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FizBer.com Introduces a Home Pricing System with Wiggle Room 2007-10-09 01:25:33 Homeowners know how low they’re willing to go when they sell their homes. They also know how much they’re hoping to get. Now real estate for-sale-by-owner (FSBO)leader FizBer.com (http://www.fizber.com ) has introduced a pricing system that includes both those figures - and may help owners sell their homes faster in today’s real estate market. It works like this: Instead of listing their homes for a set price, sellers state a price range they’re willing to accept. The lower price serves as a starting point for buyers interested in buying the home at an affordable price, and negotiations proceed from there. How it works: http://www.fizber.com/Florida/buy-Condo-Townhome-home-181464.html The advantages of a price-range system of selling real estate are many. Buyers can see the seller’s rock-bottom price and offer accordingly. Often, the lower price is low enough to give buyers instant equity. Should more than one buyer make an offer on the home, knowing the s ...

Sell Houses on YouTube with Fizber 2007-10-09 00:48:39 FSBO site gives every seller a YouTube video. YouTube, the premier online video Web site, generates millions of views every day. Now homeowners selling their homes by owner can take advantage of that unprecedented exposure, thanks to leading real estate for-sale-by-owner (FSBO) site Fizber.com (http://www.Fizber.com ). The company has just upgraded its Fizber Video service. Fizber.com sellers can now upload their own still photos to Fizber.com, rather than hiring professional videographers. Fizber.com’s proprietary software then creates a video tour from those photos and from the owner’s description and property details, then posts it on YouTube and on dozens of social networking sites. It may seem like a premium service, but Fizber Video is included with every seller package. “We listened to our sellers’ feedback,” said Fizber.com PR manager Julia Foster. “What we were hearing was that sellers liked the idea of Fizber Video, they could see the poten ... Youtube

Phase 2 of Countrywide’s “Protect this House”� Campaign? Block ML-Implode. 2007-10-08 19:59:41 Numerous loyal readers of the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, who happen to also be Countrywide employees, have reported that the popular industry news web site has been blocked by Countrywide web servers. Countrywide and Mozilo, who have been the kings of spin in trying to put a positive face on the company’s problems, seem to be using some of the black-hat tactics they’ve used in duping shareholders and the public in to buying in to the Countrywide story.  When the story is bad just obliterate it, right? Perhaps this is phase 2 of the crisis PR firm Burson-Marsteller’s employee morale improvement plan “Protect this House”? The “Protect this House” campaign was launched with much internal fanfare to Countrywide employees who were asked to sign a “Loyalty Oath” in order to receive the “special” bracelet. Step one: rubber bracelets. Step two: censorship. It is apparent that employees have a trust issue with Country ...

Senator “Brokers are the problem”� Dodd is mum on lender culpability 2007-10-08 13:33:40 Here is an interesting video of Senator Chris Dodd (D - Connecticut) outlining his proposed legislative changes to improve the plight of homeowners who are currently falling victim to the declining housing market. (h/t Housing Doom) Two thoughts here: Dodd doesn’t address homeowner responsibility in the current fiasco.  Apparently consumer responsibility is not a part of the market mess; and people who made bad decisions shouldn’t have to face the music.  Standard. Dodd says it’s the brokers who are the ones who caused the disaster that is now the housing market.  He claims that brokers, who position themselves as financial advisers, duped homeowners in to bad loans by jacking up the interest rates.  No comment on lenders, apparently lenders didn’t have anything to do with this mess either. First of all his rambling thoughts and conjectures show a lack of understanding of the mortgage market; but we can forgive him for that, because most politicians are sp ...

