Tag: deep creek lake real estate

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain

My name is Jay Ferguson and I am one of the owners of the real estate division of Taylor Made Deep Creek Vacations & Sales. I am entering my 19^th year in the real estate business here in Garrett County and at Deep Creek Lake. If you are interested, you can click here find out more about me personally and my background.

I will be writing a monthly blog post about our local real estate market, sharing & interpreting statistics and offering some insights into the market as a whole…as I see it. These are my personal thoughts and musings about the market in general and are not intended as anything more specific. And, to be clear, I am an optimistic, glass half-full kind of guy.  

Lastly, every stat I reference is based on the official stats published by Bright MLS on or around the 15^th of each month. My plan is to give you straightforward stats coupled with my analysis from the front lines and let you interpret what you read in your own way. Contact me for a candid conversation about the real estate market and how it may apply to your situation.

Greetings from the snow covered paradise that is Deep Creek Lake! We have had an incredible winter, perhaps the best in 10 years. There is plenty of snow on the ground and I think the last time I saw grass in my yard was late December. The ski resort is thriving and seems to be running at max occupancy, certainly on the weekends. It’s common to see people looking for skiing & tubing tickets on Facebook, as the Wisp has sold out most weekend days. Our restaurants and most local businesses seem to be running strong, as well. State parks and trails are filled with people who want to enjoy the winter vibe and the fresh air. Locals are out in all their glory riding snowmobiles on the lake, sled riding and ice fishing. Parents are growing weary of the many trips to and from the ski area, dropping off and picking up our kids (and all of their friends) after virtual school lets out at 12pm each weekday. It’s a labor of love, so the burden is light! These are all incredible signs for the economy in our beloved Garrett County.

The real estate market is no different. The market remains hot in spite of the freezing temperatures. Inventory is the lowest I have seen in my 21 years of real estate sales. Sellers have a tremendous amount of leverage and often have 3 or 4 different offers to choose from. Often times, this flurry of activity occurs in the first few days of being on the market. It can be frustrating to miss out on homes, but our team at Taylor Made has been successful in many multiple offer situations and have excellent strategies that can be applied in almost every situation. If you want an outside of the box approach to successful offers, give me a call or drop me an email. Now on to the stats:

 

-There were 51 new listings in January 2021. Remarkably, this number was way up from December 2020 (70%). That’s also lot higher (24.4%) than in January 2020.

-Pending sales (homes that went under contract) were up 48.8% when compared to last month. Up 35.6% from last year.

-Closed sales (homes that actually sold) were up 14.7% when compared to last year and down 40% from Dec 2020. There is always a lull around the holidays and those transactions get pushed to the new year.

-The total number of active listings dropped each and every month through 2020. We normally have 300~ homes for sale in January/mid winter. We ended January 2021 with 84 active listings for sale. As I type this, its down to 80 homes for sale.

-The average sold to original listing price (OLP) ratio was 96.4%, this is up 5% from December and up nearly 6% from January 2020.

-The median sold price was up 1% versus December 2020 but is a whopping 59.5% higher than January 2020.

-The average days on market (DOM) dropped to 91 DOM versus 164 last year. This is down from 113 last month.

The bottom line – it’s a crazy time to buy right now. Everybody wants to be here in majestic mountain Maryland. There are so many buyers sitting on the sidelines right now, just waiting for the right property to pop up on their radar, there will continue to be bidding wars for the foreseeable future.

Buyers, if you are tired of missing out on these homes, give me a call. I would love to talk strategy with you and help you WIN when it matters most.

Conversely, if you are thinking of selling, there has never been a better time in terms of low inventory. Several of the past few homes I have listed went under contract at full or above asking price within days – sometimes hours! Reach out for more info and I can make your transaction smooth and successful!

Questions about the market? Whether you are buying or selling, I can put my experience to work for you! Contact me anytime for a free market analysis of any property you may be interested in purchasing or selling!

