WSJ's Mansion Section

Many of us consume tons of real estate related media on a daily basis. For my time investment, I love reading the MANSION section of the WSJ every Friday. A group of very talented (and in touch) reporters work this beat and they cover a wide range of real estate related articles, trends and developments with taste and a local knowledge that's unbeatable IMO.

Today, for instance, Sanette Tanaka writes about home staging and its impact on the impressions of potential buyers (HERE, no subscription required for this article). The topic is a scholarly paper and study, "The Impact of Staging Conditions on Residential Real Estate Demand," which has been accepted by the Journal of Housing Research for future publication at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. It features a study of 800 potential home buyers and their reactions to the home staging environment.

A WSJ subscription is one the investments I make each year and Mansion is one of the reasons they retain me as a customer. Check it out!

BuyerMLS CEO featured in RIS Media

BuyerMLS featured in RIS Media "Real Estate" Magazine

Our first industry ad! 

November, 2013

Real Estate Predictions for 2014

As we fast approach 2014 at what feels like warp speed,  one's thinking often turns to a look ahead for the business year and what experts, pundits, observers and other 'educated' folks think about the real estate market dynamics and "trade winds."  I'm reminded of the relevant quote: "He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass," attributed to Edgar R. Fiedler. But here goes:

1) Millennials gain a foothold, but not towards homeownership. Generation Renter has arrived.

2) In proven seller’s markets (which will be far more common than not) buyers (and brokers/agents) will need to adopt new tools and strategies to be considered truly transaction-ready.

3) Affordability goes down as housing inflation returns to the market via classic supply/demand equation results. Watch for closing cost/tax increases by revenue-hungry municipalities.

4) Check out this great Redfin study (pasted below) re: Buyer Preference rankings by male and female respondents. What’s old is new – true buyer preferences are inherently the same over time. And little male/female divergence in the rankings.

5) Personal networks will retain and enhance in value as social media “over-burn” takes hold. For a zillion reasons, total transparency has more pitfalls than benefits in a hyper-connected world.

From the entire team at BuyerMLS, we wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous 2014!

BuyerMLS Joins Ranks Of Today's Hottest Real Estate Innovators

BuyerMLS was honored to be chosen as part of The Real Deal's round up of companies at the forefront of the real estate technology landscape published earlier this week. Innovators such as Floored (winner of the Realogy Innovation prize, for which BMLS was a runner up), Honest Buildings, and Compstak are just a few of the other groups recognized for shifting the paradigm of how people navigate the real estate process. 

Each company on the list demonstrates a fresh approach to this industry—one that many claim is suffering from decades of stagnation. As our Director of Market Insights, appraiser Jonathan Miller, told The Real Deal, "The whole idea is to manage the process, because right now, [buyer information] is a perishable product." We couldn't be more proud to be included in the group of cutting edge companies helping to streamline the real estate world for both sides of the transaction. ----

Number of Underwater Homeowners Down 42%

Today's NAR Magazine reports that with rising prices, more underwater home owners are regaining equity, and home sales are on the rise, according to the Obama Housing Scorecard, released each month by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

What's important, however, is to remember that even if the home value is equal to the mortgage amount (or more) for a homeowner to sell, another 8-10% of the purchase price is needed to pay closing costs and brokerage commissions as applicable. Thus, in order for the market top truly reflect a forward trend, we need price to increase substantially.

So, in our view, aside from the fact that many homeowners are sleeping more easily, there's more to the story in order to effect a deeper and broader market recovery.

Get the full story HERE.

Zillow Buys NYC-based StreetEasy

The news made the homepage of the New York Times and just about every real estate publication in the country. Even our own Jonathan Miller was interviewed by real estate blog The Real Deal about this shockwave. It seems StreetEasy is going BIG by becoming part of Zillow's growing consortium and Zillow is finally going to have a strong entry point into the New York market (which has been a struggle for the real estate site). As Jonathan Miller explained:

“Basically one of the things about national aggregators and MLS systems is they’ve been particularly weak in presenting data for what I call vertical housing market. I see this as a template, starting with the biggest vertical market in the country, and being able to apply this to other donwntowns with a heavy concentration of condos, co-ops and rentals.”

