Statistics for this years third quarter (July 1 - Sept. 30) are out regarding the housing market.  Data was gathered from the National Association of Realtors.

Average Total Sales (for Single-family, Apartment, Condos, and Coops)

Average total sales of the nation have increased from the second quarter to the third by 11.4% and the third quarter’s average total sales have increased by 5.9% compared to Q3 of 2008.  In the state of Missouri, the average total sales have increased by 16.4% since last quarter and 1.8% compared to last year’s average total sales.  Only thirteen states have a higher average sale price than Missouri in this quarter, with California, Texas, and Florida leading, respectively.

Average Sale Price (for Single-Family Homes)

From last years third quarter to this years, the national average sale price has decreased by 11.2% and the St. Louis average has decreased by 4.4%.   

There is no data for condos in St. Louis.

Predictions for the St. Louis Market

According to MARIS, the average price in the housing market will remain stable in Q4 in St. Louis City.  The number of homes on the market is expected to increase, as well as new homes built.  The average days on market is predicted to increase and the number of homes sold may not change all that drastically.

In St. Louis County, the average sale price is projected to remail stable as well as the number of homes sold.  An increase in homes on the market, new homes built, and average days on market is predicted.  Overall, the prediction seems to be that both the county and the city will mirror each other in market activity in the fourth quarter.

Data gathered from NAR, MARIS, and Stltoday.com

Here are 20 questions every seller should ask about the buyer before accepting the buyer’s offer:

1. Is the buyer’s loan approved in writing? If not, why?
2. Does the buyer have a back-up lender?
3. Is any of the buyer’s cash coming from a gift?
4. Is the buyer’s down payment and closing costs money liquid and available?
5. Will the buyer provide proof of funds?
6. Does the buyer have any time constraints?
7. Has the buyer read and approved the seller’s disclosures?
8. What property inspections is the buyer going to order?
9. Is the buyer flexible about closing and change of possession dates?
10. What happens if the property does not appraise?
11. Is the buyer willing to make up the difference?
12. Does the buyer have to sell a home, or other real estate?
13. Has the buyer bought a home before?
14. How many homes has the buyer looked at?
15. How many offers has the buyer made?
16. Why did those offers fail?
17. What does the buyer most want to change about his/her present housing situation?
18. What does the buyer like most about my home?
19. What will the buyer change on the property?
20. Will the buyer entertain a counter offer?

Ask Your Agent to Get Answers to These 20 Questions

If you’re selling, ask your agent to get the answers to as many of these questions that the buyer or buyer’s agent is willing to answer.  A top notch agent probably will have already done so.

Today we got the latest Existing Home Sales by the NAR.  Others, like Calculated Risk, have already done a great job covering this (here & here) so there’s very little for me to add.  However, there are three things I want to point out:

First, I think a finer point needs to be added to this:

Sales increased sharply, and inventory decreased, so “months of supply” declined. A normal market has under 6 months of supply, so this is still high – and especially considering sales were artificially boosted by the tax credit.

It’s not just the existence of the tax credit for 1st-time homebuyers, but the threat of its expiration that drove the spike in sales.  If there was no threat of expiration, we wouldn’t have seen a spike like this. 

Second, this probably just has the effect of pushing sales forward from the future.  Fall and winter months tend to be hibernatory for housing – just like they are for bears, squirrels, and cute little chipmunks.  So seasonal trends may get distorted.

Third, drawing the conclusion that we’re seeing a housing bottom is really a non sequitur.  We’ve had tons of tax credits to spur demand (an $8,000 tax credit that costs $43,000 to implement is not what I call a good idea), and there’s something that always seem to be missing from the discussion and that’s what I call churn.  I define it here as a basic revenue calcualtion: price X volume.  Only in this case I use the median sales price and monthly unadjusted sales figures to get my metric.  What does it say?

As the chart shows, folks, we’re still skiing downhill.  The trend of lower highs and lower lows is still intact and until that trend can be broken sans government incentives, no one data point will be that meaningful.

