Doors Close for Real Estate Speculators

Lockboxes cover a bench outside the Halstead condo complex in Fairfax County. The boxes hold keys to units for agents to show prospective buyers or renters. There recently were 49 lockboxes for the 200-unit building. (By Preston Keres -- The Washington Post)

Manuel Tagle, a real estate agent with Fairfax Realty in Falls Church, is representing two units there, both owned by investors, one of which is for sale and one for rent. He owns a unit there himself, which he has rented out.

"There's a very high concentration of investors," he said. "I have seen a lot of investors selling now. They see values going downhill."

The prevalence of investors -- and now their disappearance -- is causing real problems for owner-occupants who want to sell, sometimes against competitors willing to cut prices substantially because of profits they made in 2003 or 2004. Mike Pugh, a real estate agent with Re/Max Allegiance in Arlington, is trying to sell a condo at the Halstead for a woman he says bought it for her retirement home, then became ill and went to live with family. Pugh said his client, who he believes was one of the few purely owner-occupants in the complex, is likely to lose money she had saved over a lifetime.

"We aren't investors, but we are being punished by the market as though we were," he said.

They face plenty of competition. Delta Associates, an Alexandria real estate research firm, said there are about 25,853 new condos being marketed locally now. But only about 1,996 new condos were sold from January to March, down from 3,520 in the first three months of last year. And the area's multiple-listing service, which lists mostly previously owned properties, showed about 5,500 condos and co-ops for sale in March in Washington and the close-in suburbs. That was about a fourfold increase from about 1,400 listed in March 2005 with the service, Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc.

Some developers are struggling to sell units in the face of competition from the investor-buyers who want to dump the properties. Many had sought to protect themselves against an invasion of investors for just this reason.

A National Association of Home Builders survey of builders last year found that about 52 percent of builders tried to sell only to owner-occupants, 33 percent prohibited renting the unit out during the first year after settlement, 29 percent declined to make multiple sales to people with the same last name and about 28 percent kept the right to buy back the unit at the same price if the owner sold in the first year.

But many failed to ferret out investors or could not resist the buzz of a fast sell-out when speculators flocked to purchase. A quick sales pace allowed the builders to ratchet up prices more quickly for those who got to their doors behind the early birds.

Speculative buyers at the hottest part of the market were able to put down a $20,000 deposit on an uncompleted unit, then close on the transaction and sell it to someone else the next day, pocketing $60,000 or $70,000.

That spawned a "get-rich-quick" mentality, said real estate agent Frank Borges Llosa, of FranklyRealty.com, who said that the people who got in earliest made the most money, while those who came later are at greater risk. Unlike with stocks or bonds, which can simply be sold, a seller of real estate has to find a willing buyer or renter because a mortgage obligates the owner regardless of the value of the asset.

"People who got caught are in trouble," Borges Llosa said.

Some investors are holding on to the properties they have, but they are not expanding their empires. Ruben Cuya, 37, a Peruvian immigrant who works as a quality control technician at Cuisine Solutions Inc. in Alexandria, bought his first rental property, a townhouse in Lorton, in 2002, using the equity from his own home for the down payment. Then he bought an additional rental property in that same way each of the next two years.

"This year I'm not buying," Cuya said. "It's not a good year to buy."

The situation has made home shoppers more wary about making purchases. Real estate agents say many are so leery about where prices are headed that they are engaged in a kind of stare-down with sellers as they seek to negotiate for lower prices and more concessions.

"The buyers are there, there are people who want to buy," Borges Llosa said. "But they see no immediacy to buy now versus next week."

Some buyers are even walking away from transactions. Lawyer Angana Shah, 36, almost bought a new one-bedroom apartment in Adams Morgan last month for $454,000, but as the settlement date approached, she found herself "petrified" over the high price and worried that values would fall.

Then, during the walkthrough, she learned the place was smaller than she had been promised. The developer was unwilling to cut the price, so she decided to walk away from the sale and got her money back. She was glad she did because prices have flattened and she can now afford a two-bedroom instead.

"I don't want a one-bedroom anymore," she said. "I want a two-bedroom. Now people are begging people to buy one-bedrooms. The market is better. I couldn't have bought a two-bedroom last fall and prices for one-bedrooms are falling."