It’s well known that things slow down tremendously in the winter… But none the less there have been some rumblings that things are slowing down too fast and that we might be approaching “bubble territory”. Using some pending home sale data from the NW Reporter, I put together the following chart:
It looks like we’re in a pretty typical October slowdown to me… Seattle homeowners: I’d be curious to know if you are concerned when you see this chart?
[photopress:Living_Room_shadow.JPG,thumb,alignright]While we’re thinking $100M huge, here’s a question to lighten the mood up:
What sort of “neat” things and convenience features would you design into your dream home?
This question was recently posted at Ask Metafilter and there have been some wonderful responses. Here are some of my favorite:
It is such a fun question! I found it interesting to see where people focused. Some responses were all about the kitchen… Some all about light… and others all about keeping the bugs out!
Thanks to Fraser at Toronto at Home.
Part I: Background
Just when I thought I was getting a handle on the players in the future of real estate search, today’s news unleashes a whole new set of opportunities! “Homestore, Inc., the leading provider of real estate media and technology solutions, today announced that Elevation Partners, a private equity firm, has agreed to invest $100 million in Homestore…”
Since I’ve been covering real estate search, I’ve had numerous emails, chats, conversations, etc. from real estate agents who think that I should highlight more of the companies that are working to improve the MLS instead of the companies that are looking to replace it!
More than anyone else, Homestore represents the hope that someone will provide an awesome, nationwide, competitive real estate search based on the current MLS system.
Why? Homestore already operates the largest real estate database, i.e.the database that operates Realtor.com.
Now mix together (1) the only complete nationwide MLS database (that I’m aware of), (2) $100M to improve operations, and (3) some VERY accomplished tech visionaries, and I’d imagine that expectations are set very high.
For Homestore, Elevation Partners brings a former Apple star, a former Electronic Arts star, a Silicon Valley star, and of course, a rock star… There are enough opportunities to make one’s head buzz… I’m thinking:
Okay, so maybe my head started spinning a little too much! Back on planet earth, I’d say that all the players (Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, Google, etc.) building innovative home search tools should keep a close eye on Homestore. They already “own” a complete and nationwide set of real estate data (ownership in the sense that they have “possession”!). Should they start putting together some innovative tools, they have leverage that others are going to find hard to beat!
Part II: Where the Streets have No Name
I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name
Part III: Your Mission Should you Wish to Accept It
Imagine that you’ve been invited to 2800 Sand Hill Road to discuss the future of real estate with Roger McNamee, Fred Anderson, Bono, John Riccitiello, John Doerr, and Joe Hanauer.
What do you tell them? What features do you want to see in real estate search? If you are an agent, what is the biggest pain that someone could fix with a technical solution? If you are a buyer, what are the major gaps you see in the current system? What information do you wish you had?
I know that some of my readers have some great ideas. Please share as much as you’re willing. Remember that these guys want to work “within” the current system (i.e. cooperate with real estate agents!), and, most importantly, these people are thinking huge… $100M huge!
Tom over at the Seattle Property News summed the current state of real estate search with this question: “Is there a regional bubble in online real estate sites?”
From a consumer’s point-of-view, it is wonderful that home buyers (and sellers!) are starting to see so many options come on the market. I’ve really enjoyed following as more and more of these tools come on-line and I thought I would take today to review some of the posts I’ve had on real estate search. If you are looking to freshen up on the future of real estate search, there is lots of information (and links to more info) in the following articles:
As a fun little aside, when a new search site is announced I like to see the type of buzz that it is getting in the blogosphere. The chart from this post shows the relative buzz that Trulia, Redfin and Zillow have been getting.
Also, there are a few small search sites, like Propsmart, that I haven’t covered mainly because I simply don’t have anything interesting to say about them yet. However, if you are building (or have built) a real estate search site, I’m definitely interested in hearing about it!
I’ve been waiting (and searching) for a mapping site that gives multi-destination directions and the new (still in Beta) Yahoo Maps definitely delivers!
