Real Estate News for Friday, March 10th, 2006

The hammer falls on housing bonanza. Explanations for the recent cooling-off vary. Many people bought homes during the past five years and are staying put. Some analysts blame a decline in consumer confidence. And interest rates have been rising, especially for adjustable mortgages that allowed people to buy more expensive homes than they could have afforded with a 30-year loan. Rising prices and interest rates pushed more buyers out of the market. When prices finally did cool, sellers couldn't command a high enough price on their old house to buy the new one, said Marceau, who believes the slowdown is temporary. Click here to read more.

Buyers, Sellers Need To Be Realistic. The spring real estate season is about to get underway, and anybody who expects to take part -- as a seller or a buyer -- needs to start putting together a strategy, an action plan. It seems like a tough time to be a seller. But here's where things get confusing. The latest federal and private-sector statistical reports suggest that price inflation in dozens of metropolitan areas is still chugging along at a double-digit clip. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight found average home values rose by nearly 13 percent from the fourth quarter of 2004 through the same period of 2005. The National Association of Realtors found that a record 72 metropolitan areas saw double-digit annual increases in median resale home prices in the final quarter of 2005. Yet these markets are simultaneously experiencing rising inventories, slower sales and reports of asking-price reductions. How can all of this be going on at the same time? If markets are cooling -- and just about everybody agrees that's the case -- then why isn't that being reflected in prices, nationally and locally? Click here to read more.

Best And Worst Neighborhoods To Buy A Home. The south Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts has been notorious for many things, among them race riots, poverty and gang warfare. Now it can be known as a great real estate investment. Over the past few years, rising property prices have rocked the state of California with an earthquake-like vengeance. Luxury subdivisions have filled hillsides, bidding wars have pumped up home sales, and teardowns have sold for more than $1 million. Los Angeles saw home prices increase about 50% from 2003 to 2005, according to the National Association of Realtors, a trade group based in Washington, D.C. The median sales price for an existing home in L.A. stood at $529,000 at the end of last year. Click here to read more.

Point2 Technologies Syndicates Real Estate Listing Data to Google Base, Others. Point2 Technologies Inc. announced that real-time data feeds from the company’s online real estate marketplace, Point2Homes.com, to property search Web sites Google Base and Trulia are now active. Additional feeds to LiveDeal and PropSmart are expected to go live later this month. The feeds are part of a broad data syndication initiative Point2 introduced last February and that aims to capitalize on consumer traffic on innovative online real estate listing venues, to further increase traffic and sales lead flow to Point2 Agent member websites. Click here to read more.

More Americans are losing their homes. Risky borrowing is catching up with a number of homeowners across the U.S. Foreclosures rose 45% in January compared to a year ago, and experts only expect the pace to accelerate. The number of foreclosures is still low on a historical basis, but it has been rising steadily over the past year, RealtyTrac reported. Job losses in some regions were to blame, but so, too, were risky borrowing practices that left homeowners little wiggle room on their mortgage payments. And with the pace of appreciation stalling and interest rates rising, many economists and industry observers expect the pace of foreclosures to accelerate this year. Click here to read more.

Zillow enters crowded space. Part 1: Assessing accurate home values. Since its recent launch, the real estate industry has been buzzing about a new Web site called Zillow.com. According to Alexa.com, an Amazon Web site that ranks Web traffic, Zillow has rocketed to the top 200 Web sites in the world. That's higher than Realtor.com or any other real estate Web site. If Zillow is successful, Realtors will have to redefine their value proposition. Ever since inception, Multiple Listing Services have provided important sales documentation that was not available to the general public. Zillow provides not only comparable sales data, market statistics that show whether prices in a given area are increasing or decreasing, but it also provides its Zestimate of how much a given property is worth. The market data is particularly useful information for Realtors to know because it can assist them in helping sellers to set accurate list prices. It can also assist buyers in identifying how much they should pay. Where Zillow faces major challenges, however, is providing accurate values for its "Zestimates." Click here to read more.

Home loan costs climb. A 30-year mortgage with a fixed rate hits a 2 1/2-year high. Mortgage giant Freddie Mac said Thursday that interest rates for 30-year home loans reached their highest point in 2 1/2 years this week, but Sacramento real estate experts predicted the benchmark would have little effect on home-buyer decisions. Virginia-based Freddie Mac cited inflationary fears in financial markets for pushing loan rates to 6.37 percent, the highest since 6.44 percent during the week of Sept. 5, 2003. Interest rates climbed for both fixed mortgages and for the adjustable-rate mortgages that now dominate new home buys in California. 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