Home Prices Rise in Half of U.S. Cities as Markets Stabilize

May 7 (Bloomberg) — Michelle Meyer, a senior economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, talks about the U.S. economy and real estate market. She speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday.” (Source: Bloomberg)

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Four Killer Questions to ask Your Agent

By Maria Patterson

As prices slowly start to rise and inventory begins to shrink in many areas, you may finally be ready to put your home on the market. However, selling your home in today’s gradually recovering market is still tricky business and requires the expertise of a professional real estate agent.

Take your time when selecting the right agent to work with. You’re about to embark on a major endeavor so having the right chemistry—and the right level of trust—are essential. Here are four important questions to ask a prospective agent that will help you determine if he or she is the right person to list your home with:

1. How long have you been a real estate agent? The number of years an agent has been in the business is important information for you to know—and there are pros and cons to every level of experience, so don’t rush to judgment. For example, if an agent has only been practicing for a couple of years, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Agents who started in real estate after the bubble burst only know how to operate within current market conditions and won’t waste time on outdated strategies that worked during the housing boom, but that won’t work now. Measure their success by the home’s they’ve sold so far and how they overcame the particular challenges of those sellers. Conversely, if you’re prospective agent is a real estate veteran, be sure to ask how he or she has adapted their approach for the market downturn. While their years of experience are invaluable to you, make sure they’ve changed accordingly with the times.
2. What will you specifically do to market my home? In today’s technology-based environment, don’t settle for a general response, such as “online marketing” and “virtual tours.” Ask prospective agents which specific listing syndication sites your home will appear on, how many photos/videos of your home will be included, how social media will be utilized, and what sort of mobile platforms are available. Ask for examples of other homes the agent is currently listing so you can get a good idea of how your home will be marketed.
3. What will it take to make your home stand apart? Savvy agents will offer specific details on what simple—or potentially significant—improvements need to be made to help your home compete on the market. Ask what features/qualities were common among recently sold homes. For example, if home offices were a popular selling point, quickly redecorating a spare bedroom into office space could make a big difference to prospective buyers.
4. How will you determine the best possible price for my home? Pricing is a complicated and critical issue in today’s market and before you ask an agent this question, decide how quickly you want/need to sell your home. With a slightly lower listing price, your home could sell very quickly. With a slightly higher price, be prepared to wait. Ask your agent what the average listing time is for homes in your area. Ask which homes sold quickly and why. Ask what investments you may be able to make in your home that would result in a higher selling price. Ask what the current housing supply in your market is so you can get an idea of how in-demand your home may or may not be. All of these factors are crucial to determining the best listing price for your particular circumstances.

I hope this information is useful to you. Please contact me for all your South Florida real estate needs at (305) 329-4929 or solovay.m@ewm.com.

Pending Home Sales on the Rise

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The Reasons Your House Isn’t Selling and What You Can Do about It

(Part 1)

By Kristin Brown-Orr

Selling a home can be a daunting undertaking, and while you may be helpless to control the state of the market or the number of prospective buyers in your price range, here are a few ways to be proactive against some of sellers’ most common pitfalls:

Problem: Competition. Are there too many homes for sale in your price range? If there are too many options open to buyers in your market, you may not see as many showings as you’d like.

What You Can Do: Unfortunately, the state of the market in your neighborhood or town is pretty much beyond your control. You’ll need to think about how you can make your home a more attractive sale, either by lowering your price or providing attractive terms of sale.

Problem: Your asking price is too high. It’s stating the obvious, but if your asking price is too high, you’ll price yourself right out of a lot of potential showings. Further, even if you do manage to land a buyer at your price, his or her financing is more likely to fall through during the sale if the house will not appraise.

What You Can Do: Working with a trusted real estate agent to come up with a fair asking price is vitally important. Make sure you are educated about the market you’re selling in, and price your home accordingly. Ask yourself whether you’d rather net a little less than you had hoped – or not be able to sell at all.

Problem: Your home lacks curb appeal. The condition of your home inside and out is critically important to making a sale. If your home doesn’t show well, a potential buyer is going to head elsewhere. Most buyers are looking for a house they can move into without a ton of small repairs and cleanup.

What You Can Do: You’ve been meaning to fix that leaky faucet or repaint the fence in the front yard, so now is the time to do it! Of course, this should have been done when you decided to sell, but it’s never too late… De-clutter your rooms and store all personal effects. Consider investing in some new curtains, bath towels and throw rugs. To make sure that you nail that crucial curb appeal, spruce up your yard with new plantings, trim hedges and weed flowerbeds, and keep the lawn short and neat. Those minor repairs that you have been living with will add up in the eyes of a prospective buyer.