Jay Ferguson

Co-Owner

Associate Broker

301-501-0420 – cell

jay@deepcreekvacations.com

www.iLoveDeepCreek.com

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain

My name is Jay Ferguson and I am one of the owners of the real estate division of Taylor Made Deep Creek Vacations & Sales. I am entering my 19^th year in the real estate business here in Garrett County and at Deep Creek Lake. If you are interested, you can click here find out more about me personally and my background.

I will be writing a monthly blog post about our local real estate market, sharing & interpreting statistics and offering some insights into the market as a whole…as I see it. These are my personal thoughts and musings about the market in general and are not intended as anything more specific. And, to be clear, I am an optimistic, glass half-full kind of guy.  

Lastly, every stat I reference is based on the official stats published by Bright MLS on or around the 15^th of each month. My plan is to give you straightforward stats coupled with my analysis from the front lines and let you interpret what you read in your own way.

2020 was a crazy year for a lot of different reasons. The real estate market in Garrett County & at Deep Creek Lake was radically affected by the adverse conditions affecting us all. Our area grew substantially and our market quite literally transformed. We didn’t add any factories or huge commercial enterprises to fuel this growth and create jobs. Nothing really changed, in fact. People just wanted to be here and I believe the rural aspects of our area were more attractive alternatives. We’ll start with the year over year comparison, as you can see below (2020 versus 2019). There are lots of stats you can drill down in to, but I am focusing on 2 overwhelming numbers:

69% – The % change in sold dollar volume increase year over year.

26% – The % change in average sold price increase year over year.

The long and short of it is this – nearly 1/3 of a billion dollars transferred in 2020. Even homes that I previously thought were over-priced or had ‘issues’ sold. Demand was through the roof and still is. Prices, in turn, shot up dramatically. It is clearly a sellers market and inventory is low. As I type this, there are only 91 homes in the entire county available for sale. There are 8 lakefront homes/condos for sale. Pickings are slim, at the moment. Below, you can see the specifics on everything that sold. Below this chart, I will jump into the December 2020 month/month numbers.

Continue reading “January 2021 Real Estate Rundown By Jay Ferguson”

Lake access lots were recently listed with Taylor-Made by Garrett County Habitat for Humanity. They were generously donated to Habitat and proceeds of the sale benefit the organization minus tax and buyer agency coop commission. Our sales team has represented them several times over the years, and we are happy to donate our services to such a worthy organization. Taylor-Made will not take a commission. Our sister company, Lake Title, will also handle the settlement at cost. 

Jay Ferguson is a Habitat for Humanity board member as well as a sales agent and co-owner of Taylor-Made’s real estate division. He is overseeing the sale along with Bryan Chaney and Autumn McDaniel.

About the 5 Lake Access Lots

Located just off Glendale Road, the lots are located in the Meadow Mountain Run community. This neighborhood is a nature lover’s dream! It has seven acres of common area along with a community dock for non-motorized boats. The parklike setting has stunning natural features including ferns, boulders, trees, and streams. At the lake access area, you can canoe, kayak, fish, or simply enjoy the view. Plus, you are within less than 1.5 miles from Deep Creek Lake State Park.

Michelle Drive, Lot #10
3.62 Acres, Listed at $29,900

Michelle Drive, Lot #12
1.51 Acres, Listed at $29,900

Continue reading “Lake Access Lots Listed to Benefit Habitat for Humanity”

Real estate market conditions are affected by a wide variety of factors. Despite the difficulties presented by the pandemic, the market was strong nationally and in the Deep Creek Lake area.

While we don’t have a crystal ball that shows the future with certainty, we do have some real estate market predictions for 2021 courtesy of Realty Biz News.

2021 Real Estate Market Predictions from Realty Biz News

The U.S. economy will see recovery in 2021. The National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.” After reviewing factors that indicate a recession, the data suggests that 2021 will generally see positive increases in the economy.

