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“Great Streets” of the Nation 2007-10-08 18:11:26   The American Planning Association yesterday released it’s first list Great Streets in the country. Among the ten great streets was South Temple Street in downtown Salt Lake City. From the article; True to Its Original Character Down to the Smallest Details First envisioned in Joseph Smith’s Plat of Zion of 1833 and later employed by Brigham Young in 1847, South Temple Street was meant to be the finest and most prominent avenue in Salt Lake City, as well as a model for other cities and towns in the west. Much of South Temple’s success today is a direct reflection of this original bold vision. The American Planning Association has selected South Temple Street as one of 10 Great Streets in America for its historical residential design and craftsmanship, diversity of land uses, and the integration of multiple forms of transportation throughout history — as well as commitment on the part of the community to preserve its legacy. A major east-west corridor, South Templ ...

Lynn Richards 2007-10-05 16:59:58 In memory… ...

Things I Like About the Current Market 2007-09-30 22:57:07   The current market in Salt Lake is this; Lots of inventory, some people are watching to see what’s going on, lenders are beginning to realize they don’t have to completely shut down all loans to stay profitable, and lots of people are buying and selling houses still. Still, regardless of the good and bad and everything- there are hundreds of people buying and selling homes every week in Salt lake county. And of course hundreds more are being bought and sold in surrounding counties as well. Here are some of the things I like about the current market… Everyone I talk to is not an “investor”. It drove me crazy the last couple years that everyone I spoke to claimed to be a real estate investor. Whether they had purchased rentals or flipped any houses or not- they all fancied themselves as an investor because they all wanted to be one. And they all thought they knew everything about real estate. They didn’t, they still don’t and now they can fin ...

Fed Chops Half-Percent Off Rates/ Utah Job Market Still Strong 2007-09-19 15:34:34   Pick up a copy of the Tribune today and the whole front page talks about the .5% rate cut the fed just announced and how Utah’s job growth represents 5% of the entire country’s job growth. What does this mean for our local real estate market? Not much, actually. People with adjustable-rate mortgages will have some relief and people will get lower rates on home-equity loans and, but our job growth has been leading the nation for over a year, interest rates are a very low 6.25% right now (locally) and our local economy has been super strong for a while now. Local unemployment is still at all-time record lows for the state and people are moving into the area. But none of that really matters because many people need to sit and wait, wait and see, see and watch, watch and wait… Our challenges are not interest rates- it’s inventory levels, lender restrictions, and the overall “Chicken Little” message the media is pumping out about the sky falling. Eve ...

Salt Lake City Real Estate Market 2007-09-18 19:21:16   The state of the real estate market in Salt Lake City today is interesting. It’s much tougher to sell a home now and there are three very distinct reasons why; 1. Inventory levels are ridiculously high. Funny how this works (in any market). Prices start to go up, people begin to notice and wait and see, prices continue to go up and people begin to plan selling their homes to take advantage of the rising prices, people begin to list homes for sale and homes sell quickly, market begins to reach critical mass, everyone throws home on the market so they don’t “miss this great opportunity while prices are high”. Problem is that people begin to think about selling/buying while prices are going up but don’t act. They wait and wait and talk about it while the market is rising and then by the time they decide to do anything the market has begun to slow. Sellers are the last to acknoledge that a seller’s market has turned. It’s truly an amazing thing ...

Renting Costs More Than Owning 2007-09-17 01:00:16   USAToday published an article last week titled Housing Costs Punish Family Budgets. The article spoke of the costs of buying a home and taxes and the rising costs associated with home-ownership. It also discussed how many people are spending so much of their income on their mortgage payments and how that hurts these families.  Aside from the too-easy “Why didn’t you buy a house in your price-range” argument, let’s instead look at an article they published two days later, titled Housing Crunch Hits Renters Hard. This article discusses how rents have gone up so fast that many can’t afford to pay them and are being forced to move. From USAToday The home mortgage crisis has received far more notice, but experts say the ranks of renters with dire housing problems are growing faster than the ranks of defaulting homeowners. The Center for Housing Policy reports that the number of working-family renters paying more than half their income for housing has soar ...

Utah Job Growth Shows No Sign of Slowing 2007-09-14 12:36:44   Utah has been atop the country’s lists of states with major job growth for the last couple years and the unemployment rate in Utah has been at record lows. Now local employers are saying that things are only going to get better (or, would that be worse?) The Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, released on Tuesday, shows that 52% of Utah’s employers plan on adding to their staff during the next six months, while only 3% would be decreasing their numbers. Much of the news surrounding the area’s job growth has centered around certain companies and industries, but this survey is over the breadth of business categories, meaning it will affect most of the population. In the Orem area, over 60% of employers will be hiring, in the Ogden area 50% will be adding to their ranks and in Salt Lake County 47% will be hiring more people, 53% say they will remain the same, and zero said they plan to reduce staffing levels. From the Deseret News The strong Utah figures are in con ...

Home Builders Now Willing to Play Ball 2007-09-08 13:47:33   Some home builders are very straight-forward with the way they sell homes. They build a product and they market that product at a price they believe is fair in the market and will also bring them a profit. One example would be Ivory Homes. Ivory has always treated my clients well and my clients have always seemed very pleased with their purchase. Ivory isn’t trying to be the lowest-priced home builder and they don’t compete simply on price- they compete on value and quality. And they tell the buyers this from the beginning. Their product is semi-custom, meaning you choose one of their floor plans but then have a lot of things you can change about the floor plan and layout. And they have always worked well with Realtors and other lenders. All of this may be why they are Utah’s largest home builder. On the other side, there are home builders who are stubborn in their business practices and only work with consumer’s wants, Realtors and outside lenders when ...

