Check out this articile about home sales out of control.

Home sales rise to highest level in 2.5 years

Only a 7-month supply of homes on market; bidding wars are erupting

I Reed Saxon / AP October home sales rose 10.1 percent, beating expectations, as tax credit spurred sales.  View related photos

Video   Realty Check: Existing Home Sales Sales of existing homes jumped, but commercial real estate has further to fall, with CNBC’s Diana Olick. CNBC

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Foreclosure rates by state Foreclosure rates tend to be highest in four key states. Click to see the progression for every state since 2005.

updated 54 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – Home sales surged for the second month in a row in October, climbing to the highest level in 2 1/2 years as first-time buyers rushed to take advantage of an expiring tax credit.

Home sales nationwide are now up nearly 36 percent from their bottom in January, data Monday showed, though they are still 16 percent below the peak in autumn 2005. At the current sales pace, there is only a 7-month supply of homes on the market and in some areas there are bidding wars.

Joey Wilson, 53, and her husband made unsuccessful offers on 20 Las Vegas homes since midsummer before closing on a four-bedroom, $136,000 home this month.

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“It’s insane,” said Wilson, who relocated from Kentucky. “I’ve never seen a market like this before.”

The National Association of Realtors said home resales rose 10.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.1 million in October, from a downwardly revised pace of 5.54 million in September. It was the biggest monthly increase in a decade, and far above the 5.65 million pace expected by economists, according to Thomson Reuters.

Without adjusting for seasonal factors, sales were up 21 percent from a year earlier and were up in all four regions of the country. The gains were led a 26 percent increase in the Midwest. Sales were up 25 percent in the Northeast, 23 percent in the South and 10 percent in the West.

The housing recovery is being driven by lower prices combined with federal programs to lower mortgage rates and bring more buyers into the market. The median sales price was $173,100, down 7 percent from a year earlier and off roughly 2 percent from September.

Many experts predict prices will hit a new low next spring, perhaps falling another 5 to 10 percent, as more foreclosures get pushed onto the market.

The government has tried to counter that trend by offering a tax incentive for first-time buyers and by keeping mortgage rates around 5 percent since the spring.

The tax credit of up to $8,000 for first-time owners was originally set to run out on Nov. 30, but Congress renewed it earlier this month and broadened its reach. People who have owned their current homes for at least five years can now claim a tax credit of up to $6,500 for a home purchase. To qualify, buyers must sign a purchase agreement by April 30.

The Realtors’ report on October home sales reflects offers made before buyers knew the tax credit would be extended.

“The incentives really did get people to go out and buy,” said Wells Fargo economist Adam York. “The question is: What does the trend look like when the credit is over with?”

Home sales are likely to drop over the winter as buyers hibernate for a few months without the looming tax credit deadline.

The new deadline means “we’re going to see some good activity coming out of the spring,” said Pat Lashinsky, chief executive of online real estate brokerage ZipRealty Inc.

But the government support can’t last forever. For example, the Federal Reserve is likely to curtail its effort to push down mortgage rates next year. If rates then rise too high, it would make home purchases less affordable and dampen housing demand.

“When we do kick those crutches out from under the housing market, will it be able to stand on its own?” said Mark Fleming, chief economist with real estate information company First American CoreLogic. “It’s really hard to tell.”

Another concern is that job losses are pushing once creditworthy homeowners into default. Borrowers with prime, fixed-rate loans accounted for one in three new foreclosures in the second quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said last week. Nationwide, a record 14 percent of homeowners with a mortgage were either behind on their payments or in foreclosure.

 

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And in areas where foreclosures have hit hard, housing remains depressed, despite low prices and mortgage rates and the tax credit.

Cleveland real estate agent Colleen Rock notes that the city’s economy is still struggling with job losses. Another round of foreclosures could depress prices again.

“Just because we’re stabilizing, I can’t comfortably tell you we’re back to a normal market,” said Rock, an agent with Re/Max Crossroads. “It might be another year.”

Prudential Real Estate Laguna Beach

 

 

I thought you would enjoy this article…

Google’s got social game

By GahlordDewald

Created 2009-11-03 01:00

Google has added a new tool: Social Search. Accessible via Google Labs [1], Social Search provides results culled from the searcher’s social media graph.

Just as there are separate tabs in the normal Google search for images, blogs, video, etc., once you opt in to the Social Search experiment you’ll see a new tab for social-enhanced search-engine results.

For now, I’d consider this tool pretty bleeding-edge: the requirements for opting in, creating a Google profile and logging in to your Google account will curb the initial group using this tool.