Buyer demand will continue to grow. With the return of economic stability and increases in personal incomes, the number of first-time home buyers will rise. This will create more competition for desirable homes and upward trends in home prices. 

Positive factors that fuel demand include continued population growth, rebounding personal income rates, and improving consumer confidence. President-Elect Joe Biden has proposed a $15,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers, which, if passed, will further spur buyer demand.

Mortgage interest rates will remain low. The National Association of Realtors expects that 30-year, fixed mortgage rates will remain stable or slightly increase in 2021 from the 50-year low of 2.71% in 2020.

Housing supply will lag. As sellers become more comfortable opening their homes to buyers, there will be a rise in available listings. However, new home construction is expected to be restrained due to “a shortage of lots, labor and building materials,” according to National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Chairman Chuck Fowke. Affordability and the gap in the cost of living across the U.S. will continue to be a problem, especially in areas where housing is in high demand and fewer new homes are being built.

Home buyers will move to the suburbs. The long standing trend of moving from rural areas to the city is changing. More people are leaving cities due to high costs and aging infrastructure. Additionally, the pandemic provided the ability for many people to work from home. More people are retreating to suburbs and rural areas, something that will likely continue in 2021.

House size will continue to grow. The average single-family home size in America almost doubled in the last century to more than 2,430 square feet in 2020, even as the average number of people living in a house fell from 4.54 people to 2.58 people. On the other hand, the typical rental unit size in a metropolitan area shrank by 5%, though rents increased by 28%. These dynamics drive the appeal of suburban and rural residence for city dwellers. Another factor of the growth of house sizes is the possibility of making more profit on a home sale.

Technology access and use will be necessary home features. Advances in technology have changed the ways Americans work, play, learn, and communicate. Houses in neighborhoods or areas that lack access to high-speed internet are increasingly avoided by new home buyers. 

Buying and selling a home traditionally requires significant physical effort, time, and expense to locate potential candidates, negotiate transaction terms, and process closings. Today’s home buyers and sellers have access to extensive information about city and neighborhood demographic information, specific houses for sale, and market prices without leaving their homes. 

Continue reading “Real Estate Market Predictions for 2021”

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain

My name is Jay Ferguson and I am one of the owners of the real estate division of Taylor Made Deep Creek Vacations & Sales. I am entering my 19^th year in the real estate business here in Garrett County and at Deep Creek Lake. If you are interested, you can click here find out more about me personally and my background.

I will be writing a monthly blog post about our local real estate market, sharing & interpreting statistics and offering some insights into the market as a whole…as I see it. These are my personal thoughts and musings about the market in general and are not intended as anything more specific. And, to be clear, I am an optimistic, glass half-full kind of guy.  

Lastly, every stat I reference is based on the official stats published by Bright MLS on or around the 15^th of each month. My plan is to give you straightforward stats coupled with my analysis from the front lines and let you interpret what you read in your own way.

Look back at the last 6 months of real estate sales, the Garrett County area squeezed almost two years of sales into a few summer months and the results are shocking. I personally experienced a level of activity that I have never witnessed in my 21 years of real estate sales. In speaking with other agents in the lake area and even across the region, they were all reporting the same thing – real estate was on fire. There truly were not enough hours in the day to answer all of the questions and keep up with the activity. The market has now slowed down enough now to look back on the summer/fall season of 2020 and share some insights and try to make sense of what happened. And it bears stating, the only reason that the market has slowed down is because homeowners stopped listing properties for sale. More on that later.

Who was/is buying?

-Traditional vacationers who have experienced & love Deep Creek Lake & Garrett County

-Investors looking at rising rental rates

-Tele-commuters and remote workforce

-Re-locating families

-Buyers coming from a much farther distance – New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Texas!

