BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: September 2009 (page 4 of 4)

September 5, 2009

Even though much of the current real estate “news” is really just hype, there can still be good reasons for you to be in the market

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This from my Arizona Republic real estate column (permanent link):

Get a load of all that great housing news! Median prices are up! Sales volumes are up! The prognosis for the future? Up, up, up!

Here’s a different take: If it looks, walks and talks like hype, it’s probably hype.

Are houses selling well, compared to a year ago? They are — but the federal government is giving first-time home-buyers $8,000 in free money to buy houses right now. If that tax credit is not extended or replaced with something even more generous, the music will stop on November 30th.

And while median home prices may be up, prices for homes that normal working people actually buy are flat at best — and they have been trending downward since December of 2005.

But what about the shortage of available homes you have read about? What about the multiple offer scenarios, with homes selling for thousands of dollars over list price?

What would you expect to happen when you artificially stimulate demand at the same time that you artificially limit supply? We should be doing what your grandpa used to call “a land-office business.” Instead, even with $8,000 in free money, prices are still trending downward.

And that artificially-limited supply — all of the foreclosed homes that banks are withholding from the marketplace — will flood the market sooner or later.

If you’re in the real estate market right now, what you should do depends on your circumstances.

If you’re a seller, make a deal. Your carrying costs will almost certainly exceed any gain you can hope to realize by waiting out the market.

If you’re a first-time home-buyer, jump. If you’re not under contract by October 15th, you’ll probably miss out on the tax credit — and houses are not easy to get, taking account of the artificially-limited supply.

Buying with a loan? Interest rates are low for now, but they may not stay that way.

Buying all cash? Sit tight. As sweet as prices look right now, it seems likely they’ll get a lot sweeter when the banks finally release all the homes they’ve been hoarding.

 
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September 4, 2009

Jobs Report – did I call it wrong?

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

Okay, so far this morning, the market has reacted in a very volatile but not significantly changed manner to the jobs report.   Essentially the jobs report came in pretty much where the market expected.  

So, did I call it wrong by recommending a shorter term lock and a long term float guideline yesterday?   I don’t think so for a couple of reasons:

  1. We’ve passed the major economic hurdle for the next few weeks without any news that is going to significantly lower rates.   Between that and the fact that the new Reg Z rules essentially require locking in your rate at least 1 1/2 weeks before closing, it makes sense, if you are closing soon, to grab a rate and be done with it.
  2. One of the “big guys” at PIMCO was on CNBC this morning talking about how this is a “sugar high” rally that is based on inventory and cost control and stimulus funding (isn’t that what stimulus is supposed to do?) but that it won’t last.    When reality hits, the stock market will adjust and the adjustment won’t be pretty.    That has two potential options:  1) It would force money into the bond market driving down rates, or 2) It could cause money to jump to cash (remember last fall?) and everything would be really ugly.   So I expect there is still some lower rate potential in the next 60 to 90 days.

Have a good weekend!

Thanks!

Tom Vanderwell

September 3, 2009

Speaking of Liberty

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

For months now I have watched the political field of action, players, on-lookers, naysayers and pundits. Is there no clarity?

My highest regard for that clarity sometimes springs from this very site, its authors, contributors and readers. So today, I introduce again a contributing voice to the clarity that originates from reason, Ayn Rand.

Watch her eyes throughout this. She understands what is to come in the form and substance of the questions, and when given the opportunity, she is clear, resonant and reasoned. Oh, and she’s right by the way.

September 3, 2009

Would Consulting An Expert Produce Superior Results For You?

by

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Preface: The year long retooling of my firm’s infrastructure is now well into its second year, mercifully nearing the finish line. To my great joy, I’ve rediscovered the Old School working definition of what an expert is. They not only know what they’re doing, they know why what they do works — producing, be still my heart, RESULTS. Or, in BawldSpeak, Skinned Cats. Expert recognition hint: Next time you’re talkin’ with somebody you suspect is an expert, pay attention to how many answers they supply to questions you never in a million years woulda known to ask. Then ask yourself in how many disciplines do you count yourself as an expert?

Ah, and there’s the rub.

When I first learned about the Lord’s game, baseball, the Dodgers and Giants had only been in California for a couple years. There was no Chavez Ravine — well, the ravine was there, but not much else. When a player was described as great, we all knew what it meant — he was, um, great. Now? Gimme a break. A shortstop up from the East Toilet Seat, Idaho AAA farm club makes a decent play on a sharply hit grounder two steps to his right and he’s the next Ozzie Smith — ‘What a great play that was!!’ Now, in baseball, as in all elite sports, the concept of greatness has no meaning whatsoever.

It’s like the Hall of Fame. Some of the players spoken of in the same sentence as the HOF are almost insulting to the Hall. It’s the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of the Really, Really Good. Again, the concept of true greatness has been watered down to the quality of prison gruel. Willie Mays was a great player. Is there a center fielder today you’d mention in the same breath as Willie?

The same goes with the concept of experts directly or indirectly related to real estate.

These days the concept of expert is shown no respect. If a guy’s in a room with 30 people and is three chapters ahead of the others in the marketing ‘book’, Read more

September 2, 2009

Love in the Time of Obama: Life after the Cybersecurity Act of 2009

by

Rust Belt Realtor

Author website

-Amazing Grace, I once was lost, but now I’m found. This was a goner in the meltdown and for some reason I didn’t keep a copy. Thank you, Cheryl Johnson for finding it in the Google cache. It’s not brilliant writing, but it is something I’m pleased with, so, I’m reposting. Thanks for your indulgence.  -TL

A letter to Brian Brady, sent via private courier since the government has seized control of the internet.