However, if you wish you had thought more about video for search-engine optimization (SEO) before Google started blending video results into the regular search results, here’s your chance for one of their next additions.

For the past year or so, we’ve all been hearing about and experiencing how social Web activities produce results because social capital carries more meaning and influence than traditional paid advertising or other large-audience, reach-based methods (like SEO).

It makes sense at a gut level that decisions like choosing a real estate professional to work with can be influenced by knowing someone who had a positive experience.

Google, being in the business of selling advertising sprinkled around search results, would like to provide the most influential and relevant results to those using their search product. So it only makes sense that they’d be looking for a way to enhance their search results with sources that are closer, in terms of relationships, to the searcher.

Here’s how you can try out the new social search tool.

• Get a Google Profile [2] if you don’t have one already. (Yes, I know, yet another social media profile to manage.)
• In your Google Profile, add all your other social media profiles as "other links."
• Go to the Google Labs page [3].
• Opt in to the Social Search experiment. …CONTINUED

[pagebreak]

From here on, when you are logged in to Google and conduct a search, you will be using the Google Labs search, giving you the social search option as a tab under "more options." You should also know that you can sign up for only one experiment at a time, so make sure none of the others are truly important to you.

The quality of your results will depend a great deal on the profile links you provide to Google via your profile. If you didn’t have any social networking profiles, then you won’t see any results. I also found that it took a couple days to start showing any results at all. So perhaps you might set it up and then try again a couple days later.

Given that this tool is still very much an experiment and not in general use, how might you use it in the meantime?

• General reputation management (assuming your clients have "friended" you on one of your social networks).
• Help raise Google’s awareness of some site or page that it isn’t indexing for its primary search (though I don’t think it would help with specific keyword ranking or other SEO heavy-lifting).
• Listening to your social networks for topics/themes that are important to your audience.
• Locating social network content from your friends that you might link to in your own content.

With the rise in importance of social networks to online marketing agendas, Google appears to be developing a tool to layer its core competence (search technology) on top of all that social activity. In many ways, the search function of the individual networking sites present a threat to Google’s all-encompassing Web search.

For example, when looking for business information on someone it makes sense to start at LinkedIn’s search instead of Google because all of the results in LinkedIn will be business-oriented.

Incorporating social graph information into the way Google displays results is a logical step for them. For those using online marketing techniques that rely on being found online and monitoring reputation, observing how this service develops and is rolled out is worthwhile. Just like it was for video results.

Gahlord Dewald is the president and janitor of Thoughtfaucet, a strategic creative services company in Burlington, Vt. He’s a frequent speaker on applying analytics and data to creative marketing endeavors.

