We are thrilled at Pinnacle Residential Properties to introduce our new video, which tells the story about who we are and about what sets us apart from the rest. Based in Wellesley, MA, Pinnacle Residential Properties is a full-service, residential real estate firm specializing in Wellesley, Weston, Needham, Dover and the surrounding towns. Please click here to watch our video….

In sum, we’re about:

• Understanding your needs
• Providing you with accurate market knowledge
• Enabling you to make informed decisions
• Supporting you with superior technology tools
• Sharing our local expertise with you
• Effectively negotiating for you
• Exceeding your expectations
• Bringing ethics and integrity into everything we do for you
• Listening to you, providing you with excellence service so you want to tell other people about us

The bottom line is… “At Pinnacle, we’re all about you!” And I can honestly say that after a decade in the real estate business, I feel honored to be a part of a team and locally-owned company that operates in these ways. I hope that you feel the same and contact us to help you with your real estate needs.

For more information about Pinnacle Residential Properties and/or the real estate market in Wellesley, Weston, Needham, Dover and the surrounding towns, please contact me, Lisa Williams (781-267-2844 or www.homesalesbylisa.com), to answer any questions or provide you with additional information.

So this question is really asked from a New England perspective and presumes that you have some kind of wood siding since the predominant exterior in these parts is wood.  And so assuming this, what color is your favorite for your home’s exterior – white, beige, grey, green, yellow, blue, red, brown or another hue?  Or do you like a mix of two colors?  Or a stone with a colored clapboard?  The possibilities are endless….

I did some online surfing and found a great article about picking paint colors for your house.  Interestingly, it says that “white is the favored color for traditional classical architecture,” which is mostly the kind of architecture we have here, especially in Wellesley.  It also says that dark colors (think brown) “will make your house seem smaller, but will draw more attention to details.”  This makes sense because I have often heard that a dark brown home is the hardest to sell.

I wanted to do some of my own empirical research, and so I looked at the exterior colors* of all of the active properties on the market in Weston and Wellesley to do so.  Here’s what I found:

- Of the 51 homes** on the market in Weston, MA:

• 15 or 29% are beige/tan (or a related hue like cream or taupe)
• 14 or 27% are white
• 6 or 12% are brown
• 5 or 10% are brick
• 4 or 8% are yellow
• 4 or 8% are shingle
• 2 or 4% are grey
• 1 or 2% are stone

- Of the 89 homes** on the market in Wellesley, MA:

• 26 or 29% are beige/tan
• 19 or 21% are grey
• 15 or 17% are white
• 9 or 10% are yellow
• 7 or 8% are brick
• 4 or 4.5% are blue
• 2 or 2.25% are brown
• 2 or 2.25% are green
• 2 or 2.25% are red
• 2 or 2.25% are to be built/to be determined
• 1 or 1% is pink

Interestingly, beige/tan is the winner in both Weston and Wellesley though grey is much more popular in Wellesley than in Weston – at least according to what is currently on the market in these two towns as detailed above.  And Wellesley has a much broader array of home colors than Weston does.  This is due in large part because Wellesley consistently has a much higher inventory than Weston.

So what color is your favorite for the exterior of your home?  And if you knew that a certain color was more appealing to a higher percentage of buyers would you paint your home’s exterior before putting it on the market?  I can’t wait to hear….

* Note that some homes feature two colors or a material other than wood combined with painted wood siding.  In those instances, I used the predominant color or the predominant material.  So if a home was brick and had an addition with grey wood siding, I classified the home as brick and not as grey.

** As of January 9, 2012.  These total inventory numbers are low due to the time of the year, and they do not include any “pending” properties or those with accepted offers.

The September 2011 Pinnacle Report for Wellesley and Weston real estate is here, and you may have gotten the postcard in the mail saying that it has been published….  Pinnacle Residential Properties is going green, and so for the first time ever, the report will not be mailed automatically to households.  We write this report in an effort to help you make the most informed decisions about buying and selling property.  Not only does the Pinnacle Report detail what has happened in these markets by price range, it also provides you with the average ratio of sales-price-to-assessment data, conveys what may be on the horizon and so much more.

If you would like to receive the latest Pinnacle Report, there are two ways to do so.  Either email me by clicking here so I can get your information and send you a copy of the Pinnacle Report OR sign up on the Pinnacle website by clicking here.  I hope you find the report to be as “intelligent” and “insightful” as other readers have, and please contact me with any questions or need for additional information.

The Pinnacle Report for Needham and Dover will also be released soon so please let me know if you would like a copy of this too.  Enjoy, and happy reading…..

I had a client ask me the other day, what is DOM?  And just as he asked me, he figured it out….  DOM is an acronym for Days on the Market, which is a very important indicator in the world of residential real estate.  It stands to reason that the more the DOM add up, it has an effect – and more times than not, a negative one – on the sale and price of the property on the market.  Just for reference, the average market time (also known as days on the market) for the 106 active single-family homes on the market in Weston right now, at this very minute, is 160 days (technically it’s 159.64 days) or more than 5 months.  And for the 162 active single-family homes on the market in Wellesley this very minute, the average market time is 138 days (technically it’s 138.10 days) or more than 4 1/2 months. But these homes have still not sold.  Which then begs the question – what about the solds?

