Real Estate News You Don't See on the News - from The Cutting Edge   August 12, 2009

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The week's real estate posts of interest from The Cutting Edge.

12 AUG 09

Is The Average American Home Shrinking? For Now It Is : The Real Estate Bloggers  The typical size of a home sold in the United States is 7 percent smaller according to the US Census Bureau. With a shrinking economy, tougher financing , higher energy costs, and the demographics of home buyers changing that all makes sense. But the important question to builders and home owners alike is, will it last?

 11 AUG 09

Ginnie Mae has become a high volume subprime lender - Housing Doom   "Much to their dismay, Americans learned last year that they "owned" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Well, meet their cousin, Ginnie Mae or the Government National Mortgage Association, which will soon join them as a trillion-dollar packager of subprime mortgages. Taxpayers own Ginnie too."

Real Estate Blog - What Is ActiveRain? - A Message From the Staff!

Realtor Technology Report -2009   Realtor use of technology survey prepared by NAR. Our industry is making some progress, but we still have a long way to go.

Whatever Happened to Folk Media? » The Buzz Bin   "Professionalism and the marketing machine behind and invested in "social" media, the only growing segment of the marketing business, has robbed us of what the true communications breakthrough is... That common people can now create and participate in media without professional barriers or training. That's what is truly meant by social, conversational, or perhaps, yes, even that antiquated word from the 60s, folk media."

Bizarre Real Estate Practices #873 (and #874) - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy   "Could it be the absurdly low entry "barrier"? Let's face it, all it takes is some butt-time in "real estate school" and an ample checking account balance to get a real estate sales license. If you are 18 and take 90 hours of "education" you can have a real estate license in as little as nine days."

 10 AUG 09

Property portals: Expect casualties | Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers and Investors | Inman News   "When the boom years return to the overseas property market, the Internet landscape will have changed drastically. Nobody will mourn the death of the one-man-band overseas property portal. Scale always wins and history never remembers who came second."

 09 AUG 09

37 Steps Toward Becoming a 1.5 Real Estate Agent | Real Estate Opinion MAG - AgentGenius  'In this 2.0 versus 1.0 world of disruption, confusion, chaos, I want to lead my business forward. Even though I am a great agent, I must continue to find new ways of demonstrating my greatness to consumers both on and offline. I do not want to become caught up in a stereotype, nor do I want to become the far left, or far right fringe. I want to appeal to as many opportunities as possible, I want stand out in a sea of repetition, and most importantly I want to do it effectively, and efficiently- I am by all accounts "The 1.5 Agent."'

Calculated Risk: Research on Homeownership Rate through 2030  "[T]he period from 2010 to 2030 will see the most remarkable change in America's built environment since the end of World War II. The changes will be driven by monumental demographic shifts coupled by important changes in housing preference. The landscape of the new American metropolis will be very different from the old one ... the end of the spatial expansion of metropolitan areas and a new era of infill and redevelopment."

08 AUG 09

Matrix » Real Estate Brokers/Agents Have An Image Problem   "I think NAR really missed out on a great opportunity during the transition from housing boom to bust a few years ago to be a trusted resource for the consumer. Short sighted thinking then is hard to erase from the collective consciousness." Yep, while the market was sinking, NAR was yelling buy, buy, buy!-js

Calculated Risk: Another Apartment-to-Condo Conversion Disaster   The property, which had a failed attempt at trying to convert into a condo-hotel because of Clark County regulations, sold for $604 per square foot when it first entered the market. The average price was $539,000, Murphy said. Through June, the average resale price has fallen to $87,611 or $121 a square foot, Murphy said. With that drop in price has come rising foreclosures. Murphy reports that 201 of the 680 units or 30 percent have been foreclosed upon, and that number is likely to rise. The foreclosures have been running as high as 25 a month so far in 2009, he said.

 07 AUG 09

Tough Commercial Market Sees Defaults Occurring on Hotel Properties : The Real Estate Bloggers  With the significant downturn in commercial property values, lenders are on the hook more and more for some very large loans to hotel and retail companies. Fitch Ratings has come out with a report stating that 64 properties with loans over $100 million are late and in trouble.

 06 AUG 09

Will half of all mortgage holders end up underwater? - Housing Doom  "The percentage of "underwater" loans may rise to 48 percent, or 25 million homes, as prices drop through the first quarter of 2011, Karen Weaver and Ying Shen, analysts in New York at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a report today."

