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Over, Under, At - SF Home Sales: December 29, 2007-January 4, 2008 2008-01-05 18:47:02 Welcome back to the “Over, Under, At”� weekly feature. It’s a simple breakdown taken from MLS data that shows the number of closed sales that sold Over Asking Price, Under Asking Price or At Asking Price. *Just a reminder that new construction sales are rarely included in this list since they don’t get posted on the MLS. Holy Crap! It’s really the first week of 2008. I’m still not really over that yet. Sales are even SLOWER than last week, but that’s to be expected since there were only a few days last week that were really working days. (You can only close a sale on a weekday and Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the preferred days to close). Stay tuned for next week’s numbers which I expect will still be low since these will all be sales that closed in December. Here’s a quick breakdown of closed San Francisco home sales for the week from December 29, 2007-January 4, 2008: Single Family Homes - 18 Homes Sold 7 Sol ...

11 Steps to Buying the Home That’s Right for You - Step 5: Do Your Homework! 2008-01-05 18:04:52 I apologize for the delay in getting you back on track with the 11 Steps to Buying the Home That’s Right for You. Last time, we left off with Step 4: Fine Tuning Your Needs and Wants. So, if you’re following along, you should now have a budget and a realistic list of what you’re looking for. And your REALTOR will also have your budget and your list in mind. Most likely, your REALTOR will be sending you listings that match your criteria from the MLS. This will most likely happen via email since carrier pigeons take a while to get the information to you, and sometimes they get lost. So be sure you are checking your email often. Even though properties aren’t flying off the market like they were a couple of years ago when the San Francisco real estate market was on fire, they’re still moving. And the more desirable, quaint, charming properties are still moving, and moving FAST! However, the listings your REALTOR sends you are only as good as the in ...

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring, The REALTOR is Snoring… 2008-01-05 06:20:32 I went to bed with a cold in my head, and I didn’t get up till the morning! The video above from youtube.com could have been taken on any tree lined street in San Francisco. Most streets in the City are a mess and are covered in wind-strewn trash, fallen trees or broken umbrellas. The storm has made it plain nasty outside the last few days. Thursday night/Friday morning the wind blew so hard against my house that I was convinced the shaking was caused by an earthquake and then Friday morning, upon leaving the tiny tree-lined street I live on, I had to navigate around the trees in the road, and even had to get out of my car to move some gigantic branches. If you’re reading this right now - there’s been a little break in the rain, and I even see a glimpse of fading blue sky in the East as the sun sets in the West. But don’t put away your galoshes just yet - there’s definitely more rain on the horizon. If I were you, I’d tuck myself into bed ...

How To Sell Your House Tax Free 2008-01-03 07:09:03 If you’re a homeowner or plan to be one someday, this episode is for you. There’s a significant tax benefit for homeowners that?s really important to know about. If you’ve owned and lived in your house for two of the previous five years, there’s a gift for you in the Federal tax code. And here it […] ...

Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’ 2008-01-03 05:30:25 Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated. Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less […] ...

Investor Culture and the meltdown. 2008-01-03 03:03:49 "I’ll have to go stated," the guy on the other end other end of the phone said.    I was then given a list of demands from this individual, from coming to three houses he wanted to purchase  from a friend (for 25% more than comparable sales were going for) to the fact that he had a 690 credit score and thus didn’t want to pay a lot of money for this loan.    "Other lenders," he said, "Didn’t want to work hard and get creative to get deals done in the new market."  I was obviously not the first lender he’d worked with.  He has received training of all sorts, more on getting the house then on managing his cashflow.  He found a seller willing to shovel some money at him if he bought at last year’s prices.  This would net him some cash.  From what I could surmise, he had been in the business of selling/rehabbing and flipping houses for 2 years.  He’d done abo ...

Top 10 Real Estate Predictions for 2008 2008-01-03 02:52:30 Where will 2008 take us? Based on Elizabeth Weintraub study of real estate facts and trends from 2007, here are her professional home buying and selling predictions for next year. ...

