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Month: October 2006 (page 6 of 7)

October 6, 2006

Which houses will sell?: Local market is slow but not on life support . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me from this morning’s Arizona Republic, a kinder, gentler, less incendiary Greg. (Permanent link.) That marks a year of these columns, 52 on the nose. To tell the truth, I expected to get fired a long time ago. But, if they’re not going to fire me, I wish they’d give me more space. At 350 words I have just enough room to introduce an idea without quite exploring it…

 
Local market is slow but not on life support

The nationally reported real estate news is dire, of course — bad news trumps good news.

The locally reported real estate news is largely defined by year-over-year comparisons, which tends to make things look worse than they really are. Is our market in excellent shape? Far from it. But neither should it be put on life support.

For the kinds of homes common on the west side of the Valley, September was a repeat of August, itself a repeat of July. Prices flat, sales slow but not awful, discounting moderate. Days on market is climbing, but available inventories of newer suburban homes are declining. (You can read more about these results at bloodhoundrealty.com/MarketBasket.php.)

But as interesting as those results are — and as promising for the recovery of our market — they speak only of sold homes. What about the homes that are not selling?

I’m looking at houses right now for an investor. He picked out one he was interested in, and, as a matter of course, I searched every similar listing in that subdivision — active, pending and sold — going back to May.

I found 10 active listings with that floor plan in that subdivision. This is as close as you can get to identical comps, like little plastic Monopoly houses, each one the twin of the next.

All of them were built between 2002 and 2004, all by the same builder, of course. All upgraded to some degree, none to the ultimate degree. No premium lots, no view lots, no pools.

What’s the spread of prices for these nearly identical homes? They run from $245,000 to $360,000, a difference of $115,000.

Which ones will sell?

The best-kept houses Read more

October 5, 2006

Overall September real estate market results for MLS listed homes in the Phoenix area

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Service at large, 5,607 homes sold in September against an inventory of 47,428, an implied absorption rate of 8.46 months. There are 5,932 properties listed as “Sale Pending.”

The historical numbers make it plain that we did not experience the traditional selling season, but they also make it plain that a simplistic year-over-year analysis — which we can expect from the Arizona Republic a week or more from now — is misleading.

Number of Homes Sold (with Days on Market)

March 2003   6471    67
          2004   8678    60
          2005   9959    36
          2006   7469    58

April    2003   7429    67
          2004   8889    61
          2005   9567    32
          2006   6725    60

May   2003   7428    67
          2004   8932    56
          2005   9853    27
          2006   7582    63

June   2003     7409    67
          2004    9969    55
          2005   10225    26
          2006    7209    67

July   2003     7643    64
          2004    8974    51
          2005    9326    25
          2006    6101    70

August 2003     7648    63
          2004    8968    47
          2005    9996    25
          2006    6170    76

Sept. 2003      6802    62
          2004    8648    45
          2005    9152    28
          2006    5607    80

Average prices are down from August, from $331,266 to 324,370 in September, a net loss of about 2.1%.

Note that this may not accurately reflect the Phoenix-area real estate market as a whole. All private sales and most new-home builder sales are excluded from MLS statistics.

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October 5, 2006

Getting thousands of dollars in real estate commissions back: Getting the idea across . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Okay, let’s play. I’m building marketing materials around the flat fee buyer representation idea, and you can have a look at them — for a price. What’s the catch? Tell me what I’m missing. What I’m getting wrong. What could be better-handled.

Witness:

That’s an ad. It may run as you see it in free-distribution supermarket listings magazines, or I may do a black-and-white version for the newspaper.

The web page cited in the ad is live, so you can visit that, as well, if you like.

If you have any thoughts you would like to share — while my dog might be all nose — I’m all ears…

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October 5, 2006

September 2006 BloodhoundRealty.com Market-Basket of Homes: Values down 0.15% on normal sales . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The Phoenix-area’s real estate market seems to be continuing its slow trek back to normalcy. Home prices were essentially unchanged on a fairly strong volume of sales in the September edition of the BloodhoundRealty.com Market-Basket of Homes.

Average prices for Market Basket homes in September were down 0.15%, compared to August, a difference of $372. Year-over-year, prices are down 3.15%, and down 6.05% from the December 2005 high.

A total of 183 sales were recorded, down from August’s total of 199. Market-Basket homes spent an average of 100 days on market, 22 days more than in August. For comparison purposes, 192 Market Basket homes sold in September of 2003, the last relatively normal year, in an average of 58 days.

