Prophesies for 2007

2007 is upon us! Let's join Inman News as the make their predictions for real estate industry during the New Year:

1. Housing will lose its sex appeal. TV shows on home improvements, weird Realtors and house flipping will be canceled. Home Depot will no longer be a popular place to find dates.

2. Wall Street will no longer be enamored with the mortgage market; investors instead will shift their focus to office buildings and help overbuild that market, only to move their attention elsewhere in 2008 (such as Cuba when it is finally economically liberated in 2007).

3. The National Association of Realtors will go direct to the consumer with its message, moving beyond simple ads and offering relevant buying and selling content on multiple mediums.

4. Move Inc., formerly Homestore, will find a new CEO when Mike Long retires after saving the company from its early accounting disaster.

5. Google and Zillow will go head to head in a fierce competitive battle to dominate the online consumer market. Google will add robust features and Zillow's traffic will soar. Watch for Zillow to start an offline ad campaign.

6. Real estate search site Trulia will be acquired after building one of the largest search sites to date for home listings.

7. A raft of discount brokers will go out of business. Tough markets will squeeze out many who just started during boom years as sellers grow more willing to pay top dollar to get their homes sold.

8. RealEstate.com will either acquire a big broker or abandon its offline brokerage experiment.

9. The number of MLSs will drop in half as consolidation becomes necessary, not just interesting.

From all of us at Mail Print, have a great 2007!

Gina.

My First Real Estate Auction

Well, I attended my first real estate auction on Saturday. I came across a perfect house that I was willing to try my hand on to fix it up and rent it out.

I had my estimate from my contractor and I was ready to roll. One problem, so were about 30 other bidders. In talking to the various players I learned that my thoughts on the home price were correct and that all those who were looking for investment property were on the same page.

To our disappointment the winning bidder was planning on fixing up the house and living there. She was willing to pay about $20,000 more than all the investors.

The big lesson is that a home is worth only what someone will pay for it.

Great advice in a "buyer's market"...

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Reprinted from the Inman News Blog...

Click your heels and repeat after me: the houses are selling

At a forum of heavy hitting "power brokers" at the National Association of Realtors onvention in New Orleans today, Alex Perriello, president and CEO of Realogy Real Estate Franchise Group, offered some marketing techniques aimed at persuading the public that now is a good time to buy. "The big disconnect is consumers don't know that houses are selling," Perriello said. He tells his franchisees that sold listings should make up 20 percent of their advertising. "If you're running an ad with 10 listings, put two of them with sold banners on there ... if everybody in the market follows suit, (buyers are) going to open up the newspaper ... and say, 'Holy smokes, what's going on? I don't care what the media says, houses are selling.' "

Along the same lines, when a house sells, don't be quick to take the sign down. "The best advertising for any company is your sign with a sold rider on it," Perriello said. "Ask the buyer, can I leave that up for another two weeks ... so that people who come through this neighborhood will know that houses are selling? We'll sell more, and the value of your house might go up."

Also: don't send just one "sold" postcard -- send four. They tend to get discarded as junk mail, Perriello said.

The panel, which also included RE/MAX International chairman Dave Liniger and Real Living CEO Harvey Rouda, also talked about the need to get information on sold listings to the public in a less roundabout way: through the MLS and Realtor.com. More on that later.--Matt Carter, Inman News.

Posts related to this topic: Five ways to Earn More with Transactional Marketing, Housing in Next 10 Years to Outshine Previous 10 Years

Housing in Next 10 Years to Outshine Previous 10 Years

I saw the excerpt below from the weekly Real Trends newsletter. I always like sharing good news about the housing industry because I do believe that what you talk about comes true. People make money in real estate in both good times and bad. It's a choice for many people, me included, to NOT participate in a down economy.

If you don't receive Real Trends weekly industry report, I highly recommend it... (www.realtrends.com)

From now through 2015, housing starts are unlikely to exceed last year’s record 2.073 million single-family and multifamily units, according to the long-term forecast just published by economists at NAHB. However, starts won’t be too far from the record in at least a couple of those years, and on average will exceed those of the previous 10-year period.

The real value of residential construction will exceed previous decades by an even wider margin, the forecast says, partly because the size of new homes is expected to continue drifting upward, but even more because of the addition of amenities and equipment demanded by baby boomers trading up.

Production, including manufactured homes, will average about two million units per year over the decade, “but average production will be lower in the first half of that period as excess vacancies are absorbed and only a few of the people born in the 1980s establish households,” says NAHB. The upward trend in housing foreseen for the next 10 years will be largely driven by demographic trends, the forecast says, and not by interest rates.

With strong competition from the condo market, the single-family share of new units produced will slip from the record 77 percent of last year to about 70 percent during 2010 to 2015, according to the forecast, which will still be higher than the 67 percent average share of the 1990s and the 57 percent share of the 1980s.

Driven by overall growth and aging of the adult population, the number of households is forecast to grow by about 1.5 million annually from 2006 to 2015, more than at any time since the early 1970s, when the initial household formations of the baby boom and an increase in the divorce rate, caused a surge in new households.