The realtor population of 1.3 million agents today is expected to be cut in half over the next five years. Most will be by natural attrition – the old-style agent is retiring and being replaced by mega-teams. How the brokerages provide for their teams is what will determine the winners.
How can a relative newcomer take on Zillow, Redfin, and the traditional brokerages all at the same time? Spend big money on splashy moves to retain reputable top agents and supply them with a sleek high-tech marketing package that is fronted by a quality search portal. More coming soon!
Compass, a New York real estate brokerage firm, will buy San Francisco brokerage Pacific Union International less than two months after it purchased Paragon Real Estate Group, also of San Francisco.
Pacific Union is the nation’s fifth-largest residential real estate firm based on transaction volume and Compass is sixth, according to Real Trends, a Colorado consulting firm. Based on those numbers, the combined firm would leap to number three.
The number of new listings dropped 10% compared to last week, and the total number of pendings dropped 5%. The rest of the year should dwindle down quietly.
Surprisingly, the segment that is struggling the worst is the low-end. The number of NSDCC houses listed under $1,000,000 is near the high for the year, and the average $$/sf is at the low for the year. The number of pendings is similar to January’s count too. We may have run out of people willing to pay so much, for so little.
Hopefully September will bring deal-shoppers around one more time!
People wonder how a sleepy little beach town will ever be able to keep the housing bubble afloat. But Carlsbad isn’t just a bunch of flower fields and surf shops any more!
Timing your home’s sale is critical – and it helps if your realtor has some ‘international reach’ too! Thanks daytrip:
The apartment directly below President Donald Trump’s opulent bedroom at Trump Tower is going up for sale for $24.5 million — and it’s not clear if POTUS can control who moves in.
In what could be a huge security headache, the stunning apartment 64/65AB at Trump Tower at 721 Fifth Ave. is going on the market. The pad directly adjoins the president’s personal gilded apartment, and — real-estate sources believe — his bedroom.
Trump’s triplex penthouse — which he is said to prefer sleeping in rather than the White House — occupies floors 66 through 68.
One source said, “What is to stop the Chinese or the Russians from buying the apartment under a front, and then drilling spy holes in the ceiling to listen to the conversations and goings-on?”
Trump Tower is a condo building, which means the legal way the board could stop a potential buyer is by exercising a board waiver, which would entail the board buying the apartment itself, or else it must let the buyer move in, the real-estate sources say.
“It is possible the board could make a potential buyer’s life hard by demanding FBI checks or extra paperwork, hoping to chase away the buyer. Or perhaps [White House economic adviser] Larry Kudlow could suggest the country buys it for security reasons.” Interestingly, the Chinese government was reported to own property in Trump Tower, which the president handed over to the management of his sons Don Jr. and Eric when he took office.
The for-sale pad is a duplex apartment that encompasses the entire southern face of the building for two stories and features five bedroom suites with soaring 14-foot-plus ceilings. The seller is Oklahoma billionaire Jeff Records, chairman and CEO of MidFirst Bank.
We’re going to be fed a solid diet of ivory-tower analyses from now on, because when you look at the history, it sure seems like home prices are due to come down. What these authors fail to consider is how the Bank of Mom and Dad has made the current pseudo-bubble possible, and will continue to do so. Plus, for prices to go down, you must have sellers who are willing to dump on price. None have been that motivated, at least not yet.
This article can’t even get the facts straight – the last bust was caused by exotic neg-am financing exploding in our faces, and ill-informed homeowners bailing out. In addition, you can draw the trendline anywhere you want, and these authors drew it where it would produce the most drama – see above – yet their worst-case scenario is only back to 2013 prices. We’d survive that.
This most recent cycle we are emerging from in 2018 has its roots in the early 2000s, when home values began outpacing incomes at a rapid pace.
In 2006, home prices peaked in step with the Millennium Boom. By that time, home sales volume was already falling as buyers sensed prices were too high to continue during the inevitable recession, which arrived in 2008. From 2006 to 2007, prices dropped 16%, followed by a further 26% in the following year.
All in all, California home prices fell 44% from their 2006 peak to their bottom in 2009.
In some ways, this steep fall was a correction to all the excess experienced in the housing market during the early- and mid-2000s. In another sense, the fall was simply the market’s way of bringing home prices back in line with incomes.
There is a name for this reliable force that pulls home prices toward incomes: themean price trendline.
Through the volatility of housing booms and busts, price increases continue to return to the same rate of annual income change, related to the consumer price inflation (CPI), which is typically 2%-3% per year. In California, this mean price change is closer to 3.5% annually over the past several decades.
How does income impact home prices?
Quite simply, home values can only go as high as incomes allow.
Homebuyers reliant on financing are limited to a maximum mortgage payment of 31% of their monthly income. This translates to the ability to purchase a home costing roughly five times their annual income.
Still, there is some wiggle room in the equation. After incomes, interest rates have the next biggest impact on home prices. When interest rates are falling — as occurred in the 2000s — buyer purchasing power is extended, as homebuyers’ mortgage payments go further. When interest rates rise — as is occurring in 2018 — buyer purchasing power falls and homebuyers are limited to paying less with the same income.
During housing bubbles, home prices become temporarily untethered from this rule and the mean price trendline. During the bust that follows the boom, prices fall, returning once again to the trendline.
interest rates are nearly a full percentage point higher than a year earlier, translating to a 7% reduction in purchasing power for the average California homebuyer.
Further, the Federal Reserve (the Fed) plans to continue their efforts to increase interest rates in an effort to cool down the economy and induce a moderate business recession by 2020. Not only do higher interest rates discourage potential homebuyers from entering the market, but they cause homebuyers to offer less when they make an offer to purchase.
In response, first tuesday expects home prices to fall by mid-2019, bottoming once they hit the mean price trendline around 2020. Meanwhile, incomes will continue along at their current measured pace, pausing briefly in 2020-2021 in response to the recession.
Sellers need to do more updating and improving to get their home sold these days, but you don’t want to go crazy. Here are a few quick ideas from Bob Vila:
10 Kitchen Updates You Can Do in a Day
You don’t have to live with your ugly cabinets one minute longer!
There are plenty of ways to give them a quick refresh without having to purchase replacements. Make a large-scale change by painting your units a bright color, or go for a mix-and-match effect by applying a few coats only to the top cabinets. Consider removing a door or two to create trendy open shelving, or use chalkboard paint on the doors or expanses of wall for a dose of cottage charm.
So many loving tributes today to the Queen of Soul that I couldn’t help but acknowledge the greatest wife role in the history of film – her appearance in the Blues Brothers (he left anyway):