So I decided to share with you some year-to-date sold data on Weston, Wellesley and a few of the other surrounding towns:

• Weston – for the 27 properties that have sold, the average DOM  is 171 days and the median price is $1,075,000.
• Wellesley – for the 75 properties that have sold, the average DOM is 188 days and the median price is $925,000.
• Wayland – for the 28 properties that have sold, the average DOM is 191 days and the median price is $454,900.
• Needham – for the 68 properties that have sold, the average DOM is 104 days and the median price is $649,700.
• Lincoln – for the 11 properties that have sold, the average DOM is 209 days and the median price is $1,079,000.
• Dover – for the 9 properties that have sold, the average DOM is 214 days and the median price is $1,025,000.

Pretty interesting information although you can’t necessarily draw a conclusion about the effect of the number of properties sold or the median price of the town/market on the days on the market.  When you look at Dover and Lincoln, which have the lowest amount of properties sold and the highest days on the market respectively, and then you look at the Weston market, which has the next lowest amount of properties sold, that trend does not continue as the days on the market is 171 days, which is the second lowest number.  And then you look at Needham, which has the lowest number of days on the market, but its median price is higher than that of Wayland, which also has the third highest number of days on the market.

Keep in mind that this data reflects an overall perspective.  When you start to look at various price points within a town/market, you see large fluctuations in the DOM depending on the “bread and butter” buyer and price point in that particular market.  And honestly, to accurately analyze and summarize the trends of DOM at various price points within specific towns/markets, I think another blog post is in order – so stay tuned for that in the future.  The bottom line is that DOM is an analytical tool, which should be taken into account, and yet from a general market perspective, it doesn’t necessarily correlate to size or median price of the market.  But interestingly, it can adversely affect the price of the home the higher it is.

Phew….  Anyway, it’s important to know that there can often be more to DOM than just its face value, so sometimes you need to look more closely.  For example, the days on the market will reset to zero if a slightly different property address is used (i.e., if a road with a two-word name such as “Knob Hill Road” becomes a single word name – “Knobhill Road”).  In addition, if a property is canceled or expires and sits off the market for 90 days, the DOM resets on the 91st day.  Often you will see sellers take their homes off the market for the slower holiday months and into the New Year, and then put them back on the market for the Spring months, which makes a lot of sense and has an added benefit of resetting the DOM to zero.  So just keep this in the back of your mind, though your savvy real estate agent will be on the lookout for this too.

And one last thing for sellers to think about…. When you are selling home, and you accept an offer on it, the property can be red flagged designating an Accepted Offer or it can go Under Agreement (UAG) in MLS.   If you choose to red flag your property, the DOM will continue to accrue, and buyers can still see your property (though this is highly unlikely as buyers prefer to see homes that are “available”).   Most times the red-flagged designation will remain this way through the home inspection process and until the purchase and sale agreement is signed – usually an additional 14 days.  Alternatively, if you choose to have your property go UAG, it no longer accrues DOM but buyers no longer see the property as an active listing.  So depending on which designation you prefer, it has a different effect on the DOM and whether your property is “active” or not.  Finally, if the offer falls apart, and you have red flagged your property, the red flag just disappears.  Whereas if your property is UAG, it will come appear as BOM (back on the market), which is much more of a signal to potential buyers and other agents about the change of your property’s status.

I think that’s just about everything on DOM, and I’m guessing you never knew there was so much information about and subtleties to this subject?  Do you have any stories about hidden DOM and/or how the DOM influenced the sale or purchase of your home?  I can’t wait to hear….

I bet you thought I was talking about the Spring Real Estate Market Update, and yes, I will cover that too…but I was really referring to the Spring Weather Update.  As you can see, despite the fact that we’re well into April and the Spring season, I still have snow in my yard (see photo above).  Can you believe it?  I have been asking the kids since the beginning of March when they thought the snow would finally melt.  And the overwhelming sentiment was that it would melt on the first day of Spring, which I thought was a logical conclusion.  And yet that day has come and gone, and we still have snow.  But now I think we know….I think we can all safely bet that the snow will finally be gone sometime this week, especially given today’s 70+-degree temperature and the rain we’re supposed to have as well over the next few days.  Alleluia.

In terms of the Spring Real Estate Market Update, we had eight single-family homes come on the market and eight sold* this past week (Monday, April 4 – Sunday, April 10) in Weston, MA.  This is great market news – the number of new and sold* listings are finally offsetting one another.  As a comparison, during the month of March in Weston, our number of new listings outperformed our number of sold* listings by almost 3 times.  So let’s hope this recent strong, healthy market activity continues.

And lastly, I don’t usually report on the single-family home rental market, but I feel compelled to since it is absolutely gangbusters right now, especially in the Wellesley market.  In the last two weeks (March 29 – April 10), 10 rentals came on the market in Wellesley, and of those, 6 are pending or have already rented.  And during that same time frame in Weston, two rentals came on the market, and one of those has already rented.  More specifically it rented within four days and at $200/month more than the asking price.

All this is good.  So now we just need the snow to melt……

* Sold means “pending/under agreement” and not yet closed.