In my ever increasing attempts at getting updates and information posted before I forget, I finally asked for help. In getting to all of the critical meetings I had to enlist Burton Lee as a fellow attendee. He went to the key appraisal meetings in San Diego while I attended the education meetings. Worked great, but his reports are better than mine. We’ll start with his and then close with my report from the Professional Development meeting.

NAR National Conference – HVCC Session – November 13, 2009

A panel discussion that included FHFA, FHA, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and LSI (an appraisal management company) left the audience with a clear understanding that they like the HVCC. The perception is that complaints about pressure on appraisers has been reduced and the overall level of risk associated with faulty appraisals has been reduced.

NAR representatives from the Risk Management & license Law Forum and the Appraisal Committee highlighted the unintended consequences of the HVCC which include,

1. Lack of geographic competency associated with some AMC ordered appraisals, and
2. Appraisers fee reductions which have resulted in the more competent appraisers being unwilling to perform appraisals for AMC’s leaving the less experienced appraisers to do the work.

Since the HVCC is scheduled to sunset in one more year, does not appear to be actively pursuing legislation to suspend enforcement of the HVCC for 18 months. Most people in attendance were frustrated about the prospects for the future associated with HVCC related issues.

NAR National Conference – Appraisal Committee Meeting – November 13, 2009

The Good News – Mr. Thomas Strickland reported that HUD will be requiring appraiser fees to be separately identified on the HUD-1 and that AMC’s will be required to be required to compensate appraisers based on the customary fees for the region. Timing and details were not otherwise presented.

FHA will accept appraisals for a period of 4 months instead of the previously acceptable 6 months. Additionally two unit condominium units will now be eligible for FHA financing.

The Not So Good News – NAR has developed the REALTORS Property ResourceTM which will include a comprehensive, catalogued database of real estate information on every parcel of property in the United States. Part of this resource will include a REALTOR Valuation Model (“RVM”). The RVM will be used to produce a best-in-class automated valuation product. Most of the appraisers in attendance at the meeting posed the question, why are appraiser members of NAR funding a product that will compete with the services that the appraiser members provide and why weren’t appraisers included in the development of this product? The concerns of the committee were to be presented to the Executive Committee.

NAR National Conference – Professional Development Committee – November 14th, 2009

The PDC had a presentation of “The Shift” as well as covered the written reports from the family of designations. After which, I had no choice but to mention that there seemed to be a lack of committee business on the agenda and that the presentation should probably have been delivered to the General membership. That statement got a lot of positive response from fellow committee members.

Want more information? Visit www.realtor.org/conferencelive for all of the updates and information from NAR in San Diego.

Once again, we have great news on the home-front!  NAR, the National Association of Realtors, latest report shows great improvement in existing home sales.

The combination of the Federal Tax Credit, low interest rates and stable or lowering home prices has garnered another gain.  This gain is the highest in the past two and a half years!

Read the full article here.

And, read the local Collin County Association of Realtors (CCAR) article detailing our area’s 23% increase here.

For more information on building, buying, selling or leasing commercial or residential property anywhere in the world, contact Nicole Tucker, licensed agent with Keller Williams, Dallas Preston Road office at 972-992-8204 or visit my website at http://www.NicoleRE.com.
Nicole Tucker ~ Making Real Estate Real Easy!

Over the years I’ve tracked “source of business” both as an agent and a manager.  Finding that on the listing side, about 80% of the time, there was a pre-existing relationship between the agent and the client.  In a review of the research done by the National Association of Realtors two-thirds of consumers had some form of relationship with the real estate agent that closed their transaction.  By way of clarification, when I use the word relationship, I am saying they either were A Friend, Family Member, Neighbor, Past Customer, or were referred by one of the previous to an agent.  Which reminded me of the following story.