As has been the case in recent months, most Market-Basket homes are selling at or above list price. A few deeply-discounted properties pulled down the average — most notably builder’s spec homes deeply discounted to close before the end of the third fiscal quarter. Average discounting netted out to 2.03%, up from 1.43% in August.

Inventories of available Market Basket homes continue their decline. There are now 1,337 homes available for sale in the Market-Basket, where there were 1,406 in August and 1,506 in July. With sales of 183 homes, the implied absorption rate is 7.31 months, up from slightly over 7 months in August, but down significantly from almost 10 months in July. A six-month absorption rate is considered normal. The number of homes listed as “Sale Pending” is 165, down from 179 in August.

Based on the idea of the Consumer Price Index market-basket of goods and services, the Market-Basket of Homes uses average sales prices for a small subset of all Valley home sales to get a clearer idea of what is happening in the middle of the bell curve. The alternative method, striking a median among all closed transactions, introduces too many extraneous factors to provide a reliable indicator of what is happening to prices for those homes that are most avidly desired by the greatest number of people. To that end, the Market-Basket of Homes looks at sales prices for MLS-listed Read more

October 5, 2006

If you want to play, you can’t delay . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

First, if you want to take a shot at The BloodhoundBlog Valuation Challenge, get your entry in soon. Judging will be tonight.

Second, don’t forget to get your Carnival of Real Estate entry in. We don’t control the deadline, so, if you’re late, your post gets shunted off to next week…

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October 5, 2006

Business is slow at the Arizona Business Blogs . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

In the “Don’t Hate Me Just Because I’m Pitiful” sweepstakes, The Arizona Republic invites us to visit their brand new “Arizona Business Blogs”. They’re not new, but that hardly matters. First, there is no link to the not-new “Arizona Business Blogs” in the on-line article. Second, although there is a text representation of a link, it’s broken. Third, even if you fix the broken non-link, the “Arizona Business Blogs” aren’t there. (Seek elsewhere, intrepid info-seeker.) And fourth, these dingleberries know nothing about weblogging. For example, Senior Real Estate Reporter Catherine Reagor’s real estate weblog was last updated on September 19th. Of six posts visible on the first page (I didn’t dig deeper), there are zero links and three comments. That’s not a weblog. That’s a long-winded tombstone…

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October 4, 2006

Ask the Broker: Is a Buyer’s Agent like a bad penny . . . ?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

When is a Buyer Broker Agreement abrogated, anyway?

Is there a law stating that once your contract with your realtor is up that you must include them on the deal of the purchase of a home that they showed you?

No such law.

Feeling relieved? You can stop that right now.

For, while there is no law binding you to your someday-to-be-former Buyer’s Agent, you may well have signed a contract that says that someday never comes. Or at least not soon.

Consider this, from the Arizona Association of Realtors Buyer Broker Agreement:

e. Buyer agrees to pay such compensation if Buyer, within ____ calendar days after the termination of this Agreement, enters into an agreement to purchase, exchange, option or lease any Property shown to or negotiated on behalf of the Buyer by Broker during the term of this Agreement, unless Buyer enters into a subsequent buyer-broker exclusive employment agreement with another broker.

The blank is filled in with a number, often 30, sometimes 90 — although it could be anything, so long as it is something. If the you and your agent mutually agreed to 1,001 days, it will be two-and-three-quarters years before you are divorced.

Unless… You sign another Buyer Broker Agreement.

This kind of hold-over language is common in real estate employment agreements. On the one hand, you can say, “Well, jeepers, why shouldn’t the poor goofball get paid, even if he didn’t get the job done by the deadline?” But on the other hand: “Exactly how much time do you need, you poor goofball?”

The real reason for that kind of language is to frustrate betrayal. If you make a whispering deal with the Listing Agent to cut your Buyer’s Agent out of the deal, that language cuts him right back in.

So how long is long enough to protect the Buyer’s Agent without unduly ham-stringing the Buyer? How about 15 days?

Or how about zero? My attitude is, if you’re done with me, I’m done with you. Whatever you do after we’ve divorced each other is your business.

But different agents will see this issue differently, and this is why buyers and sellers need to read, mark, learn Read more

October 4, 2006

HotPads.com: A for-rent-by-owner site based on a whimsical map mash-up . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is the map search screen from HotPads.com, a for-rent-by-owner site launching tonight:

This is the most whimsical map mash-up I’ve seen yet, and the site is a treat if only for the cartoony graphics.

