Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
Low Ball Offers Don't Work In Today's Real Estate Market
When the number of home sellers grossly outpaces the number of buyers, no offer can be ignored, even if it’s 25 percent or more off the asking price. But in today’s rebounding market, those low-ball offers don’t often work. Many times, the potential buyer finds that they don’t get a counter-offer. And, in many cases, another more realistic buyer gets the home.
A low-ball offer – generally 25 or more off the asking price – allows buyers to see if they can land a great deal, even if they’re willing to pay more. In a survey last year conducted by the National Association of Realtors® (NAR), one in 10 respondents cited low-ball offers as a concern. According to real estate columnist Kenneth Harney, a NAR survey conducted in March and not yet released found that almost no one complained about low offers.
When the number of listings outpaced the number of buyers, many potential homeowners submitted a shockingly low offer on the theory that they had nothing to lose. If the seller balked, most would still counter with something below their asking price. Today, however, offers close to the asking price – or even beating it – will probably come in fairly quickly from someone else if a home is priced correctly in the first place.
Even buyers who still want to low-ball an offer on a home many times switch tactics after they lose a property or two to a more aggressive buyer.
Florida Realtor Marnie Matarese works with J Wood Realty in Sarasota. She told Harney that fewer buyers want to low-ball an offer in her area, but they still come in – mainly from out-of-state or out-of-the-country people who have read about the state’s foreclosures and short sales. That news, however, is old – it has not kept up with reality in many areas.
Matarese says some people still insist on making a low-ball offer, but that she doesn’t mind. “You can’t blame a buyer for trying to get a good deal,” she says.
In some cases, a seller isn’t offended by a low-ball offer, but their counter-offer shaves only a little bit off their original asking price. An Olympia, Wash., real estate agent had a $150,000 offer for a $250,000 listing, according to Harney. But after the dust settled and the seller shook off his irritation, he and the buyer agreed to $230,000.
Harney closed his column with this advice: “Rolling low-balls at sellers may have been an effective approach between 2008 and early 2011. But in 2012’s environment – at least in rebounding markets – it could be counterproductive if you truly want to buy.”
Source: Ken Harney. Distributed by Washington Post Writers Group.
© 2012 Florida Realtors®
"Maximize Your Equity...Enjoy Life!"
www.LakeMaryRealEstateSales.com
A low-ball offer – generally 25 or more off the asking price – allows buyers to see if they can land a great deal, even if they’re willing to pay more. In a survey last year conducted by the National Association of Realtors® (NAR), one in 10 respondents cited low-ball offers as a concern. According to real estate columnist Kenneth Harney, a NAR survey conducted in March and not yet released found that almost no one complained about low offers.
When the number of listings outpaced the number of buyers, many potential homeowners submitted a shockingly low offer on the theory that they had nothing to lose. If the seller balked, most would still counter with something below their asking price. Today, however, offers close to the asking price – or even beating it – will probably come in fairly quickly from someone else if a home is priced correctly in the first place.
Even buyers who still want to low-ball an offer on a home many times switch tactics after they lose a property or two to a more aggressive buyer.
Florida Realtor Marnie Matarese works with J Wood Realty in Sarasota. She told Harney that fewer buyers want to low-ball an offer in her area, but they still come in – mainly from out-of-state or out-of-the-country people who have read about the state’s foreclosures and short sales. That news, however, is old – it has not kept up with reality in many areas.
Matarese says some people still insist on making a low-ball offer, but that she doesn’t mind. “You can’t blame a buyer for trying to get a good deal,” she says.
In some cases, a seller isn’t offended by a low-ball offer, but their counter-offer shaves only a little bit off their original asking price. An Olympia, Wash., real estate agent had a $150,000 offer for a $250,000 listing, according to Harney. But after the dust settled and the seller shook off his irritation, he and the buyer agreed to $230,000.
Harney closed his column with this advice: “Rolling low-balls at sellers may have been an effective approach between 2008 and early 2011. But in 2012’s environment – at least in rebounding markets – it could be counterproductive if you truly want to buy.”
Source: Ken Harney. Distributed by Washington Post Writers Group.
© 2012 Florida Realtors®
"Maximize Your Equity...Enjoy Life!"
www.LakeMaryRealEstateSales.com
Friday, April 20, 2012
Home Buyers - It's Time To Commit
It’s an old investment adage that remains true: “Buy low, sell high.”
National Association of Realtors® (NAR) President Moe Veissi, who served as Florida Realtors president in 2002, explains why conditions have never been better to buy a home in an online radio interview.
The Real Estate Today interview can also be forwarded through Facebook and Twitter to friends, family and clients.
Veissi, broker-owner of Veissi & Associates Inc. in Miami, says today’s real estate market has “less folks looking, less inventory and more contracts working. … We’re just now seeing appreciation in real estate prices in some areas of the country. … This is a wonderful time to take advantage of interest rates that are lower than they’ve ever been.”
