Albuquerque, New Mexico
Blogging about Life in New Mexico - the Land of Enchantment - describing real estate resources in the greater Albuquerque area
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May. 26, 2008
Categorized in: Market Report
How recent changes in lending practices are affecting the real estate market in the Greater Albuquerque area
May. 8, 2008
With its mayor as green advocate, Albuquerque, New Mexico has received recognition as greenest city and is living up to its name.
Dec. 27, 2006
Albuquerque, New Mexico Real Estate
Great Year for Albuquerque Residential Real Estate — Rising Prices Despite Rising Inventory
Two thousand six has been a great year for the Albuquerque residential real estate market. Unlike some other parts of the country where prices have fallen, Albuquerque has seen a rise in prices.
Sales decreased, leading to a rise in inventory that gave buyers more choices, but with no negative effect on prices. Increases continue, but not at the consistent double-digit pace of the last few years. September's prices increased 7.5 percent, October’s 8.4 percent, and November’s, edged back up into double digits at 10 percent.
The average sale price per residential unit , including detached, townhouses, and condos, increased to $233,512 from $212,593 in 2005. The average price for condos and townhouses was $158,500 in November 2006 compared to $154,877 in November, 2005, a 2.3% increase. The median townhous/condo price was $136,000, a 10.3 percent increase from November 2005, to $150,000 in November, 2006.
The significant increase in the inventory of resale homes gave buyers more choices and did not put a damper on the market prices. From November 2005 to November 2006, the supply increased from 1.89 month’s supply to 3.95 months supply. In November 2005, 1130 units sold, but in November 2006, only 935 units — a decreased of 17.3 percent. .The record for residential sales units in any one month was August 1999 when 5,310 units were sold.
Two thousand six has been a great year for the number of resale homes;12,633 units sold through November 2006, reflects the second best home resale period in the history of the region, and because of the number of homes under contract and not yet sold, indications are that the 2006 final resale totals will surpass those of 2005. In 2004, 12, 254 single family homes were sold, and in 2005, 14,330. Here in Albuquerque, we are optimistic about continued real estate success in 2007.
Happy New Year!
—Source: Albuquerque Metropolitan Board of Realtors
Eloise Gift
Dec. 21, 2006
A lbuquerque, New Mexico Real Estate
A Winter Wonderland
Yesterday, folk were cross-country skiing in Albuquerque. Today, just half hour away up on Sandia Peak, they are skiing down the slopes.
I am at home this morning - all scheduled events cancelled since yesterday morning through tonight. Since we are so close to the Christmas and New Year holidays, essentially all business events to the end of the year have been cancelled.
The following email is typical of the notes I have received within the last twenty-four hours.
Hi everyone,
Hope you have a very Merry Christmas and New Year!!! The snow looks like a picture....beautiful.
The meeting for tonight is cancelled due to the weather, slick roads and traffic...we want you to be safe. Also, next week is cancelled for the after Christmas melt down. We will see you January.
Yesterday, I was scheduled to attend a luncheon at 11:30 a.m. in Estancia, Moriarty (if you remember, that is on the other side of the mountain). Monday night, my husband told me, "You won't be going to Estancia tomorrow." He was right. Even though the sky was overcast, I could see the mountains when I woke up and even a hint of glow behind them, but by 10:30 a gravelly hail was beginning to fall as I left home. “It won’t stick.” I told myself.
By 11:00 a.m., Albuquerque, was blanketed in white. We were in a winter wonderland --no mountains, no sky, just a fairy-tale world of white, like a stage or movie setting for a tale of enchantment. For all I could tell, the whole world was similarly transformed.
In the stores, clerks began wondering out loud about getting home safely later in the day, anticipating lower temperatures and icy roads. An obvious newcomer, not dressed for the weather, contemplating getting to his car outside the grocery store declared with a broad grin, "What's going on? I thought I had come to the desert. What's with this snow storm?" I thought to myself, "Welcome to the desert!"
I was hardly better dressed for the weather than the newcomer. I was wearing a coat, but not one suitable for wet weather, and had left my umbrella in the car. As I dashed back to my car trying to dodge the snow puffs, I sported a plastic grocery bag bonnet. Like many others in Albuquerque, I usually don't pay attention to forecast of bad weather, and we never believe it will be as bad as predicted.
Out here in the desert we are subject to sudden extremes — extreme winds, extreme rainfall, extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme snow. These extremes are always brief, however, and already, most of yesterday’s snow is melted from my south-facing front lawn. By tomorrow, we are likely to be wondering if it really happened.
The snow has been beautiful and thrilling. I felt like a child playing, as I drove around, taking advantage of business cancellations to do last minute personal chores. This morning, a friend in Edgewood, also on the other side of the mountain not far from Moriarty but only about thirty-five minutes away from Albuquerque, emailed to say they had received 12 inches of snow and it was still falling. It is beautiful, she wrote, but I am unable to get out of my driveway.
I couldn't resist taking pictures. I want to preserve the mood and the sentiments. If you think snow is beautiful falling on oak and grass, you should see it on piñon, sage, and rosemary. I love living here. In any season of the year, in any weather, "Albuquerque is beautiful, a true land of enchantment.