Go here to read the full Real Deal article.

The Next Real Estate Disrupter Will Be...

There's an interesting post over on TechCrunch about who (or what) will be the next big disrupter for the real estate industry. With comparisons to travel agents, taxi services, and Airbnb the writer posits that something is big coming for real estate. He has a few possibilities about what it might look like, but is still operating in guessing mode for now. The comment thread is even more fascinating, with 118 people (at last count) weighing in. While it is true that those everything from travel agents to taxis have had the tsunami of change whip through their respective industries, those industries don't require as much know-how as homebuying. There are so many more laws, not to mention larger sums of money at stake, that whatever it is that's going to 'disrupt' real estate would have to come with a built-in educational component. Go here to read the full piece.

How BuyerMLS Helps Agents In A Softening Seller's Market

The American housing market has spent the past few months in the throes of a low inventory scenario with multiple offers and bidding wars being the standard way of doing business. That may start to die down some now that June saw a 'respectable' increase in listings. While it doesn't look like we'll enter a true buyer's market any time soon—for example: an agent I heard from this week said that last month they had two different homes sell with five and seven multiple offers, respectively—we just might see a softening in the advantages sellers have had this year. So how does a service like BuyerMLS fit into this new situation? It means it makes it even easier for real estate agents to do their jobs. Whereas in a strong seller's market BuyerMLS gives agents a greater chance of snagging a new listing because they can prove to the sellers that they have access to the buyers, a market with more inventory means BuyerMLS can make the matches happen faster. There might be less competition between buyers for the same house, but agents won't have to do as much work to woo them in. Since BuyerMLS provides a database of buyers ready to make offers the listing agents go there first. They scroll through the BuyerList before they invest in printing glossy brochures or expensive advertising. They can check and see if any buyers are a good fit for their listings in a matter of minutes—less time than it takes most of them to check their email each day. The softening seller's market is good news for those worried about possible price bubbles or market stagnancy but it is great news for agents in the BuyerMLS system since their jobs are about to get much easier.

BuyerMLS Named Finalist For Prestigious Inman News Innovator Award

Sometimes good news comes in large doses. BuyerMLS had the honor of coming in third at the Realogy FWD Innovation Summit earlier this month and now we are so proud to learn that we are also finalists at the very prestigious Inman Innovator Awards in the App, Tool, or Vendor category. The winner will be announced next week at Inman's conference in San Francisco when industry leaders from all over the country gather to share best practices for the real estate field. All the finalists have also been entered into a People's Choice competition which is still open for voting so please vote for BuyerMLS here.

