Lately, I've been running a series on real estate market trends for 10 zip codes in the MD Suburbs that I service on a pretty regular basis.  So far I've run the charts for:

• Bowie, MD 20720
• Bowie, MD 20715
• Greenbelt, MD 20770

What I've seen so far is not encouraging.  Prices are still continuing to decline and Day on Market are continuing to increase.  All this tells me is that the foreclosure and short sale market is continuing to be a drag regardless of Government home buyer tax credits.

That being said, so far I've only written the blog posts with the charts and stats tables for towns in Prince George's County, MD. Prince George's has been the hardest hit with the housing downturn in the MD Suburbs.  I have a few more Prince George's towns to hit and then it's over to Montgomery County, MD. 

I actually did a Contrast and Compare post awhile back between College Park, MD and Bethesda, MD.  The towns have some similarities but the difference in the housing market is eye popping considering they're really only about 17 miles apart.  It's amazing what a little trip around the Beltway can do for you!

I've posted about Points A, B and C (see above) so far.  I'm heading to the others in the days ahead.

In a recent blog post about shoveling snow in front of a vacant listing, I took a little time to toot my own horn and shoot a little video. Yeah it was a pain in the patootie and it took about 2 and half hours to shovel a path from the road to the front door. It was worth it, though, because people wanted to see it.  They were calling the showing service and even with unflattering photos online they saw the price was right.

Recently, the tables were turned when a buyer client wanted to go house hunting.  They had picked out a few homes from their Internet search and they were available to be shown...because they were empty.  Now, in my area there are a lot of foreclosures and short sales that are vacant but there are also "plain vanilla" homes that are vacant, too.  It's these homes that should have been shoveled but weren't.  Either the listing agent was too lazy or was above shoveling or, maybe, the owner of the house was too cheap to have the listing agent hire a contractor (the two teenagers down the street or some day laborers) to shovel the snow so people could get in to see the house.

It was a real shame to drive up to a house only to see a lockbox on the railing or front door knob and so much snow that there was no way I was going to wade through it to try and open the door.

I look at it this way.  If I can shovel a driveway in order to allow access to potential buyers and their agents, others can, too.  I might be wrong about this and I might be expecting too much but in this current housing environment, if you want to make any money and sell some houses you might have to shovel some driveways.

Oh by the way, I got an offer on the house.  If all goes well I might just get paid before all the snow melts in the Spring.

A couple of Blog posts ago I put the question out there:Since home buyers love to look at photos on the Internet and many buyers eliminate homes without photos is it appropriate to put photos of homes that need lots and lots of TLC?

The trend of the comments was:  Yes, it was a good idea to put photos of the house as it exists in the marketing materials.  The concept is to keep from wasting the time of both the potential buyer and the Realtor.  Who wants to go to a house that needs a lot of work when the buyer isn't really up to it?  The thinking is that if the photos tell the story, the Seller might just get the right buyer earlier rather than later.

So, I took the plunge.  I took photos of the interior of a home that needs quite a bit of work.  I've seen worse and I've seen lots better.  I'm lucky in the sense that the Seller has agreed to price the home aggressively - well below comparable sales in the neighborhood.  This should allow puh-lenty of room for someone amenable to a FHA 203(K) type mortgage or even a CASH buyer.  The potential is there, the numbers should work.  Now, it's just a matter of whether the photos really help eliminate people who really aren't interested and saving them and their Realtors valuable time.

By the way, since the price is so attractive I actually got a couple of calls from Realtors the first day it was in the MLS even though there is over 2 feet of snow on the ground.  Since the house is empty, I toodled on out with my snow shovel to clear a path and placed the video on the Maryland Suburban Homes blog.  Just wanted to toot my own horn a bit.

Everyone knows that the home buying consumer loves photos.  They look at them constantly on the Internet.  I doesn't matter if they're the still photos the Realtor took, a Virtaul Tour a professional put together or something done with one of those cute little Flip things.