Real-Estate Agents Are Babysitting Rats 2007-10-08 03:01:41 Jonathan Marks makes his living as a real-estate agent. Lately, he’s been babysitting rats. With the housing market in a dive and homes lingering unsold for months, the relationship between real-estate agents and their clients is beginning to change. Both buyers and sellers are demanding more from their brokers, and getting it. Jim Perry, an agent in St. Helena, Calif., spent most of an afternoon vacuuming up thousands of flies from one client’s guest house. Mary Hartley, in Albany, Ore., organized a garage sale for one seller, spent 10 hours painting the side of the house for another and recently enlisted her grandchildren to help clean out the debris in a crawl space for a third. And to help Sandra Le Buhn sell her $1.2 million, four-bedroom home in Mill Valley, Calif., Mr. Marks agreed to board her nine-year-old daughter’s cherished brown-and-white rats, Zack and Cody, who had been living in a cage in the bathtub. During the boom times just two years ago, real-est ...

Spread the good word 2007-10-07 20:38:36 hat tip keith and thanks to our supporters at first baptist:   Share This ...

How to Settle Your Real Estate Disputes - The FREE Public Seminar 2007-10-07 16:22:04 So you hate your landlord, or your tenant? Or maybe you own a TIC and you and your co-owners can’t seem to agree on anything? Or is your neighbor the neighborhood nuisance? No matter what the situation, Elizabeth Erhardt, a litigation attorney and partner of Sideman & Bancroft LLP will provide you with answers at the upcoming FREE public seminar sponsored by Zephyr Real Estate and yours truly. The presentation will feature attorney Elizabeth Erhardt. Liz concentrates her practice on resolving real estate disputes including: landlord-tenant matters co-owner disputes purchase and sales agreements boundary disputes nuisance actions probate disputes involving real property Ms. Erhardt will be discussing recent legal decisions affecting real property acquisition and retention and will be available to address real estate questions and concerns for you. When: October 20th - 10:00am to 12:00pm Where: Contract Design Center, 600 Townsend Street, San Francisco RSVP: E-mai ...

Every Last Penny? 2007-10-07 11:16:34 An alarming story in the Wall Street Journal online today highlights the recent uptick in loans against 401(k) retirement plans. Hat tip to Yves over at naked capitalism for picking up on it. From the WSJ: Despite potential tax and investment consequences, more individuals have been borrowing from their 401(k) plans or taking hardship withdrawals in recent months, some retirement-plan providers say. … “A few years ago, the buzz was about borrowing from a 401(k) to buy a second home,” says Jeff Carbone, a financial adviser in Cornelius, N.C. “Now it’s people looking at their 401(k) because they’ve extended themselves on their homes and credit lines.” The numbers are preliminary and are too nascent to draw real conclusions about the loans, but the increased borrowing is noticeable and comes conveniently at a time when dropping home prices and tighter underwriting guidelines have made the access to cash via equity more difficult to the average ...

Live, from Baby Tattooville 2007-10-07 08:45:37 When I was at Inman Connect, Brad Inman was asking questions of the audience and to the winner with the answers he liked the best, giving away Mark Frauenfelder’s “Rule the Web: How to Do Anything and Everything on the Internet—Better, Faster, Easier”. Frauenfelder’s an artist and one of the co-creators of BoingBoing. I met him briefly at a show he had at Roq la Rue Gallery in Seattle. Brad said he loves BoingBoing and admonished everyone who wasn’t a fan to become one immediately. For lovers of the internet, tech news, art and popular culture, it’s a regular read and getting something mentioned there is equivalent to having your new invention mentioned on engadget. I’ve had several posts meet with their approval and get a link. One was a photo essay on artist Lisa Petrucci and another just a little link that documented collector Steve Bard. Yesterday, they mentioned this one on Riverside folk artist Martin Sanchez. I met Mart ...

Market Watch, Comfort Zone in Fall Market 2007-10-07 05:30:00 Recently I was having a conversation about the market with a few friends and colleagues. Those that were not Realtors were asking about the so called price decline in Listings. “How much do you think the market will fall?” they asked me. I look at them and reply “fall?”. The market is competitive and yes there is pressure on price, and on the surface it may seem like prices are on the decline, but the reality is that the market is very healthy and strong. See my earlier post regarding median sale prices etc… The biggest change is the increase in supply. In general it is always a good time to buy. Real Estate is a long term investment, not a quick get rich scheme. Sure there may be moments in time that allow for rapid growth, but overall Real Estate is a long term investment and should be seen as part of your overall wealth creation portfolio. I was looking further into the numbers and decided to look at averages as well as the medians and sur ...