PHILADELPHIA, July 5, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- BuyerMLS CEO and Founder Charles (Chuck) Williams IV is proud to announce that the firm has been named one of eight finalists for Inman News Innovator Awards' Real Estate Agent App, Tool or Vendor category. The Innovator Awards honor companies, individuals and tools that make the most of new technologies and ideas to increase the productivity, efficiency and transparency of the real estate industry for consumers and real estate professionals alike.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130705/CG43067)
This is the third time the company has been recognized by the Inman News and Inman People's Choice Award committees. Last month, BuyerMLS was also honored by being named one of three Finalists at Realogy's FWD Innovation Summit, in which 15 firms presented to a gathering of Realogy executives, each representing one of their leading real estate brands, along with industry leaders and visionaries.
BuyerMLS is the real estate industry's only buyer marketplace that helps brokers and agents to more efficiently cross-reference their seller and buyer databases to connect buyers with the ideal new, updated and existing listings in real time. Using a patent-pending system, BuyerMLS enhances agent productivity and features "four-star" buyer qualification scoring, algorithms for instantly matching buyers with property listings and comprehensive social marketing tools to reach broad audiences of potential buyers and sellers.
Noted real estate market commentator and BuyerMLS shareholder Jonathan Miller said: "One of the most innovative and unique elements of the system allows potential buyers to be searched and matched by agents with homes to sell.  This leverages an asset the broker already owns by making sure no lead gets left behind."
The system has been beta tested in the past two years by nearly 2,000 real estate agents representing more than 40 brokerages and is actively expanding its network and upgrading technology to meet and exceed the needs of real estate professionals. In addition, the firm reports more than 70 real estate brokerages have joined a waiting list to deploy the system in their offices.
See more at http://goo.gl/kC8nq.
BuyerMLS™ (www.buyermls.com) streamlines, advances and monetizes customer acquisition and relationship management by providing an evolutionary, next-generation agent-only system. All leads are centralized into BuyerMLS to filter and optimize by patent-pending processes including: four-star scoring, matching algorithms, and social marketing tools.  Only BuyerMLS enables agents with qualified buyers to both search and be searched.  The buyer-centric and agent-tested system is dynamically updated in real-time providing immediate access to match willing, able, and ready qualified buyers with current and upcoming listings. BuyerMLS makes the best agents better. Find.Match.Close™ to increase brokerage profitability, win more listings and retain control of clients.
About Inman News: Inman News (www.inman.com) is the leading source of independent real estate news, information, advice, research, technology, opinion and commentary for industry professionals and consumers alike. Inman's unbiased and hard-hitting stories are known throughout the real estate industry. Agents and brokers globally trust Inman News as their first source of accurate, innovative and timely daily real estate news. For more information, visit www.inman.com.
Media Contact: John Heithaus, BuyerMLS, 484-580-9260, jheithaus@buyermls.com

BuyerMLS Has Arrived (at Times Square)

There have been so many milestones lately for this little start-up that could. First, we made it the final rounds of the prestigious Realogy Innovation Summit competition and now we're proud to share that a Times Square news crawl has BuyerMLS showing up on its screens. We've been piloting our product for the past two years, making sure that it worked well and adding upgrades like a BuyerList, heat maps, and a patent-pending matching system so now it's time to spread the word. Times Square, you're a dream come true.

BuyerMLS is honored to be featured in the Wall Street Journal.

CEO Chuck Williams said "The real estate industry is thinking ahead by evaluating the adoption of emerging technologies, such as business intelligence and the application of matching algorithms. BuyerMLS is at the forefront of this exciting and relevant movement. By leveraging our proprietary enterprise system to help instantly match qualified and screened buyers with sellers, we provide a streamlined and highly efficient home buying and selling process for real estate agents unlike any other marketplace solution."

Full article HERE

BuyerMLS Featured in Yahoo Finance News

BuyerMLS Named Finalist at Exclusive Realogy FWD Innovation Summit

Innovative Company Recognized for its Unique and Valuable Application to Bring Next-Generation Solutions to Real Estate Professionals

PHILADELPHIA, June 21, 2013 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- BuyerMLS, the next generation lead matching system for real estate professionals, joined a select group of innovative companies to meet with Realogy executives and brokers to help define real estate's future at the Realogy FWD Innovation Summit held on June 18, 2013. Realogy is the global leader and industry-dominating real estate franchisor and operator, with a 26% industry market share and a $7 billion market capitalization.

For the full release, please click HERE

BuyerMLS Honored At Realogy FWD Innovation Summit

Yesterday BuyerMLS got to be one of the cool kids and attend the Realogy FWD Innovation Summit where companies with gamechanging technology products were invited to present their wares to a room of industry leaders. Not only was BuyerMLS one of the fifteen companies selected from a pool of almost one hundred applicants, we were also voted a finalist in the competition for a $25,000 cash prize. It was a tough contest since the winner was a group called Floored that specializes in a 3D modeling software (which virtually recreates the physical space of interiors). We're considering ourselves lucky to be one of the runners-up. Here's a few recaps from the big day:

Sotheby's International Realty: Highlights from the Realogy FWD Innovation Summit

Inman: Floored voted best real estate tech startup at Realogy summit

Realogy: Official overview of the event

The Tipping Point For Buying Versus Renting

Some have said we are living in the middle of Generation Renter (mostly because people are having a hard time coming up with enough cash for a downpayment) but with interest rates so low it is better to buy a house now if at all possible. But how much would rates have to rise in order for renting to become a cheaper proposition than buying? Trulia has crunched their numbers and have come up with the answer: roughly 10%. While it does depend on the market—for San Jose, California rates would only have to rise above 5.2% to make renting a better option—there would still have to be a considerable rise to make buying a more expensive commitment than renting (just on paper, of course). Click over to read their exact methodology and to see the list of cities with the highest and lowest tipping points for mortgage rates.

A Narrow Focus Helps Real-Estate Agents

Today's WSJ runs an interesting piece on a rarely covered topic: agent productivity. The author, Sanette Tanaka, states: A new study suggests real-estate agents do something that might go against their grain: think small. Agents who concentrate on a small, specialized area sell homes for 1.21% more than agents who list homes in a large area, says Bennie Waller, professor of finance and real estate at Longwood University in Farmville, Va. Homeowners with pricier homes stand to gain even more. Properties above the median sale price sold for 1.71% more when listed by an agent with a small territory, according to a study last year on listing area and real-estate sales." Get the FULL ARTICLE here

Low Inventory Gets Another Wallop

There have been a few hints that the curse of low inventory is beginning to ease but today brings the strongest sign ever: fewer people are underwater on their mortgages. The total number of 'underwater' mortgages is now under ten million, or just under 20% overall. This is down from 25% at the end of 2011, so it is a step in right direction to get owners to put their houses on the market. This is based on a new report released by CoreLogic that was reported in the Wall Street Journal today but it doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet. Even though homeowners are seeing an increase in equity, there is still a large proportion with less than 20% equity in their homes so the margins may still be too tight to motivate them to list. So, the silver lining is getting thicker but we're still going to have a sluggish market for at least the near future and possibly longer.

Jonathan Miller Discusses Million Dollar Ghost Towns

It's hard to believe that someone would spend millions of dollars on a home that they leave sitting empty, yet these 'million dollar ghost towns' are starting to pop up in several pockets of the world, including along the East Coast of the US. BuyerMLS insider Jonathan Miller spoke on Huffington Post Live about this new phenomenon saying, "What we're seeing is the very wealthy have higher exposure to taxes, higher constraints on the businesses that they own. So they're looking to invest to preserve the capital that they have and one of the ways that they're doing it is investing in real estate. Ironically, we're seeing a lot of that in the US....and it is being seen as a solid, safe investment." Watch the full interview for a deeper exploration of the impact these high-end purchases have for real estate market as a whole.

Are you focusing on your Hot Dog?

Always ensure your resources are focused on the epicenter or your “core" and you can outsource whatever is non-core but needed.

A recent tweet by @spencerrascoff about "Sunsetting" product features that are rarely used got me thinking and then Spencer posted a follow-up comment that I thought was equally insightful and inspired this blog post.

"There is no hard and fast rule about how much usage is so little that it's time to kill a feature. At Zillow, it depends on usage data but it also depends, to a large degree, on how much maintenance is required for that feature, and what the opportunity cost is from a Dev standpoint. i.e., what else should that team optimally be working on"

Spencer is absolutely dead on when talking “opportunity cost” as a decision factor. Internal resources are precious and should ultimately be focused on your epicenter or your “core". Anything ‘non-core but needed’ can be outsourced. Anything ‘non-core and not necessary’ should be “pruned” or eliminated.

How do you determine what’s “core”?  Start at the epicenter. I like the "hot dog stand" analogy in the book "Rework" by the founders of 37Signals. It helps me limit scope creep and ensures everything we develop, is focused on our core. 

