La Costa Rumor Mill
When is the best time to sell? When big money comes to town!
Are Auctions the Answer?
None of the wranglings with Zillow or others will matter much if auctions take hold. Here’s another example of how they are being presented:
LINK HERE to story.
An excerpt:
The property is being auctioned through Premier Estates in conjunction with local listing agent Shelly Tretter Lynch of Sotheby’s International Realty. Tuvia Sablosky, director of sales for Premier Estates, is directing the auction, which is the first Premiere Estates has conducted in Greenwich.
“This is the first time we’ve done this in Greenwich, but we’ve done it all over the United States and it’s been very successful,” Sablosky said. “It’s not so much affected as far as location, it’s more sellers who are interested in an accelerated sale. There’s a specific date where the property is expected to be sold and buyers have to make a decision by a certain date if they’re going to make an offer. That’s really the biggest difference.”
Lynch said the Greenwich home located at 591 Indian Field Road has been off and on the market for several years, and now the owners simply want to get the house sold as quickly as possible. As a result, she sought alternative sales strategies and decided auctioning the home could be a great way to accelerate a sale.
“We’re really putting this on the fast-paced plan,” Lynch said. “This is a fairly new process in this area of the country, but it has been successful throughout the country and there’s no negativity surrounding the auction. It’s a homeowner making a choice to have an auction and that’s really important to note. It is entirely the homeowner’s choice.”
Selling homes at auction was once considered a last-ditch attempt to unload a property that wasn’t selling, but in recent years auctions have become a viable option for luxury home sales by replicating marketing techniques used to sell high-end art, antiques and collectables. According to the National Association of Realtors, the perception of auctioning a mansion is changing because it allows homeowners to set a deadline and hope a bidding war will result in a higher selling price. Sometimes the method results in the home selling below its market value — a risk associated with this method of home sales.
PB Remodel
The Pacific Beach hillside remodel is complete. Here are a few photos of the journey, and a recent video tour:
Mr. Buyer delivered what might be the best quote of the year: “I finally buy my wife a million-dollar house, and the first thing she does is tear it down!”
Realtor Doom
Link to full HW article HERE:
Zillow Group is positioning itself to take the lead in bringing the entire home-buying process online.
During a Tuesday call with investors, Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff revealed Zillow’s reasons for acquiring DotLoop, a Cincinnati-based company that aims to simplify real estate transactions by enabling brokerages, real estate agents, and their clients to share, edit, sign and store documents digitally, and what Zillow plans to do with DotLoop.
The short version? Rascoff believes the time of the paperless transaction is now, and believes that Zillow and DotLoop are well-positioned to lead the revolution.
“DotLoop is very exciting for us,” Rascoff said during the call. “There is no question that real estate transactions are moving online, any of you who have bought a home, know that signing hundreds of pages of documentation is a burden and that the day of the paperless transaction is here now, and DotLoop is the clear leader in the category.”
Rascoff said that Zillow’s acquisition of DotLoop allows the company to provide increased value to the industry by bringing the paper-heavy real estate transaction online, from “the creation of a listing agreement to the submission of offers to the actual closing.”
Read the full article HERE.
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Spence has said that they are here to help realtors, not replace them, and this acquisition sounds like it falls in line with that mission. Except the real estate industry went paperless about 3-4 years ago.
Yes, a buyer has to physically sign a load of bank-generated loan documents, and Spence isn’t going to change that. But he is using the ‘hundreds of pages’ excuse to justify bringing DotLoop to Zillow.
There are plenty of realtors using DotLoop already – they are closing $30 billion in sales every month. Does Spence just want to help more of his realtor buddies hook up with his DotLoop buddies? On the surface, that’s what it sounds like.
But here’s the problem:
The industry is changing to a transactional business.
This business used to be relationship-based. Realtors used to rely on getting new clients from family, friends and past clients. While those referrals will still be appreciated, they aren’t enough to support the big realtor teams. Instead, they hire marketing people and newly-licensed agents to maximize volume.