During my first year as a sale associate I received a call from a longtime friend.  Someone I had gone to elementary school with.  He and his wife were living in the midwest and had a chance to move back east for a job opening within his company.  It was the career break he had been working for over the past six years since leaving college.  I asked if he had a relocation package, knowing that if he did then the company would connect him with an agent on the East coast.  When he said he did not I asked if he would like me to help him find a qualified agent to help in the home search?  His answer was “No I already called Your Mother (Mom was an agent since we were in Junior High).  It was at that Ah-Ha moment I learned that I did not hold the top of mind awareness as a Realtor of choice.  I was top of mind as a buddy so if he needed a ride to the airport or someone to go to the game, I was the man, but when he visioned real estate, he saw my Mom.  From that point forward I made it a goal to earn top of mind awareness with everyone I knew.  I wanted them to think of me when they thought about real estate, I wanted to be their real estate agent of choice. Here is what I did:

I collected the contact information for everyone I knew in one location.  I did it first on a legal pad, then transferred to an outlook file.   As I gathered new contacts they went into the file.  Today there are many ways to build a file like this, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Foursquare being some of the most recognizable.  Next is the more difficult part.  I made it a habit to contact 5 of those people every working day, and that contact had to be real, and valuable to them.  Simply calling and asking for business was out of the question.  I wanted to find out what I could do for them.  I put their interests ahead of my own because as Dale Carnegie said “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”  Yes they were added to my notification lists: New Listing Postcards, Monthly Newsletter, Just Sold Mailings etc. but it was the daily contacts that really propelled the relationships.  Through the conversations I was able to help connect people who could help each other. 

Over time I carved out a place at the Top of the Minds I was looking to influence as the resource for all things real estate.  Oh and that friend, the one that moved east from the midwest, when he moved to his next house, he called me first, sorry Mom.

Download my band’s new album for free!!! – www.narmusic.com

TEXAS (Real Estate Center, CNNMoney.com) – A total of 18,643 existing single-family homes were sold in Texas last month, a 4 percent increase from September 2008, according to MLS data compiled by the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.

The median price rose 2 percent to $147,900 during the same period, and the state finished the month with a 7.1-month inventory of existing homes.

Here is how select Texas cities fared in August (data current as of Oct. 23, 2009):

Additional home sales data for these and other major Texas cities are available on the Center’s website.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors reported today that, nationally, year-over-year sales of existing homes were up 9.2 percent last month. The median price of homes sold in September was $174,900, down 8.5 percent from last year.

For more information on building, buying, selling or leasing commercial or residential property anywhere in the world, contact Nicole Tucker, licensed agent with Keller Williams, Dallas Preston Road office at 972-992-8204 or visit my website at http://www.NicoleRE.com.
Nicole Tucker ~ Making Real Estate Real Easy!

RE Barcamp San Diego session: Introduction to RPR

The first session I sat through really wasn’t a technology session at all, but more of an informational session about the newly announced NAR program called RPR (REALTORS® Property Resource).  If you haven’t heard of RPR, I recommend reading the information NAR posted on REALTOR.org.  There you will find a press release, fact sheet, and webinar that goes through some of the screen shots I’ll include below.  Then, if you are a fan of intelligent writing from the dark side, check out Rob Hahn’s post about the Death of RPR.  To tell you the truth, there is much more to learned from those readings than what I can explain here or what was explained at barcamp.  No worries, I’d like to give you a flavor of the session.

Reggie Nicolay (Director of Social Media for RPR), Neil Pinchin (Web-designer for RPR), and Todd Carpenter (Social Media Manager for the NAR) were on the hot seat fielding questions for about half an hour.  They didn’t get too many beginner level questions.  Instead they they got CEO, COO, and MLS Consultant level questions. It seemed to me the majority of the questioneers were looking for definitive answers on, what pieces of the RPR database can be shared and how? Given that RPR was announced about a week prior to this event, it was no surprise that there were a lot of unanswered questions.

Unfortunately, there were no visual aids that could be used to help focus the presentation on the benefits to the REALTORS®.  The most basic way to explain what RPR plans to do is merge MLS data with all the public records data they can get their hands on for the entire country. After the creation of this massive database of information that includes every parcel in the US of A, REALTORS® will be able to login and gain access to an extremely slick portal of information.

