Today’s Best & Worst Real Estate Markets

According to Money Magazine, some real estate markets will continue to experience prices free falling over the next 12-18 months before bottoming out. On the flip side of that forecast they’ve also published the fastest growing real estate markets in the nation. Even as prices continue to deflate, there are actually areas that have appreciated in value and continue to post gains.

For the sake of this blog I’ll save the best for last.

5 markets that are forecast for steep losses over the next 12 months: Read more

Are your real estate listings camouflaged?

Depending on who’s numbers you look at 65-90% of buyers begin their real estate search on the internet. If that is the case, how are you keeping your listing from blending in? What do you tell your client you are going to do to set their property apart from the other listings? Let me tell you about how I secured a much sought after listing in Niagara County New York. We are in the first week of turkey season here in New York and there is a property known as Camouflage Acres that has been under developement in the Town of Wilson that has been gaining notariaty. I came to the presentation with a website. Not of me or my company but one about their property. How did I do it? I am no geek or website guru but I did use ListingDomains.com. It gave me a template to follow and allowed me to show my client their property website live before I even had to purchase the domain. After I got the listing I have promoted the website via Newspaper, emails, my radio show and best of all my clients are telling everyone they come into contact. I am the only contact on the site and we have been getting some great feed back. So don’t let your listing blend in to the MLS standard. Promote it with it’s own domain.

Buying Season

SPRINGTIME

Historically the best time for families to buy or sell a home. Sellers waiting for spring can prepare the home for market and buyers know that spring time always offers enough choices for them to find that just right home in the just right neighborhood for a little less than they’d want to pay.

Read more

Short Sale Adventures

My wife and family occasionally provide me with leads. They have great confidence in my professional abilities and trust in my character, so these leads can sometimes be challenging. This is a brief but still disturbing example of one of those more challenging adventures. Read more

I’m Busy and Much More Important Than You

One of my biggest pet peeves is when other Realtors - and even clients - tell me they didn’t fulfill a commitment or duty because “they were busy”. I am currently co-chairing a committee for a Leadership program and one of my committee members told one of the slackers that we expect more involvement from them. The slacker’s excuse was that she has “had a busy year and her schedule has just been hectic”. What she didn’t realize is that she was speaking to a lady whose father-in-law had passed away 2 days prior and still made it a point to fulfill her duties and then some.

When you tell someone you didn’t return their email or phone call because you have “been busy”, you are basically telling them your time is more valuable than theirs. Realtors are notorious for spitting out this poor excuse like it’s second nature and I simply can’t stand it. I have even caught myself saying it at times but my friends and colleagues have been nice enough to call me to the carpet when this happens.

Next time you hear this excuse from anyone, make sure to tell them no one person’s time is more valuable than another’s. So that excuse doesn’t sit well with me, nor should it with you.

Are Hedge Funds Affecting Real Estate Values?

What I know about hedge funds wouldn’t fill a Post-It Note. But the little I do know about them seems a bit sketchy. Not all of them, mind you. Just the ones that are banking on the demise of the US economy. For example, T. Boone Pickens, a legend in oil and gas across the globe, has his own hedge fund, BP Capital. They bet that oil prices would rise beginning in 2005 and it ended up making him over $1.5 billion dollars that year. Yes, billion. So basically it’s like gambling in Vegas but for mega-rich businessfolk. And the “big game” they’re betting on is real life. Are rising oil prices good for the average Joe? Of course not. And isn’t it a bit odd that one of the world’s richest men, who hangs with the most powerful and influential businessmen and women across the globe, is hoping for gas prices to reach $4.00 a gallon? I’m not saying Mr. Pickens assisted in the rise of oil prices but if anyone had the power to make this happen, it would probably be him. There is an inherent conflict of interest here and his gain is the average Joe’s loss.

Blanche Evans discusses this phenomenon using Robert Shiller, a finance professor at Yale University. Apparently he’s a pretty important guy and makes up one half of the S & P Case-Shiller real estate pricing index. According to Evans, the Case-Shiller Index wields quite a bit of influence on how newspaper headlines read across the country and are notoriously pessimistic. We all know how doom and gloom headlines can -and have - affected the psyche of today’s home buyers. And it’s interesting to note the Case-Shiller index tells a different and much more disheartening story than 3 other well known real estate indices. But here is the kicker from the Evans article.

“The Case/Shiller Index is licensed by Macromarkets LLC. In partnership with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Macromarkets created the “Housing and Futures Options” for trading. The CME Group, a Chicago Board of Trade Company, describes trading housing futures as having multiple benefits to investors:

• A new means of risk transfer to a broad range of investors
• Low cost exposure to real estate values without direct ownership of properties
• Access to a unique asset class
• Opportunity to profit from a movement in housing prices
• A way to make trading in real estate a short-term and liquid investment

This is a hedge product, folks, and guess who one of the owners of Macromarkets LLC is? None other than Shiller.

