I’m back in Knoxville after attending the annual National Association of Realtors (NAR) Conference and Expo in San Diego, California.

 

View of the San Diego skyline from Coronado Island

One of the most exciting things I saw at the conference was the official unveiling of NAR’s new consumer website, HouseLogic.

HouseLogic is not a listings website like Realtor.com but rather a consumer resource which NAR intends to make the ‘go to’ site for homeowners and buyers to visit for objective and valuable advice, tips, and pretty much everything you need to know about owning and buying real estate.

You can simply visit the site and search to find whatever you’re looking for; it’s laid out very well and easy to navigate. A second option is to sign up for a free account and be able to find more easily projects and tips customized to your area. You’re completely safe signing up with your email address; the site’s privacy statement assures that none of your contact information will ever be passed on to anyone for any reason without your express consent.

I signed up for a free account and was immediately served up some project ideas to save money on energy costs, preventative maintenance on my heating system, and an article on how to receive up to $1,500 in tax credits for replacing an existing heating and air conditioning system. Pretty good stuff and the price was definitely right, FREE.

For buyers NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun had some words about the current market. He said: “said home sales continue to be dominated by lower-priced homes. In fact, NAR data shows nearly 70% of homes sold in September were priced below $250,000.

“The housing market has become much more active at the lower end,” said Yun. “The $8,000 homebuyer tax credit has significantly helped the market and is having its intended impact of stimulating home sales, decreasing high home inventory levels, and helping to stabilize home prices.”

Sales of homes priced below $100,000 are up 22.5% from a year ago. Sales in the upper-end market are still slow, however; homes priced above $500,000 are up only 4% from last year.

Yun projects the homebuyer tax credit will help raise home sales this year by 350,000 to 400,000 among first-time homebuyers—these are buyers who couldn’t have purchased a home without the tax incentive.

“The expansion of the tax credit into 2010 will help raise existing-home sales next year by as much as 15% and increase home prices by 3 to 5%,” he said.

Increased affordability is also helping spur lower end home sales. In September, the national median existing home price was $174,900, down 8.5% from one year ago.

So do yourself a favor, pay a visit to HouseLogic and see what it has to offer you. Better yet sign up for a free account and let the site find things relevant to your needs and get a monthly newsletter (optional) filled with timely information.

Buyers and sellers are also invited to visit KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com to see all the Knoxville area homes for sale as well as find buying and selling tips, schools information, local jobs, recreational opportunities, and lots more Knoxville information.

Please feel free to comment or ask a question either here or email me

By now lots of us have likely heard something about www.Wordle.net, the website that lets you build a "word cloud" like the one below which is made of words used in a post. The most used words appear larger and seldom used words appear as smaller.

While that is a very cool application to add some color and visual interest to a post, there may be occasions where you want words other than the most used ones to appear larger and more prominent.

There's a very easy way to make that happen by simply 'cheating' when you paste your word cloud in to Wordle to transform it. In this example I'm deliberately only using the words "Knoxville Real Estate" and "Jim Lee, Realtor" one time to illustrate my point.

Here's the normal Wordle with all the words in this post as you see it.

Now let's suppose for whatever reason you want the keywords I mentioned above to appear more prominently in your word cloud.

Simply by adding them multiple times ( I added each one 6 times) you can dramatically alter the output of your Wordle world cloud should you have a reason to want to.

Here's the same word cloud as above with the added keywords mentioned above.

And to capture the above Wordle files I used MWSnap, a free screen capture utility that has a lot more functionality than simply using the print screen key on your keyboard and it's my favorite price, FREE!

BTW, even though MWSnap is freeware someone had to work to develop it. I made a contribution to that person from the site I downloaded it from.

Happy cheating. ;)

PS, I saved the above images as .JPG files which also gives you the option to insert (slip) your own keywords in the image description and title when you insert the file into your post.

 

 

 

 

Below is a chart prepared by the National Association of REALTORS ® comparing the new changes to the Homebuyer Tax Credit.

The biggest change is that current Homeowners are now eligible if they sell their current homes and then buy AFTER the date of enactment of this extension which is November 6th, 2009.

