Bilingual real estate agents in high demand among Hispanic buyers. Bilingual real estate agents are in high demand among Hispanics, the fastest-growing segment of the area's real estate market, local agents say. Click here to read more.
A tale of two markets. Is housing headed for a big chill? What we can learn from a pair of the country's hot spots. Stay local, and always follow the inventory. With that in mind, FORTUNE decided to check up on two areas at opposite sides of the country that have seen spectacular run-ups in home prices. Yale's Shiller surveyed Orange County residents last year on what they expected home prices to do over the next ten years. The average expectation was a 23 percent return -- per year! That kind of unbridled optimism has caused buyers to stretch beyond their limits. Southern California has become a hotbed for "exotic" mortgages, such as interest-only loans. Boston isn't quite so fortunate. In the city's suburbs, single-family homes have gushed onto the market. Inventory increased to 4,281 by January, 79 percent higher than a year earlier, according to MLS Property Information Network. So what does this tale of two markets mean for everybody else? The good news is that although there are definite signs of a long-term slowdown in each market, it appears to be happening gradually, and in each case guided largely by local economic factors. In other words, there's nothing to suggest a Nasdaq-like plunge, with one overheated city taking down every other all at once. Click here to read more.
Real estate slowdown will pinch industry deluged with agents. Amid all the talk of a bubble in home prices, another bubble has been inflating — this one in the number of people flocking to work in the real estate industry. Palm Beach County now has nearly as many real estate agents as annual home sales. But with sales slowing, real estate experts say the new arrivals will be hard-pressed to make a living in what's always been a tough business for rookies. With the typical real estate commission at about 5 percent, a $400,000 sale generates a $20,000 payoff. But if both buyer and seller have agents, the agents divide the $20,000. And agents' brokers typically get a cut of their commissions, and agents usually pay for ads, yard signs and car expenses. As a career, real estate always has offered a paradox: It's easy to get into the business but tough to make a living. A cooling market only boosts marketing expenses for agents who had been cashing in on quick sales. Click here to read more.
County hits tax jackpot. Spurt in assessed values enriches public treasury. A record number of San Bernardino County residents will soon find supplemental tax bills in their mailboxes, and it's understandable if they're not rejoicing. But for everyone else, the bills are a sign that the county's fortunes are on the rise. Some 89,000 such bills are going in the mail this week, amounting to a record $93 million in supplemental taxes owed. The properties subject to the tax have an assessed value of $14.78 billion, up 65 percent since January of last year. Supplemental assessment taxes come from a levy on properties that have been sold or improved in the last year, or, as is the case with many of the county's newer developments, properties that simply didn't exist before. In San Bernardino County, such properties are plentiful. Although assessed value is far from a perfect indicator of either the growth or overall worth of the area's property, it directly determines county revenue and gives a rear view of growth in the real-estate market. These days, say builders, economists and government officials, that's a rosy view. Click here to read more.
Agents coming off the market? As the housing market cools, list of valley Realtors expected to thin. Reflecting a California trend, the number of real estate agents and brokers in the Coachella Valley has risen significantly in recent years. Research indicates about 50 percent of the active agents account for nearly 90 percent of valley home sales volume. According to the latest available state data, there were 449,107 licensed brokers and sales agents in California as of June 2005. That was up 26 percent from the 355,912 as of June 2003. In June 2005 alone, nearly 7,000 new real estate licenses were issued statewide. Qualifying exams were administered to nearly 16,000 people that month. The Coachella Valley currently has around 5,000 licensed brokers and agents. According to Greg Berkemer of the California Desert Association of Realtors, that number was around 1,000 as of 1996. According to research firm Real Data Strategies, 50 percent of the valley's active agents accounted for 89.3 percent of local sales volume in the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2005. Of the 4,120 members of the California Desert Association, 56.6 percent - 2,331 - had an active license (representing one or more sellers) in the 12 months ending Sept. 30. The remainder were considered inactive - though some may be members of active sales teams, Real Data Strategies reported. Click here to read more.
Foreclosure activity up 15% in California in fourth quarter. Foreclosure activity in California was up 15.6 percent in the last three months of 2005, according to a report released Feb. 2. Lending institutions sent 14,999 default notices to California homeowners during the October-to-December period, according to DataQuick Information Systems. That was up 19 percent from the third quarter, and up 15.6 percent from 2004's fourth quarter. All regions of the state saw an increase in foreclosure activity, ranging from 10.5 percent in the Bay Area to 19.6 percent in Southern California. Click here to read more.
Expedia creator fluffs his Zillow. House-valuation site may have Realtors tossing and turning. The man who helped shoot the travel-agency business between the eyes now has the real estate industry in his sights. Richard Barton, 38, co-founder of the Expedia.com self-serve travel Web site, set off a year of speculation, occasionally bordering on hysteria, when he announced that he had secured $32 million for a real estate Web site called Zillow. The news media, industry Web sites and bloggers spent months postulating that Zillow would be everything from a national multiple-listing service to an online transaction manager. Real estate agents fretted that he was about to put them out of a job, as Expedia had done to many travel agents. At midnight Tuesday, Barton unleashed a test version of Zillow, and the response was so intense--300,000 page views between midnight and 7 a.m. Wednesday, Pacific time--that its servers crashed. Zillow spent most of Wednesday promising to be back later. Zillow is a home-valuation tool that spits out "comps," or comparable market analyses, for buyers and sellers who want to know the worth of their homes--or their neighbors' homes. It's hardly the first such online tool, but it may be the most elaborate. It claims a database of 60 million homes. That's 2 terabytes--2 trillion bytes--of information, and Zillow aims to nearly double that database to 110 million homes. The site combines satellite and traditional mapping with transaction data from county governments to create a "Zestimate"--a home's purported value, mapped side-by-side with neighbors' homes. Users can enter data about their homes' improvements--remodeled kitchen, finished basement, etc.--to get a more refined guess. Click here to read more.
~Tina Jan~
Coldwell Banker Kivett-Teeters
1655 E. Sixth St.
Beaumont, CA 92223
Work: 951-845-5520 Ext. 105
Fax: 951-845-4916
Cell: 909-446-2666
Toll-Free: 1-877-TINAJAN
tina.jan@coldwellbanker.com
www.tinajan.com
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