Problem: Location. Everyone’s heard that old maxim that real estate is all about “location, location, location!” But what do you do if you’re trying to sell a home on a busy street, or too close to a major highway?

What You Can Do: There are actually a few things you can do to increase your chances of a sale. If your home is on a busier street, highlight any benefits on the flip side—maybe your backyard is fenced in, your taxes are low or you can walk to a school nearby. Make sure you pay extra attention to those highlights. If you are in an area where your home is very close to a major highway, consider some type of privacy hedge or fencing. If you have older windows consider replacing them – the benefit will be two fold, you will have new windows as a selling feature and those new windows will provide a little more sound buffering inside the home. Last, consider selling at a time when the foliage is in full bloom to help naturally block sound or visual effects from nearby highways.

Kristin has been serving her community as a REALTOR® for the last eight years. She is a member of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, MAR, NAR, MLS-PIN, Women’s Council of REALTORS®, and a recipient of The President’s Circle Award.

I hope this information is useful to you. Please contact me for all your South Florida real estate needs at (305) 329-4929 or solovay.m@ewm.com.

Is The Housing Market In Recovery?

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Downtown Miami 2020

Video illustration of ten billion dollar boom coming to Downtown Miami by the year 2020.

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Real Estate Bidding Wars Are Back

Pending-home sales in March hit their highest level since April 2010, spurring the return of real-estate bidding wars. Nick Timiraos reports on The News Hub.

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Housing Outlook Continues to Brighten, Say Economists

Mirroring the uneven economic recovery, the housing market is expected to move in a slow, gradual upward path in 2012, while encountering its share of speed bumps along the road, according to economists participating in yesterday’s National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) construction forecast webinar on the housing and economic outlook.

While the latest monthly housing data have shown signs of a slight softening, NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe said this is more reflective of typical month-to-month volatility in the numbers and unusual seasonal factors than they are an indication of any significant downward trend in the broader housing market.

“The aggregate information suggests we’re just in a pause mode right now in terms of these measures,” said Crowe, who noted this could partly be the result of an early spring that brought much better weather than usual into the picture at the start of this year and pulled some housing activity forward.

Pointing out that less volatile quarterly data have continued to show modest improvement in key housing indicators such as builder sentiment, new-home sales and housing production, Crowe said the “housing outlook continues to slowly brighten.”

Crowe noted that numerous other fundamentals remain positive for housing at this time, including demographic factors (with pent-up household demand expected to ramp up and echo-boomers heading into their prime household formation ages), historically favorable mortgage rates that are not expected to move higher than 5 percent by the end of next year, more than 100 local markets currently listed on the NAHB/First American Improving Markets Index, and the fact that house price-to-income ratio has now returned to its historical average of about three-to-one versus the nearly five-to-one to which it had previously risen during the height of the housing boom.

However, he cautioned that housing still continues to face formidable challenges of its own such as rising foreclosures, persistently tight lending standards for homebuyers and builders and difficulties in obtaining accurate appraisals. Moreover, disappointing job growth numbers in March and uncertainty in the European economy are undermining prospects for a vigorous recovery.

“No one is anticipating that an upward path for housing will run in a straight-line trajectory,” said Crowe. “The economy is in an uneven recovery and we can expect some corresponding ups-and-downs in the housing market in the months ahead. However, NAHB believes that on the whole, we can expect a slow and gradual recovery in housing starts, home sales and the overall housing market in 2012.”

Starts and Sales on Upward Path

New-home sales are expected to climb from a record-low of 305,000 units in 2011 to 357,000 this year and 505,000 in 2013. Existing single-family sales are expected to follow suit and rise from 3.8 million last year to 4.4 million in 2012 and 5.4 million next year.

Housing starts are also anticipated to move in the same upward trajectory, Crowe said, with single-family housing production increasing from 434,000 units last year to 503,000 this year and a more solid 660,000 in 2013.

On the multifamily side, starts posted a healthy 55 percent increase in 2011 over 2010.

“A lot of newly formed households have become renters, so we need more rental units,” Crowe said. “We don’t expect to see the same rate of increase moving forward, but we should continue to see a healthy recovery.”

NAHB is anticipating that multifamily starts will rise from 177,000 units last year to 216,000 in 2012 and 235,000 in 2013.

With many households choosing to stay in place and remodel their homes rather than move, residential remodeling is expected to rise 12 percent this year and another 7.9 percent in 2013.

U.S. Economic Outlook

Delving into the economic forces that housing will be contending with in the next two years, Chris Varvares, senior managing director and co-founder of Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC, projected growth in the gross domestic product of 2.6 percent this year and about 3.3 percent in 2013.

