By JOANNE CLEAVER
jcleaver@journalsentinel.comPosted: Jan. 20, 2007
Franklin - Four houses are for sale on the 4100 block of W. McGinnis Drive, but one of them is not like the others.
It has a buyer.
South suburban Franklin is one of the busiest real estate markets in the Milwaukee metro area.
With new developments and plenty of 10- to 15-year-old houses for sale, it's one of the few Milwaukee-area markets in which new and existing homes compete directly.
Last year, the average value of a new house built in Franklin was $276,440, a 5.1% increase over 2005, according to MTD Marketing.
The average resale price of an existing house sold by a broker was $242,224, according to Metro MLS, an increase of 4.2% over the year before.
And reflecting the metro-area trend, sales of both kinds of houses slowed considerably in 2006 and have entered this year dragging.
Small houses and condos geared for first-time buyers are selling, albeit slowly, reports Bob Selensky, a broker with Franklin's Parkway Realty, which handles both new developments and resales.
Developments aimed at downsizing, responsibility-shedding boomers aren't getting much interest.
"Entry-level buyers move faster because they're moving from no house, but the empty-nesters, by definition, have to sell," he says.
Last year was 15% to 20% slower than 2005, in his opinion, but buyers awoke with the new year and have been turning up at open houses once again, he adds.
Mary Jo Fritz put her home at 4118 W. McGinnis Drive on the market last February.
Built in 1990, it's a solid family house with a stone-faced fireplace, three bedrooms, a spacious deck and a new patio with a firepit.
Buyers said they were interested, but nobody showed up with paperwork.
Fritz found another south suburban house she loved near her aging mother, and bought it in May.
To try to spark interest in the McGinnis house, she spent about $1,000 on minor repairs, including removing a kitchen cabinet that blocked the view of the dining area and family room, the better to appeal to people who said they wanted an open layout.
Off market for holidays
Empty, cold and clean, the McGinnis Drive house hibernated.
To avoid juggling the holidays and the chores of selling a house, Fritz officially took it off the market in early Thanksgiving.
Many other Franklin sellers appeared to do the same thing, as signs evaporated from yards, she reports.
But they popped back in early January. Fritz re-listed with Coldwell Banker broker Wendi Werner.
Tinkering the price
That made it look like the house was coming on the market for the first time, as it popped up as a "new" listing in the database shared by brokers.
Werner edged down the price from the original $259,000 to $255,000.
An open house Jan. 7 drew eight couples.
"And open houses have been slow. I had two that day and at the other one, nobody came," says Werner.
She thinks the family who made an offer in the first week of January had overlooked the house before, because they have been house hunting for months.
Perhaps the freshened photos for the online listing made a difference, she says.
The deal is set to close in early February, so the agreed-on price isn't yet the final price, and not yet on the public record. In any event, Fritz is a little disappointed with the price she accepted.
"You can't be too choosy," she says. "It's still a buyer's market."
From the Jan. 21, 2007 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Link: JS Online:.
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