Real Estate News You Don’t See on the News – from The Cutting Edge August 18, 2009
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The week’s real estate posts of interest from The Cutting Edge.
18 AUG 09
Study Says Homes in More Walkable Markets Get Higher Prices
‘Green’ is low real estate priority | Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers and Investors | Inman News “Most respondents in a survey of Better Homes and Gardens magazine readers said they most value ample storage space (74 percent) and closet space (74 percent) as very important in house hunting, while just 22 percent said they rate “eco-friendly” features as very important.”
Walkable neighborhoods also bankable | Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers and Investors | Inman News “Homes in neighborhoods where goods, services and fun things to do are located within walking distance can command a price premium of $4,000 to $34,000 over otherwise similar homes in less walkable areas, according to an analysis of recent home sales.”
Homeowners More Optimistic About the Future Than Any Time in Past Year | Zillow Blog – Real Estate Market Stats, Celebrity Real Estate, and Zillow News“Four times a year, we field a survey with Harris Interactive to get a pulse on how homeowners perceive the value of their own homes and their local real estate market. Our quest – to find out how realistic homeowners are about their own homes’ values, and how optimistic (or not) they are about the coming six months.”
17 AUG 09
Suckface With Facebook Today or Tomorrow, You’ll Just Plain Suck. True or False? | Real Estate Opinion MAG – AgentGenius “Everywhere I go, I hear earfuls of Facebook yadder. It’s a time suck. It’s a tool. It’s the future. It’s a fad. I don’t get it. Who cares. Get a life. I’m an addict. Don’t you work? Etc. You hear it too, right?”
16 AUG 09
Commercial Real Estate Lending Picking Back Up : The Real Estate Bloggers “Reports of commercial real estate lending are coming in, a welcome sign for an industry that has been hit hard by the credit crunch. It looks like there is more money available on the West Coast, but anyone who owns commercial property and is unable to roll over their loans must be thinking there is light at the end of the tunnel now. ”
15 AUG 09
Fishing for the details takes all the fun out of real estate fish stories “So some nice folks bought more home than they could afford during the housing boom. They couldn’t make their payments, so they put the home on the market for more than it was really worth, even back then. It sat on the market for four years, through a normal listing or two, through a short-sale listing, and then it finally sold to your friend as a lender-owned home. Is that about right?”
A Price That Works In A Market Headed South via the Housing Bubble Blog“‘When your neighbors house is on fire you don’t wait to call the fire department to help put out that fire, because the danger is it’s not just going to destroy that home, but it’s going to spread in the neighboorhood and destroy other homes as well,’ he said. ‘The effect of foreclosures has been to accelerate and deepen the declines in value, particularly in communities where it’s been concentrated. Studies have shown that those are not natural declines or declines that would otherwise happen.’”
Calculated Risk: Hotel Owners Walking Away “… From San Diego to Dearborn, Mich., an increasing number of hotel owners in the U.S. market are simply walking away …Distressed noncasino hotel loans now cover more than 1,000 properties with a cumulative loan value of $16.8 billion, according to Real Capital Analytics ….”
Calculated Risk: First-time Home Buyer Frenzy With a growing sense of urgency, first-time buyers are searching for homes, worried that time is running out on an $8,000 federal tax credit. Real estate agents say they’re seeing a surge of first-timers who want to close on a property by Nov. 30, the deadline for the credit. The rush has set off bidding wars and stirred up a normally quiet August market.
14 AUG 09
First-time Home Buyer Frenzy A few key points: This has boosted existing home sales, and will continue to boost existing home sales (reported at close of escrow) through November. This will put upward price pressure on low-to-mid level homes during this period. This is the also the target price range for most cash-flow investors. At the same time, the foreclosure moratoriums and modification programs have limited supply – especially in the low-to-mid priced areas.
Price cut on 1 in 4 listings | Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers and Investors | Inman News One in four homes on the market as of Aug. 1 had its asking price reduced at least once, although price reductions were smaller on average in July than June, according to an analysis by real estate search site Trulia.
13 AUG 09
Calculated Risk: Report: Record Foreclosure Activity in July “RealtyTrac … today released its July 2009 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report™, which shows foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 360,149 U.S. properties during the month, an increase of nearly 7 percent from the previous month and an increase of 32 percent from July 2008. The report also shows that one in every 355 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing in July.”
BloodhoundBlog.com | Am I being Paranoid about what the NAR is calling the “Recovery?” “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a recovery. I would love to see a recovery. Did I mention that really strong sales would be great? The issue for me is that sales that are still 3% below a year ago doesn”t look like a recovery to me.”
Calculated Risk: Jim the Realtor: Investor Watch
Calculated Risk: National Data: Distressed Sales and Types of Buyers Here is some national data on the number of distressed sales in Q2, and the types of homebuyers. This is from a survey by Campbell Communications (excerpted with permission).
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