With a tool of this magnitude comes fears of a National MLS, among other things. RPR has repeated in several places they have no intention of turning this into an MLS – there will be no offers of compensation within the system.

Once RPR has parcel information for the entire country they are going to have quite the unique product to sell.  Some MLS’s would like to be included in some of the profit sharing.

Like all things, there are pros and cons.  Like all change, it’s scary. The way I look at, I’m glad the NAR is involved some how some way.  To tell you the truth, I’ve gone back and forth on whether I think this is a good idea, but from what I know now – I’m for it.  As local broker Jay Thompson says, “I don’t get, at all, why an agent wouldn’t want as much RE data as possible.”

I’m sure we’ll have more to talk about down the road.  Until then here are a couple of screen shots from the webinar posted on REALTOR.org.

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Here’s a short video that Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate put together at NAR about what REALTORS are looking for at the convention.  Some good ideas and information.  And it features our Broker, Keith Nelson.

You can find more video’s from NAR as well as real estate news on Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate’s Clean Slate blog.

I hope you enjoy this video message, reviewing the latest real estate trends within the Twin Cities Market. Where do you think our market is heading?

TIP: If a video you are watching continually starts and stops, this is called buffering.  When this occurs, simply click pause to allow buffering.  Once complete, click play again.  The video should play without stopping and starting.

As always, please call with any thoughts and questions you may have.  I am here as a resource to you and yours.

Kindest Regards,

Steve M. Albers, REALTOR®, ABR®, CDPE©
Stephenson & Albers Real Estate Team
RE/MAX Results
(763) 229-9067  Mobile
steve@stevealbers.com

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A fellow blogger, ex word of faith-er put this up on his blog. It is very much worth the time to read or to pass on (as he requests at the end of the article).  I will add that anyone following the whole latter rain-kingdom now/dominion-manifest sons of god garbage which is also evident in the healing room ministries of Cal Pierce, and all those under NAR  fall into this teaching. It does not have a foundation in the word of God!  It is the foundational teaching of what I warn about here. We also see the comparison in the article I recently put up, No Sweat.

The Dangerous Teaching Methods Of Kenneth E Hagin (links to article and the blog of Junker Jorge)

I sat under the teaching of Kenneth Hagin for fourteen years. Over these years I read most of his writings, attended his school, sat in his classes and listened to hundreds of his sermons on both CD and tape.

Nothing in my experience as a Christian has damaged me more. I am not alone. Millions of others have been led a stray by this very popular and false teacher who has reproduced himself in other ministers such as Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, Mark Hankins, Frederick Price, Michael Murdock and Joyce Meyers.

His teachings are extremely dangerous because of four basic reasons:

1) He teaches Scripture out of context. He only uses Scripture to fit his doctrines and stories. Not reading Scripture in the context of which it was written is the fastest way into error.

2) Many of his writings were stolen from EW Kenyon. Kenneth Hagin plagiarized massive amounts of Kenyon’s writings. EW Kenyon started out as a Free Will Baptist, but became a passionate student of Christian Science and New Age teachings. He attended a New Age college and was seen at many lectures. He blended Christianity with New Age, Christian Science and Eastern Religion. Hagin then plagiarized these writings for years.

3) Kenneth Hagin also taught the Bible in light of the eight visitations that he claimed to have received from Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith also claimed extra revelations. Kenneth Hagin taught for decades, using his claimed visions to back up his spin on Scriptures. The Apostle Paul warned again ts this in the First Chapter of Galatians. Hagin taught on many things which are never taught in Scripture.

4) Kenneth Hagin claimed to be a Prophet and claimed to have been to Heaven where he received special revelation and instruction from Jesus. Kenneth Hagin would warn his students and followers with many horror stories and testimonies from those who would not receive him. This has resulted in thousands of honest and sincere Christians to become brainwashed and manipulated. The Word of Faith has become a dangerous cult that controls it’s members with spiritual intimidation and erroneous, manipulative teaching from Scripture that has been twisted out of its intended context.

