index (4)

4359163720?profile=original

Anyone remember MLS books? I remember when I first got into the business, we had to pay our Board of Realtors for this HUGE ass book that double the size of a telephone book that showed every active listing in our market.  I'm probably aging myself, but this was before the internet and even before computers were a standard staple of any office. Back then, the way we kept track of our clients and leads were by post-it notes and handwritten notebooks.

Good news - The times have changed! There is a plethora of great realtor software programs that now exist and are fairly cheap in the scheme of things, BUT...walk into any real estate office and your guaranteed to find at least a few agents still stuck in the last millennium using post-it notes and index cards as their best means of organizing leads and follow up.  I with I could report that the "post-it note agents" that are using this method were high producing agents that have stuck with a system that has worked well for them through the years.... but in my experience that is rarely the reality.

What's the best lead follow-up systems you've seen? What the worst/most embarrassing ones you've run across?

 

http://wp.me/p1yiuo-2l

Read more…

Case Shiller: Will We Double Dip

Case Shiller report shows a deceleration in the annual growth rates in 17 of the 20 MSAs. Housing generally leads the economy out of a recession. This time its not, housing is simply suffering. Not only is money tight but job creation is still a big hurt. In some cities, the decline over the last year was quite sharp.

David M. Blitze,chairman of S.&P.’s index committee tells the NY Times that a double-dip could be confirmed before spring. He goes on to say the series is now only 4.8% and 3.3% above their April 2009 lows. Certainly nine cities set new lows, and with the only positive news concentrated in southern California and Washington DC, the data point to weakness in home prices.

S&P sounds dismal, indeed. David Wyss, S&Ps chief economist tells martketwatch that The recovery in home prices has not only stopped, it's going in reverse, that it's going to get worse before it gets better

Some Balance Is Needed

Artificial Stimulus
The tax credit
First, the index to a positive spike due to the tax credit, an artificial inducement to buy. Well it worked, and we saw buyers flood the market. But comparing new data to a spike that doesnt represent normal market behavior, but a artificial spike in home sales due to the tax credit can skew the true picture.

Seasonality
This is the slowest part of the year for home sales and must have something to do with the steep decline

Weather
Could the weather have been worse for the mid west and east coast? Winter is traditionally a poor indicator of market health.

Certainly, this market needs no excuses and Im not second guessing S&P, but lets not lose perspective - winter data is hardly a leading indicator for housing markets and there is more to the story than the data is expressing.

REsourced from www.yourpropertypath.com

You may republish this article, as long as you do not edit and you agree to preserve all links to the author and www.yourpropertypath.com

Related Articles
Apartment Sector: First One Out
Rent vs Buy End Of Year 2010
A Recent Survey: Is It Time To Buy Rental Property
Read more…
Fitch Solutions reported this week that its pricing index for subprime residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) originated in 2004 fell by 16.7 percent in November compared to just one month earlier.Other vintages included in Fitch’s study, from 2005, 2006, and 2007, showed small gains on a month-to-month basis. The gains helped to temper Fitch’s total market subprime RMBS price index so that it recorded only a “marginal” decline, according to the firm.While prices among recent vintage U.S. subprime RMBS continue to stabilize, 2004 is seeing a substantial drop-off in performance with no signs of improvement, Fitch said in its study.At first glance these statistics may seem to paint the more recent vintages in a better light … showing “gains”, “stabilizing”, and other affirmative-sounding depictions. But Fitch says the reason its 2004 subprime price index is deteriorating is because the 2004 loans are higher quality.Recent loan level analysis conducted by Fitch Solutions of the indices’ constituents revealed a significant uptick in the constant prepayment rate (CPR) of the 2004 vintage, meaning the credit-quality of a large number of these loans is high enough that they are being refinanced to allow mortgagors to take advantage of current low interest rates.The CPR for the 2005-2007 vintages, on the other hand, remained unchanged due to the lower quality loan-to-value ratios precluding much refinancing, Fitch explained.“As the good quality loans are refinanced, the remaining pools are on average of lower credit quality, a factor that largely caused the drop in price for the 2004 Subprime Price Index,” said Thomas Aubrey, managing director at Fitch and author of the study. “Credit quality among the pools will continue to converge over time as better quality borrowers take advantage of refinancing opportunities, thus leaving the remaining pool with more consistent weaker borrowers.”With these weaker, diminished quality loan pools also comes a higher default rate – another factor contributing to the declining performance of the 2004 subprime RMBS, Fitch said.DSNews 11/13/09
Read more…

Climb in U.S. House Prices Pauses in July

Integrated Asset Services®, LLC (IAS®) (www.iasreo.com), a leader in default management and residential collateral valuations, today released the latest IAS360™ House Price Index (HPI). Based on the timeliest and most granular data available in the industry, the index for national house prices was down 0.5% in July.The slight decline marked the first down month for the IAS360 since February. The leading U.S. housing benchmark remains ahead fractionally for the year but still well off (-16.2%) its high in June 2007.“We are seeing normal seasonality with a slight July pullback, but we are not out of the weeds yet as we will see waves of volatility while the markets correct themselves and settle down,” said Dave McCarthy, President and CEO of Integrated Asset Services. “Meanwhile, there’s an awful lot going on down at the neighborhood level that will take time to normalize at the top.”Conspicuous among the nation’s 10 major metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) were the 3.8% declines in both Denver, which had been reliably stable since the first of the year, and San Francisco, which had jumped almost 8.0% from February. Notable, too, was a sizable 4.8% drop for the month in Las Vegas. While the region has fallen month over month since August of 2006, July’s plunge represents the largest percentage drop to date.“A lot of this volatility has to reflect Washington's near-term influence on price behavior through actions like the foreclosure moratorium,” says McCarthy. “We’re already seeing buying activity moving around in different price segments. The beauty of the IAS360 is that the index captures and reports on these changes in a way that reveals the reality of the market.”The IAS360 House Price Index is a comprehensive housing index tracking monthly change in the median sales price of detached single-family residences across the U.S. The index, based on all arms-length transactions, tracks data for 15,000 neighborhoods, that roll up to report on the changes in 360 counties, nine census divisions, four regions, and the nation overall. The IAS360 House Price Index is delivered on a monthly basis.
Read more…