What's happening with Fuquay real estate prices? (Star: real estate market, house)

[Ellen Pitts]

I lived in Fuquay when I first moved to the Triangle in 2000-2006. I was just doing a little real estate search in Fuquay and saw that the prices are still almost as low as they were in 2000. You can still get a decent starter home in the $110's-$120k's. Am I missing something? Or have property values really not increased much at all in this period? Do people think this is a good place to invest at this point?

[jmcstef]

Part of what you're seeing is that at the low end of the market there is less appreciation. Also its possible you were looking at brand new starter homes at that range around 2000, and now perhaps those starter homes have seen some increase in land value, but 15 years later are looking at upcoming improvement needs (roof, HVAC, windows etc).

In anything less than a perfectly predictable / stable real estate market (if one ever existed), in major metro areas we sometimes see a trend in the smaller towns surrounding major cities that is a chain reaction of suburban sprawl. It goes like this:

Due to cost of homes in primary city, smaller surrounding towns gain in popularity due to newer construction, more house for the money, smaller town feel, etc. folks buy in new surrounding town suburbs in droves with hopes of future growth (which are reasonable expectations based on projections at time of purchase). Small town is chosen based on buyer's current job location / commute at the time. Economic downtimes hit, causing many in the small town to lose jobs and pursue employment elsewhere, but the impacted job market often finds the homeowner looking at a much worse commute to a new job than they thought they were signing up for. So, either they sell in a down market for less than they would have liked, impacting local property values, or if things are really bad they end up foreclosing (also impacting property values for the entire area). Meanwhile the older homes in or closer to the primary city in question fare much better.

So I think what you're seeing is partly because the suburban sprawl syndrome but also a factor of the price range you're looking in. I'm not that familiar with the Fuquay market but it looks like in general homes have returned to about their peak 2007 values (returning to values of 7 years prior isn't exactly ideal but it's better than a continued downward trend).

In terms of buying property, I've always gotten the most bang for the buck (return on resale) in homes that are valued near the area median range. Starter homes that are far below average cost, and McMansions that are much larger / more expensive than average always have their necks on the chopping block when the RE market is less than perfect.

[RedZin]

What about larger homes that are NOT McMansions?

That word gets tossed around pretty often on here. All larger homes are not McMansions.

[jmcstef]

Originally Posted by RedZin

What about larger homes that are NOT McMansions?

That word gets tossed around pretty often on here. All larger homes are not McMansions.

That's why I qualified it with "slash more expensive". I was hoping it would be obvious that the price of the home versus median for the area is what matters most. Square footage can matter too but typically in RE size and price go hand-in-hand to a certain extent.

The point is too much below or too much above median home price tends to add additional risk factor to resale, just as distance of commute from core job area can.