With flood season just around the corner, now is the time to make sure you and your home are prepared. Here is some information from the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH). … [Read more...]
Just 10 Weeks Supply of Twin Cities Housing
March 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
As the news media has been reporting with greater regularity recently, the supply of homes for sale in the Twin Cities has been shrinking dramatically - down over 31% in the last 12 months. As of March 14th, 2013 there were 12,399 homes for sales in the Twin Cities on the NorthstarMLS system. That works out to approximately 13 weeks of supply or approximately 3 months of homes for sale. A balanced market between supply and demand is typically considered to be in the 5-6 months of inventory range, so we're … [Read more...]
Bad Data on Trulia & Zillow is the Agent’s & Broker’s Fault
March 8, 2013 by 2 Comments
I was reading a post today from the recently departed Trulia employee, and industry veteran, Todd Carpenter, called Data Accuracy is a Community Effort. I went into this article, and through a couple additional readings, thinking that Trulia and Zillow were to blame for all the inaccurate data displayed on their sites. I've come away with a different understanding now. The pre-foreclosure property information Zillow offers I think is still a big mistake and a source of consumer misinformation. For that, I … [Read more...]
It’s Ok To (Slightly) Overprice Your Home Again
February 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment
For 6 years agents and homeowners suffered terribly when they've overpriced a home for sale. Some agents did not have the courage to give sellers the bad news and in some cases the sellers wouldn't listen to reason, even if there was a mountain of proof. With a huge glut of homes for sale and few buyers, there was so much competition at every price point that an overpriced home was getting few showings, if any, and wasn't making it onto buyer's followup lists. This meant the home would sit on the market much … [Read more...]
Twin Cities Builders Stymied by Lack of Financing
February 15, 2013 by 1 Comment
As the Builders Association of the Twin Cities continues to report strong increases in the number of building permits and units issued, I've heard from several small builders that the difficulty in finding construction financing is impacting their ability to take advantage of the dramatic increase in buyer demand. With the quickly approaching and ever-important spring market, builders are looking to build up their inventory of available homes but finding that few lenders are willing to step up to the plate with … [Read more...]
Twin Cities Preforeclosure Notices Down 45%
January 23, 2013 by 2 Comments
The positive trends in housing continue as the Minnesota Home Ownership Center released Q4 2012 preforeclosure notice statistics that show such notices declined an astounding 45% from a year ago in both the Twin Cities and Minnesota as a whole: (click on images for a full view) As preforeclosure notices proceed a sheriff sale by 2-6 months, the continued decline of notices foretells future declines in sheriff sales and the continued waning of foreclosures in our housing market. There were still 39,000 … [Read more...]
2013 Housing Market: Crying Buyers, Cheering Sellers
January 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The 2013 Twin Cities housing market is shaping up to be a story of the haves and the have-nots. In this case the haves are Sellers, who are going to find stronger buyer interest for their home than sellers have seen in nearly a decade. On the other hand, Buyers are the have -nots, as they will struggle to find homes in their price point before another buyer does. 2013 is going to surprise a lot of people with severely restricted housing supply, strong buyer demand, and accelerating price increases. The crux … [Read more...]
2012: Twin Cities Housing Turnaround
December 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The Twin Cities saw a surprising turnaround in the housing market in 2012. While I had predicted that the Twin Cities had hit bottom in January 2012, no one, including myself, had expected as strong of a 2012 as we had. While final numbers are not in yet, 2012 was a banner year for the Twin Cities. Prices surged, Traditional Seller activity increased while distressed sales decreased, buyer demand swelled nearly 20% and the inventory of for-sale homes dropped almost 30%. That increase in buyer demand and … [Read more...]
Minnesota Foreclosures Down 10%
November 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment
HousingLink just released their 2012 Q3 Minnesota Foreclosure Update, showing sheriff sales are down 10% from Q3 2011. What is also worth noting is that they are down 38% from Q3 2010! Here is a chart from their report: … [Read more...]
Comparing Trulia, Zillow & REALTOR.com to IDX/Broker Reciprocity Audience
November 15, 2012 by 2 Comments
While the syndicators have a lot of web traffic at a national level, their traffic locally is much smaller. Up until this point however, there has been no way to track all the properties viewed by consumers on the 1000's of local Broker Reciprocity websites and compare that to these behemoth syndicators. Through Broker Reciprocity (many know it as IDX), many MLSs have hundreds or thousands of member websites that display property listings. This represents a huge amount of exposure for member's listings that … [Read more...]
