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House Sales Tank to 6 Year Low - NAR Blames Credit Crunch 2007-10-02 21:33:42 Hat tip Keith at HousingPanic for this symbolic photo.  Existing home sales are down 21.5% year over year and hit a 6 year low, the National Association of Realtors reported today. It is the lowest number reported for existing home sales since the NAR started tracking the number. Larry Yun, the court jester hired to put a happy face on gloomy numbers for the NAR blamed the credit crunch for the dismal housing sales: “The volume of activity we’re seeing today is below sustainable market fundamentals because some creditworthy people are trying to buy homes but can’t because of the credit crunch,” Yun noted. I’ve got a slightly different hypothesis, Lar; people that have zero liquid reserves and mediocre credit scores are finding it impossible to buy their dream McMansion with 100% financing on stated income and stated assets. That’s what’s killing the numbers. We went through the “creditworthy” people a long time ago. Funny, h ...

Making Real Estate Search Faster and More Local 2007-10-02 15:02:25 Some things are universal, such as when you click on a link you want an instant reaction. Redfin’s response time hasn’t been as fast as we’d like, so we’ve released a new version that improves performance significantly. It’s on the site today. You’ll see much faster search, especially for past sales search. John Battelle’s blog on what web users value was influential in our decision to prioritize performance. We ran many different tests against our old user interface and the new one. The chart below shows the performance gains across three browsers. In the case of Internet Explorer 6, we display listings on our map almost four times faster with the new version of our site. The performance gains are smaller but still significant for IE7 (download it) and Firefox (download it), both of which have better overall performance than IE6. And we’ve added a cool visual effect: during the (now shorter) search, you’ll see a progress ba ...

Home Stage & Blogging… Reflecting Opportunities in Real Estate Marketing 2007-10-02 12:50:00 For a little over a year now I have been writing about home staging here in this blog. I have to admit I have been fortunate in raising my staging voice up in an ever expanding world of real estate blogging. I believe part of the reason for my blogging success is due to the fact that the approach I take to blogging reflects the approach I take to staging. When it comes to staging and selling a home it is no secret that good curb appeal is desirable. If a buyer doesn’t like what they see, there is a good chance they will just move on. Well the same goes for a blog. I consider a blog’s headline its initial curb appeal. Headlines should be interesting and captivating so that your reader wants to stop in and read on. When touring a home, which is for sale, a second critical moment takes place the instant the buyer opens the door and sees the interior of a home for the first time. What a buyer sees in this moment better be a visually appealing. For just as it is important t ... Amp  Blogging  Marketing

Morgan Stanley Lays Off in Mortgage-Related Divisions 2007-10-02 11:58:29 Market Watch reports that Morgan Stanley is laying off 600 employees in its mortgage-related divisions as it consolidates mortgage operations in light of recent market changes.  Morgan Stanley owns and operates Saxon Capital which is one of the few remaining subprime lenders in the market place.  The move includes 500 state-side jobs and corroborates the recent implode-o-meter subscriber email detailing branch closings at East Coast Saxon offices. From the article: Morgan Stanley unveiled plans Tuesday to scale back its residential mortgage business, including cutting 600 jobs, as the investment bank responds to recent turmoil in the real-estate and home-loan markets. … “The industry has experienced a fundamental paradigm shift that will require banks to rethink product offerings and capital structures, and to provide greater transparency to investors in securities backed by pools of mortgages,” said Bruce Witherell, managing director and global co-head of the resi ...

Homes sold on ByTheOwner.com in August 2007 : an increase of 63% over last year 2007-10-02 04:42:34 According to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA). seasonally adjusted sales dropped 4.1 per cent in August to 43,257 units from July’s 45,102. Resale housing sales activity was down in most provinces, particularly in Ontario and Quebec. But the real estate association says sales in August were up 7.7 per cent over sales in the same month of 2006. Meanwhile, on ByTheOwner.com, 288 houses were sold in August 2006 and 457 in August 2007 : an increase of 63% over last year. Those 487 sold houses represented about 1% of the overall housing market in Canada. The median length of time that single family homes were on the market on ByTheOwner.com was 52 days in Canada and an average of 67.81% of our single family houses for sale in Canada sold using our services. ...