If you know anyone that is caught up into this dangerous cult, then please paste this article and send it to them.

Purchase and Sale Agreement

Have you ever been frustrated by the lack of electronic signatures when you’ve been buying or selling real estate in the Seattle area? Many of my hi-tech clients have been surprised and bemused by this over the years.  Considering we live in the land of hi-tech with Microsoft, Amazon and many other hi-tech companies, our NWMLS (Northwest Multiple Listing Service)  and the real estate industry in general have been behind the curve on this issue.

This may change as the NAR, The National Realtors Association, is investing in DocuSign, the company that develops software for electronic signatures.

From Dale Stinton of NAR:

Our capital investment and guidance will serve as a catalyst for this company to become the standard and meet the market demand for legally binding electronic signatures that help REALTORS close more deals at a faster rate, and offer the convenience and flexibility buyers require,” he said.

Market demand?  Definitely, it’s an understatement and has been a long time coming. Since one of the untold rules of real estate is someone, the Realtor, the buyer or the seller are out of town when an offer needs to be presented and negotiated.  Electronic signatures should make life a whole lot easier.  I think of the times I’ve had clients on opposite sides of the globe in places such as Taiwan, India, and Sweden or clients who are at out of town conventions or meetings.

Having been in the business of helping people buy and sell homes for a long time, I’ve traveled from offers having to be signed with original signatures in person or via snail mail to the giant leap made with faxed signatures.  It would be terrific to make another leap forward to meet the needs of our clients who are busy and on the move.

What do you think?  Have you ever been in a difficult situation with getting an offer signed and delivered?

I’m on my way back to Raleigh today after a fantastic week in San Diego at the NAR (National Association of REALTORS®) annual conference, along with about 20,000 attendees.

One of the hottest topics this year was “smart growth,” the concept of concentrating growth in the center of a city to avoid urban sprawl. The idea is to make land use as compact, transit-oriented, walkable, and bicycle-friendly as possible. To achieve the goal of long-term sustainability, smart growth policies expand the range of transportation, employment, and housing choices; equitably distribute the costs and benefits of development; preserve and enhance natural and cultural resources; and promote public health.

The NAR has gathered survey data on this subject to see how the general public feels about smart growth policies and how they would work locally. The 2009 transportation survey found strong support for smart growth. In fact, says the NAR, “An overwhelming majority of Americans believe restoring existing roads and bridges and expanding transportation options should take precedence over building new roads.”

Survey results from 30 states show that…

• 47% want to improve public transportation
• 25% support developing communities that require less driving
• 20% want to build new roads

So I’m curious, Breeze Blog readers… What do you think? Post your comments here, and let’s get a discussion going on smart growth!

Crediting the homebuyer tax credit, the National Association of Realtors (NAR), said it believes the outlook for housing and the economy appears to be headed for a sustainable recovery, and these projections were enhanced by the tax credit expansion to more homebuyers through the middle of 2010.

“Given the success of the first-time buyer tax credit to date, and the need for qualified buyers to continue to absorb inventory that will include additional foreclosures over the coming year, we are hopeful about the impact of the expanded tax credit because it will stabilize home prices,” Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said. “In fact, the credit is working better than first projected – it now looks like we’ll have 2.3 to 2.4 million first-time buyers this year.”

The 2009 NAR profile of homebuyers and sellers said first-time buyers accounted for a record 47 percent share of home sales over the year, an increase of 6 percent from last year’s survey. With a cyclical low of 36 percent in 2006, this share has continually risen over recent years.

“We’ve seen a steady downtrend in housing inventory for well over a year and home prices appear to be in the early stages of stabilizing,” Yun added. “With expansion of the tax credit to additional buyers through the middle of next year, and no major unforeseen events impacting the economy, home prices should rise between 3 and 5 percent in 2010, but with wide geographic differences.”