Utah Foreclosures Rates Far Below National Average 2007-09-08 12:25:32   According to it’s National Delinquency Survey, released today by the Mortgage Bankers Association, the percentage of Utahn’s with loans in foreclosure at the end of the second quarter 2007 dropped from 0.74% (second quarter 2006) to 0.55%. This puts Utah’s foreclosure rate 61% lower than the current national rate of 1.40% for the quarter. As the Salt Lake Tribune points out, some of the factors include Utah’s economy creating jobs at one of the fastest rates in the nation, local unemployment rates at record lows, and our continued strong housing appreciation, which allows people to sell their homes and pay closing cost before needing to resort to foreclosure. The strong local economy and job growth are two very important factors here as they help give indication as to where a real estate market is going. The strength of our local market for the last few years has been attributed to a number of factors that go beyond simple investor speculation and home reh ...

The Fallacy of an “Average Sales Price” 2007-09-02 18:03:40   Don’t believe everything you see in the media. You probably hear that all the time, but surprisingly, most people still do- especially when there are numbers- statistics to back up the claims. But there are many ways to look at data. People mine it, disect it, twist it up, slice it into pieces and then put it back together again to make whatever point they are trying to make. But different people can make the same data look entirely different by the way the present it and by choosing the pieces of that information that will best suit their needs. So what does this mean? Well, if nothing else, it at least should tell us to be careful not to simply take stats for the way they are presented. Case in point- Average Sales Price. What is an average sales price and what does it tell us? Well, again that depends on the data being used. Here’s what I mean… If the “average sales price” for an area (residential homes) is $280,000 and last year the average sales ...

There are no Good or Bad Markets 2007-08-31 21:28:53   It’s funny hearing people talk about “the market” because I don’t quite know for sure what they are talking about, and more often than not- neither do they. Are they talking about the Salt Lake City market, the Utah market or the imaginary “national market” that only exists in the media. And it’s interesting to hear people talk about good markets and bad markets. “This is such a great market” or “this market sucks!” are a couple examples. Well, what exactly is so great about it, or what makes a certain market suck? In a local real estate market like Salt Lake is in right now it depends on your price range whether it’s a buyer’s or a seller’s market, but above $300,000 it’s a buyer’s market, so what does that mean- is that great? There are no good or bad markets because it’s all a matter of your point of view. Usually when people talk about the market being good or bad- it is from ...

Visual Aid of Real Estate 2.0 Companies 2007-08-27 10:35:43 If you’re wondering who the players are in online real estate today, you’ve just been given a new tool. 1000WattConsulting has put up a visual aid showcasing the top players in the RE2.0 space, complete with categories and links. Real Estate 2.0 is like Web1.0 for the rest of the world because the real estate industry as a whole, didn’t really embrace the internet until about 13 minutes ago. And most Realtors and brokers are still confused about how the whole thing works. Understand, most real estate in America is still sold by agents who got the job because they either knew the seller or were referred to them. There are over 50,000 real estate agents who blog now, but there are over 2 million real estate agents. That’s less than 2.5% of the agents that are blogging. I read somewhere that 12% of agents have websites now, but most are crappy template sites (same website, different agent photo). So this isn’t just a visual showcase of the Real Estate 2.0 ...

People Don’t Buy Homes Online 2007-08-27 10:08:06 I’ve been utilizing the internet to sell homes longer than almost anybody. My first real estate website was built back in 1998 (which might be considered Web.05) and featured a few spots where I could change the photos and info about homes and a few pages of clip-art and text. It was crude, for sure, but also high-tech and innovative back then. Heck, I was a broker with the first company (Prudential California) to ever accept a real estate contract on a house online. Site unseen, but the buyer had an inspection period to come see the home before the close was finalized. Today I run a team of Realtors and have multiple websites that have flash, motion video, map-based search, Web2.0 looks and feel, consumer-generated content, self-updating information, virtual tours, online offers, and even property notifications by text message or email. Last week I brought some clients into the office to search for homes with me and the MLS was down so we jumped onto BlueRoof.com because the we ...

Utah’s Mid-Priced Housing Market Softens, Lower Priced Market Stays Strong 2007-08-17 13:36:21 The housing market for homes priced between $400,000-$800,000 in northern Utah is showing signs of softening due to high inventory levels. We are not going through a correction or a decline, simply a slowing. The Salt Lake Tribune today reports that homes priced over $500,000 are being hit the hardest, which I can confirm. I listed a home for $509,900 two days ago and when I pulled comps there were hundreds of active homes in the area, in the price range that we need to compete against. The media likes to play up anything they can, including a shifting housing market, but things aren’t usually nearly as dramatic as the media makes them out to be. The media is chicken little, running around screaming about anything they can, while I’m out in the field everyday seeing what’s actually happening. (Searching between $500-$700k on BlueRoof.com in the south end of valley returns almost 500 homes for sale) In the lower price ranges homes are still flying off the market in d ...

Utah’s Mid-Priced Housing Market Softens, Lower Priced Market Stays Strong 2007-08-16 13:36:21 The housing market for homes priced between $400,000-$800,000 in northern Utah is showing signs of softening due to high inventory levels. We are not going through a correction or a decline, simply a slowing. The Salt Lake Tribune today reports that homes priced over $500,000 are being hit the hardest, which I can confirm. I listed a home for $509,900 two days ago and when I pulled comps there were hundreds of active homes in the area, in the price range that we need to compete against. The media likes to play up anything they can, including a shifting housing market, but things aren’t usually nearly as dramatic as the media makes them out to be. The media is chicken little, running around screaming about anything they can, while I’m out in the field everyday seeing what’s actually happening. (Searching between $500-$700k on BlueRoof.com in the south end of valley returns almost 500 homes for sale) In the lower price ranges homes are still flying off the market in d ...