San Francisco Home Sales Data - September 2007 2007-10-01 23:41:02 Holy Crap… does anyone else realize it’s October? I realized it must have been October when I walked into a Macy’s and there were already Christmas trees. Can someone tell me when we decided to skip Halloween and Thanksgiving and jump right into the jolliest time of the year? I’d like to carve my pumpkin before I start making pie from it. Wait…. there was something else that made me realize that it’s October…. THAT’S RIGHT! MLS September sales data is officially available! Here’s this month’s summary of home sales pulled directly from the MLS. Remember, these are all closed sales and not pending sales. And there may still be a few lingering sales that haven’t been updated in the MLS just yet… most agents update the MLS data immediately, but there are always a few stragglers. But the bulk of the data is here! Check back monthly to get the latest facts and figures - and if you have any questions and t ...

Blown Mortgage - Winner at Carnival of Real Estate 2007-10-01 21:25:59 The Carnival of Real Estate is a weekly celebration of the best writing in the real estate “blogosphere”. And this week the contest was held over at one of our favorite blogs, The Orange County Register’s Mortgage Insider blog. Out of 30 entries this week yours truly was one of the 3 winning entries with my post A Bail Out is Still a Bail Out by Any Other Name. Thanks to Matt at the OC Register for recognizing Blown Mortgage and the work we do here. Here are the other two winners as well: Spicing Up the Neighborhood What really gets Web hits on Zillow.com? A house that’s a brothel, writes Diane Tuman on the Zillow Blog. I chose her post to start with a lighter note, and because it’s a titillating read. Also, Tuman gets right to the point, something essential in blogging: The New Rochelle police routinely monitor Internet sites and saw an ad on Craigslist for “Grand Opening Special! Hot models, soft sensual touch”¦New Rochelle has Westches ...

Countrywide Continues to Try to Calm Nervous Brokers 2007-10-01 12:16:12 This is an open letter from Countrywide to its brokers regarding the recent market situation. This is the third such communication in a series that started here, and continued here. What are you thoughts? Honest, genuine insight in to Countrywide or marketing drivel to placate an important (but problematic) revenue source? Dear Business Partner: My previous note in this series of communications outlined some of the decisive steps that Countrywide®, America’s Wholesale Lender® has taken to address projected industry declines in loan origination volume for the remainder of 2007 and into 2008. The focus of this note is the ongoing importance of the mortgage broker “value proposition” in today’s mortgage market. This topic is particularly significant to all of us in the wholesale lending channel”?lenders and brokers alike”?as our industry adapts to the new realities of the current market environment. With a shared goal of revitalizing the w ...

Redfin, By the Numbers, And an Experiment 2007-10-01 08:29:07 After popping up on TechCrunch and BusinessWeek Friday and in Slashdot over the weekend, Redfin appeared on Guy Kawasaki’s blog today, in a post comparing our planned costs to our actual costs. For those putting together a financial model, here are a few bonus links: 1. On the amount of office space recommended by brokers. 2. On the need to get a quarterly third-party valuation of common stock, to protect employees from cheap stock charges. 3. And proof that California’s tiny payroll tax is tiny. Thanks to Guy, who has put Redfin in the limelight before on why a startup was harder than we thought, and how you can do your own PR. It’s a huge honor to appear on such a great blog, even if Guy took out (again!) our Diddy link. Anyone want to guess which site (Guy Kawasaki, Slashdot, Techcrunch) drives more traffic? We’ll post the answer Friday. ...

Consider It SOLD 2007-10-01 07:40:46 Your home has been on the market for a couple of weeks and already you’ve had more visitors than in the whole time you’ve lived in it. You’re overwhelmed with last minute phone calls from your Realtor requesting yet another viewing. So with all this traffic, why hasn’t your house sold? The objective is to have your home priced right and looking better than the competition. So the proper staging of your home makes the difference between it selling quickly or being the last property in the neighborhood to sell. Buyers are looking for a home they can picture living in. They’ll pay top dollar when all they need to do is move in and add their own personal touches to make the house their home. Follow these suggestions to help get your home ‘Real Estate’ ready. Think ‘curb appeal’ What is the home saying on the outside? It’s a fact that potential buyers often make up their minds in the first few minutes. How the home presents ...