While experts believe recovery is looming for the residential real estate market, the most recent Realtors Confidence Index (RCI) showed that some Realtors still have notable concerns.

As a key indicator of housing market strength, the RCI is based on a monthly survey of more than 50,000 Realtors. Participants are asked about their expectations for home sales, prices, and market conditions, and they share their insights regarding buyer preference, financing options, and how these factors influence real estate markets across the nation.

According to the survey, 29 percent of recent buyers purchased a home in foreclosure or through a short sale, and Realtors are concerned about this growing numberand the hurdles buyers face during short sales. The survey said buyers who present a short sale offer can wait months before hearing whether their offer will be accepted, and Realtors are seeing increased competition for foreclosed properties, sometimes driving sales prices over list prices.

“Realtors are on the front lines with buyers and sellers in today’s market and have valuable insights into real estate trends,” Charles McMillan, president of NAR, said. “The volume of distressed sales that our members are reporting underscores the importance of the recent tax credit extension. By putting cash in the hands of financially healthy homebuyers, the credit will continue to help draw down inventory and stabilize home prices to encourage a strong and sustainable housing recovery.”

McMillan continued saying, “As leading advocates for homeownership and real estate issues, Realtors will continue to address rising foreclosure rates, stalled short sales, ongoing appraisal issues, and tight credit in the commercial markets in support of real estate recovery.”

Please join Bradley J. Chais for real estate performance at Team Chais, where his personal brand of “experiencing life’s journey & growth through persistence, ownership, family & fun” will guide you to your real estate dreams coming true!

So what was the big buzz at this year’s convention?  Without question it was the talk surrounding RPR, or REALTORS Property Resource.  The REALTORS Property Resource™ (RPR™), is a parcel-centric information database covering more than 147 million property parcels in the country. This database is designed to be a resource for NAR members and will create single source access to data which will add value to the information available for members to use with their clients and customers.   

This initiative will provide access to a national database of real property information and will give real estate professionals the best access to property needed to serve their clients and customers. It will include in-depth, trusted information on every parcel of real property including public record information, details of prior transactions, MLS-provided information, zoning information, transfer tax information, and other relevant information.  The initiative will be based on the collaborative efforts of REALTORS® and the real estate community, including MLSs. It will drive development and implementation of data standards and definitions, and will increase the breadth, depth, immediacy and power of real estate information available to REALTORS®.

Sounds good right?  So what is all the fuss about?  According to Brian Boero on his 1000Watt Blog, “The RPR is impressive with enough data to choke a horse and a user interface that is very well done.  Foreclosure data, default stats, interactive charts, and even sliders for users to adjust the market conditions as they see them. On top of that, there is a basic community/social function. It’s extremely robust, perhaps to a fault.”  So again, why all the fuss?  In a nutshell what the NAR has done is position itself to go head to head with dozens of local MLS’s that already have contracts with service vendors to provide this type of data at the hyper-local level.  This is shaping up to some real estate professionals a “Civil War” of epic proportion!

On one side there seems to be a need for this type of information and it could be seen as a welcome opportunity to streamline data and make it simple for real estate professionals to access the same information all from one source.  On the other side it’s not hard to see that MLS’s feel like they will be cut out of the picture.  Which brings up an interesting point, just what roll does the MLS play, not only in this tale, but in the overall big picture?  Another session I attended on, “The Future of the MLS” seems to tell the story of changing times with talk that the MLS should exclude offers of shared compensation between brokers, be a free service for core information and offer additional “marketing” applications for a fee. 

So the questions are, “What is the value of this type of data?  Who owns the data?  And should MLS’s be offering up anything other than what they were initially designed to do?”  Clearly we have seen a move by MLS’s toward a deeper offering of service and product.  In addition to the property search and agreement to share commissions, many MLS’s are now including things like transaction management platforms, market analysis tools, valuation tools, and even marketing applications.  But it remains to be seen if real estate agents and brokers will embrace these offerings or opt to provide their own.  And in the NAR is going to play in the same sandbox, is it better for us to play with them?