“Every time a CME hedge is made, revenue flows to Macromarkets,” says Lawrence Yun, senior economist for the National Association of Realtors. “People would hedge only if they believe prices will fall big time.”

Is this not a glaring conflict of interest? Isn’t there a huge opportunity for abuse here? Is this a good thing for the powerful and ultra-rich to bet on economic downturns?

What We Can Learn From Japan

I’ve only recently become aware of the real estate “bubble” that took place in Japan from 1986 to 1990, where real estate prices became so outrageous it is said land in Tokyo’s Ginza district was going for $139,000 per square foot! But then things went South, way South. People were losing 80% of the equity in their homes. A $500,000 home would now be worth $100,000 but you’re still paying a $500,000 mortgage. Talk about throwing your keys at the lender and walking away. And this lasted for 17 years only to experience an upturn in 2003. Ouch.

Is this where some parts of the United States are headed? Absolutely not. But according to Wikipedia (I’m not sure how accurate this is but it’s the point that matters), the US lost $20 trillion in investments in the Japanese stock market due to their real estate collapse. So shouldn’t we know better? Shouldn’t the CEO’s, CFO’s and COO’s of the largest global financial institutions - who I assume were around then - know that too much development, building and loose lending will eventually end up hurting the economy in the long run?

And shouldn’t cities like Dallas know better? Didn’t we learn anything from overbuilding skyscrapers in the 80’s that now sit vacant and unused? Sure it’s great when money is pouring in and condos and homes are being snatched up at a healthy clip. But aren’t there any regulations or restrictions to make sure we don’t overdo it? Most builders in Lakewood were building - and selling - their inventory between 1998 and 2004 and then started branching out into other areas because investors were swarming and invading their territory and ignorantly buying any tear down they could get their hands on at ridiculous prices assuming someone would pay them top dollar no matter what type of structure they built on the lot. Other areas guilty of the same mentality are downtown and all of their condo conversions and new builds, Oaklawn/Uptown, Preston Hollow and certain parts of the Park Cities. And lets not leave out Frisco, McKinney, Rowlett, Murphy, Wylie, Sachse, Cedar Hill, Mansfield…I could go on and on. Lavon, TX was recently featured in the New York Times because they are a prime example of how overbuilding has virtually brought the city to a complete stand still. From the article,

“These were not towns built on the speculation that soaring home prices would continue forever, like many developments in Florida and on the West Coast. These bedroom communities of bedroom communities were built because land was cheap, jobs were plentiful and mortgage rates were low.”

I find this statement interesting because nowhere does the person say anything about the communities being built due to consumer demand. This is the golden rule for any retail product. Look at the Nintendo Wii. You still can’t find the damn thing anywhere because the company releases the gaming system in small numbers. They get bought within hours. Rinse and repeat. That’s the idea. Unfortunately people have been treating real estate like a commodity and not a product. They want to treat it like stock instead of selling a home for what it truly is, a product. Homeowners are also guilty of this mentality.

Financial Week ran a story back in 2007 reiterating what we already know. That builders are hurting because they can’t sell their existing inventory.

“Dallas-based Centex…walked away from $38 million in deposits on land it planned to acquire for development. “They don’t need more land, they need more customers,” said Standard & Poor’s housing analyst Kenneth Leon.”

To which I say, ya think so doctor? This is the root of our problem. Lack of customers and lack of demand. I think Dallas and other areas across the country needs to step in and prevent this from happening again. Why can’t we use the Wii mentality and limit the number of speculative homes or condos being built within Dallas? This will create a sort of pseudo-demand. Builders won’t be able to build willy-nilly and the consumer will still have a healthy number of homes/condos to choose from. As long as we stay under our historic healthy inventory levels then builders are free to build and receive permits within certain limits. Once we breach that level then the city can halt all new speculative construction for 30 or 45 days or until inventory levels return to normal. I’m sure the big companies would never agree to this idea but I’d choose this scenario and know that my real estate values are being protected over what’s been happening to Japan for the last 17 years, or what’s happening to Lavon, TX right this very minute, any day of the week.

Scrutinizing Equity Lines

Several weeks ago, during a conversation with the owner of a Mortgage Lender here in South Florida I was told that some large banks had started blocking existing HELOC’s  ( Home Equity Lines ). Read more

How Much are Realtors Worth?

Many people don’t want to pay the traditional 6% commission (3% to listing broker and 3% to selling broker)  Read more

Irreplaceable You?

 

The graveyards are full of indispensable men. -Charles De Gaulle Read more