I've been seeing a lot in the Blogosphere and Twittersphere about how listing agents are really falling down on the job if they don't provide lots of interior and exterior photos. I'm guessing most people mean "regular" houses. I wrote about a different type of house in a piece called: "Are Photos of Homes in Disrepair OK on the Internet".

Here's the gist: Am I doing my Seller client a service by showing his or her trashed out home on the Internet.  It doesn't matter if it's a foreclosure, short sale or "plain vanilla".  It the place looks horrible. It looks horrible. Gutted kitchens, Holes in the wall, Destroyed hardwood floors, broken windows, plumbing and electrical issues galore.

Would it be ok if I just added a frank but written descritpiton of the property with the requisite front exterior photo? Or should I just go ahead and take all the pictures and throw them up on the Internet for all to see...forever!

About a month ago or so (it was recent but I can't remember exactly when), Zillow sent me a nice e-mail telling me that I can continue to manually update my listings on Zillow for a nominal fee (about $10, as I recall) and it would be good for six months.  Well, I was none to pleased about this and mentioned it on a couple of blogs and Twitter.  Zillow, of course, came back with the response that this was really not such a big deal and, besides, the listing data will still be syndicated by MLS and other syndicators and appear on Zillow for free.

OK. Fine.  I'm good with free.

Fast Forward to Today

I got an e-mail on Tuesday from Zillow directing me to a bunch of videos about how Zillow works and yadda, yadda, yadda.  One of the videos was entitled: "What do I do with this (!@#$%&*) Zestimate?"  That was a pretty enticing title so I went for a peek. One of the things that struck me was that when a house is actually listed for sale (as opposed to the one next door which isn't listed), Zillow says they will put the actual list price prominently and first while moving the Zestimate farther down the page.  I guess the deal is that they'll respect the Realtor's list price (or the FSBO list price, I guess) and move the Zestimate down a bit without, of course, getting rid of it completely.

So I went and took a look at a home that I currently have listed, is currently on the market and is eagerly awaiting a buyer. (here's the link).  Sure enough, the Zillow Zestimate is prominently displayed at the very top of the page so that it is the first thing anyone will see if they happen to look at this particular listing.  Now, I'm sure that real estate professional are not using Zillow to look for homes for their buyer clients or for valuation purpose.  Consumers.  Potential home buyers are using the site and that's what Zillow wants.

What's The Problem?

The house is actually listed for far less than the Zillow Zestimate with feedback from fellow Realtors that have viewed the home that it is still "overpriced". (here is the link to the real deal)  Now, I've already overcome this with the Seller.  My issue is with any potential buyer that might be using Zillow and decide "Whoa! Out of my price range!"  or "That's overpriced."  or whatever and decide to pass on it.

It turns out that if I don't pay Zillow their $10 or whatever it is for the listing, I have to deal with the Zillow Zestimate at the top of the listing -- a real listing with a real list price!

Why does Zillow blackmail Realtors like this?  Because they can.  You would think that there would be some law (Truth in Advertising??) or some kind of consumer protection but evidently not.

I'm sure Zillow's lawyers have looked at this up one side and down the other.  That's not the point. The point is that Zillow is misleading the public at the expense of home sellers and, really, home buyers, too, by distributing this wildly inaccurate data on the Web.  Unless I pay my $10 to correct it.

End of rant.

I just came away from the second workshop in as many months about the new RESPA guidelines for the "new and improved" Good Faith Estimate and HUD-1. I understand it was devised to make the costs involved in the home buying process clearer, more understandable and more transparent.   Puh...leeze!

I tend to lean left when it comes to Government assistance with social programs but this thing is absolutely ridiculous.  It is anything but clear, transparent and understandable.  Worse, it will, more likely than not, create so much confusion in the marketplace that buyers will be even more frustrated about the costs of buying a home.

