Homeland Houses For Sale (Baltimore, Towson: lawyers, neighborhood, buying)

[Digger 68]

Originally Posted by Tallybalt

I count around 22 houses listed for sale in all of Homeland, which has several hundred houses. In real estate terms, that's a shortage of listings.

Prices range from 1.5 million down to just 200k. Eight of the houses - all the "cheap" houses - seem to be clustered down in that corner of Homeland I mentioned. Willowmere, Woodbourne, Southfield Place, Broadmoor Road. They are all quite modest houses, mostly duplexes.

I never mentioned price. None of them are duplexes. Not one. All stone individual houses. Zillow said 32 when I posted the link. 26 left. Hmmmm.

And there were houses with Auction Signs in front of them.

Yeah, there's a shortage alright....

[Tallybalt]

Originally Posted by Digger 68

I never mentioned price. None of them are duplexes. Not one. All stone individual houses. Zillow said 32 when I posted the link. 26 left. Hmmmm.

And there were houses with Auction Signs in front of them.

Yeah, there's a shortage alright....

Then what are the houses?

Can you provide us with listings?

I've looked at redfin and Coldwell banker and zillow and I'm looking at the same listings over and over again. Coldwell Banker lists 27 properties for sale in Homeland, including those pending. Redfin lists 22 properties for sale (not including any pending). There's no glut of housing for sale. There are actually fairly few given the size of the neighborhood which has hundreds of housing units.

There are about eight houses, mostly duplexes, in the southeast corner closest to York and Homeland Avenue, that are for sale around the $200k benchmark. There is one stone house for sale in the northern edge of Homeland on Croydon (already pending), last listing at 389k, but it clearly needs work and similarly sized houses on the same street sold a few months back for 575k and 600k.

Otherwise I have no clue what you're trying to claim here. Perhaps you're thinking of another area?

[Digger 68]

Guilford. I emailed my Father who I was with. I think he said Homeland, and we drove through both Guilford, and Homeland.
Makes sense since like said earlier in the thread Greenmount is further south. I think he wasn't paying that close attention when he said it. He knows the city almost like the back of his hand.
Streets are Underwood, Wendover, and Greenway.
Many of the houses for sale in that area need a lot of work. The usual older resident dies, or just doesn't have the money to fix the place up, sells, and moves on. A lot of that has been going on in central Baltimore County.
My Father is a Mason, and we were in the lodge on Charles Street that day. Weather was great! Oh well.

[BMoreJuice]

Originally Posted by Tallybalt

He must be talking of the small pocket on the southeast corner of Homeland, where it abuts York Road, particularly Willowmere and Woodbourne Avenue. Greenmount doesn't begin till further south.

These are mainly duplexes and quite modest houses that do not have the quality or charm of most of the Homeland houses. They are also east of Springlake, and this is critical because the boundary zones for Roland Park ES/MS ends at Springlake, so you are zoned for a very different ES/MS which is likely so bad that I don't even know the name of it. Govans? So young families who might otherwise be interested will automatically rule out these houses. And they aren't nice enough for families who can afford private schools.

Real estate sales are fairly flat and stagnant across Baltimore and Baltimore County, particularly the higher end market. We know people who have been trying to sell their houses out in Monkton and in the Greenspring Valley and the houses are sitting, even with price cuts. They sell, eventually. But the Baltimore area market is not in boom conditions. The changes in the Trump tax plan and the increase in interest rates seems to have made people cautious.

What about the tax plan and interest rates that are making people hesitant?

[Zonderpaard]

The trump tax changes did away with the SALT deduction from federal taxes. With the high prop tax rate in Bmore city, that adds up.

[Digger 68]

Old money, and people are dying. That's what's going on. and it's right next to Greenmount.
The same thing is happening all over Baltimore County. Especially north. Young people from the area want to leave, but young people from expensive places like New York, DC, and Boston are moving in. Just not at the rate the old folks are dying, or selling their dilapidated house. And these houses may not look bad, but they need boat loads of work.

I knew it made no sense for me to post this thread.

[pwduvall]

Annie Millie in her Daily Record podcast mention that her detailed analysis of the City real estate market this year shows strength in the mid-market but weakness in the more expensive neighborhoods. https://thedailyrecord.com/2018/11/1...g-market-more/ if you can get past the pay wall. I think the new tax law is causing problems in market for more expensive homes nationwide. We are probably looking at a mixture of local and national factors in Homeland. Incidentally, I ran into a Guilford resident that I know. While it is kind of a surprise that I know a Guilford resident, it was not a surprise that he was complaining about declining home prices in his neighborhood.

