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An investigation by KNXV-TV in Phoenix showed how home foreclosures are happening in clusters.
The station analyzed records and discovered zones where most of the foreclosures are happening. One neighborhood alone had more than a thousand foreclosures in the past 18 months. An expert that looked at the trend explained that certain neighborhoods were once considered “affordable housing.” People bought homes there when the market was booming with adjustable rate loans. Now that values have dropped, the homes are worth less than what’s owed on them.
WATCH:  “Foreclosure Zones — What it means for homeowners,” KNXV-TV, July 27, 2007

“Make something happen today, before you go home, before the end of the week. Launch that idea, do what you haven’t, run that ad, call that customer. Go the edge, that edge you’ve been holding back from… and do it today. Without waiting for the committee or your boss or the market. Just go.”

There is more to buying a home than collecting curtain swatches and making sure you’ve got enough moving boxes.

Other, just-as-important details include calculating the cost of renting vs. owning, the quality of the local school district, legal fees, local preservation laws and signs of value in the neighborhood in which you are looking.

Consider house hunters in San Diego. There, the single-family home market is experiencing a significant price correction. In 2006, the market dropped 4.5 percent. Renters pay 38 percent of the cost of an owner’s mortgage payment, according to data from Torto Wheaton Research, a research firm owned by CB Richard Ellis. That’s compared with 79 percent nationwide.

The situation illustrates a key point. Owning a home fulfills a central element of the American Dream, but if you don’t do the math, it can quickly turn into a nightmare.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was searching around for some good real estate technology news. Something uber geek.

I ran across this article about a video production company in New York City who set up shop to service Realtors full-time. However, their job is not to go in with a camera to spin it around for a 360 view, but to go through every part of the property to give an “intimate” and personal view of the house’s features.

The footage is taken with the listing Realtor narrating each feature. After production, the video is uploaded to YouTube immediately for distribution.

A few New York Realtors sold their listings the NEXT DAY beause someone saw the “home video” on YouTube.

Do you think a fully narrated, nicely arranged video would help market your listings?

The old saying that the rich get richer is very true. As long as you manage your money well, it’s far easier to make money if you’ve already got some cash socked away than it is to start from scratch. The reason is simple: compounding.

When you’ve already got money working on your behalf, each percentage point of return simply adds that many more dollars to your account balances. After all, if a stock you own goes up in value, it’s far better to own 10,000 shares than it is to own 100.

You can do it!  Start small

Fortunately, anyone with even a little cash to invest can take advantage of the power of compounding. It just takes a little while longer for the rest of us to get to the point where it can really work its magic.

To show how it works, here are a few charts that showcase how many years it takes to reach each $1 million threshold given that you regularly invest and earn a decent rate of return.

To go from $0 to $1 million:

To read more, click over to the story “Your First Million is the Toughest”

Cynthia Habberstad, with her children, Andrew, Brielle and Brooke, said she regretted not buying a parking spot for $165,000 with the apartment she bought on West 28th Street. The spaces are now all taken.

In most major U.S cities, 225-thousand-dollars will get you a decent home to live in.  But in New York City’s Manhattan borough, it’s the going rate for a prime parking spot.

According to “The New York Times,” five private parking places in the basement of condo building on Manhattan’s Lower West Side are listed for a quarter-of-a-million dollars.  Eight people are already on the waiting list, and some that don’t own vehicles want to buy them in order to rent them out.  The developer of the building, which will be completed in January, is asking the city for the approval of four more spots.  Figures from the National Association of Realtors show the average price of a home in the U.S. is currently selling for just less than 224-thousand-dollars.

It seems as though this website, Agentopolis.com, is cataloging all the agents in the country, including each agent’s business and contact information.

If I were you, I would go update my information. The webmaster of the site boasted an estimated 100,000 page views in January and it looks as if your agent profile will be crawlable (searchable) through Google and Yahoo, so you would want the most up-to-date and accurate information showing in case people visit.

Internet marketing is fun! Haha.

To view the profiles of  the candidates that are running for Officers and Directors on the Lodi Association of Realtors click on the following link http://www.lodirealtors.org/lar_candidates.htm or you can go to our website at lodirealtors.org and click on the link there.

Be sure to become familiar with your candidates!

I know this doesn’t make any sense, but according to this New York Times article, you might be pricing your home too low.

Don’t get too excited, however. The article is mainly referring to high end homes in San Francisco and New York’s well-to-do areas.

This is an interesting analysis, however, on why “The low end is getting creamed. The middle is struggling. [and] The high end is running on its own dynamic.”

Read the full story by clicking here.