Estate of Things » Blog Archive » Realtor vs. Appraiser: Are they being pitted against each other?  "The HVCC states that Realtors and mortgage brokers are prohibited from selecting appraisers. Lenders can select "in house" appraisers, but due to restrictions, many are hiring appraisal management companies (AMCs) to obtain their appraisals." Since roll-out, Realtors and mortgage brokers claim low-ball appraisals are killing their deals, and some appraisers feel the real estate industry is just pointing fingers.

Independent vs. dependent contractors | Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers and Investors | Inman News  "There are some brokerages that cross the line in how they treat agents. They have mandatory meetings or mandatory floor time and tend to treat agents like employees without giving them any of the benefits that a W-2 employee would be entitled to."

Craigslist Rental Scam Being Run From Nigeria? : The Real Estate Bloggers   "The FBI has released a statement that a new Craigslist Rental Scam is being run out of Nigeria. Famous for the Advance Fee Scam, or 419 fraud , the Nigerian con artists are now targeting renters in America to try to collect rental deposits on homes they do not own. " - One of my listings was hit twice by this scam about a year ago. js

Calculated Risk: Foreclosures: One Giant Wave, Still Building   "To say there is a second wave implies the (current) wave has receded," [Sam Khater, senior economist, First American CoreLogic] "I don't see that the wave has receded."

 05 AUG 09

BloodhoundBlog.com | Should Realtors "Interview" Lenders? | National real estate marketing and technology blog | Realtors and real estate, mortgage and investment news  - This post poses and answers some very pertinent questions. js

Aspirational marketing: it's about them | Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers and Investors | Inman News  "Today's affluent consumer is more likely to value the customized services of a personal shopper than they are an oversized designer bag. In fact, when asked to define "luxuries," the item that often rates highest is time and being able to spend that time with family."

Authenticity and the Social Web : Speaking of Real Estate  One of the more significant bits of advice that I came across in my research and writing was the importance of being genuine. To use social media successfully, you have to be yourself. This sounds easy, but there's always a temptation to project an image of yourself that overstates your abilities or experience, or perhaps alters your demeanor to fit a potential client's perception of an ideal real estate professional.""

How About a ‘Disappointment Index' for Real Estate | Rain City Guide  "So here's the question: why are these discounts so big? Are the agents not able to estimate market value and expected selling price any better than that? Or are the Sellers not listening to their agents and overriding them? "

The Federal Reserve's proposed changes to Regulation Z (Truth in Lending) | Rain City Guide  it seems like Bernake is seeking to further complicate and confuse the mortgage/homebuying process-js

I Hate Most Every Sales Pitch And Most Salespeople But Make My Living Selling | Real Estate Opinion MAG - AgentGenius  "It's true. I really don't like salespeople, I don't like to listen to a sales pitch and anytime someone says, "I just need twenty minutes in person to explain it to you", I already know in advance that whatever it is I don't want it. And, for sure, I don't want to listen to them explain it to me."

High End Housing The Weak Spot in Housing Market : The Real Estate Bloggers  "The lower and middle end of the housing market may be solidifying, a welcome chance to breath for many of us, the top end is showing even more weakness. The Wall Street Journal has an outstanding article here. "

Real Estate Man Is LandlordFor Sex Offenders In Florida : The Real Estate Bloggers  "A fellow sex offender, Randy Young, is capitalizing on this and has become a landlord to sex offenders. He has learned the laws in the state and has scouted out properties where these sex offenders can live legally and is renting them out to the criminals as they leave prison."

Photog Annie Liebovitz Could Lose NY Homes | Zillow Blog - Real Estate Market Stats, Celebrity Real  Estate, and Zillow News  "It's hard to understand how Annie Liebovitz, the "it" photographer of the past four decades, known for her portraiture work of celebrities such as John Lennon, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, and who makes a seven-figure salary from Vanity Fair and Vogue - not to mention her work for Gap, American Express and others - could possibly be in the severe financial mess she's in."

Calculated Risk: Jim the Realtor: A CRE Foreclosure Cornucopia  -Another interesting video from Jim the Realtor

04 AUG 09

Calculated Risk: Barclays Analysts: House Prices Still Falling  "While an S&P/Case-Shiller index for May showed the first month-over-month price increase since 2006 and a 2 percent seasonally adjusted annualized drop, a more-accurate reading probably would have been an annualized decline of 10 percent to 15 percent, [Barclays' analysts Ajay Rajadhyaksha and Glenn Boyd] wrote."

 03 AUG 09

Is Social Media a Threat To Your Personal Safety? | Real Estate Opinion MAG - AgentGenius  "A friend of mine recently tweeted about a killer new computer system they purchased. Later, they went on to tweet how they were traveling to Disneyland for vacation."

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