Because of widespread incidents of fraud, purchasers must now attach documentation proving they actually bought a qualifying home to qualify for the credit.

Additinally the income guidelines have been increased, now a single taxpayer can qualify if they earn up to $125,000 and up to $225,000 for married taxpayers.

The rationale for increasing the income limits and expanding the credit to existing homeowner is that it should encourage more higher priced home purchases. Currently the existing tax credit was driving mostly lower end purchases.

 

All of us have probably at one time or another watched one of those TV game shows that feature a “Lightning Round” of fast paced questions.

I applied that concept to selling your Knoxville area house with a 90 second “Lightning Round” of tips to make it more appealing to potential buyers and bring a higher price.

Read more great "Lighting Round" home selling tips at Knoxville, Tennesse Real Estate Blog.

The graph below compares this year's 3rd quarter (July, August, & September) sales figures with past years. There's no denying the volume is still sliding although it does show some signs of leveling off a bit.

 

Typically at this time of year we're started a season decline which continues into early the following year and then starts a climb back to the traditional peak summer selling season. This year the sales seems to be holdin up longer than usualy according to the graph below which compares 2009 year to date sales with previous years.

As you can see by the red line representing Knoxville sales so far in 2009, the numbers of sales seems to be holding up longer than as in past years. I believe a significant number of those sales are being driven by the $8,000 tax credit that expires at the end of November. It will be interesting to see what happens to the numbers at that time.

We’ve talked a lot about sales numbers but how are prices holding up in this depressed market? Fairly well actually. We haven’t seen any really depressed prices compared to some of the harder hit markets like south Florida, California, Michigan, and others. I believe home values have fallen some in the great Knoxville area but not dramatically.

In the Knoxville, Tennessee real estate market a typical sale is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath homes with a two car garage and somewhere between 1500 to 2200 square feet. Here’s how the median prices of those types of homes have fared over the past 10 years.

The median price is simply the price at which half of the homes sold are more expensive and the other half are less expensive, fewer sales of cheaper homes moves the median higher, all else being equal. Since our median price is down to $139,900 in the 3rd quarter of 2009 versus a high of $154,500 in the third quarter of 2007 that means we’re selling more less expensive houses than higher priced ones.

Those statistics are born out by the absorption rates (time to sell) of Knoxville area homes. Today there is a 42 months supply of Knoxville homes priced over one million dollars and only a 9 months supply of those homes priced between $100,000 to $150,000.

Bottom line any way you slice and dice it: Knoxville TN home sales are down compared to the booming market of just a couple of year ago and as long as mortgages continue to be difficult to obtain and unemployment continues to be in the 10% range I don’t see many reasons for our market to improve significantly.

On the brighter side there will continue to be homes bought and sold every day, just fewer of them and probably not for top prices as before.

If you have a house for sale in the Knoxville, Tennessee area right now and it’s been on the market over 30 days here’s some tips you can probably use. More useful home selling tips at www.KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com including a free copy of my 52 page eBook titled: “450 Ways To Make Your Home Sell Faster”.

Looking to buy a house in the greater Knoxville area? www.HomeCenter.com is also a great place to see all the homes, condos, land, and lots of sale. No registration required, just plug in your search criteria and start looking. Search by Maps, addresses, and areas.

Wow, an exciting and interesting thing just happened.

I posted on Twitter a graph I created below showing the Knoxville area home sales month to month this year.

 

19 minutes later my phone is ringing and the news director for WATE , one of our local TV stations is on the phone saying his boss saw it on Twitter and asking permission to use it (with suitable attribution and a quote from me regarding our market) in a news story they're doing this afternoon about our local market.

I get quite a bit of positive feedback from my Facebook and Twitter activities and that phone call was further proof positive that people take notice of what you post there.

A couple of weeks ago I was in a bakery buying a loaf of bread and the guy behind me asked if I was Jim Lee the Realtor. I replied yes and he said I read your blog all the time. You're the only one  in town that publishes the actual sales figures instead of just saying the market is great and it's a good time to buy a house.

My blogging has also resulted in a couple of live interviews on local stations including one time the news team met me at a listing and photographed me showing it to some buyers and then interviewed me in the yard (beside my sign) talking about the local market.