The first two categories are what we are used to. People who have vacationed here and know the area and have been planning to buy here one day or retire here – and buyers interested in leveraging their vacation home into a rental property. That is who typically fuels our market. The interesting thing to note is that other types of buyers were purchasing here, as well, and that’s where the inventory issues started to set in.

If you work from home now or only need to visit the office sporadically, that is a fundamental life change for a lot of folks. For the first time, though, I think a lot of people started to realize that they can live almost anywhere now, so why not look around for a more suitable option. Garrett County checked that box for a lot of people. Part of this group includes buyers who were coming here for the first time – albeit out of necessity. It is not uncommon to see New York, New Jersey and Connecticut license plates here, but now there a lot more of them.

There were also people who were capitalizing on the hot real estate market (back home) and selling their primary home to permanently re-locate to Garrett County. This one intrigues me the most, as Garrett County didn’t need to land a new Amazon distribution center or add a huge factory to bring these folks to the area. No, these people moved here because the perception was its safer and they could still keep a higher paying job in the city. A silver lining of the pandemic is that people now can live where they love – and DCL has a lot to love, apparently!

If you combine this with our booming vacation rental market – which was nearly 100% capacity for most of the summer – it drove more traffic to our area than EVER before and I think a lot of people realized just how rewarding owning here could be. Record profits for homeowners. Homes rented back to back ALL summer long. With all of these people in town, homes sold at such a breakneck pace that we have quite literally run out of properties to sell. The figures below put this in context. A ‘normal’ month in Garrett County is 25-30 property sales, higher in the summer months when more people are here. May 2020 was artificially low because of the stay at home orders. You can see what happened when the restrictions were lifted.

Continue reading “December 2020 Real Estate Rundown By Jay Ferguson”

Lake Title, LLC is the newest addition to Taylor-Made’s full service Deep Creek Lake real estate division. Offering competitive rates, it is one more way that we are making transactions smoother for buyers and sellers

With the closing of another local title company, we identified a void in marketplace. Our agents have numerous real estate transactions. In order to best serve clients, this was a natural next step in Taylor-Made’s “one-stop-shop” approach.

We are thrilled to have David R. Collins join the team as our attorney. He is licensed in Maryland and West Virginia. His background includes more than ten years in litigation, real estate, and appeals in West Virginia. Mr. Collins graduated from West Virginia University College of Law, where he served as Publications Editor for the West Virginia Law Review. Prior to attending law school, Mr. Collins worked for the Preservation Directorate at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. 

Continue reading “Lake Title: Taylor-Made’s New Sister Company”

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain

My name is Jay Ferguson and I am one of the owners of the real estate division of Taylor Made Deep Creek Vacations & Sales. I am entering my 19^th year in the real estate business here in Garrett County and at Deep Creek Lake. If you are interested, you can click here find out more about me personally and my background.

I will be writing a monthly blog post about our local real estate market, sharing & interpreting statistics and offering some insights into the market as a whole…as I see it. These are my personal thoughts and musings about the market in general and are not intended as anything more specific. And, to be clear, I am an optimistic, glass half-full kind of guy.  

Lastly, every stat I reference is based on the official stats published by Bright MLS on or around the 15^th of each month. My plan is to give you straightforward stats coupled with my analysis from the front lines and let you interpret what you read in your own way.

The month of May was a steroid shot for the Deep Creek Lake market. Even after being shutdown for the first half of the month, the second half of May was on fire. Vacation rentals are booked solid through the summer as demand ‘to get out the house’ finally gave way with the opening of our transient vacation rental homes.

You can see it in the numbers below – people are buying homes left and right. We continue to have inventory issues and thats good news for sellers, but buyers now have fewer homes to choose from. Many people that I spoke to about selling this summer have decided to keep their property for the time being and are spending their time here at the lake instead. That’s part of the inventory problem.