In Phoenix, at least, they’re aggregating listings from local property management companies, although landlords can register to list their homes on-line. The site provides a lot of details on the listings, along with neighborhood information.

The site seems to be reliably alive right now, but tomorrow is their real launch date, so, if something flakes on you, cut ’em a break and come back later. There’s a weblog if you want to track their progress.

We rarely do leases now, but I used to do a ton. The MLS is a poor solution, since agents don’t love to list rentals, and they really, really don’t love servicing the listings. I sell a bunch of rental homes, though, so I’m always watching for better ways to market availability. HotPads.com is a sweet solution…

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October 4, 2006

Arizona economy: “Get over housing bubble, economists say, growth remains strong”

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I won’t have September’s numbers until tomorrow, but the news is not good for bubbleheads — which is to say that the news is not bad for everyone else. Meanwhile, there’s this from The Business Journal of Phoenix:

Some of Arizona’s leading economists believe the housing slowdown is a short-lived bump in the road that too many people spend too much time thinking about.

Instead, Arizonans should be looking at statistics that show the state created 161,000 jobs through August of this year, more than 340,000 jobs since the end of the 2002 recession and had a whopping 8.7 percent gain in gross state product for 2005.

“It’s hard to imagine a state with more economic momentum,” said Kent Ennis, an economist and the director of research at the Arizona Department of Commerce.

I most sincerely do not hate to say I told you so…

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October 4, 2006

Don’t shoot the messenger — shoot the editor instead . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I had a call from my editor at The Arizona Republic earlier today. To be honest, I thought it was The Goodbye Look. I’m utterly amazed that they’ve let me carry on like this for a year, and lately I’m pushing even more than my normal share of buttons.

And that really was the gist of the call, not to fire me but to ask if I would mind plugging in less contentious columns between the columns in the series I have cooking right now on buyer’s agent’s commissions.

The editor said he loves the content, he just wants a break from the angry Realtor phone calls!

Fair enough. So I wrote a new column today on why overpriced homes won’t sell, and I’ll hit him with others later in the week. He can space them out however he likes.

It’s funny, though, isn’t it? That urge to censorship — call the ADRE, call the AAR, call the editor, try to brow-beat me — is so common. God help us, I hope it’s isolated to the real estate business…

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October 3, 2006

Linking my way out of the trials of tabulation . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Sellsius° wrote this morning about tabbed browsing, but they have no idea. I live my normal life with over 100 tabs open at any time, and right now I have many more than that. I’m going to do a bunch of links, because I want to close tabs I’ve been opening since last week.

(What about crashes? I use Saft for Safari. My Mac never crashes anyway, but if Safari starts to get cranky, I Force Quit then relaunch. Saft reopens all my previously-opened tabs.)

Joel Burslem at the Future of Real Estate Marketing cites some stats from Redfin. Not to be contrary, but I think 131 total transactions ain’t bad for a new brokerage. It’s nothing for the head-count of 35, to be sure, but most of those heads are useless eaters. Divided by 12 agents, that’s almost 11 sides per agent over six months, just short of two sides a month. At full-commission, they could live on that. But at one-third commission, before the broker’s cut, its pretty lousy money, so I guess Joel is right in the end.

The Property Monger shows how to use inspections as a negotiating tool. The post is pretty Massachusettscentric, but the general principles travel.

Bonnie Erickson at Real Estate Snippets takes on buying real estate during a divorce. The specifics might be Land of a Thousand Lakes-local, but, again, the principles are ubiquitous.

My favorite math gods, Altos Research, take on the media’s flavor of the month: The unaffordability of housing. Alas, the last time math persuaded a reporter is when it persuaded him to major in Journalism.

Local to Arizona, Todd Tarson at moco real estate news details how Mohave County was able to hang onto it’s land use traditions. It turns out you can fight City Hall…

John Keith at The Boston Real Estate blog weighs in on the idea of flat-fee buyer representation.

Want to sell to wired prospects? Mike’s Corner has bad news and good news, with a review of Waiting for your cat to bark? (Mike’s feed is broken, so you’ll need to visit his blog to keep up with his thinking.)

Jeff Brown at Behind Read more

October 3, 2006

The BloodhoundBlog Valuation Challenge . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Here’s a cute little game for people who think they know a thing or two about real estate…

I’m looking at houses for an investor client who is also a close friend of the family. He picked out a house he was interested in, and, as a matter of course, I ran every comp listing in that subdivision — active, pending and sold — going back to May.