$549,999 is A Better Price for Your Home Than $550,001 (5% Better) 2007-10-06 09:08:37 With more than 70% of home-buyers looking on the Web for real estate to buy, we wondered if it made sense when pricing a house to take into account the parameters used on most real estate search sites. For example, since every site lets folks filter on price in increments of $25,000 at lower price ranges and increments of $50,000 at higher price ranges, wouldn’t a property priced at $549,999 get seen by more Web shoppers than one priced at $550,001? The answer is maybe, just a little. How so? Enter Mose Andre, Redfin’s ace statistician, who analyzed the logs of the Redfin site to determine how often Seattle users of our site see properties in different price ranges, between September 10, 2007 and September 24, 2007. His findings: About 30% of searches don’t even filter on price. But the number of searches that don’t filter on price is exaggerated on Redfin’s site because Redfin.com price filters aren’t easy for users to find. For most neighborhoods ...

Mozilo to Dump Tons of Countrywide Stock Next Week 2007-10-05 15:28:42 Countrywide issued a press release today announcing that Angelo Mozilo will sell a large number of shares as one of his 10b5-1 plans.  The 10b5-1 plans allow corporate executives to sell shares on a defined basis, triggered by stock prices and other events and set well in advance of the actual sale.  The rule was set up to allow executives to diversify out of large stock positions in their company while keeping them from leveraging insider information to their benefit.  This is, in theory at least, how it is supposed to work. The shares remaining in his plan will be sold in equal 20% chunks next Monday to Friday. I don’t have a share total yet, but I’ll update it when it comes along. From the press release: One of these 10b5-1 Plans, which was entered into almost a year ago on October 27, 2006, is set to expire this month and covers stock options previously granted to Mr. Mozilo. It provides that a pre-determined amount of Countrywide’s common stock issued upon exe ...

Realtors and home shoppers need dose of realism when looking for homes 2007-10-05 09:18:42 No matter what anyone tells you (including me) about whether it’s a good time or not to buy a home (it’s a terrible time in 9.5/10 cities)  there are some important financing considerations that you and your Realtor need to be aware of if you choose to buy before you fall in love with your “dream home.”�  While you may feel that certain situations warrant jumping in to the home market, the bottom line is now is not a good time to do it.  Even if you are relocating or have faced a major life change, the  prudent move in this market is to rent and look for better opportunities.  However, if you choose to enter the market (at your own peril) you need to be aware of the recent changes in the home loan market that may make your home search more difficult than it has been in the past few years. Please note that while these changes may adversely impact your ability to personally purchase a home, they are healthy corrections to a bloated and broken lending industr ...

I know people too”¦. 2007-10-05 08:16:55 The honor is all mine ...

WaMu’s Net Income Drops 75 percent for 3rd Quarter 2007-10-05 07:48:45 Washington Mutual saw its net income drop 75% for the 3rd quarter as its provisions for loan losses and portfolio-loan write downs ate away at top-line revenues.  Those provisions now total to close to $1 billion in charges.  These include both loans that are being hold to sell by Washington Mutual and those that WaMu has held, but now has little chance of recovering.  From Yahoo! Business: Rising delinquencies and defaults among mortgages, especially subprime loans given to customers with poor credit history, have led to the near disappearance of investors willing to buy the loans in the secondary markets and forced lenders to reserve more cash for losses. Washington Mutual gets a lot of its profit from the deferred interest booked in accordance with GAAP from the negative amortization loans that it has on its books.  It also has one of the thinnest loan loss provisions out of the major banks.  This means that problems associated with loan losses and profit margins are impacting ...