors, says he and other agents are getting a lot busier. He's hopeful.
"There's a significant supply, and buyers demand is not there yet, or is on the rise, and once that starts to increase significantly, you'll see prices start to uptick. Now when's that going to be? I wish I had a crystal ball, but I feel it, we see it, we see it in the number of showings we're getting, and we see it in the amount of offers we're getting."
Fresh data from the regional multiple listing service shows a market that's still contracting. March sales were down 18 percent from a year earlier, though the rate of decline has slowed significantly. And prices continue to slide. Average prices in the first quarter were the lowest in four years. The big question: Are we there yet?
I'm Georgia Samios, reporting in Pikesville, for 88.1, WYPR.
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