Facebook and Twitter directly led to these interviews and recognition in addition to bringing several listings and buyers to me.

If you're reading this on Active Rain you're likely already blogging but you need to make sure you also have a presnce on Facebook and Twitter; it will lead to business.

Have you tried this great Google tool yet? Google Trends Labs lets you search, find, and compare keyword search terms with others to see which ones are being searched for most.

Here's an example from my area comparing: "Knoxville Real Estate", "Knoxville TN Real Estate" and "Knoxville Homes For Sale"

 

 

The blue line above represents Google searches within the US for the keywords, "Knoxville Real Estate" which form the baseline at 1.00

The red line is for "Knoxville TN Real Estate which scored 0.45 or less than half the top keywords rank.

Last is the term, "Knoxville Homes For Sale" which is the keyword set the salesman below told me was the top search term for my area and it ranked 0.39

These results are for searches done within the United States for the year 2009. You can ask Google Trends Labs for most any combination of areas and time periods. Since I believe most of my searches originate in the US that was what I was most interested in.

I found this tool by accident while looking for most used keywords for real estate in my area. I had one of "those salesmen" call me several times trying to sell the proverbial "latest and greatest" keyword oriented website. Looks like Googles results above doesn't support his story.

Here's what Google says about their new tool:

"1. How does Google Trends work? Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time.

We then show you a graph with the results – our Search Volume Index graph. Located beneath the Search Volume Index graph is our News reference volume graph. This graph shows you the number of times your topic appeared in Google News stories.

When Google Trends detects a spike in the volume of news stories for a particular search term, it labels the graph and displays the headline of an automatically selected Google News story written near the time of that spike.

Currently, only English-language headlines are displayed, but we hope to support non-English headlines in the future. Below the search and news volume graphs, Trends displays the top regions, cities, and languages in which people searched for the first search term you entered."

Pretty cool stuff from our friends at Google.

It’s been listed for 90 days now and not even one showing. What’s the problem?

The number 1 reason I see for homes not selling is most often the price (this could also be reasons 2,3,4 and 5).

It’s a tough new market out there folks; mortgages are tough to get these days, buyers are taking MUCH longer to make decisions about which house to even make an offer on, and the economy is in a shambles with high unemployment.

Even if the recent comparable sales and price points in your area and neighborhood support your asking price your house could still be overpriced relative to the market right now because that’s the market buyers are buying in.

Just because you refinanced last year or even 6 months ago, and got an appraisal equal to or higher than your current asking price, the market right now may be lower than those figures.

Generally the higher up you go on asking price the longer the time on the market becomes. Because of the credit crunch especially on jumbo or non conforming loans (in the Knoxville area that would be a loan over $417,000), large mortgages are even tougher to get than say an FHA loan on a median priced 3 bedroom house in the Knoxville area.

The above graph shows that if your home is listed for sale for over 1 million dollars there is currently a 42 month supply of those homes at the current sales rates. Listed between $100,000 to $150,000 there is a 9 month supply of homes in that price point.

So what’s the answer? Have your agent update your market analysis. Take a look at homes that have sold in your neighborhood, your zip code, and similar homes in other parts of town. What is their list price to sale price ratio? Did those sellers make any concessions to the buyer, i.e. pay some of their closing costs, install new carpet, and any other inducements to get them to buy that house.

If they did maybe that’s something you should consider to get yours sold too but most often it’s the price.

Reason number 2: CONDITION Does your home show like a model home? Has it been “staged” to show in the best possible light to new buyers? Decluttered with overstuffed closets leaned out, excess ’stuff’ packed up and out of the way? CLEAN, with everything including windows, front door, kitchen and bathrooms squeaky clean? Visit my website, www.KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com and click the “Selling” link to get my 40 Free or inexpensive tips can make your home show better, sell faster, and put more money in your pocket at closing.

The better your house shows the more buyers are willing to pay and the quicker it usually sells.

Reason number 3: LOCATION Ok, if this is your problem immediately call Acme House Movers and………of course I’m just joking here but one of the cold hard facts of life are that some locations are more desirable than others and others are less desirable.

