The McAllister Team Blog

These are my notes from my presentation this morning at the Springfield Clark County Chamber of Commerce. What we do, where we have been in the area, and where I think we will go in the next few years.

Good Morning, Thank you for the opportunity to speak for a few minutes.

I’m Chris McAllister with Real Estate II. My goal this morning is to give you a sense of our local real estate market, some information on national trends and statistics, and a little bit about myself and my team, and the services we provide. I have a summary hand out of information as well.

My Real Estate II office is just up the street in the Bushnell Building, and we also have our office on East Home road and a third in Urbana on Court Street. Collectively we have 48 licensees and a very healthy share of the market.

I have been licensed since 2001 and I was born and raised in Springfield and attended Springfield North and The Ohio State University. My last ‘real’ job was as a District Team Leader for Target Stores in Long Island and around New York City. My wife will tell you that in the 17 years or so I worked in retail that we transferred 17 times. So we had some personal experience buying and selling houses. In late 2000 I was not sure what I wanted to for the next few years but I knew I wanted to own my own business and work for myself. I decided to pursue real estate and real estate investing.

Business was great for quite some time -until it wasn’t. I’m sure you all have a pretty good idea of what happened to the market in 2007 and 2008 – but if you missed, take my word for it – it wasn’t pretty. – and yet here we are.

The McAllister Team focuses on three primary areas.

First, is what I call the ‘retail’ portion of our business. We are Realtors and we help people buy and sell homes.

The second area we work in is REO or Real Estate Owned property. We work with over two dozen banks and financial institutions helping them liquidate distressed property, mostly to investors but more and more end users as well. I have actively worked this business since the year I got my real estate license. We have marketed and sold literally hundreds of these properties in the Miami Valley over the last few years. Sadly, depending on how you look at it, this will be a big part of our business for at least another two to three years as what I call “The Great Deleveraging” continues to play itself out.

The third area we work in is property management. At present we look after 350 or so rental units for various owner clients. We work with owner clients with 50+ properties as well as owners of individual properties who want to rent their homes out in order to take advantage of a job transfer or to move up to a larger home.

The statistics regarding our local market I want to share with you this morning come from our MLS and are for the 12 months ending September 30. First of all, for some perspective, July 2005 was our last best month. For the year 2005 in Clark County we sold over 1200 properties with a volume approaching $124 Million. For the same calendar period ending September 30, 2011, we sold 743 properties with a total sold volume of $70 Million and change. That is a drop of more than 40%.

We have been ‘bumping along the bottom’ the last three years. For the calendar period ending September 30 2011 compared to the same period ending September 30, 2010, unit sales were down 8% but volume was essentially flat to last year and to 2009. Things are not necessarily better, but they do not appear to be getting any worse either.

I am planning for a similar 2012. However, I expect a large influx of distressed property to hit the market in Spring that will provide a bit of a boost to volume. Foreclosures were down for most of 2011 as the large banks, Chase, Citi, Bank of America and like became embroiled in ‘Robo-Signing Scandals’ and were / are being forced by the 50 states attorneys generals to address their practices and ensure they are foreclosing within the letter of the law. There was a significant uptick in sheriff sale activity beginning in November last year.

The quality of the distressed inventory is improving in that many REO properties, especially those being marketed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in good shape and are highly attractive to first time home buyers. As these properties are sold to owner occupants, it strengthens the market for all of us. Quite frankly, available inventory has been thin recently as so many would be sellers are under water on their mortgages. This Deleveraging is a painful process but it is what needs to happen to get us where we need to be.

Most experts I follow continue to predict the overall market will improve by 2014 with moderate to strong growth into 2023 and beyond. Demographically this makes sense as the ‘Echo Boomers’ the largest demographic bubble since the ‘Baby Boomers’ finally begin to move out of their parents basements and build new homes, families and lives. This combined with an improved job market and Baby Boomers in a position to downsize once the market stabilizes provide not just hope, but a good bet for improvement in the future.

I am all about the numbers so if you have questions please do hesitate to see me after the program this morning. I would like to leave you with the fact that houses that are well positioned in the market and in move in condition are selling. And there are going to be some tremendous deals still to be had over the next couple of years.

Thank you so much for allowing me to ramble on up here. I have some handouts for you to take with you at our table if you would like some more info.