Blogs

Normally, the market slows in the fall as the leaves and the temperatures drop. This fall, however, the market has been unusually active, defying the standard seasonal pattern. Sales volumes are actually remaining steady, if not increasing.

Specifically, the volume of real estate sold across all Front Range markets in October increased 0.1% compared to September’s volume, and was up 11.4% on a year-over-year basis. Sales remained steady, but the number of new listings followed the typical seasonal pattern and fell 8%. Fewer listings and steady sales resulted in a drop in the inventory from 2.3 months to 2.1 months, reversing the four-month trend of rising inventory levels.

Looking ahead, the market’s strong performance in October should continue through the end of the year based on a few leading indicators. First, the number of listings placed under contract in October was up 10% over last year. These under contracts are November and December’s closings.

Second, home sales have been trending up this fall on a national basis. The NAR Pending Home Sales Index, a forward looking indicator based on contract signings, has been rising since the summer and has been above 100 for five consecutive months. (100 is equal to an average level of contract activity)

One more metric that gives us a peek even further into the future is foot traffic – the number of buyers actually touring listings and looking at them for purchase. This is the time of year that foot traffic would normally level off and start to drop. We’re actually seeing the exact opposite. The national Foot Traffic Index published by NAR Research and Sentrilock is skyrocketing. The Index jumped 8.7 points to 65.7 in September, the third consecutive monthly increase.

More and more buyers appear to be staying active or coming into the market this fall. On a macro level, the reasons for the increase in demand can be found in the positive economic news of late, from lower jobless claims to higher job openings to an increase in consumer confidence.

However, something that is not receiving much press, but is certainly impacting the housing market, is the fact that it’s getting easier to secure a mortgage, not harder. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the average FICO score of a buyer who purchased a home with a conventional mortgage in September was 755, 4 points lower than the average score in 2013, and 9 points lower than the average in 2012. Of course, we haven’t returned to the bubble days of recklessly easy credit, but the trend for the past two years has been an increase in credit availability, and this is slowly helping first-time buyers enter the market.

Back in the July edition of the 8z Real Estate market update, when many national real estate sites and pundits were talking about a slow down in housing, we predicted “the second half of 2014 looks like it will be quite strong.”

It’s been a little over a year since Boulder landed the 4^th spot in the “best city for hippies” ranking by the magazine Estately. And while Boulderites will have a divided opinion about that, few would disagree that hippies are intimately linked with the word “peace.”  Boulder has its own history of peace activism, especially with the protests against the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. Some of those activists may have considered themselves hippies; some may not have… but the article did not mention this history of peace activism, focusing instead on Boulder’s love of marijuana. So what does it even mean to be a hippie? What does it even mean to really desire peace?

It’s this word “peace” that has become almost a laughingstock – a tie-dyed peace symbol you’ve stared at so long it’s lost its meaning, or something shouted by barefoot, drugged out people that will never ever happen.

If we’re keeping peace only in the houses of hippies and within the ambit of a 1960s counter-culture, we’re doing it a major disservice.  This is the message that’s been coming out of an organization here in Broomfield, One Earth Future, which has been producing research and interviews of thought leaders on the subjects of peace and conflict. What is needed to make us stop thinking of peace as an unattainable utopia, and apply this concept to a practical agenda?

For one thing, we can’t be kidding ourselves that the mission is to evaporate all forms of conflict. “We need conflict,” says William Ury, co-founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project. “Wherever there’s injustice, you need to engage it.” But injustice can be engaged through nonviolent forms of conflict that are more effective in the advancement of humankind.

For another, there are some seriously underutilized resources and attention out there that can be harnessed for the cause of peace. As Sanam Anderlini, the co-founder of International Civil Society Action Network points out, a silent majority actually does want peace, and it’s not the hand-holding, altered-mind state, but the practical existence of nonviolent action. We just need to elevate and learn from these voices – especially women. Women in particular can be powerful negotiators, says Swanee Hunt, and bring a different perspective and knowledge base to the peace process.

And let’s remind ourselves that peace is not represented only on your uncle’s John Lennon poster. Like psychologist Steven Pinker says, our mindsets towards peace should change so that it becomes a practical, solvable problem, not about whether or not you sing the right folk songs.  We no longer consider dueling, slavery, or human sacrifice fashionable practices, and norms about war may be going the same way.

Voices like Ambassador Charles Stith caution us about the scope of the challenges, especially existing levels of discontent. Lack of fairness makes for violent people, as he says, and we have only to look to Ferguson, MO for proof that underlying grievances are far from vanishing. But we can also look to some inspiring examples – like the Civil Rights movement – for confronting anger and conflict in nonviolent ways.

There is a little referenced distinction between inequality as represented by World Bank stat sheets, and a person’s own sense that they are being treated unfairly What if we were to get better attaking the sense of a people’s inequality into account along with the other statistics? What if, like Ury suggests, we treat war and violent uprisings more like common health ailments – predictable and preventable? What if we stop giving in to a narrative of spiraling unrest and danger and start paying more attention to some of the astonishing positive global trends that have taken place?

Whether or not Boulder is a haven for hippies is beside the point. Hippies and non-hippies alike, we have a lot of practical problem-solving ahead of us.