Orange county
Market Overview a monthly real estate report | September 09
Housing sales up for the fourth consecutive month
Housing Sales Are Climbing
The month of August began cautiously
with mixed economic news, but by
the end of the month, the outlook for
September housing was greatly improved.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported
that job losses were continuing, but at a
slower pace.
Housing continued to improve, largely
driven by the first-time home buyer
tax credit. The National Association of
REALTORS reported that July existing
home sales jumped 7.2 % — the largest
monthly sales gain since 1999 and the
fourth consecutive month of growth.
If the current rate of improvement in
existing homes remains at a steady pace,
from 9.8 months on hand in June to 9.4
months on hand in July, the existing
housing market could be balanced
(on a national basis) in approximately
eight months.
On August 20, the Mortgage Bankers
Association announced that mortgage
applications were also up, as interest
rates crept down to a five-week low,
with purchase applications up for the
third consecutive week. Among the
reasons cited were the success of the
first-time home buyer tax credit and
price-to-income ratios falling below
historical trends.
Momentum in housing sales should
continue, spurred by the end of
first-time home buyer tax credits on
November 30, 2009. With new banking
and appraisal rules adding time to the
typical closing process, first-time home
buyers should open escrow by the end of
September if they hope to close on time
and qualify for these credits.
Reasons to Buy Now
The economy is improving
The worst recession since the Great
Depression may be winding down, said
The Conference Board on August 20, 2009.
The analysts found that leading economic
indicators rose 0.6% in July, following a
0.8% rise in June. That’s two consecutive
months of improvement halting eight
months of declines.
While the indicators can certainly slide
backward on new data, serious home
buyers should realize the days of wholesale
bargains may be numbered. This could
explain why California entry-level prices
are rising, and luxury home owners are
starting to stick to their prices.
Inventory is being absorbed
We appeared to hit bottom during the
second quarter of 2009. Since then we
have seen a steady rise in closed sales.
Existing, or pre-owned, home inventories
are being absorbed and are close to a
balanced market at 9.4 months of supply.
At their highest during the recession, new
and existing home inventories hovered at
11 months on hand. A balanced market
is approximately six months of inventory
on hand.
Average sales prices are starting to rise
Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the
NAR, says that improved affordability has
driven sales, with first-time home buyers
taking advantage of the tax credit. “The
demand for foreclosed and lower-priced
homes has spiked, and lack of inventory
is becoming a common complaint,”
he notes. In many Southern California
communities, homes priced at or below
conforming loan levels have little inventory
on hand, allowing sellers to raise prices
and entertain multiple offers.
Advice for Home Buyers
Since May 2009, Federal Housing
Finance Agency appraisal regulations
have slowed home sales transactions. The
National Association of REALTORS®
has found that 76% of its members
reported delays in closing.
As the first-time home buyer tax
credit comes to a close, banks will be
inundated with loan applications for
an already narrow production pipeline.
Home buyers should allow at least 60
days closing, which puts some first-time
home buyer loans at risk of not meeting
the November 30, 2009, deadline if
they are not in escrow by the end of
September 2009.
Advice for Sellers
Price your home for today’s market, not
what you think it will do in two or three
months. Lenders are very cautious about
appraisals.
While demand is picking up, the
percentage of foreclosures in the
second quarter 2009 was the highest
ever recorded by the Mortgage Bankers
Association. The trade organization
says foreclosures will continue to grow,
peaking at the end of 2010 — placing
continued pressure on pricing.
To avoid delays in closing, make sure
your home is in top repair and you have
all your property disclosures ready for
the buyer’s inspection. You may see some
buyers still waiting for signs of a bottom,
but motivated buyers will respond
immediately to a well-priced home in
great condition.
ORANGE COUNTY
Orange County is experiencing a seller’s market in affordable homes priced below $899K.
Only homes priced above $900K are selling more slowly at nearly 13 months of inventory
on hand, but that is far from the highest inventory in luxury homes in Southern California.
Detached homes are single-family homes that share no walls with other properties. Attached homes have at least
one shared wall, such as condos, duplexes, or townhomes.
Attached homes are selling well below
$699K, while those priced over
$900K have nearly 21 months of
inventory on hand.
Detached homes are selling well below
$899K, while those priced over $900K
have nearly 12 months of inventory
on hand.
Detatched Properties – Inventory in Months
Attached Properties – Inventory in Months
0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0 12.0 14.0
0.0 5.0 10.0 15.0 20.0 25.0
The availability of near-same comparable
homes makes list to sold prices somewhat
closer, according to price per square foot.
However, lower backup offers than closed
prices indicate that buyers know there is
plenty of room to negotiate.
Detached home listings and sales volumes
have grown exponentially since January
2009, but sales volume has yet to
overtake the number of new homes for sale
that are entering the market.
Active listings are priced much higher per
square foot, supporting data that housing
is selling much faster in lower price ranges.
Higher pending and backup offers than
solds suggest that buyers know a bottom
when they see it.
New Listings Listings Absorbed
Detached Properties – Listing Taken and Absorbed – 12 Months through July, 2009
Detatched Properties – List Prices Per Square Foot by MLS Status
Attached Properties – List Prices Per Square Foot by MLS Status
$0 $100 $200 $300 $400 $500 $600
$0 $100 $200 $300 $400
©2009 Prudential California Realty Independently owned and operated. Objective data used in this report provided by Real Data Strategies. Inc. Our
company’s mailing materials are printed on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as the product of sustainably managed forests. An
independently owned and operated member of the Prudential Real Estate Affiliates, Inc. This is not intended as a solicitation if your property is currently listed
with another broker.
Attached Properties – Listing Taken and Absorbed – 12 Months through July, 2009
Detached Properties – Listings Sold – 12 Months through June, 2009
Detached home prices have trended
downward for the last two years, but they
rose in Q-2, 2009 for the first time due to
attractive pricing.
Sales volume in attached homes has
outpaced new listings on the market since
June 2009.
With prices down sharply for two years in
attached homes, the trend reversed itself
with a price increase and sales volume
spike in Q-2, 2009.
Attached Properties – Listings Sold – 12 Months through June, 2009
New Listings Listings Absorbed
Avg Sales Price Listings Sold Units
Avg Sales Price Listings Sold Units