2012 Home Sales: Positives on Many Fronts

2012 Home Sales: Positives on Many Fronts

Distressed Properties Continue to Put Pressure On Home Prices, Latest HousingPulse Finds
Despite solid demand for home purchases overall, a glut of distressed properties is continuing to put downward pressure on home prices, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey.
Distressed properties accounted for a hefty 46.1% of home purchase transactions in November as reported in the HousingPulse Distressed Property Index (DPI), using a three-month rolling average. Significantly, November marked the 23rd month in a row that the DPI has been above 40%.
At the same time, however, homebuyer demand for housing appears surprisingly strong, especially for lower-priced foreclosed properties or real estate owned (REO). Time on market for move-in ready REO was just 10.1 weeks in November, the lowest in 15 months, according to HousingPulse. Time on market for damaged REO was even lower at 9.0 weeks in November, also the lowest in 15 months.
Short sales were the largest segment of the distressed property market during the month of November, accounting for 17.6% of total home purchase transactions tracked in the HousingPulse survey. Move-in ready REO was the next largest group of distressed properties with a 15.2% share, followed by damaged REO with a 13.3% share of total transactions. Non-distressed home purchases accounted for the remaining 53.9% of home purchases in November.
Average pricing for distressed property was substantially lower than for non-distressed property. The average short sale sold for $209,200 in November, while the average move-in ready REO sold for $189,700. Damaged REO sold for far lower at $98,600. At the same time, non-distressed properties sold for $258,900.

Residential Real Estate Pricing and Commission Metrics
Average Sales to Listing Price Ratio			2011 Year to Date
Region	Damaged REO	Move-In Ready REO		Short Sale	Non- Distressed
AZ & NV	97%	99%		95%	94%
California	97%	99%		96%	96%
Farmbelt	89%	97%		92%	95%
Florida	94%	97%		91%	93%
Industrial Midwest	92%	94%		91%	94%
Northeast	93%	95%		92%	94%
Oil Producing	90%	97%		92%	96%
Pacific NW	98%	95%		96%	96%
Rocky Mountain	91%	96%		92%	95%
South	89%	95%		91%	95%
National Average	93%	96%		93%	95%

Average Property Price by Region--Year to Date
Region	Damaged REO	Move-In Ready REO	Short Sale	Non- Distressed
AZ & NV	$120,003	$170,303	$173,001	$247,834
California	$203,618	$274,488	$301,190	$444,699
Farmbelt	$75,646	$136,991	$161,036	$201,224
Florida	$84,488	$155,823	$153,236	$245,320
Industrial Midwest	$60,639	$113,306	$136,641	$204,813
Northeast	$146,411	$295,458	$232,080	$327,816
Oil Producing	$66,851	$150,284	$159,930	$209,096
Pacific NW	$107,134	$234,574	$255,663	$321,266
Rocky Mountain	$149,109	$171,828	$191,836	$246,136
South	$79,779	$156,464	$191,169	$222,129
National Average	$102,149	$182,687	$199,718	$259,661

Courtesy Campbell Surveys

Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey

It is based on a national survey of more than 2,500 real estate agents each month and provides up-to-date intelligence on home sales and mortgage usage patterns throughout the United States, broken down by region.

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Housing Trends Update

Housing Trends Update is published monthly and is available only to real estate agents who are part of the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse survey panel.
 


Copyright © 2011 by Campbell Surveys

www.housingpulse.com

The Basics

The Basics

Its funny how lately in real estate, and life for that matter, how complicated things have become. QR Codes, Smart Phones, Text Marketing, Tags, SEO, Dynamic Positioning, Key Words, Robots, Spiders, Organic Optimization, IDX, Listing Sync, Facebook, Twitter, Zillow, Trulia, Google, Ad Words, Pay per Click, click through rate, stickiness, social marketing, 24/7 Instant News Sources ….you get the point.

But what does this all do for us? How does this make what we do for our clients better? After all having a QR code on a listing sign may be cool, but how will it work? Does the buyer driving by have to stop the car on the street, get out of the car, walk into the sellers yard to get close enough to take a picture of the sign?  Maybe the picture can be taken from the car, but is that safe?

Is communicating with your Facebook friends and clients violations of Facebook terms, and client confidentiality and potentially violating your fiduciary responsibilities?

Does your personal website or company website and BLOG really warrant the investment in time and energy to compete against the big boys and girls in the industry? I read that our local board website www.LBAR.com was one of the top 30 visited MLS’s in the country this year so far. In a town of less than 300,000 people. Imagine that beating the big boys. But what does that say for me, and the other 2,000 other real estate professionals out there who pen $25-$1,000 a month for websites and all the bells an whistles to market it and get leads? Is it worth it? Or would our time be better spent elsewhere?

