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May

31

NAR/DOJ settlement: Much ado about nothing ?

Filed Under Economy, Marketing, Real Estate, Technology | Leave a Comment

Seems that the Economy and the Political scene in this hot election year has caused the DOJ to re-think their approach on the battle with the National Association of Realtors. The case was settled this week or rather it appears that the DOJ gave up, because they did not want to seem unsympathetic to the plight of the industry as a whole, given the political climate et all in the U.S. right now.

The reason I and others say gave up is because, we do not think that the DOJ went far enough into really scrutinizing the MLS control issues.

One thing they did do was help free up the hold on VOWs, and that in it self may not have been a good thing depending on how you view the situation.

So what is a VOW anyway ? A VOW is basically a Virtual Office. One description I have often heard is in reference to the difference between an IDX platform and a VOW. VOWS differ from IDX by essentially taking the IDX platform at least one step further.” VOWS are “private business platforms that are designed to facilitate actual transactions” by registering consumers and delivering them as leads to other companies and sales agents, in some cases.

Here’s one of the key-issues that was discussed by NAR and various Multiple Listing Services on how VOWs operated.

“Some MLSs have objected to VOWs putting information on sold, expired or withdrawn listings on the Internet, saying that it makes it easier to mine data that belongs to their members.”

The settlement, in effect says the Internet and innovation is going to be supported, and you have to allow competition to come into this space. Some brokers don’t like the changes and are trying to protect their business. This says you have to compete fairly.”

To put it in laymen s terms.

If a consumer visits a Realtor or Brokers web site with MLS listing data supplied in an IDX (Internet data exchange) format, most likely the consumer will be able to browse and research data without being required to verify an email address or create a log-in account. However with a VOW site, the consumer has to create a log-in, or leave identifying information to be able to access the data.

One such site is ZIP Realty, whose CEO made the comment’s above. On their site you can enter search criteria for an MLS search however, you cannot view any details of that data, including pictures on their site without registering first.

Only time will tell now how NAR and the MLS’s continue to move forward in the integration of technology

One thing is for certain though, and that is that the monopolistic polices adopted by some MLS boards will continue to garner scrutiny by other state and federal agencies. In that venue the Justice Department is currently engaged in a lawsuit over policies adopted by an MLS in South Carolina, as an example, and the Federal Trade Commission is engaged in a lawsuit with a Michigan MLS.

If you interested in more details on the major talking points, I will defer to the excellent post by non other than Mr. Greg Swain of the Bloodhound Blog.

Look here for the details of the DOJ/NAR proposed Final Judgment,

In closing, I must confess that, Greg’s blog is what I one day aspire to be when mine grows up. Maybe not on this blog, but then again you never know ?

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. If you would like to receive new articles in your email box Subscribe to Greater Tampa Bay Real Estate BLOG by Email. Thanks for visiting!

May

1

Q1 2008 Mortgage Statistics for Florida and Tampa Bay

Filed Under Economy, Finance, Mortgage | 3 Comments

050108 The results are in for the first quarter and it is not a pretty picture on the foreclosure front here in Florida or for that matter the Tampa Real Estate Market.

Two reports this week that are interesting depending on how you can decipher the content ? The first report is by Trans Union. They put together a trended analysis report that reviews 2007 fourth quarter data to compile their latest statistics and then forecast for 2008. They are reporting that Florida delinquent mortgages have increased by 34 %.

The top three areas showing the largest growth in delinquency from previous quarters are Florida at (34 percent), California (33 percent) and Arizona (32 percent).

“The market continues to see the effect of the mortgage crisis in the steeply increasing mortgage delinquency rates among borrowers across the country,” said Keith Carson, a senior consultant in Trans Union’s financial services group.

The national 60-day mortgage borrower delinquency rate is expected to continue to rise throughout 2008 from a value of nearly 3.0 percent in the 4th quarter of 2007 to 4.0 percent or greater by year end.

On another note: Realty Trac released their quarterly report on the U.S. Foreclosure Market which states that “Foreclosure activity has increased by 23 % in the first quarter of 2008.” They are reporting that Nevada, California, Arizona posted the top state foreclosure rates.

“Foreclosure filings were reported on 87,893 Florida properties during the first quarter, the second highest state total and giving Florida the nation’s fourth highest foreclosure rate — one in every 97 households received a foreclosure filing during the quarter. Foreclosure activity in the state was up 17 percent from the previous quarter and up 178 percent from the first quarter of 2007.”

“The highest ranked Florida metro area was Fort Lauderdale, which ranked No. 8 with one in every 73 households receiving a foreclosure filing during the quarter. Other Florida metro areas in the top 20 included Orlando at No. 13, Miami at No. 14 and Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice at No. 15. The foreclosure rate in Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater ranked No. 21.”