Dear Brian-

So sorry to hear Maggie didn’t get into the college of her choice. It’s okay, though. I’m sure the government school she’s in will give her the education she needs to function well in our new society. Never forget we need highly-skilled workers, Brian.

I don’t know if you are aware, communication being dicey right now, but we have moved to some acreage in a remote part of Ohio. Like so many Midwest cities, ours went bankrupt, was taken over by the State and our neighborhood was rezoned as a Construction Reuse Reclamation Area under eminent domain. Thousands of our brick homes were recycled for government buildings and stimulus projects. We were given free homes within the city of Dayton as part of it’s Vacancy Infill Plan, but we chose to move elsewhere. We can manage as a small self-sufficient farm and are hidden from the road, since our carbon offset tree plantings are located there. We’ve begun bartering with neighboring farms, and use horseback to travel, as our carbon emissions quota is limited and we need them for our farm equipment, and our cows keep farting. I won’t complain, though. We get to see the land this way.

The only problem we have is when the Czarina of Food Safety shows up to our farm. I know she thinks she is doing the right thing, but the problem is that she grew up in southern California and never set foot on a farm until she was Gulaged decommissioned relocated here to be an inspector. I’m not sure, but it feels like she is unhappy living in Ohio farm country and takes it out on us. I guess when she Read more

September 2, 2009

Introducing Manny Fae and Merry Fac

by

Commercial Real Estate Finance Expert
Structured Debt and Equity
Licensed Real Estate Broker in AL, CA, and FL

Author website

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose“- Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Carr, 1849

Hat tip to Matt Graham and Adam Quinones of Mortgage News Daily

You gotta hand it to the powerful Mortgage Bankers Association of America (MBAA).  What they lack in imagination, they make up for in chutzpah.  The MBAA released its report “Recomendations for Future Government Role in the Core Secondary Mortgage Market“.  This six page report (the other six pages are pictures and such) essentially suggests that the Federal Government charter “Mortgage Credit Guarantor Entities” (MCGE) with a mission to purchase whole loans from originators and issue securities for purchase by investors.

These MCGE’s will be different from the existing GSE’s inasmuch as they:

  • require originators to retain 5% of the risk of the underlying loan values in the form of “set aside” capital
  • will be subject to “strong and effective regulatory oversight”
  • will only guarantee “core” mortgage products (30 and 15 year fixed rate loans)
  • will issue securities with the “explicit” guarantee of the full faith and credit of the United States Treasury rather than the former “implicit” guarantee

The MBAA did recommend that the existing infrastructure of the “outdated” GSEs be used to establish new MCGEs.  It recommends that initially, the number of MCGEs to be established should be…

two or three.

As I’ve said before, I criticize too much.  As a taxpayer, I should be outraged but as a mortgage banker, I’m keeping my mouth shut;

I want to be President of Manny Fae before I retire.

PS:  Read the whole report here.  Pages 5-10 are the meat of the proposal with lots of pretty pictures and footnotes on the other pages.

PPS:  Look for the more powerful National Association of REALTORs (NAR) to offer immediate support for and pledge lobbying efforts  for the establishment of MCGEs

September 1, 2009

Does your smart-phone hold within it the future of real estate marketing?

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This from my Arizona Republic real estate column (permanent link):

Do you have a smart-phone like the iPhone, Blackberry or Palm Pre? How much time do you spend on it? Is it possible that your smart-phone is your primary interface for accessing the internet? If you’re not there already, can you foresee a day when that might be the case?

It’s certainly that way for us, and we see smart-phone surfing as the next big wave in internet use. Because of that, we’re devoting more of our marketing efforts to promoting real estate by smart-phone.

As an example, we just added SMS messaging from a company called Drive-Buy Technologies. If you happen to drive by one of our listings, you can text a short message to a pre-set SMS account number and you will get a return SMS message with a link to a mobile web site featuring property details, photos and a link to that property’s main web site.

I’ve never been a huge fan of video as a real estate marketing tool. But smart-phone technology is changing my opinion. The integration of YouTube into smart-phones is so seamless that touring a home by video — as you sit outside in your car — is suddenly a viable option.

Another use for real estate video on smart-phones would be a sixty-second neighborhood tour — photos of houses, nearby stores and restaurants, schools and parks. And that video might link back to a Google map of the neighborhood, with each featured landmark shown on the map.

We’ve also just added the SmarterAgent smart-phone MLS client. This is a tiny app that gives you access to the full Phoenix-area MLS database. You can search for homes any way you want — by address, zip code, school district, MLS number. Even cooler, the app will use your smart-phone’s built-in GPS system to show you listings at your current location.

Is the smart-phone the future of real estate search? Maybe not, but when you spot the house of your dreams, won’t it be nice to find out all about it — right there on the spot?

 
Spread the word: Click here for Read more

September 1, 2009

Urf! We’re back up, kinda-sorta, but we lost a week’s worth of data

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Maybe a dozen posts are gone from BloodhoundBlog, along with around 400 comments, 300 of them about forced versus open registration. We lost a couple dozen engenu pages as well, along with the photos that make them up.

I treated this as a simple hardware swap, but it turns out that our incremental back-ups were failing all week. I was insufficiently paranoid, alas.

Contributors, if you have copies of your posts, you can re-enter them. If not, they’re gone.

Everyone: You have my apologies.

 
Further notice: We lost BloodhoundBlog.net, and I mean all of it. None of the backups of the database will restore, so it is gone for good. I’ve not been delighted with it, overall, for the past few months, so I think I’m not going to start over. If you had serious content there, I’m sorry but it’s gone. If you had an older Scenius scene running there (I had several), rebuild it at Scenius.net. Very sorry…

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Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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