Toronto’s new tax implemented 2008-01-03 02:51:50 Home buyers in Toronto can no longer dodge a new land transfer tax, as the deadline came and went Monday for exemption from the city-imposed fee. The controversial tax, assessed at 0.5% to 2% of the sale price, can add thousands of dollars to the final cost of homes. The Toronto land transfer tax will take effect on February 1, but purchasers had until December 31 to buy a home to be exempt from it, with the closing date to be no later than February 1. Sales made to first-time home buyers under $400,000 are also exempt from the new Toronto land transfer tax. The tax is one of two new taxes approved by Toronto city council in October as part of its response to a $500-million budget shortfall. Since the vote, real estate agents observed a rush by homeowners to sell their homes before December 31, in the hope of avoiding the tax. Agents are predicting a slowdown in Toronto’s real estate market this year. Combined, the land transfer tax and a vehicle registration tax are expected to ...

How to Sell a Home in 2008 2008-01-03 02:45:37 If you’re planning to sell a home in 2008, it’s time to start thinking about how to make that home stand out from the rest. ...

What is the Best Way to Sell a Home During this Slowed Market? 2008-01-03 02:34:11 Slow is the word in housing market. The real estate market has slowed down in many areas that were booming over the last few years. Sellers in those areas got spoiled. It was only necessary to put a sign out front, and buyers came. Homes sold in a matter of days. This is no longer […] ...

ByTheOwner’s December For Sale By Owner Stats: New Listings, Sold Properties, Active Listings 2008-01-03 02:32:34 Here are ByTheOwner.com’s Canadian For Sale By Owner stats for December 2007: New listings increased 80% from 322 new listings in December 2006, to 580 new listings in December 2007 Sold properties increased 40% from 351 sold properties in December 2006, to 491 sold properties in December 2007. Total active listings increased 55% from 3,400 active homes for sale in December 2006, to 5300 active homes for sale in December 2007. www.bytheowner.com ...

ByTheOwner December 2007 Webstats - FSBO Visitors Increase 50% 2008-01-03 02:21:23 ByTheOwner.com’s website statistics for the month of December 2007: Website visitors increased from 348,672 unique visitors in December 2006, to 521,955 in December 2007. This is a 50% increase in unique website visitors from December 2006 to 2007. Pageviews increased from 3.27 million page views in December 2006, to 4.54 million pageviews in December 2007. This is 28% increase in pageviews from December 2006 to 2007. Unique visitors and pageviews are the two most useful statistics when it comes to measuring the exposure you will receive from a For Sale By Owner website. Unique visitors is the number of individual people coming to look for properties on the site. Pageviews is the number of pages that those visitors look at. For example, on ByTheOwner.com in December 2007 we had 521,955 unique visitors and they looked at 4.54 million pages. This means each visitor looked at approximately 9 pages. Some websites claim to have a certain number of “hits”�. This is not a ...

Do Open Houses Sell Homes? 2008-01-03 02:13:57 Open houses. The professional real estate community appears split on whether it’s a good idea to hold open a house for sale. Many sellers wonder if Sunday open houses are worth the inconvenience. Some complain that agents use open houses to pick up clients rather than to sell their home. Others worry about security. Do […] ...

National City Shutters Wholesale Department 2007-12-31 11:05:01 Well, I had a draft posted about National City dying this year.  It wasn’t crisp or sharp, but it would have made me a prophet.   A couple of hours ago, they announced that they would be shuttering their wholesale lending department.  This is after they shuttered second mortgages. And the beat goes on… Share This ...

The George P. Riley Group 2007-12-31 09:15:29 Although public housing in Seattle has always been maintained to be livable, elsewhere in the country public housing has been allowed to deteriorate to the extent that people can no longer live in many thousands of units. In the early 1990s, a national commission found that about 100,000 public housing units in the U.S. were “severely distressed” and proposed a national action plan to address this problem by the year 2000. In 1992, Congress authorized a new program called Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere, or HOPE VI, to carry out the commission’s recommendations. In August 1999, the Office of Housing and Urban Development awarded Seattle Housing Authority with a $35 million HOPE VI grant to redevelop Rainier Vista, a 481-unit World War II-era garden community in Southeast Seattle. The Seattle Housing Authority created a unique partnership with local builders to build not only low-income and rental housing, but market value housing for members of the mi ...