Continue reading “June 2020 Real Estate Rundown By Jay Ferguson”

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain

My name is Jay Ferguson and I am one of the owners of the real estate division of Taylor Made Deep Creek Vacations & Sales. I am entering my 19^th year in the real estate business here in Garrett County and at Deep Creek Lake. If you are interested, you can click here find out more about me personally and my background.

I will be writing a monthly blog post about our local real estate market, sharing & interpreting statistics and offering some insights into the market as a whole…as I see it. These are my personal thoughts and musings about the market in general and are not intended as anything more specific. And, to be clear, I am an optimistic, glass half-full kind of guy.  

Lastly, every stat I reference is based on the official stats published by Bright MLS on or around the 15^th of each month. My plan is to give you straightforward stats coupled with my analysis from the front lines and let you interpret what you read in your own way.

The second month of COVID 19 was exactly what you would anticipate with regards to the real estate market. Bad. Almost our entire real estate market was on lockdown. Our office was shutdown to the public. The Governor had determined that the only ‘essential’ home shopping was for a primary residence, which really rules out 80% of our clientele that is coming to look at 2^nd homes or vacation/investment properties. The strategy was a success, and as I write this, Garrett County is now re-opened, as of last Friday at 5pm.

Update on existing business, transactions are still closing on time. Lenders are getting the job done, even working remotely. Homes are still being listed for sale and often selling quickly. We are entering Memorial Day weekend and the traditional kickoff to summer. Based on how busy I have been over the past few weeks, I am confident the market will stabilize. Hopefully, this time next month, we have stronger numbers to report. All in all, the median prices are up, days on market is still down and we still have declining inventory, so the news isn’t all bad.

Continue reading “May 2020 Real Estate Rundown By Jay Ferguson”

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain

My name is Jay Ferguson and I am one of the owners of the real estate division of Taylor Made Deep Creek Vacations & Sales. I am entering my 19^th year in the real estate business here in Garrett County and at Deep Creek Lake. If you are interested, you can click here find out more about me personally and my background.

I will be writing a monthly blog post about our local real estate market, sharing & interpreting statistics and offering some insights into the market as a whole…as I see it. These are my personal thoughts and musings about the market in general and are not intended as anything more specific. And, to be clear, I am an optimistic, glass half-full kind of guy.  

Lastly, every stat I reference is based on the official stats published by Bright MLS on or around the 15^th of each month. My plan is to give you straightforward stats coupled with my analysis from the front lines and let you interpret what you read in your own way.

Our first month of ‘COVID 19’ real estate stats really wasn’t that bad, overall. I expected the month of March to be down considerably (because of Marylands lockdown/quarantine in place strategy), but what I have discovered is actually surprising. Stats are up. The market is doing fine, so far.

Transactions are still closing – on time – which is spectacular. Homes are still being listed for sale. We have modified our approach to get our agents, photographers and video/3D tour folks into homes one at a time – adhering strictly to social distancing policies. Our staff and marketing department are getting the job done – from home. The only challenge is coordinating buyer showings and keeping everyone safe, but we have great processes for that, too – reliance on ‘virtual walkthroughs/showings’ and videos. Our core principle of investing in technology is paying off more than ever. Its helping to keep a vital part of our economy moving!

Continue reading “April 2020 Real Estate Rundown By Jay Ferguson”

615 Sandy Shores Road is a stunning log home at Deep Creek Lake. Even though now is the time to stay home, you can still get a personal tour.

Tour 615 Sandy Shores Road

Sales agent Terah Crawford is your host for this virtual open house. She gives you a closer look at 615 Sandy Shores Road, listed by Beverly & Bob Everett.

Meticulously maintained and tastefully decorated, you will feel right at home the minute you step through the door. This five bedroom, 5.5 bath home has plenty of room for family and friends. The open floor plan and fabulous kitchen are ideal for entertaining. Multiple gathering areas, two fireplaces, hardwood floors and central air conditioning are a few of the highlights.

Continue reading “Virtual Open House: 615 Sandy Shores Road”