Has that paradigm shifted in the market and we are yet to face it? Here is the question I am proposing here. What about the basics? 

I venture to say that every professional reading this post will agree, publicly or not is a different issue, that if being 100% honest with yourself you will find the following challenge and proposed theory to be true. Here is the challenge:

Log in to your MLS or black book, day planner, whatever you use and go back search for your last 5 years business (or as far as you can go back) - closed, expireds, deleted, actives, pendings all of it and print them out, and evaluate each one. Then for as many as you can write down where that business came from. i.e personal sphere of influence, open house, referral, past client, online client, third party source, walk in, sign call convert, yellow pages, cold call…whatever your categories are, just stay consistent in placing them. Then once you have done this go through and total up how many in each category. For example of the 100 sales, X came from sign calls, X from personal referrals, X from online,….. My theory is that an overwhelming percentage came from “old school” techniques, such as personal referrals, sphere of influence, sign calls, personal generated marketing, walk ins and a small minority came from online leads from personal website, third party leads, QR codes, text marketing, etc.

NOW does this mean that these other new fangled techniques are a waste of time and money? No, probably not. Does it mean that next year that QR codes will not become a bigger percentage maybe, maybe not. But I speculate it does mean that most of our time should be spent on proven, repeatable, productive activities. Such as….well that is a post of next week, this is enough to think about for now.  

The point is that we as Realtors® and other sales professionals can get wrapped up in all the gadgets and glitz, and forget about the basics. Maybe its more its important to do the basics, and then add a little glitz, and gadgets. 

Lexington KY Investment Property

New Project

Ty Brown Day 1 Video

My New Company

Always looking for an opportunity I have seized the opportunity to create the Kentucky American Air Company. Noticing the apparent need to create private companies to package and sell the vital life giving necessities of life for profit, and the willingness of the PSCSC's (Public So-Called Service Commission) to allow these generous companies the right to make a substaitial profit to provide these vital services. When interview the PSCSC's chairman, Adolf Richard Head, said "You know these vital companies provide a life sustaining and necessary product, that while available to everyone already they make it easy to get, and clean enough that you only have to filter it or buy it bottled if you pan to ingest it, and we need to make sure that these German....er...uh...great companies are allowed to make a substaitial profit on that service. Afterall air isn't free, really you know." Mr. Head then mumbled almost inaudibly as he sped away in his AMC Mercedes "If they don't like it then they can get their air somewhere else, or well die."

So as you can see there is a great opportunity here, hell its practically a monopoly. So with that being said for this great service we are going to only charge a reasonable fee of $.01 per cubic foot of air, which we calculate as the average capacity of the adult lung per breath and makes sense to us as a measurable unit. Pleas note we have already announced plans to ask for small increases over the next couple years and we provide more air just in case we need it in the future, but no more than 60%, but this year it will only be 37%, which we feel is reasonable considering the cost we have to take on to provide this service and the effect it may have on our share holders with out the raise. Yes these services were subsidized and partially provided by government and developers, and yes they pay for most of that, but we have to be able to pay all of our employees to monitor the increased future usage and quality of our product. Also storage of this new air will be difficult as nature you know is a very inefficient care taker of such resources, the facilities are simply not there for such capabilities. That being said our collection department will be very reasonable and we commit to only use as our last resort, the plactic bag over the head cutoff method for chronic non payers, after all they shouldn't be able to use the product we all need to live for free. And use that only as long as it takes them to find an alternative supplier of air in their neighborhood. Because after all we are a private enterprise, the market is unpredictable out there these days with opportunistic governments and eager beavers everywhere, anyone can come along tomorrow and beat us out of the market with another air company you know.

So I am pleased to announce that effective immediately we are in operation, and legal owner of all the air around you. You will see your first bill soon. Please note we reserve the right to increase our rates at any time to ensure a substantial, but fair, profit for our share holders, and remeber they are air breathers too, so are we, so we are really all in this together.

We are concerned that this rate increase may be a stretch for some and we understand this, but if you would like to come by our office we have a pamphlet we have designed, at our own cost, to educate you as to how to conserve air, and lower your new higher bill each month. Common sense ideas such as rebreathing methods, and not over exerting yourself which uses more air, and always remember to use air wisely after all we all need it.

Thank You

Me, Owner and Air Czar KAAC