"If you’re opening a hot dog stand, you could worry about the condiments, the cart, the name, the decoration. But the first thing you should worry about is the hot dog. The hot dogs are the epicenter. Everything else is secondary. The way to find your epicenter is to ask yourself this question “If I took this away, would what I’m selling, still exist?” A hot dog stand isn’t a hot dog stand without the hot dogs. You can take away the onions, the relish, (the soda, etc) … you simply cannot have a hot dog stand without any hot dogs."

When I worked at GE, I made the tough decision to sell-off a very profitable business segment ("segment"), because it was not core to our business.  The fact that the segment was highly profitable was actually irrelevant.  In mind, there were two major decision factors:

1. Non-core weakened our business. Any time we had to discuss or allocate resources across our business and to this "segment", it meant we were taking away resources from our own "core" businesses.  It meant we were spending less time and money making our core products, better. 
2. It wasn't fair to the non-core segment either.  When I visited the HQ of this segment in 2007, I saw the evolution of their products in their showroom.  There were four versions of one product lined up against the wall.  In front of each product was a placard that read the date the product was released: in order they read something like: "1985", "1991", "1996", and "1999".   In the roughly seven years GE owned the segment, there was no significant investment into the segments main product line, effectively "starving" the segment.  This in turn hurt the segment's customer-base and sales team culture, and ultimately sales numbers.

It is imperative to constantly ask yourself, are we focusing on the core.  Are you dedicating your precious resources to develop a better napkin? better ketchup? or are you focusing on the hot dog in your stand?  First figure out what your core is and then make sure you're focusing your resources at being the best, at your "core".  You want to be known for having the best ________ (fill in the blank)  Personally I want to be known as having the best darn 'buyer data' around.  This is my "hot dog".  When people think of “buyers”, “buyer data”, and the demand-side of real estate, I want them to think of BuyerMLS. So with every decision, I'm asking our team, how does this help us improve our "core".

And so, a good question to ask yourself:   "Are you focusing your resources on the hot dog in your hot dog stand?" 

 

The Real Reason Housing Is Making A Comeback

If you ask just about anyone why housing has turned around in the last year or two they will mostly likely say it is primarily because interest rates are so low. But that isn't the only reason. Investors are another. Not necessarily the small time house flippers we see every night on home renovation shows, but the large companies that are buying up homes by the dozen in financially depressed areas. A recent New York Times article spells it out clearly:

Nationwide, 68 percent of the damaged homes sold in April [2013] went to investors, and only 19 percent to first-time home buyers, according to Campbell HousingPulse.

One company, the Blackstone Group, has bought 26,000 homes in nine states and is either renting them out or holding onto them as-is to sell when prices rise. This begets questions about whether or not this current housing 'recovery' is going to be sustainable and if big companies are going to do anything to keep their thousands of homes in good condition. Wit headquarters several states away these behemoth owners bring a whole new meaning to the phrase 'absentee landlords'. Might we see a whole new crop of teardowns in five to ten years? Click over to read the full article for even more statistics about this quiet trend that just might become a force to be reckoned with. 

World Chasing U.S. Yield With 25% Deal Jump: Real Estate

This pertains more to commercial, but it shows the value of American real estate to non-US buyers.  From Bloomberg comes this update:

"Singaporeans, South Koreans, Israelis and Norwegians are accelerating purchases of U.S. real estate as a growing economy and rebounding prices lure yield-hungry buyers from overseas. International investors made $7.97 billion in U.S. commercial-property purchases this year through April, a 25 percent jump from the same time in 2012, according to Real Capital Analytics Inc. Their $27.5 billion in deals in all of last year was almost six times the $4.7 billion low in 2009, the research firm said."

For more click here


While we're in the Bloomberg space, check out this informative video from BuyerMLS Advisor and Investor, Jonathan Miller on the state of the US Housing market.

With Today's Model Even A Motivated Buyer Can Miss Your Listing

There may be an inventory shortage but that doesn't mean every house for sale is going to stand out. Any major market still has dozens of homes hitting the MLS almost every day and buyers can be too busy to look at each listing closely enough to decide if it is worth visiting in person. This Marketplace article sums it up well with the following quote from a real estate agent, "[Buyers] are leading their own life, they’re trying to sell their house, they’re raising their kids. They have the attention span of a gnat. If there’s one thing that pulls their emotional attention away from that house, we’ve lost them. We have five to seven minutes to win them over. And basically all we’re trying to keep them from doing is saying ‘no.' "

It is time to use a new model. The short attention span and time crunch phenomena are nothing new, but what if instead of spending time visiting a house that isn't going to be a good fit an agent spent about ten minutes creating a BuyerProfile that spelled out exactly what a buyer needed in a home? Instead of focusing on listing properties, the industry needs to shift toward listing people and what they want. That way when they do go visit houses they know going in it at least fits their most important requirements. 

Notice Anything Different Over At RE Technology?

The website devoted to chronicling the changes in technology that impact the real estate industry has finished a refresh of their branding efforts and the new logo is now up across all their outlets. CEO Victor Lund told HousingWire, "The letter ‘t’ in the company name is designed to form the trunk of a tree, representing our deep roots within the real estate industry. [It] reflects our core ideals of knowledge and growth for real estate professionals as well as our own expertise grown through many years of experience." The same depth of content for agents and brokers is still front and center on their homepage, but the company is taking its own credo to heart and keeping up with the changing trends of the public.

Foreclosures, Not As Big An Impact As We Thought

Today CoreLogic released a report that shows completed foreclosures for the month of April are down 24% compared to a year ago. That makes it seventeen straight months that foreclosures have declined across the country. There are a little over a million properties at some stage of the foreclosure process during any given month, which is plenty to be sure, but the number is steadily decreasing. Florida and California are still the states that have the highest number of foreclosures and any of the states that require a judicial foreclosure process are also towards the top of the list. But all that talk about a shadow inventory flooding the market doesn't look like it is going to materialize. The lenders have streamlined their foreclosure alert teams (okay, so they don't call them that) and many of the properties that could have become foreclosures are going the way of the short sale. Banks got smart fast.

Curb Your Enthusiasm For Housing's Return to Normalcy

Could rising interest rates improve the housing market? Last week's article by real estate reporter Nick Timiraos for the Wall Street Journal listed four reason why we shouldn't get too excited that housing is going to make a rebound and one of the items on the list suggests interest rates would need to rise before a true turnaround can be achieved. The thinking goes that if interest rates rise fewer people will want to refinance so banks are going to have to turn elsewhere to keep cash coming in the door. And that means they just might ease up the lending standards and give a guy a loan. Go here to read some of the more unexpected reasons why housing needs to think outside the box if it wants to get back to normalcy.

Pocket Listings: A Temporary High

A perennial conversation around real estate agent circles is whether or not pocket listings are a force for good or evil. Some say they should be allowed because it usually benefits the buyer/seller if the agent reduces their commission while others say it isn't a fair practice to keep houses off the 'fair' market economy. The recent NAR Mid Year conference asked some important questions about the subject, but  that conversation as well as any of the other discussions we've seen still focus on some of the old ways of doing real estate.

As the industry undergoes the massive upheaval and moves away from a property-centric model towards one that emphasizes what people want to buy many of the issues surrounding off-market listings fall away. Once sellers (and potential sellers) see what Buyers are looking for it becomes less about protecting privacy and more about getting the attention of that Buyer's real estate agent as soon as possible.

What Today's Buyers Are Thinking

Every quarter the real estate firm Redfin surveys buyers that are actively working with their agents to get a sense of the buyer mood and the latest report has a few slivers of good news for sellers. Namely, that buyers realize they're going to have to pay more in this 'sellers' market. The survey pulls from twenty-two major cities where Redfin operates and polls approximately 1,300 people who have toured homes with Redfin in the past three months. Besides the fact that more buyers realize they're going to have to pay more, other trends that percolated up from the data include the attraction of low interest rates and the belief that prices are only going to rise so it is better to buy now than to wait. Go here for the full synopsis with a few charts that explain it all.

The Best Way To Secure A New Listing

In this age of extremely low inventory it seems not a day goes by without a real estate expert claiming they have the best/most fantastic/sure-fire/no-fail ways to attract new sellers. or generic tips to win new listings. 

Those approaches work some of the time, but require a huge investment of time and money for the real estate agent and resemble a scattershot method—just throw the everything out there and see what sticks. Too many resources are wasted on leads that aren't going to go anywhere. 

Really, there is only one guaranteed way to convince a seller to list with you: demonstrate that you have direct access to buyers who want to buy a house like theirs. With BuyerMLS agents can skip the direct mail approach, leave behind the excessive drip marketing emails, and say goodbye to hosting repeated open houses. Showing up to a listing presentation with a list of pre-qualified buyers at the ready is the biggest advantage an agent can bring to the table and with BuyerMLS the process takes less time than a phone call. Agents such as Brian Preston (Wayne, PA) and Sue Adler (NJ) can prove they have the buyers!

NAHREP: 3 Million New Home Owners Could be on the Horizon

Today, NAR reports that "The National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals estimates that immigration reform could bring an estimated pool of 3 million new home owners into the market. The nonprofit trade association estimates that current legislation proposing to give legal status to some immigrants has the potential to generate $500 billion in real estate transactions over a five-year period." Full article here.

This is an interesting tie to the Immigration debate raging in Congress today and one worth keeping an eye on since the "supply/demand" for real estate is essential to the market's functioning well.

Here's a great infographic from NAHREP on this hot trending topic.

WSJ: Existing-Home Sales Hit Highest Level Since November '09

ALAN ZIBEL And SARAH PORTLOCK from the WSJ report today that "the housing market continued its rebound last month, with sales of previously owned homes reaching the highest level in more than three years and a shrinking share of foreclosures purchased." Full article here (subscription required).

In spite of the statistical jubliation here, the authors also state that "the results were slightly below expectations. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast sales would rise by 1.4% on a monthly to a pace of 4.99 million. The previous month's figures were revised upward to a reading of 4.94 million."

We at BuyerMLS believe this is clearly attributable to the lack of inventory, which is a nationwide phenomenon. Real estate professionals will likely find the upcoming quarters challenging to get the inventory needed to make their sales numbers. Tools like BuyerMLS are naturals for helping "farming" efforts to win new listings.

Markets Getting Too Hot? Financing Constraints, Inventory Shortages Should Help Keep Them in Check

Our friends at Forbes posted this great article, by noted real estate expert Ken Harney, which carefully balances many of the issues facing real estate professionals today as well as buyers and sellers.  Of primary importance is this section: when contrasting the difference between real estate "booms", Harney states the powerful truth that this time IS different as it pertains to inventory: "There’s another key difference: Although inventories of homes listed for sale were tight during portions of the boom years, they were generally not as severe as  today’s shortages." Read on for more. 

Get the full article here (no subscription required for this one).

Have some housing markets gotten too hot, too fast?

"Looking solely at recent price changes at first glance, it makes you pause and wonder. Entire swaths of California are seeing double-digit annual price jumps seem eerily similar to the boom years. Markets in parts of Florida, Arizona, Nevada and elsewhere are also seeing rapid price gains that might cause you to ask: Could this be déjà vu all over again?

Take Santa Barbara, California, as an extreme example. According to the latest multiple listing service data from realtor.com, median list prices in this high-cost, highly sought after enclave on the Pacific were up by 56.2 percent year over year. Between February and March alone list prices soared by 15.2 percent, bringing the median to $795,000, California’s second most expensive major market after San Francisco.

Get the full article here (no subscription required for this one).