Dec. 18, 2006
Albuquerque, New Mexico Real Estate
Person of the Year--You and I
In 2006, Albuquerque, the city in which I reside, was voted one of the best cities in which to do business, one of the best places to live and raise a family, and now this—I have been honored as Person of the Year. So have you!
Time magazine voted all of us web users, Person of the Year. (Albuquerque Journal, http://www.abqjournal.com). If you are reading this article, it makes me (the writer) and you (the reader) winners. I created content that is available only on the World Wide Web, and you are using that content. That makes us citizens of the “new digital democracy” and therefore, winners.
If you are over the age of forty and are able to navigate the information highway, you have every reason to feel particularly honored and proud of your achievement. You are using technology that was not available to you in school during your childhood. You had to cover a lot of ground in a short time—terrain that many of your peers failed to or refused to negotiate.
The road to becoming a Time magazine “Person of the Year” required not only an academic, but a psychological leap. My friend, a hospital nurse in the mid 1980’s, chose to resign her position rather than learn to use a computer. She explained that she feared the use of computers for administrative purposes would lead to lack of face-to-face interaction and destroy interpersonal relationships.
You and I did not fear technology. We made the leap, and I will let you be the judge of whether our Web experiences have hurt or improved our relationships
.
I recall the period when I thought building a web page was rocket science until with the help of a colleague, and online support, I created my very first page on a school LAN as a teaching aid for third grade students. Emboldened, I undertook a more ambitious project with the aid of Writing HTML, http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/lessons.html, just one of the myriad sites dedicated to teaching code, knowledge of which is no longer necessary for building a web page. i created a web site for sharing information with teachers. (Now available at http://www.eloisegift.com/TeachingSpanish.htm)
My next challenge was to write blogs. The million dollar question was, “What is a blog?” The word was new, a creation of the technology age, introduced into our vocabulary like so many others by the need to describe new concepts and ideas.
This is a blog. I am blogging about Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” award. That means I am writing and publishing my views on the topic on the World Wide Web. If I were actually speaking, I would be “blabbing.” Will anyone read my views? I have no idea. I write simply because I feel like it.
In the past, I may have written this on a typewriter or in a notebook. I would have had a limited audience unless I could have afforded to publish it myself or convince a publisher that it was worth the expenditure for publication. With the World Wide Web, you and the rest of the world make up my audience, and publication cost is minimal. Taking advantage of this relatively new gift of technology has made us winners--at least in the eyes of Time.
Dec. 10, 2006
Albuquerque, New Mexico Real Estate
New Mexico's Newest Mall
shoppers' delight
Last month I attended four new business openings at ABQ Uptown, including the ribbon cutting for the grand opening of the mall itself.
Albuquerque’s newest mall is unlike any other in the city. High-end retail shops are grouped along pedestrian-friendly streets bordered by wide sidewalks in an open-air configuration very suitable to Albuquerque’s all-year-round, sunny climate.
Gary Sapp, executive vice president of the Hunt Development Group conceived of the main-street shopping concept, and planned and completed it as an infill project between two older, traditional, covered malls anchored by department stores.
Sedberry & Associates, the leasing agent for the group, found 48 willing and able tenants who now occupy the space. Forty-three percent of these tenants are new to New Mexico, suggesting a substantial impact on retail growth for Albuquerque.
A few weeks after the opening of ABQ Uptown, I heard Gary Sapp speak at the December 7, monthly meeting of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce http://www.AbQChamber.com. Mr. Sapp spoke of the decade-long development project, of his vision, his search for the right property, and negotiations and collaboration with the city to realize the dream.
The ABQ Uptown project has brought a measure of excitement, freshness, and revitalization to the city, as well as convenience to shoppers. As infill, it is an inspiration to addressing urban sprawl. As land in the northeast quadrant of the city becomes scarcer and more expensive, such projects will have more relevance and greater impact on the continuing development and vibrancy of the city.
Sources: http://newmexico.bizjournals.com
Eloise Gift
Dec. 2, 2006
Albuquerque, New Mexico Real Estate
End of Era—400-year-old New Mexico land grant sold to California developer
History was made in Albuquerque in November when shareholders finally voted to approve the sale of one of the oldest existing land grants in the United States.
The Atrisco land grant is almost 400 years old. Granted during the Spanish colonial period, it survived revolts, false claims, and the ceding of Mexico to the United States. It was honored by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Upt o less than a month ago, the Atrisco land grant was one of the oldest continuous existing land grants in the United States and one of the few Spanish Colonial grants made that remained continuously in the hands of the heirs of the original settlers.
Understandably, months of heated debates, preceded the shareholders majority vote to allow Westland Corporation (into which the Atrisco land grant was incorporated) to sell some 57,000 acres to SunCal Company of California.
Many shareholders found it difficult to part with something that had been in the family for so many of years. Views were mixed. Some shareholders did not want the land sold to outsiders, while others thought it was time to get more out of the land than their grandparents did.
The greatest beneficiary of the transaction may be the city of Albuquerque that is fast running out of land for expansion. With Native American lands and mountains to the north and east, and the airport and air force base to the south, the availability of the Atrisco land grant in the west may be a welcome relief for expansion and development.
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