I wrote about this at some length on my MD Suburban Homes Blog.Yet, I cannot help but wonder where the hue and cry from the real estate profession was to allow some input into what are two of the most important aspects of the home buying transaction - the mortgage and settlement.

Don't get me wrong. I'm big on consumer choice.  I'm big on potential home buyers feeling comfortable with their Realtor, mortgage company and settlement company.  I also know that real estate professionals go through these transactions many, many times while the typical home buyer may go through it once every seven years (or longer).

What really irritates me is that as restrictive as the Good Faith Estimate might be, the HUD-1 has morphed into something that is barely understandable without a calculator and math degree. The old saying will change from "Buyer Beware" to "Buyer be Scared".  Confusion does that to people.

My only hope is that someone over at HUD wakes up and smells the coffee.  Of course, they're not the ones out here.

Here's a confession:  I hate short sales.  I do my very best to avoid them either on the listing side or the selling side.  Yeah. I know.  People tell me all the time  that "this is the market" and, if I'm going to survive, I have to learn and work with short sales.  Bah Humbug.

To be sure, I have not been having as much fun as I had in the early 2000s. There are fewer "plain vanilla" sales out there - sellers with enough equity in their home that there is "NO third party approval needed".  However, there are a few and those sellers still need professional Realtors to help out.

What I've been noticing lately is that the "plain vanilla" home is on the rise, at least in my little part of the world.  I'm not sure if that's an indication that sellers have finally come to the realization that they need to price their home to compete against the short sales and foreclosed homes or if we baby boomers are finally getting to the point where it doesn't matter if we get hundreds of thousands of dollars from our home sale... as long as we can sell our home!

Whatever the reason, I'm encouraged that there seems to be more homes on the market where a buyer does not have to wait for months and months for some bank to say that it might consider, maybe, an offer if Mars aligns with Jupiter and some clerk doesn't lose the file.

Rather than mess around with predictions for next year, I thought I'g really go out on a limb and make some predictions for the next decade.  After all, they're just as likely to come true and with all this nostalgia stuff on the Web and on TV about our first decade in the 21st Century, I thought, "Why not?"

1. Lending gets tighter. FHA will be "a deal" with a 5% down payment. Most lenders won't touch you for less than 20% and a 640 credit score, minimum.  There will be lots of "skin in the game".
2. Housing prices continue to drop through 2012, maybe 2013, and then flatten out.  Why? Two reasons: see #1 and foreclosures and short sales will continue downward pressure on prices.
3. Inventory will drop dramatically because of #1 and #2. Buyers won't be able to get a mortgage and Sellers won't have enough equity to sell. Investors will  buy up REOs and turn them into rentals. Flipping will be for idiots and scammers.
   
4. NAR membership drops to about 600,000 members since they will have forgotten what the heck they were supposed to be doing. Politicians will see what's going on and refuse lunch invitations from NAR leadership or staff.
5. Real Estate teams will be far and few between.  Some of the mega super stars will have smallish teams but Realtors who used to have teams or thought they could support them until the "market turned" are going to be back on their own.
   
6. Prediction #5 will lead to Realtors being nice to one another again because they'll know they may need each other to go on vacation of take over when they get sick or have a baby or whatever.  Office Managers will actually have to step in and help with their agents in times of need.
7. RESPA rules will cause massive consolidation in the mortgage and settlement services industry.  This will lead to pricing standardization - not to be confused with "price fixing". Price fixing is illegal, remember?  Standardization will be fine.
8. HUD will realize that massive mortgage and settlement services consolidation has, de facto, eliminated consumer choice.  However, it won't be able to do anything because all these companies will be "too big to fail".
9. Full service Realtor and Brokerages will come back into vogue as 20 and 30 something digital natives realize that buying a house online for a $24.95 flat fee isn't all it's cracked up to be.
10. 2019 will be "the time to buy" or "the time to sell"...just like every year.

OK.  That's it for me.  What do you think might happen within the next decade?