Penhold Market Update 2007-10-01 05:46:00 It’s October 1 and we’ve officially entered the last fiscal quarter for 2007. What an exciting year in real estate again. Dramatically different then 2006, and I can’t wait to see how the rest of the year unfolds and 2008 begins. Penhold historically has been somewhat quiet in comparison to the neighbors. 2007 is year best characterized as people on the move year. Perhaps it is because in 2006 we had a shortage of listings which created price increases weekly if not daily and the list price was often the starting price with many buyers bidding on one home over another. This year, 2007, more people are looking at that increase in equity and using it now to move up pr downsize. Seller’s can move with confidence that they have some where to go where a 2006 for some there was a level of fear that they would not find a suitable replacement. In Penhold: 2006 January 1 - October 1 there was a total of 30 properties that sold. The median list and sale price for sin ...

What, Me Worry? Redfin in a Buyer’s Market”¦ 2007-10-01 05:30:59 This is shaping up to be the winter of our discontent. High real estate prices were once a threat to the middle class; now low real estate prices are a threat to the middle class. Reporting last Friday that new homes sales’ hit a seven-year low, USA Today’s Noelle Knox quotes an economist as saying “this is just hideous.” The same day, House Intelligence’s Jonathan Smoke notes that transaction volumes would seem healthy if we could just forget the past five years. Inman’s Glenn Roberts brings word that discount listing brokerage Foxtons may be filing for bankruptcy. TechCrunch highlights Realtors at each others’ throats. The Wall Street Journal somehow predicts the demise of an entire real estate-mad state. Yet online real estate startups have nonetheless banked $62 million of venture capital in the past four months. So, are we worried? OF COURSE WE ARE (but hey, we always are). After increasing revenues nearly seven-fold over the first seven m ...

RealEstatePlus.ca is back 2007-10-01 04:22:22 Finally, an INTELLIGENT home search A new Toronto website, RealEstatePlus.ca, has taken power of Web 2.0 and applied it to real estate. It brings accurate, immediate, easy residential real estate search directly to your home or mobile phone. And, with the complete MLS® database, it presents specific property details for all of the homes for sale in Toronto. Imagine the possibilities! Whether you’re a home buyer or seller, a real estate professional, or just plain curious, it’s a great addition to your real estate intelligence gathering. Incredibly simple “? all you have to do is type the address or location of any home (ie: 123 Main Street or Riverdale) and instantly you’ll know the scoop on that great mansion or the cozy cottage next door, all for FREE! You’ll get complete info about the property including: Price (they want what?!) Number of Bedrooms (where will Aunt Irma sleep?) Number of Bathrooms (less sibling fights?) Square Footage (yep, enough ro ...

Fizber.com Launches City Profile Feature Under Individual Home Listings 2007-10-01 04:11:35 FSBO Website Creates a More Comprehensive Home Listing Page with the Addition of Area Statistics. Fizber.com, a real estate for-sale-by-owner (FSBO) website, announces the addition of a “City Profile” feature to each home listing page, providing buyers with all the information they need - about a specific house and its location - in one place. City profiles aren’t new to FSBOs, but many websites unintentionally bury the information and require separate searches to find it. Fizber.com displays the city profile on the same page as the listing itself, allowing buyers to view the statistics immediately. With statistics pulled from BestPlaces.net, Fizber.com’s city profile provides a detailed look at factors that could impact the quality of life for an area: demographics, economics, crime rates, education percentages, health indexes and climate data. Each topic is broken down into more specific information and compared agains ...

At last, INTELLIGENT home search 2007-10-01 04:11:35 A new Toronto website, RealEstatePlus.ca, has taken power of Web 2.0 and applied it to real estate. It brings accurate, immediate, easy residential real estate search directly to your home or mobile phone. And, with the complete MLS® database, it presents specific property details for all of the homes for sale in Toronto. Imagine the possibilities! Whether you’re a home buyer or seller, a real estate professional, or just plain curious, it’s a great addition to your real estate intelligence gathering. Incredibly simple “? all you have to do is type the address or location of any home (ie: 123 Main Street or Riverdale) and instantly you’ll know the scoop on that great mansion or the cozy cottage next door, all for FREE! You’ll get complete info about the property including: Price (they want what?!) Number of Bedrooms (where will Aunt Irma sleep?) Number of Bathrooms (less sibling fights?) Square Footage (yep, enough room for the pool table) Lot Siz ...