Twitter is quickly becoming a ubiquitous commodity. Let’s first set some assumptions aside. We know our kids are knee deep in it, the twenty-somethings are the hip ones, the thirty-somethings are tinkering, but then our presuppositions bell curve from there. Right?

Let’s look deeper, past what we often assume applies to the social savvy, and into the dollars and cents of it all.  Businesses are beginning to recognize Twitter’s impact. This realization really dove-tails into the entire arena of Social Networking. Well actually, it snowballs. Once a business realizes that this medium is what consumers prefer, they quickly see the necessity of jumping into all the various social outlets.  The leaping point, is often Twitter.

An industry making that leap that surprised me,……….Realtors!  Find out which industry association is leading the way  here.……

We’ll address the other mediums in subsequent posts.  There is a lot to write on!  Much more later.

EXCERPT

When Lee Grady (Apostle in the New Apostolic Reformation and editor for Charisma Magazine (with founder being Stephen Strang) not once during the duration of the Todd Bentley Lakeland Outpouring Revival say in any of his articles anywhere;   

‘No, people, No.  This is not God.  Stop, don’t go, you are being conned out of your money, you are being lied too, there is a fake spirit coming over you”  

Never did Lee Grady say this or anything remotely similar, there was NO warning what-so-ever.  In fact Lee Grady endorsed it and helped spread the fire (that fake holy) spirit.   So coming out now with an article like this is just laughable, telling people to calm down, as the ‘play play’ games are now over.   None of this should have ever happened in the first place if you and your apostle and prophets friends read the Word of God and had an ounce of discernment.

 

READ HERE:

http://www.discerningtheworld.com/2009/11/13/we-do-not-play-sloshed-in-the-spirit-anymore/#more-6825

According to marketwatch.com , the number of people interested in investing in real estate has doubled since March as more folks are lured by low prices and the wide selection of foreclosures that can be bought on the cheap, according to survey results released this week by Move.com.

Just more than 12% of potential home buyers surveyed plan to purchase a home as an investment property compared with less than 6% who said the same seven months ago, the survey found. Of those interested in buying a foreclosure, 42% were investors. About 13% of those investors would turn their foreclosures into rentals, 11% would fix them up for resale and 17% said the houses would be used by a family member until the home could be sold for a profit, according to the survey.

Of all potential buyers interested in purchasing a home — both for investment and to live in — 25% said they want to buy a foreclosure.

They also plan on buying low and watching their purchase pay off in the next several years. Of the potential buyers polled, 58% said they expect to pay at least 20% less than market price for a foreclosure, and 39% said they expected a 25% or greater discount. Seventy-three percent expect their properties to appreciate 10% or more in five years; 28% expect their purchases to appreciate 20% or more during the same time.

The most popular reasons given for taking action now: concern that prices have hit a bottom and a desire to take advantage of bargains, according to the results.  About 1,000 people participated in the survey.

“This latest survey validates what many had hoped to see in the housing markets — affordable prices and ample inventories are restoring the appeal of real estate to investors while providing opportunities for first-time home buyers to enter the market,” said Move Inc.’s chief revenue officer, Errol Samuelson, in a news release. Move Inc. operates Move.com.

“In today’s environment, regardless of whether you’re an investor or interested in purchasing a home to live in yourself, residential real estate is a more attractive investment today for many than it has been in recent years.”

Members of the National Association of Realtors will likely be expressing similar sentiments when they meet this weekend in San Diego for their annual conference. Check in with MarketWatch throughout the weekend for the latest real estate news from the conference.

With the first-time home-buyer tax credit extended last week — and expanded to benefit certain move-up buyers too — this could be an unusually busy winter for home sales.

Written by, Amy Hoak, Real Estate writer

For FREE Counsel and access to real estate inventory that is not yet available to the public, contact me today.

Steve M. Albers, REALTOR®, ABR®, CDPE©
Stephenson & Albers Real Estate Team
RE/MAX Results
(763) 229-9067  Mobile
steve@stevealbers.com

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