Bill Morris Realtor

There was an interesting letter to the editor yesterday in the local Florida newspaper where I am spending the holidays.  I can't resist offering a few comments. The gist of the letter was that real estate agents take advantage of inside knowledge of properties on the market, showing activity, of...

The following post appeared this morning on Statesman.com, written by Austin American-Statesman staff: Austin jobless rate falls, but job losses continue Is it too much to ask that journalists would pay attention to their use of  the English language?  Without even reading the rest of the articl...

I came across this short article posted last week: TexasRealEstate.com, 12/8/09 Overpriced or under-analyzed? "Forbes recently came out with a list: Where U.S. homes are most overpriced …. But what does overpriced mean in this instance? I hate to say it, but you may have to actually read the enti...

I often find myself at odds with opinions included on the Op-Ed page in the Austin American-Statesman.  A few days ago I found two items that I found interesting, engaging, important, and worth sharing (in the extreme): First, a tale of two local college students, living in shelters and demonstra...

I have been in Austin since 1971, so there are a lot of things I take for granted as I think about community lifestyle -- hills, lakes, mild climate, "Live Music Capital of the World," "Silicon Hills" -- the strongest high-tech center outside of Silicon Valley, one of the first three Metros to co...

Years ago in one of my first pre-licensing real estate classes a trainer told me, "If you just return your phone calls you will stand head and shoulders above most of your competition."  After almost 30 years in a corporate career where taking and returning phone calls was very basic to survival,...

As I have blogged previously, mortgage interest rates are being held down for now by Fed purchases of mortgage-backed securities.  That government-subsidized demand is holding bond prices up, and yields low.  The average 30-year mortgage was priced yesterday at 4.71% -- truly incredible! As I hav...

I have written frequently over the past year about the underlying strength of the Central Texas real estate market, and I have discussed Austin's relative economic strength with all of my clients for most of the past two years. Not only have we suffered less than many other areas in the mortgage ...

A little more than two weeks ago I wrote about what was a shockingly (and obviously) erroneous report on the number of residential foreclosures in the Austin area this year (Austin Area Foreclosures Up?).  Today, something of a correction was published in the Austin American-Statesman:  “It appea...

This article hit the wire yesterday from Reuters: "The U.S. Treasury on Monday set long-awaited guidance on a plan for mortgage companies to speed "short sales" of homes and other loan modification alternatives to stem a rising tide of foreclosures."  More:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091130/bs...