The Rhinelander Daily News - Online news and information for the Rhinelander, Wisconsin region

Around the nation, particularly in the bedroom communities that have sprung up around major metropolitan areas, housing values are plummeting. But in the Northwoods, while foreclosures have soared, housing values have not fallen and other housing indicators are mixed.

Mike Romportl, head of Oneida County’s department of real property listing, has seen land transactions fall only slightly over the past year, an indication that people are still buying and selling property.

“Our documents this year for deed reviews were down only about 7 percent from June last year. On the other hand we’re up 12 percent for the number of parcels those documents have affected,” said Romportl. “There are still a significant amount of sales and transfers of property.”

The housing market is a complex animal, and in a region in which many home-owners are second home-owners, tracing the local fallout of the collapse of the national housing markets is not easy.

Greg Peckels, the owner of North Star Title, deals with title transactions on behalf of real estate brokers and independent sellers alike.

“I’ve been in this business almost 20 years and the change from five years ago to now... things are at a standstill,” said Peckels.

Peckels says that during the housing boom he handled a high volume of re-financing transactions, but these days, despite low interest rates, those transactions are no longer taking place.

“I was doing a lot of re-finances. The rates kept getting lower and lower and the equity was there. Now you don’t see that. The rates are still below 7 percent but people are leery now,” said Peckels.

Jef Muelver of Peterson Appraisals works assessing property tax values for a number of different municipalities in the region. He believes the hysteria surrounding housing markets nationwide does not correspond with what is happening locally.

“We’re not seeing depreciating values in real estate. So much of the property is accounted for by second home-owners and the money the supports those investments is not affected by what’s going on in the economy in the same way,” he said. “We are still seeing nearly double-digit appreciation.”

Muelver said he has witnessed a marked slow-down in property turnovers in the $200,000-$400,000 range, but both the high and low ends of the markets are still busy. That observation may account for the disparity between what Peckels has experienced and the transaction listings coming through Romportl’s office.

Our region has two separate housing markets. One market for second home-owners and another for full-time residents. Waterfront property has an intrinsic value that combined with low-interest rates is highly attractive to buyers in today’s market. At the same-time occupancy of residential homes is down and those transactions have slowed to a standstill.

Many residential home-owners have already re-financed their homes multiple times, and many have borrowed down on equity they might not have had in the first place. The missing link in the chain is the role of independent appraisers during the housing boom.

While property value assessments and independent appraisals share common methodology and practice, their outcomes are often different.

“For a re-finance the lending institution is interested in having their funds covered by the value of the mortgage as assessed by an appraiser,” said Muelver. “As assessors our goal is to reflect market trends with uniformity from one property to the next.”

Many home-owners are balking at their rising property taxes as the news tells them the bottom is falling out of the housing market. But according to Muelver, assessed equalized values in the our region are not going down, they’re going up.

The problem locally – the one that has particularly affected the mid-range in the housing market as indicated by Muelver – is that too many people were given inflated independent appraisals on their properties on the way to their lending institutions, and too many lending institutions were willing to provide loans on inflated appraisals.

The result has been that people cannot sell their houses for what they think they are worth and they do not have the equity to cover what they have borrowed. That scenario has spelled personal financial disaster for many area home-owners, but it hasn’t undercut local property values. In addition, it has made paying property taxes more painful, because lost housing equity means less access to money, even if equalized assessed values are constant.

Tell us what you think...

Comments »

transplant wrote on Jul 20, 2008 5:36 PM:

" By the way,,most HOMES in this town are owned by landlords. There is 47% poverty in this town and no market here so they are dumping them. Adding to market downfall. "

transplant wrote on Jul 20, 2008 9:42 AM:

" Jef Muelver of Peterson Appraisals works assessing property tax values

Is he ever dreaming...what else would he say.
We will defn be fighting our assesment. There is no way we would get what we paid for the home two years ago.

My neighbors houses have been for sale for years and have not had a offer. Anything under $75,000 might sell and the nice places on the lakes over $500,000 that are not remodeled junk sell. "

transplant wrote on Jul 20, 2008 9:39 AM:

" Having moved here two years ago and also being a real estate broker, I can tell you the market here is horrible. The Brokers in this town artificially keep listing prices high and rarely sell anything. Some do one buyer listing of their friends homes to show out of towners what a good deal the garbage they have listed. Homes that were for sale when we moved here are still listed at the same prices and are now being foreclosed on. The lake homes in the 2-$300,000 range are junk. Wausau homes or remodeled cabins every 10 years. We found a vacant home contacted the owner and but it direct. "

Bob wrote on Jul 20, 2008 8:05 AM:

" You haven't seen nothing yet folks if you think it'sbad now just wait things are going to get a lot worse believe me when the world changes over to the EURO and they stop trading in dollars watch out. The dollar right now is about to fall lower. Get ready. The banks are already starting to fail and the big ones at that it's worse than the government is telling folks. "

The comments above are from readers. In no way do they represent the views of the Rhinelander Daily News.