Citing a number of risks to this outlook, Varvares said the “eurozone is the 800 pound gorilla in the room,” and if Spain or Italy face a financial default, the effects could spill over into the U.S.

Soaring oil prices and the standoff with Iran over its nuclear stance could also unnerve financial and commodity markets.

In the U.S., he said that the payroll tax holiday, emergency unemployment benefits, and the Bush-era tax cuts are all due to expire at the end of the year. So if Congress does not act, he said we could be “hitting a fiscal cliff.”

On the plus side, he said that increasing household formations, rising real incomes, steadily upward payroll growth and a bullish stock market will contribute to the current economic expansion.

Turning to the housing front, Varvares said, “we believe we have hit the trough in home prices” and expects prices to be flat this year and to rise 1.5 percent in 2013.

He anticipates 514,000 single-family starts in 2012 and 751,000 next year. Multifamily housing production should hit 221,000 this year and 238,000 in 2013.

“Our long-term analysis suggests that given the demographics, we need to build roughly 1.6 million units a year over the next decade to meet demographic demand for housing,” said Varvares. “Obviously, we are now well below that. We do believe we will see a fairly nice run in 2013 and beyond as we need to build those units.”

Conditions Vary by State

Looking at various state statistics behind the national numbers, Robert Denk, NAHB’s assistant vice president for forecasting and analysis, noted a range of conditions across the country and differences among the states in the amount of distress suffered during the recession and the headway that is being made in recovering.

Housing nationwide bottomed out at an average 27 percent of normal production, which he defines as the residential building that occurred in 2000 to 2003, before the housing boom.

The hardest hit states—such as California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona—bottomed out at between 10 percent and 15 percent of normal production, while better states, in sharp contrast, declined to 50 percent of normal production.

Denk said that housing prices are drifting back to near-normal in many states. The number of states where house prices now exceed their historic trend are continuing to recede, joining the states where prices are in the normal range.

Some states however, such as Arizona and Nevada, have seen an overcorrection of boom prices and will take longer to get back to normal.

Nationally, he said prices have dropped back to normal. “What we are seeing is stabilization of house prices across the country, back to nearly their historical averages,” he said.

Most states saw their foreclosure rates jump from an average of 0.5 percent during the period before the boom to a peak of nearly 1.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009, but there were those—such as California, Arizona, Florida and Nevada—where foreclosures increased by a factor of four, five or six times normal.

Nationally, foreclosure rates have dropped back down to an average of 1 percent, and while they remain a problem in most markets, they are at crisis proportions in only a few, Denk said. He added that Texas and Florida have roughly the same number of mortgages, but Florida has four times as many foreclosures.

The protracted housing recovery now underway will bring housing starts to 40 percent of normal production by the fourth quarter of this year and 55 percent of normal by the end of 2013.

Getting back to normal considerably faster will be oil states Texas and Oklahoma; coal and natural-gas producing Wyoming and Montana; and Iowa, supported by agricultural commodities.

I hope this information is useful to you. Please contact me for all your South Florida real estate needs at (305) 329-4929 or solovay.m@ewm.com.

Short Sales: A Viable Alternative to Foreclosure

By John Voket

One of the things we hope to see less of in 2012 is short sales.

This brings me to a blog by Bion Grady, (bionsellshomes.com) who specializes in loan modification assistance and short sales in Paulding County, Ga. Grady says if the only alternative for distressed homeowners is to walk away from their property, a short sale may still be a viable alternative for a number of reasons .

Grady advises homeowners to remember these four things:

1. Debt Eraser. The upside down debt is erased in most cases. If you are selling because of a financial hardship, then the upside down debt will be automatically erased in most cases. If your loan is owned or insured by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, and/or VA, and you are short selling because of a financial hardship, their policies state that your debt will be erased.

2. Faster Rebound. You are eligible to buy another home much sooner compared to a foreclosure. The most common loan program, Fannie Mae, stipulates that you can buy another home under their program in two years. FHA, a popular low down payment loan program stipulates that you can qualify for an FHA loan within three years.

3. No Cost to You. According to Grady, all of the expenses are paid for by your lender. That includes the title insurance, any county taxes or fees on the sale, attorney fees, and the real estate agent. If the lender foreclosed on the house and then tried to sell it, they would have to pay all the costs.

4. Less Credit Damage. Upon completion of the short sale, Grady says your credit score will drop between 50 and 100 points. However, it will rebound fairly quickly, and you will have a lower debt to income ratio, which will boost your credit. In addition, anything and everything bad on your credit can be fixed through the dispute process.

I hope this information is useful to you. Please contact me for all your South Florida real estate needs at (305) 329-4929 or solovay.m@ewm.com.

Ellen Degeneres Talks Real Estate

I hope you got a good laugh, like I did.