If you’re in a location buyers seem to perceive as less desirable for whatever reason the only cure for that condition is to reduce your asking price.

You may enjoy living next to the railroad tracks and look forward to that 100 car coal train that comes by at 3:00 AM every morning but trust me, the average buyer won’t share your passion for railroading that up close and personal.

Reason number 4: ACCESSIBILITY You can’t sell it if buyers can see it. Showings are often requested on short, or sometimes no notice. As a serious seller you need to make your best effort to keep your home in showable condition at all times.  I’m continually amazed as I search through the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) looking for homes for my buyer clients and find agent notes like: “24 hour notice to show, no exceptions”, “no lockbox, listing agent must be present for all showings” (so what if the listing agent is not available?, and this favorite, “DO NOT GO IN YARD, dogs will bite”

So if I have a buyer that wants to see your house in 2 hours you want them to wait until tomorrow, hope your agent can let us in, and run the risk of being attacked by your darling pit bulls? Guess what, that’s not happening, there are hundreds of other houses for sale that we can see on our schedule and buy today. Which of those options would be best for you Mr. Seller?

Reason number 5: YOUR AGENT Yep, this could be one of your problems.

Even though all Knoxville area Realtors pay the same amount of dues some of them are frankly just better at marketing homes than others. So the first thing you should do is review your agent’s written marketing plan of what they’re going to do to get your house sold. Oh, you asked for their written marketing plan and got that ‘deer in the headlights’ look. Ooops, that could be a problem.

National Association of Realtors statistics show that over 85% of current homebuyers started their home search on the Internet so how is your homes Internet marketing presence? Does it have a virtual tour? Is your home displayed on multiple websites like Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, Yahoo, GoogleBase, BirdView, Vast, Homes.com, YouTube (yep, videos), and other websites including your agent’s personal website? If not that could be a problem.

Does your MLS and advertising descriptions paint a pleasing visual picture in a buyer’s mind or does it just say something like: “3 BR, 2 BA, darling, hurry, won’t last long”? Have you ever seen your homes MLS listing? If not that could be a problem.

Does your listing have a minimum of 20, well made and current photos of your house including the interior. Amazingly there are still photos in the Knoxville MLS of homes for sale with snow on the ground. When was our last snow? Buyers like to see lots of photos and if you don’t have them…….that could be a problem.

So here’ s the 5 reasons roundup:

1. Revisit your list price objectively and look at the most recent sales. If it’s not selling then adjust your price.
   
2. Go outside and walk through your house pretending you’re a buyer. Do you like what you see? Showroom condition is key.
   
3. Have a talk with your self about your homes location.
   
4. Make sure potential buyers can get in to see your home and feel safe and welcome while they’re there.
   
5. And finally, call your agent up and invite them over for a visit and review of what’s been done to market your house and what will be done in the future.

Visit KnoxvilleHomeCenter.com for lots of great selling tips, no charge, no obligation.

Please feel free to call, comment, or email any questions.

"Wordle" is another of those way cool and free tools you can use to create a "word cloud" from text or a RSS website, i.e. your blog.

Once you submit your text or URL to Wordle, it then turns it into a world cloud with the most used words larger like a tag cloud.Wordle just does it cooler and you can randomize your Wordle clouds into different layours and colors.

Here are some example of the same things several different ways from the Active Rain homepage:

 

Creat some cool word clouds to enhance your blog postings.

Founded in 1786, Knoxville, Tennessee is a city rich in history and colorful citizens that contributed much to Knoxville the the surrounding areas. Many of Knoxville’s early citizens were buried in Old Gray Cemetery after their passing.

In what has became an annual even, the Lantern and Carriage Tour at Old Gray Cemetery offers fascinating vignettes into Knoxville’s past as reenactors portray famous and/or interesting Knoxvillians buried in Old Gray.

Old Gray Cemetery was dedicated in 1852 with the first burial on July 14, 1851. Old Gray is located about 12 blocks north of downtown Knoxville and is intended to be used as a park in addition to being a burial place.

My lovely wife Charlotte and I visited Old Gray yesterday for the 9th annual Lantern & Carriage Tour.

This terrific bugler below played "Taps" every 30 minutes or so.