Veissi quotes investor Warren Buffet’s outlook on the current real estate market: “Warren Buffet appeared on CNBC about two weeks ago, and the young lady that was interviewing him asked where you should invest your money. Warren said, ‘If I had the capabilities, I’d buy 200,000 homes across this county … I think that housing in America today will outstrip the investment capabilities of the Wall Street blue chips over the longer term.”
To hear the five-minute radio interview and forward to friends and clients, visit the Real Estate Today website at: http://retradio.com/?p=4916.
WASHINGTON – April 20, 2012 – © 2012 Florida Realtors®
National Association of Realtors® (NAR) President Moe Veissi, who served as Florida Realtors president in 2002, explains why conditions have never been better to buy a home in an online radio interview.
The Real Estate Today interview can also be forwarded through Facebook and Twitter to friends, family and clients.
Veissi, broker-owner of Veissi & Associates Inc. in Miami, says today’s real estate market has “less folks looking, less inventory and more contracts working. … We’re just now seeing appreciation in real estate prices in some areas of the country. … This is a wonderful time to take advantage of interest rates that are lower than they’ve ever been.”
Veissi quotes investor Warren Buffet’s outlook on the current real estate market: “Warren Buffet appeared on CNBC about two weeks ago, and the young lady that was interviewing him asked where you should invest your money. Warren said, ‘If I had the capabilities, I’d buy 200,000 homes across this county … I think that housing in America today will outstrip the investment capabilities of the Wall Street blue chips over the longer term.”
To hear the five-minute radio interview and forward to friends and clients, visit the Real Estate Today website at: http://retradio.com/?p=4916.
WASHINGTON – April 20, 2012 – © 2012 Florida Realtors®
"Maximize Your Equity...Enjoy Life!"
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
Housing Prices Expected To Soar.....
Real estate economists and analysts are increasingly optimistic that the housing market will have a dramatic recovery in the next two years, according to results of a new semi-annual survey of 38 real estate economists and analysts conducted by the Urban Land Institute’s Center for Capital Markets and Real Estate.
The economists predict that the national average for home prices will stop falling by this year and a subsequent turnaround will occur. By next year, they project that home prices will begin to rise by 2 percent, and then get a larger boost of 3.5 percent by 2014. The economists also predict that housing starts will nearly double by next year.
They also foresee rental prices continuing to increase for all property types, ranging from 0.8 percent to 5 percent.
The economists’ predictions were made on assumptions that the economy would continue to strengthen, including a larger drop in unemployment.
“While geopolitical and global economic events could change the forecast going forward, what we see in this survey is confidence that the U.S. real estate economy has weathered the brunt of the recent financial storm and is poised for significant improvement over the next three years,” says Patrick L. Phillips, ULI chief executive officer. “These results hold much promise for the real estate industry.”
Source: “Real Estate Will Rock in 2014,” RISMedia (March 31, 2012)
© Copyright 2012 INFORMATION, INC. Bethesda, MD (301) 215-4688
The economists predict that the national average for home prices will stop falling by this year and a subsequent turnaround will occur. By next year, they project that home prices will begin to rise by 2 percent, and then get a larger boost of 3.5 percent by 2014. The economists also predict that housing starts will nearly double by next year.
They also foresee rental prices continuing to increase for all property types, ranging from 0.8 percent to 5 percent.
The economists’ predictions were made on assumptions that the economy would continue to strengthen, including a larger drop in unemployment.
“While geopolitical and global economic events could change the forecast going forward, what we see in this survey is confidence that the U.S. real estate economy has weathered the brunt of the recent financial storm and is poised for significant improvement over the next three years,” says Patrick L. Phillips, ULI chief executive officer. “These results hold much promise for the real estate industry.”
Source: “Real Estate Will Rock in 2014,” RISMedia (March 31, 2012)
© Copyright 2012 INFORMATION, INC. Bethesda, MD (301) 215-4688
"Maximize Your Equity...Enjoy Life!"
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Real estate market is picking up, but foreclosures expected to surge
Even as real estate sales are picking up across most of the country, a painful second act of the housing slump looks set to unfold: Many more U.S. homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes this year as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures.
“We are right back where we were two years ago. I would put money on 2012 being a bigger year for foreclosures than 2010,” said Mark Seifert, executive director of Empowering & Strengthening Ohio’s People (ESOP), a counseling group with 10 offices in Ohio. “Last year was an anomaly, and not in a good way.”
In 2011, the “robo-signing” scandal, in which foreclosure documents were signed without properly reviewing individual cases, prompted banks to hold back on new foreclosures pending a settlement.
Five major banks eventually struck that settlement with 49 states in February. Signs are growing that the pace of foreclosures is picking up again, something housing experts predict will again weigh on home prices before any sustained recovery can occur.
Mortgage servicing provider Lender Processing Services reported in early March that U.S. foreclosure starts jumped 28 percent in January.
More conclusive national data are not yet available. But watchdog group 4closurefraud.org, which helped uncover the “robo-signing” scandal, says it has turned up evidence of a large rise in new foreclosures between March 1 and 24 by three big banks in Palm Beach County in Florida, one of the states hit hardest by the housing crash.
Although foreclosure starts were 50 percent or more lower than for the same period in 2010, those begun by Deutsche Bank were up 47 percent from 2011. Those of Wells Fargo’s rose 68 percent, and Bank of America’s, including BAC Home Loans Servicing, jumped nearly seven-fold – 251 starts vs. 37 in the same period in 2011. Bank of America said it does not comment on data provided by other sources. Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank did not comment.
According to Moody’s Analytics, sales of repossessed properties probably will rise 25 percent this year from 1 million in 2011, Bloomberg News reported. Prices for the foreclosed homes could drop as much as 10 percent because they deteriorated as they were held in reserve during the investigations by state officials resolved in February, according to online foreclosure marketplace RealtyTrac. That month, 43 percent of foreclosures were delinquent for two or more years, from a 21 percent share in 2010, according to Lender Processing Services.
“The longer a foreclosed home is in the mill, the bigger the losses,” Todd Sherer, who manages distressed mortgage investments for Dalton Investments, a Los Angeles-based hedge fund, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We have a bulge of these properties coming through the system.”
Real estate company Zillow expects the resurgence in foreclosures this year, combined with excess inventory of unsold, bank-owned homes will contribute to a 3.7 percent national decline in prices before the market hits bottom in 2013 and stays there until 2016.
Copyright © 2012 washingtonpost.com; Nick Carey, Reuters.
“We are right back where we were two years ago. I would put money on 2012 being a bigger year for foreclosures than 2010,” said Mark Seifert, executive director of Empowering & Strengthening Ohio’s People (ESOP), a counseling group with 10 offices in Ohio. “Last year was an anomaly, and not in a good way.”
In 2011, the “robo-signing” scandal, in which foreclosure documents were signed without properly reviewing individual cases, prompted banks to hold back on new foreclosures pending a settlement.
Five major banks eventually struck that settlement with 49 states in February. Signs are growing that the pace of foreclosures is picking up again, something housing experts predict will again weigh on home prices before any sustained recovery can occur.
Mortgage servicing provider Lender Processing Services reported in early March that U.S. foreclosure starts jumped 28 percent in January.
More conclusive national data are not yet available. But watchdog group 4closurefraud.org, which helped uncover the “robo-signing” scandal, says it has turned up evidence of a large rise in new foreclosures between March 1 and 24 by three big banks in Palm Beach County in Florida, one of the states hit hardest by the housing crash.
Although foreclosure starts were 50 percent or more lower than for the same period in 2010, those begun by Deutsche Bank were up 47 percent from 2011. Those of Wells Fargo’s rose 68 percent, and Bank of America’s, including BAC Home Loans Servicing, jumped nearly seven-fold – 251 starts vs. 37 in the same period in 2011. Bank of America said it does not comment on data provided by other sources. Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank did not comment.
According to Moody’s Analytics, sales of repossessed properties probably will rise 25 percent this year from 1 million in 2011, Bloomberg News reported. Prices for the foreclosed homes could drop as much as 10 percent because they deteriorated as they were held in reserve during the investigations by state officials resolved in February, according to online foreclosure marketplace RealtyTrac. That month, 43 percent of foreclosures were delinquent for two or more years, from a 21 percent share in 2010, according to Lender Processing Services.
“The longer a foreclosed home is in the mill, the bigger the losses,” Todd Sherer, who manages distressed mortgage investments for Dalton Investments, a Los Angeles-based hedge fund, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We have a bulge of these properties coming through the system.”
Real estate company Zillow expects the resurgence in foreclosures this year, combined with excess inventory of unsold, bank-owned homes will contribute to a 3.7 percent national decline in prices before the market hits bottom in 2013 and stays there until 2016.
Copyright © 2012 washingtonpost.com; Nick Carey, Reuters.
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Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Florida unemployment dropped again in Feb.
Florida’s unemployment rate dipped in February to 9.4 percent, the lowest since February 2009, the state labor agency reported Friday.
The rate was 0.2 percentage points lower than in the month before, and nearly a point and a half lower than a year ago. The state had over 10,000 more jobs in February than it did in January, and the Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) said the state’s number of jobs is up 1 percent over a year earlier.
The DEO added, however, that the state still has 869,000 people looking for work out of a state labor force of just under 9.3 million, and Florida’s rate remains well above the nation’s jobless rate of 8.3 percent.
February was also a strong month for job creation nationally, and a number of economists say that it’s hard to separate how much job growth in any single location is based on local economic policies, and how much can be attributed to the overall improving national economy.
Job growth in the nation as a whole, however, has outpaced the recovery in Florida. While Florida has seen 1 percent job growth over the year, the state is actually holding the country as a whole back – the nation has seen 1.5 percent job growth in the same time period.
Still, Gov. Rick Scott, who came into office promising to put creating jobs first, trumpeted the latest numbers.
“Florida’s drop in its unemployment rate and increase in private sector job creation continues to prove our state is definitely headed in the right direction,” Scott said in a statement. “The signing of my 2012 Jobs and Economic Development Package represents a significant step towards ensuring Florida is the best place in the nation to create, attract and retain jobs.”
DEO said that 346,000 people claimed benefits this past month, down from a peak of 735,000 collecting unemployment in February of 2010.
The slow economic recovery is starting to be reflected in state tax collections as well. Legislative economists report that corporate income tax collections are up and that general revenue collection was higher than expected in February. For the fiscal year, general-revenue collections are $74.6 million above earlier estimates.
Transportation, trade and utilities led job growth in Florida in February, followed by the private education industry and the health care sector. However, construction, typically a mainstay of the Florida economy, remains sluggish. The construction industry lost jobs year over year, with construction jobs down 5.1 percent from February of 2011. The drop in private construction jobs was due, in part, to cutbacks in state government spending, DEO said. But the slow housing market remains the main culprit.
Monroe County, which includes the Florida Keys, continued to have the state’s most robust employment picture, with only 5.4 percent unemployment. Walton and Okaloosa counties in the Panhandle, both of which have large numbers of military personnel, and Alachua County, home to the University of Florida, also had low unemployment rates at 7 percent or lower. Despite Alachua County’s relatively low unemployment rate, Gainesville was one of the few metro areas that saw a net job loss in the month. Others were Pensacola and Port St. Lucie.
Flagler County continued to struggle with the state’s highest out-of-work rate at 12.7 percent. Also above 12 percent in unemployment in February was Hernando County.
The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area created the most new jobs during the period, creating just under 21,000, a 1.9 percent increase.
Source: News Service of Florida, David Royse
The rate was 0.2 percentage points lower than in the month before, and nearly a point and a half lower than a year ago. The state had over 10,000 more jobs in February than it did in January, and the Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) said the state’s number of jobs is up 1 percent over a year earlier.
The DEO added, however, that the state still has 869,000 people looking for work out of a state labor force of just under 9.3 million, and Florida’s rate remains well above the nation’s jobless rate of 8.3 percent.
February was also a strong month for job creation nationally, and a number of economists say that it’s hard to separate how much job growth in any single location is based on local economic policies, and how much can be attributed to the overall improving national economy.
Job growth in the nation as a whole, however, has outpaced the recovery in Florida. While Florida has seen 1 percent job growth over the year, the state is actually holding the country as a whole back – the nation has seen 1.5 percent job growth in the same time period.
Still, Gov. Rick Scott, who came into office promising to put creating jobs first, trumpeted the latest numbers.
“Florida’s drop in its unemployment rate and increase in private sector job creation continues to prove our state is definitely headed in the right direction,” Scott said in a statement. “The signing of my 2012 Jobs and Economic Development Package represents a significant step towards ensuring Florida is the best place in the nation to create, attract and retain jobs.”
DEO said that 346,000 people claimed benefits this past month, down from a peak of 735,000 collecting unemployment in February of 2010.
The slow economic recovery is starting to be reflected in state tax collections as well. Legislative economists report that corporate income tax collections are up and that general revenue collection was higher than expected in February. For the fiscal year, general-revenue collections are $74.6 million above earlier estimates.
Transportation, trade and utilities led job growth in Florida in February, followed by the private education industry and the health care sector. However, construction, typically a mainstay of the Florida economy, remains sluggish. The construction industry lost jobs year over year, with construction jobs down 5.1 percent from February of 2011. The drop in private construction jobs was due, in part, to cutbacks in state government spending, DEO said. But the slow housing market remains the main culprit.
Monroe County, which includes the Florida Keys, continued to have the state’s most robust employment picture, with only 5.4 percent unemployment. Walton and Okaloosa counties in the Panhandle, both of which have large numbers of military personnel, and Alachua County, home to the University of Florida, also had low unemployment rates at 7 percent or lower. Despite Alachua County’s relatively low unemployment rate, Gainesville was one of the few metro areas that saw a net job loss in the month. Others were Pensacola and Port St. Lucie.
Flagler County continued to struggle with the state’s highest out-of-work rate at 12.7 percent. Also above 12 percent in unemployment in February was Hernando County.
The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area created the most new jobs during the period, creating just under 21,000, a 1.9 percent increase.
Source: News Service of Florida, David Royse
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