So this actually shows that the Tampa and St. Petersburg Real Estate areas are faring a bit better on the over all State level.

While the numbers on a whole do not look too promising, this is still a positive note for the Tampa Bay Area Housing Markets, and once again affirms the prediction by our States Economist that Tampa Real Estate markets will recover first starting with Pasco County.

If you want to find out specific information on Foreclosure statistics in your area and or find out which homes are in foreclosure or are on the auction list, you can go to RealtyTracs home page, click on the interactive map. For example click on the US Map, in the Florida area, this will then pull up a State Map where you can enter in a specific county. For example Pasco County and then click on search.

You will then be presented with the break down of total number of homes in pre-foreclosure, auction, bank owned etc. You can gain some pretty good information for free however, to see specifics on taxes etc you have to have a paid membership. The site looks complex but is fairly easy to navigate. Check back tomorrow and I will post a quick video over-view to walk you through the process.

Florida’s indifferent real estate market in Tampa…huh ?

Exisiting home sales bottom still elusive

Buy your home in Florida NOW

Apr

22

Exisiting home sales bottom still elusive

Filed Under Economy, Finance, First Time Home Buyers | 3 Comments

NAR released their March 2008 report and the picture is still not very pretty.

Resale homes continued to drop and now stand at 19.3 percent off of March 2007 numbers. In addition, the media resale home price continued it’s spiral and fell another 7.7 percent compared to the same month in 2007. The median price in 2007 was $217,400. and as of March 31, 2008 it now stands at $200,700.

According to NAR “Regionally, sales rose in the Northeast and West but fell in the Midwest and South.”

So how does the picture differ her in the Tampa Real Estate Market ?

Well according to recent report by the West Pasco Board of Realtors, the Pasco County market has actually had two very good months back to back that prove while the bottom is still elusive in most places it appears to be settling some in other areas. It does appear that their is still more room for prices to drop before the national average stabilizes though.

What is interesting in the Pasco County scenario is that a Florida Economist “Hank” Fishkind, had predicted that areas within the Tampa Bay would recover before others in the state. It may be a bit optimistic at this point to say he his right only more time will tell.

If you are a regular reader to this Blog, then you might recall this post back in February “Florida’s indifferent real estate market in Tampa…huh ? The significance of this post is the comments made by Mr. Fishkind, with specific reference to Pasco County Real Estate he said”

1. HOME SALES: Pasco and Hernando counties’ housing markets have hit bottom and are most likely to start the the turn around ?.this will be seen later in the year. Hillsborough County is close to the bottom, but Pinellas County has a few more months in this downturn before home sales and prices will stabilize.

You can down-load a copy of Dr. Hank Fishkinds Power Point report in PDF format entitled **Economic Outlook U.S. and Tampa Bay/Bay Area Real Estate Council.

** Be sure to check out pages 28 to 63 of the PDF for Tampa Counties (158 to 197 as listed on the lower right corner of the presentation).

Buy your home in Florida NOW

1 in 3 Home Owners with Negative Equity according to Zillow

Apr

9

Earn Money Trashing your Home

Filed Under Economy, Finance | 7 Comments

I could not believe this latest information on the Foreclosure front. Just when you thought things were as unreal as they could be with the entire mortgage market meltdown, the amount of home owners that have walked away from their homes due to falling values and now add to this Trashing your Home for money ?

You heard me correct, check out this video segment. It appears that many homeowners angry with their banks refusal to work with them have been taking out their frustrations on the bank and the lenders by totally trashing their homes as they-vacate them. It has been so bad that many banks are now paying top dollar to the former owners to leave the property with a guarantee not to tamper with the home.

I believe that this footage is from the West Coast.

Has any one in the Tampa Real Estate Market observed this ?

What about Florida as a whole ?

Please comment if you have heard about this, or know anyone that has ?

How to stop foreclosure - 101

1 in 3 Home Owners with Negative Equity according to Zillow

Apr

5

New Technology and Real Estate Agents

Filed Under Economy, Helpful Information, Technology | Leave a Comment

040508

I was recently accepted as a guest Blogger and Technology advice contributor over at the Home Gain Real Estate Blog. Since my back ground is based in the technology sector and I have been actively involved in the Real Estate industry for some time, it made sense for me to contribute to the larger Real Estate society of Bloggers and those that look upon Home Gain. After all Home Gain was one of the first major players in the online scene of Real Estate and competitors like Zillow have continued to hone their best practices following the path all ready blazed by Home Gain.

With that, I was warmly introduced into the Home Gain family by the Marketing & Communications Manager Jessica Gopalakrishnan of Home Gain on Thursday April 3, 2008

My first article written exclusively for the Home Gain Blog is entitled New Technology and the Social Forest. In the article I take a look at the amount of Industry published self help articles aimed at Realtors that are not into the Social Media aspects of today’s online Real Estate.