I found ten active listings in that exact floorplan in that same subdivision. Unzillowables be damned, this is as close as you can get to stone identical comps, like little plastic Monopoly houses, each one the twin brother of the next. All of them were built between 2002 and 2004, all by the same builder, of course, all upgraded to some degree, none to the ultimate degree. No premium lots, no view lots, no pools.

What would you expect the spread of prices to be?

You would be wrong, no matter what you said, wrong by a lot. There is actually $115,000 between the highest and lowest priced homes.

The nature of this insane market is that people are still seeking prices for their homes that would have been obscene a year ago, as we neared the end of our housing boom.

This is the range of prices sought for these ten homes:

  • $245,000
  • $257,900
  • $257,900
  • $265,000
  • $266,355
  • $272,000
  • $275,000
  • $283,900
  • $299,900
  • $360,000

Here is your challenge:

Go take a look at this particular house and tell me what price it’s selling for.

Anyone can enter. You cannot possibly guess worse than some of these listing agents! It’s like The Price Is Right, just enter your best guesstimate as a comment. We’ll send a great prize to everyone who guesses correctly…

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October 3, 2006

BloodhoundBlog’s WordPress plug-ins . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Daniel Rothamel is swapping over to WordPress, and other people have told me that they are, too, so here, for canonical purposes if for no other, are the WordPress plug-ins BloodhoundBlog is currently using:

Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web serivce to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use this service. You can review the spam it catches under “Manage” and it automatically deletes old spam after 15 days. Hat tip: Michael Hampton and Chris J. Davis for help with the plugin.

Customizable Post Listings (I’m not doing anything with this yet)
Display Recent Posts, Recently Commented Posts, Recently Modified Posts, Random Posts, and other post listings using the post information of your choosing in an easily customizable manner. You can narrow post searches by specifying categories and/or authors, among other things. By Scott Reilly.

Filosofo Comments Preview
Filosofo Comments Preview lets you preview WordPress comments before you submit them. It’s highly configurable from the admin control panel, including optional captcha and JavaScript alert features. By Austin Matzko.

Popularity Contest
This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity. You set a value (or use the default value) for every post view, comment, etc. and the popularity of your posts is calculated based on those values. Once you have activated the plugin, you can configure the Popularity Values and View Reports. You can also use the included Template Tags to display post popularity and lists of popular posts on your blog. By Alex King.

Related Posts
Returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches. By Alexander Malov & Mike Lu.

Subscribe To Comments
Allows readers to recieve notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry By Mark Jaquith and Jennifer (ScriptyGoddess).

Search Meter
Keeps track of what your visitors are searching for. After you have activated this plugin, you can check the Search Meter Statistics page to see what your visitors are searching for on your blog. By Bennett McElwee.

Google Sitemaps
This generator will create a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. By Arne Brachhold.

WordPress Read more

October 3, 2006

Zillowing the convergence: ‘Close enough is good enough’ will eventually eat every anti-Zillow argument except the ethical complaint . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

When I was young, I was convinced I was going to work in either editorial or advertising. I was a teenage photo geek, a Junior Jimmy Olson with thousands of dollars worth of professional photo gear slung over my shoulder. In college, I was publisher of the student newspaper. From the time I was very young, single digits, I was producing all sorts of printed material. And because I often didn’t have a budget, I learned how to do a lot of it by myself.

The net consequence of all this is that, by the time I had to get a real job, I knew how to write, I knew how to create images — and I knew how to do many of the back-end jobs associated with producing printed words and images. I looked at my job opportunities and saw that print production paid a helluva lot better than content creation. So I went to work in Wall Street (where the very best money was found) producing 10-Ks and Blue Sky Reports and Annual Reports. I worked a boatload of IPOs, and 102 weblog posts overnight is not a very big job compared to the 100+ hours of the revision cycle on an Initial Public Offering.

All of this was happening at an epoch we might name The Dawn of the Age of Connectivity. The law firms we worked for had high-end dedicated word processing systems, and they wanted to know why they couldn’t do everything “on disk” — in the dewy-eyed lingo of the day.

It fell to me to do this, mostly because I was interested and no one else was. The “disk” problem was a bear, and there were dozens of kludgey “solutions” to this dilemma over the years. But, understood as a telecommunications problem, mere capture of keystrokes was not that big a problem.

The big problem was expressing word-processed coding as typography — and if you are not fairly well-versed in typography, you are probably already saying, “What’s the difference?” And, indeed, the difference today is much smaller than it was when I was doing this work. Typography once Read more

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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