The real estate blog.

Ok, I admit it. Sometimes I’m wrong. Not often when it comes to real estate, but it does happen from time to time. Maybe I drank too much bubble blogger juice when I analyzed a couple homes for sale in my neighborhood.

Both sold well before I estimated they would and they both sold for higher than I thought they would.

I’ve been following two homes in my neighborhood for sale. If things keep going the way they are, I’m betting they’ll still be for sale in March.

I finally got to take a look at the sold data for these two homes.

House 1.

I said, “Nobody in their right mind will ever pay $409k for this house.” I also said it would still be available in March.

I was right about the sale price, wrong about the timing. It sold for $375k…went under contract in December and closed in February.
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I will be running some of my listings in the local Real Estate Guide. The guide is choc-full of outdated listings (because deadlines are a month in advance).

Over the years I’ve had so-so success with this kind of advertising on behalf of my represented listings. Although, when I first started in this biz, I used to put a few bits of other information about me on my page. Used to have an in-action photo of me playing hockey, a nice photo of me and my wife, that kind of thing. I’d get people saying, “Hey, you are that guy in the picture playing hockey,” or “Wow, I didn’t you were married to her. I’ve known her for years.” I placed photos of my wife in my ads because she has lived here in Kingman most of her life. The hockey photo was in place of listings that I didn’t have at that point in my new career. But again, these more personal ads for whatever reason got response. More than the photos of the listings.
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Yesterday I made a post about January’s existing housing in Salt Lake. Today I got a report from NewReach on new homes throughout Utah for 2006.

In Arizona when a Realtor uses a contract to write an offer on a property, it will include a period of time called the Buyers Inspection Period. I’ve since renamed this period the buyer’s ‘Free Look’, because during the inspection period a buyer can practically give any reason to cancel a contract and be entitled to all of their earnest money back, almost no questions asked.

So what can you gain by getting a home inspection at the time you decide to sell your home?? Well for one you will know the true present condition of the house through the eyes of a licensed inspector. Chances are the buyer for your property is going to hire the services of an inspector, and chances are good that a buyer is going to furnish you with a laundry list of things that they want you to fix before they go ahead and truly agree to proceed with closing the transaction. You won’t be happy on this day.
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The Salt Lake Board of Realtors normally publishes housing numbers on a quarterly basis. They usually turn up around the 20th of the month following the end of the quarter. With all the national shakeup with loans and housing, I’ve been very curious to see how the local market is doing. I’ve seen anecdotal evidence from the industry that things are still OK in Salt Lake, but I’m getting emails from potential clients asking if they should wait.

Today, I got my answer. I managed to snag a copy of the latest copy of the Realtor magazine. We’ll have to wait until April for the quarterly report, but this magazine did have January’s numbers.

2007

Average List Price - $257,469
Average Sales Price - $254,349
Days on Market - 41

2006
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Pardon me, but I think I have to channel Dennis Miller for this post.

::Start rant::

So I got an email from one of my favorite lenders today about new rates and terms for 100% and 97% loans –

We’ve been given a heads-up from our Secondary Marketing Department. We continue to see deterioration in the 100% products and Stated Income product offerings.

We do not have all the details but we wanted to alert you to the following:

If you have floating loans in the pipeline that fall under these products please lock them immediately.

What hurts is these new changes appear to come from Fannie Mae, meaning, my favorite lender isn’t the only one that will be affected. This will be a systemic change. FICO scores have been raised from 680 to 700. On top of that, the rates are increasing; 100% by .25% and 97% by .5%.
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Normally when I complain about mainstream media headlines concerning housing, the headline normally depicts worse news than the actual numbers being reported. February’s existing home sales were just the opposite. The headline said, Home price slump helps spur sales.

The numbers on the other hand, showed median prices went down and year over year sales, the only figure that matters, were also down. The good news, and this was the part the media focused on, was February’s sales outpaced January. While this is good news, it’s relatively meaningless. Each month could outpace the previous one for the entire year and we could still end up with 2007 having less sales than 2006.

The National Association of Realtors said Friday that home sales rose 3.9 percent last month to an annual rate of 6.7 million from a revised 6.4 million pace in January. It was the biggest percentage increase since March 2004.
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By Marshall Loeb
MarketWatch, Inc.

The task of packing up all your things to move to a new place can seem daunting at best. A move, whether it’s cross-town or cross-country, is often fraught with anxiety and headaches: Which mover should I use? Am I getting a good deal? Will my belongings be safe?

Because moving expenses can run high, it’s smart to do a little research before handing your money — and your hard-earned possessions — to just anyone.

Click here to read the entire story.

That word ‘disintermediation’ continues to flabbergast me, especially as it pertains to the real estate business.

Here is the best all around example of how disintermediation is actually a friendly word to Realtors everywhere. Not only that, but the example shows it will be very friendly to home buyers. Give them the information they can use, why is it so hard to understand??

I found LittlePinkHouses.com while commenting on another blog. Great stuff, I’ve added the site to the blog roll and I hope you check them out.

I almost forgot, today is the first birthday of this place I call MOCO Real Estate News. Just some little blog way out here in the Arizona desert just humming along.

Things have changed since my first post.

One thing that I have discovered about blogging in real estate, it is an ever evolving activity. I still can’t figure out HTML language no matter how hard I try, but overall I have been pleased with the results from my efforts. I think of this place as the little blog that could, and it is my hope to continue along for many other such anniversary dates like today.

While I do not really know what the future holds for blogging, all I can do now is look back. When I do, I see that I have made some blogging friends and through those relationships I have learned
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