As spring home-buying season begins, real estate agents see promise in housing market

"The first two months of the year are usually the slowest for Mark Prather’s real estate agency.

Not in 2012.


“On Jan. 5, the phones started to ring” with would-be buyers and sellers hoping to make a deal, says Prather, whose ERA Buy America Real Estate Services is in La Palma, Calif., on the border between Los Angeles and Orange counties. That quickly lifted the mood at his agency, where business plunged when the housing market collapsed.

“I’ve come to work with people who have optimism in their eyes as opposed to people who look like they’re coming to the morgue,” Prather says.

It looks like the prolonged dry spell at real estate agencies is finally ending. The housing market peaked in 2005, fell in 2006 and by “2007, the wheels fell off,” Prather said. Agents got a respite in early 2010, when the government was giving first-time homebuyers tax credits of up to $8,000. But sales immediately plunged when the credits expired on April 30 of that year.

Business started gaining some momentum in late 2011. The National Association of Realtors has said that the number of people who signed home sales contracts rose in the last three months of 2011 after dropping for three straight months. In January, they hit the highest level since April 2010. Meanwhile, sales of previously occupied in homes in January were at the highest level since May 2010.

Reports from the field back the headlines. Prather, who also is a mortgage broker, says his company closed 50 loans in February. More than half of them were for purchases. A year ago, it was closing 25 to 30 loans a month.

Chappy Adams, president of Illustrated Properties in central and South Florida, says the number of sales contracts his agents have handled this year is up 50 percent from a year ago. Florida was one of the hardest-hit markets when sales and prices plunged." [Read more]