We closed a sale this year with a big team, and the only time the team leader got involved was after the deal was signed, hoping to change title and escrow to their in-house companies.
The big teams put their clients on the transaction conveyor belt, with each team specialist doing their part to close the deal. But does it feel like somebody really cares start-to-finish, or just processing the order?
For-sale-by-owners already use Zillow to promote their homes for sale.
If, and when, Zillow allows FSBOs to use DotLoop, you will know that the end is near.
If consumers get the feeling that they just need to have someone process their order, and Zillow is offering those realtor-like services, then realtors, as we know them, will be extinct within a year or two.
Those of us who are swift and nimble will adapt, and become consultants who use the best online features to process the order, and include a good dose of advice and counsel for a reasonable fee. Single agency will flourish, and hopefully auctions will become popular.
The big teams might adjust, but the big-box brokerages that rely on less-experienced agents on lousy commission splits will be toast.
Fraud or Favor?
Sellers who are forced to fend for themselves are smart to consider all the angles. But you hate hearing people being put in this position:
San Diego is Eighth Hottest Market
We finally edged ahead of Detroit. From HW – link HERE
Whether to buy or sell may not be clear following recent housing indicators, which offered contradictory points of view. But Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at realtor.com, says the residential real estate market continued to show strong signs of health in July.
According to realtor.com’s ‘Advance Read of July Trends,’ which draws on residential inventory and demand trends over the first three weeks of the month, the prevailing positive price trend continues with the national median list price increasing to $234,000, up 7% year-over-year and 1% over June. Median days on market increased to 69 days, down 7% year over year, but up 5% month over month.
“It’s typical to see a slackening in the pace of market activity during this time of year, due to back to school and the dog days of summer,” Smoke said. “Increasing median days-on-market suggests the market is finding more of a balance, but demand is still strong. This bodes well for more moderate price appreciation in the months ahead.”
“We have reviewed the data and taking into account less than perfect seasonal adjustment techniques at a very seasonal time for housing and the differing baseline metrics used in the various indicators, we’re comfortable that the market remains strong despite of these recent mixed signals,” stated Smoke.
The 20 hottest markets in the country in July, ranked by number of views per listing on realtor.com and the median age of inventory in each market, follow.
Corner Lots
The bearish outlook on corner lots – less privacy, more dog poo!
Oh sure, you’ve got a bigger lot and neighbors on only two sides, but the cons far outweigh the pros.
In fact, besides often being more expensive to buy, here are 21 additional reasons why corner lots just aren’t worth it:
Super Drone
Yesterday, the 16th annual Debbie Olivier Easter Seals golf tournament was at the Pala Mesa Resort for the first time. Here’s a brief helicopter tour:
Rest of 2015
This summer’s 3-mo moving averages look quite different from last year.
In 2014, the list-pricing started to falter as summer approached, and stumbled along until this spring. But since then, we’ve been on a tear!
How can it be explained? The lower-end buyers are more affected by rising rates, so maybe they are scrambling to buy anything affordable while they can?
According to the MLS, the San Diego County detached-home sales are 7% higher for the first seven months of 2015, compared to last year! Summer sales this year are hotter than the 2013 frenzy levels in the graph below.
Any decent houses-for-sale have been gobbled up so quickly that the inventory appears bleak to casual observers who only see low numbers and lousy offerings left behind by the more-motivated buyers.
The casual buyers and sellers will check out once school starts – leaving the rest of this year to the motivated players on both sides.
When is the best time to buy? When everyone else isn’t!
Inventory Watch
Hello August!
The summer market is winding down, and the unsuccessful sellers will be cancelling their listings over the next two months – which is great for buyers. Why? Because any new listings won’t be using those OPTs as price indicators!
Click on the link below for the complete NSDCC active-inventory data:
