Real Estate News for Friday, March 9th, 2007

Rising Subprime Mortgage Defaults Add to Unsold Homes Inventory. In January, 4.09 million new and existing homes were offered for sale, down from 4.43 million in July 2006, the National Association of Realtors and the U.S. Commerce Department said. New homes accounted for 536,000 of the January total, down from a record 573,000 in July. A five-year housing boom that ended a year ago was fueled in part by the growth of mortgage products marketed to borrowers with poor credit histories. Now, as defaults on subprime loans surge to a seven-year high, more than 20 lenders have closed or sought buyers since the start of 2006. The survivors are raising their lending standards. Click here to read more from Bloomberg.com.

Sellers shoot for YouTube hits. Online videos could be another marketing tool for agents to lure home buyers into market. Just how many real estate videos are claiming a spot in cyberspace is hard to quantify because such general-interest video meccas as YouTube and Yahoo don't have a category for them. House-hunters must cull the videos from millions of other clips by typing in search terms. That may be about to change. At the same time, the major search engines, including YouTube's parent, Google, are emerging as players in hosting real estate listings and property-mapping tools. Designating a category for real estate videos would be a natural complement, he said. For the most part, the videos aren't the familiar "virtual tours"--the 360-degree scans that have inhabited brokerage sites for a decade or so. Many of the current videos are a few minutes of digital footage shot by a videographer--or a real estate agent or homeowner--strolling room to room. Click here to read more from The Chicago Tribune.

Buying Into Housing. Market: Builders and real estate agents are paying more attention to female consumers. Kim Braziel bought her first townhouse three years ago when she was 26 and a single, working woman in Los Angeles. She recalls the move when she was just four years out of college as a stand for financial independence. Home builders and real estate agents are starting to pay more attention to people like Braziel. At 29, she represents a significant -- and growing -- segment of the nation's home-buying market: single women. While married couples are still 60 percent of homebuyers, their market share has dwindled from 70 percent 12 years ago. Meanwhile, statistics from the National Association of Realtors show unmarried women accounted for 22 percent of sales last year, up from 14 percent in 1995. Single men, on the other hand, accounted for just 9 percent of home sales in 2006 -- unchanged from the mid-'90s, the Realtors association says. Experts say the trend is ripe with opportunities for condominium builders and sales agents who specialize in the smaller, low-maintenance houses that agents say single women prefer. Builders already target women when decorating many model homes, emphasizing the lighter colors they believe women favor and showcasing upgrades in rooms such as the kitchen. Real estate agents say that they emphasize a neighborhood's safety and the security of attached garages when talking with single women interested in buying a home. But the recognition of the role single women play in the housing market also has its negative side. At least one consumer group contends single women often are charged higher mortgage interest rates than men. Analysts say this home-buying phenomenon is rooted in societal changes, including the fact that women are waiting longer to get married. Married women who get divorced also are less likely to remarry -- and remarry less quickly than men, according to a 2006 study by Rutgers University's National Marriage Project. Another factor is the economic gains college-educated working women have achieved. Click here to read more from The Press Enterprise.

~Tina Jan~
Coldwell Banker Kivett-Teeters
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