Archive for 'Info for Buyers' Category
Short Sales are “Liar Listings” on the Twin Cities MLS
26 August 2008If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Short Sale
Definition: a home sale where the seller owes more than what the home is worth and is asking the lender(s) to accept an amount that is less than the amount owed to them as payment in full.
The same [...]
Builders Clearing Out Inventory
25 August 2008I received an email this weekend from a builder advertising models that were marked down 20% + ($100k+) from their original prices (but marked down incrementally).
I also saw another builder marking their inventory down in the MLS a similar amount too.
This suggests to me that builders understand that we’re nearing the end of the strong sales season [...]
Twin Cities Foreclosures & Short Sales - A Report Analysis
14 August 2008For several weeks now, Jeff Allen (and several others) from MAAR and I have been working diligently to provide an update to our one-of-a-kind research report we released a few months ago. We’ve just released Foreclosures and Short Sales in the Twin Cities Housing Market Q2 2008 Update. The report contains updates to a lot of [...]
US Housing Rescue Bill Resources
5 August 2008There’s some good things in the housing bill that Congress & the President signed into law but also some surprising disappointments. An 800+ page bill takes time to process, but here are a few resources so far that deal with some of the biggest parts of the bill:
First Time Buyer Credit Analysis from the National [...]
Jim Cramer Says Buy a House - Soon!
23 July 2008Excerpted from: http://www.cnbc.com/id/25818021
Jim: I thought you were of the opinion that banks could not bottom before housing bottomed. What changed? –Dana in Florida
Cramer says: “We saw quarters from Wells Fargo from US Bancorp. We saw a quarter from JPMorgan. We saw a quarter from Bank of America. And those guys had already put charges in [...]
Twin Cities Sales Strong, Listings Soft
21 July 2008While I’m probably the most techie REALTOR in my office, I still like something that is decidedly low-tech, our office’s Listings & Sales Boards. These white boards, which “back in the day” were chalk boards, give a one-line description of each of our new listings and sales for the month, including the name of the agent [...]
Loose Lending Broke Housing, Tight Lending Keeps it Broken
20 June 2008The several years of “loose lending” by mortgage lenders helped bring a surge of bad loan programs with borrowers that were either overextended from Day One or should have been unqualified to begin with. This surge has now become a tsunami of foreclosures and short sales, which Jeff Allen and I have lumped together as [...]
Minneapolis Area Association of REALTORS Monthly Video Update
16 June 2008Take a look at some great commentary by MAAR. The numbers are clearly showing a peak of inventory and a bottom for buyer demand, so we see “strength” in numbers that are no longer continuing to soften. This market has a long way to go before we’re back to “normal” but it all has to [...]
May 2008 Twin Cities Market Stats
12 June 2008MAAR has released their new market stats for the month of May and I’m trying a new idea: I’ve added commentary to the report expressing what I believe are the important “take aways” from the data. I would love to get feedback both on the concept and your thoughts of my opinion.
Minneapolis/St. Paul Real Estate [...]
Minneapolis/St. Paul MLS Addresses Foreclosures & Short Sales… Kinda
10 June 2008The RMLS of Minnesota, which is the governing body of the MLS in the Twin Cities and is owned by the 4 local REALTOR associations, has made some policy changes in regards to the reporting of foreclosures on the MLS, effective on Thursday:
The “In Foreclosure/Lender Owned?” field:
Initially will be an agent-only field (not available on [...]