This article has started a lively debate and several comments have all ready developed from the article. The comments are positive and supportive of my article comments. However, one comment in particular I felt should be drawn out for more dialog. So I thought I would share it here and then those that want to continue can do so, as well as having you check out the base article over at the Home Gain Blog.

So moving on:

_{Steve Obermon commented:}

_{?There really isn?t a one-size-fits-all entry point to social media marketing. There are many entry points and if one does not work for a Realtor, they should just try another until one works in their market.}

_{Those who choose not to participate in social media do so at their own risk.}

_{Eight out of ten housing consumers are on line ? are you visible to them as a Realtor? When they contact you by phone or email, are you available?

Is your brokerage set up to work in web time?

Good basic questions to start with ? and review as you go along.}

_{And,yes ? seek out the best advice you can get for free and pay for if you need it.}

_{Start as soon as you can your market is waiting!?}

My Reply to Steve:

Trial and error in the Technology arena especially in the current market is only for those that have the aptitude, foresight, time and money. If you are one of the agents I referred to that still has issues managing your email and trying to figure where to find files on your PC then you need professional, expert advice. The first place you should look would be your local community college or other technical training resources in your community to get you up to speed with the rest of the business community on basic computer skills. Trying to jump in on the social scene without the basics will make you even more confused and steer more agents way from the very thing they should be learning to embrace.

Every one talks about consumers on line, and most of those consumer are more computer and web savvy than your average Realtor.

Why ? Because most of them have grown up with games and computes from the very onset.

I have very vivid memories of when the PC revolution really hit me. Do you recall when yours was ?

It was in my first year at a community college back in the mid 80?s. I was taking English composition 101 and had to write weekly short stories for submission. I was on active duty in the Navy at the time and had access to IBM Selectric typewriters which were the best you could get at the time. Obviously, word processors were only used by those that could afford them. While Apple had started building PC?s in the late 70?s it was not until IBM started selling the Personal PC in the 80?s that Personal Computer usage really started to take off. So here I was typing, re-typing and correcting my term papers only to find out I missed a major typo that cut my final grade by a whole grade point. Yet, the top student in the class did all her work on an Apple PC. At the time, my thought was that she was cheating. Interesting enough, I was all ready involved with computers as my job in the Navy was as Technical Instructor teaching students how to maintain and repair system utilized on the then most advanced Submarine of the time, the Ohio class Trident Submarines. The systems I worked on were the Univac AN/UYK-7 and AN/UYK-43 systems which were the US Navy’s standard main frame computing system for war ships. So, I had a head start on the technology arena, and I still spend a massive quantity of my time learning and trying to stay up to date on the technological changes which seem to happen at an almost daily rate.

Yet, many of today?s realtor’s have not been involved with computers of any type for this length of time. Not that anyone should have to match my skills, thats not what I am implying here however, they should be more proficient at the normal tools of business for that profession. Statistics will bear that most children born to these same Realtors have mores computer skills than their parents.

If there was an aptitude test for a Real Estate Agent to obtain or renew their license today , based on the ability to manage email, organize files on a computer and be able to aptly use MS Office tools like Outlook, Word, Excel and Power Point, I would wager my home that over 50% of the active Real Estate agents in the US would fail and loose their license.

This is a rather huge issue and NO ONE is willing to even discuss it, except maybe me. The Brokers I think are the ones who have looked the other on may of these issues, yet again many Brokers I know and have talked with suffer from the same affliction. Yes, there is a lot of training available by the various Realtor Organizations, but much of it is still fee based, and from the ones I have investigated they cost more than the tuition to a local community college or technical school would charge.

If NAR really wanted to assist Realtors, they would open up their E-PRO classes to any realtor. Or even better yet, make it mandatory in order to for you to renew your license. But the fee structure should be waived and they should also institute basic skill sets.

In my opinion: When this happens you will see more agents embrace blogging and Social Media. Until then they should look to experts in their fields to get them up to speed.

In my neck of the woods or even yours that would be Get Found Now. Go ahead, go to Goggle right now and type in the name. What you will see is the number one listing, they are Social Network Marketing Experts SEO Blog Design Web 2.0 … etc. They can get your site where it needs to be at.

If your goal is get to eyeballs to your site, that is increase your site traffic, so you get more phone calls etc?then pick someone who has a proven track record of doing just that. Weather you have a static site and just want improve upon it by adding blogging, or maybe your blogging is not getting you anywhere and you need some one to look your site over and tell you what needs to be done, check them out.

Shameless Plug: Now when you want to talk about Video for your site, I am not talking about your garden variety You Tube video. I am talking about a Viral Social Media Video campaign that works in synergy with your blog system to get your message noticed. If that?s your cup of tea or coffee as it may be, then check us out and give us a call over at Virtual Interactive Systems.