[Digger 68]

Again, if anybody ever saw the great movie being there with Peter Sellers the part where he leaves his tranquil home and is on the street is an exaggerated way of looking at the area I was describing, and what driving just a few hundred feet onto Greemount felt like.

It's astounding what municipalities let builders get away with combined with short-sightedness, and greed!

[Tallybalt]

Originally Posted by pwduvall

Annie Millie in her Daily Record podcast mention that her detailed analysis of the City real estate market this year shows strength in the mid-market but weakness in the more expensive neighborhoods. https://thedailyrecord.com/2018/11/1...g-market-more/ if you can get past the pay wall. I think the new tax law is causing problems in market for more expensive homes nationwide. We are probably looking at a mixture of local and national factors in Homeland. Incidentally, I ran into a Guilford resident that I know. While it is kind of a surprise that I know a Guilford resident, it was not a surprise that he was complaining about declining home prices in his neighborhood.

The real estate market in Guilford is intriguing. Many indicators show a decline in values, but there are also still high end sales and what's surprising is what sells for a high amount and what doesn't.

A realtor familiar with the North Baltimore dynamics, including Guilford, said that if the house is in tip top condition with fully updated kitchens and bathrooms (within the last few years, not the last 20 years), new electricity and updated plumbing and in move in condition, it will sell, and usually quite quickly. And for a premium. If you look at the sales history for Guilford over the past year, there are a number of sales in the 700s to well over a million, including up to two million, and these houses were all immaculate and perfect.

A house that has flaws, regardless of the flaw, will linger and the more flaws, the longer they linger. So we have a situation where a smaller but more updated house will sell quicker and for more money than a larger, grander house but which is outdated.

Then there is the schooling dynamics. Twenty years ago it didn't matter where in North Baltimore you bought because your kids were going to private schools from the get go. Today, many families want to be specifically in the RPES/MS school zone because they are deferring private schools till middle or high school, or even committed to the public route the entire way. It really is a flip from 20 years ago when very few students at the public school lived within the official zone and most were bussed in, today very few are from outside the zone. The effect on the real estate market is substantial because people want to be within the zone. All of Roland Park is in the zone, but only half of Homeland is (from the Lakes to Charles Street), and until last year, none of Guilford was in the zone. The school district recently changed the zone boundaries so a third of Guilford is now inside the zone (the boundary runs down St. Paul Street now).

For the childless couples or older couples whose children have fled the nest, more and more are opting to live down in the waterfront neighborhoods in the luxury condos or townhouses. So Guilford has lost out on that particular market.

I've now lived through several phases of demographic changes affecting real estate preferences and it's fascinating when I think about it. It's not restricted to Baltimore City, for the county has areas that have stagnated due to changing preferences. Northern Baltimore County (Monkton, Sparks, Glencoe) was very popular and desirable in the 1990s, today the house prices are stagnant and have barely appreciated in the last 10-15 years because the younger generation just doesn't want to live "way out" in the rolling countrysides. And changes in perceptions of school quality also has an impact. The Dulaney Valley Road corridor was well regarded and popular in the 1980s but the portion that fed into Loch Raven High School has declined in value, relatively and when adjusted for inflation, because Loch Raven isn't as regarded as Dulaney High is.

Likewise, portions of the Greenspring Valley and Owings Mills have seen relative declines in desirability largely because the schools they're zoned for (Pikesville and Owings Mills) are perceived as having declined.

[Digger 68]

I am trying to figure out how north of Hunt Valley is not as desirable. Since I have lived here my entire life the entire area has become much more desirable.
Especially north. Hereford was considered bumpkinville when I went to Dulaney. Not so anymore. That entire area was considered redneckville. And many of them were proud of it!
(Half of Dulaney looks like it was built during the cold war in Soviet Russia, and the other half a hundred years ago.)
Why if the area isn't so desirable they keep building houses in bizarre locations and selling them for half a million dollars? Because they are new.
For fun go to Hunt Valley Town center in the spring, or fall, and go down to Towson Town Center, and compare the types of people you see in both places.
Greenspring Valley isn't desirable anymore......compared to what, the city.
And then you have Falls Road.

That area I referenced is right next to a dump. Who would want to spend there. No thanks. Somebody from New York where the cost would be much higher.

Half this area has become New York Boston South.