Here are some of the features that I have wanted to see in an on-line maps and how the Beta Yahoo Maps stands up:
Ideally, I’d like to be able to map out a bunch of homes while sitting at my home computer and email a set of directions to myself. All the addresses would be remembered (by Yahoo Maps) so that I could easily get an updated set of directions while on the road via my mobile phone. It looks like Yahoo is definitely going in that direction, but when I tried to email myself a map with four destinations, it only returned a generic map. I had similar problems trying to get a “printable version” of the map so I’m thinking that my problems might be related to the fact that I’m working on a Mac. Hopefully they will fix these issues soon!
And speaking of bugs, the beta version of Yahoo Maps did not work for me while using Firefox on my Mac. I had to revert to IE in order to see the graphics. Again, hopefully they will fix this bug soon!
One last thing before I call it a night… I played around with some of the programs that have been created with the Yahoo Map API, and it looks like they are finally at a level that is competitive with Google… My favorite mash-up so far maps out local events based on yahoo’s event calendar. Note that it would be really nice if this event mash-up had a city/zip search bar so that I could easily navigate from SF to Seattle, but instead, I had to zoom way out and zoom way back in is really nice that this program DOES have a city/zip search bar. (As Toby says in one of the comments: “For moving around in the events browser, you can highlight the city name above the map and type in a city or zip. It’ll jump straight where you want it to go.”) . Other than that issue, it It is a nice little program which I’ll definitely use again! I’m especially jazzed (or is it “rocked”) that I found out the Red Elvises are playing at the Tractor Tavern this Saturday! 🙂
Update 1: After posting this article, I noticed that I wasn’t the only one excited about the Local Event Browser. Jeremy Zawodny gives a good round up of all the excitement by Yahoo staff regarding the new map capabilities. I especially like that Yahoo has made an API for their geocoder. A free and easy-to-use geocoder is a major missing link from the Google Maps API. (what is a geocoder? In the simplest sense, a geocoder gives a latitude and a longitude for a given address.) It will be interesting to see if Google responds by opening up an address geocoder as well.
I noticed yesterday that this site has started to get hits from google on the search term “real estate”. I did a little more digging and found that Rain City Guide still doesn’t rank that high on standard google searches, but on Google’s Blogsearch, I’m now one of the top five sites that it returns for “real estate”
This reminded me of a post I put together last march (before Rain City Guide existed!) on Anna’s first real estate blog. Back then I was still trying to figure out What does it take to be a successful real estate blogger?” I just reread the article for the first time in months and I’m amazed at how much that article set the stage for everything that has become Seattle’s Rain City Real Estate Guide. I thought I’ve give my thoughts on how this site has evolved, but first I’m going to take us back to my initial thoughts on a real estate blog:
What does it take to be a successful real estate blogger?
What does it mean to be a successful real estate blogger?I’ve been asking myself these questions a lot lately as I try to figure out where I should take this site. Where does one start? Google, or course! So I searched “Real Estate Blog”:
Google Search: real estate blogOf course, generating traffic is of the highest priority, so I want my site to rank high in google searches… So what are:
Southern California Real Estate Blog and Toronto at Home doing “right” so that they rank so high?1) The highest ranking site, the S. Cal. blog, is using blogger technology. (They have a ***.blogspot address, just like me.) Neither of the top two sites hosts their own site under their own domain (such as www.annaluther.com), which makes me think that I should be content and satisfied with my site location. In addition, the S. Cal site has the poster’s names in it highlighting the fact that the domain doesn’t really matter (in other words, the domain doesn’t have to say “seattle” or “real estate” in order to rank high. The content of, and links to, likely matters much more.
2) Both of the top two sites add a blog entry at least every other day.
3) The top site has been blogging since Aug 2003 (1 1/2 years), the second site only since Nov 2004 (5 months) (at least that is as far as the archives go back.
4) Both place links to other real estate bloggers in prominent places on their website.
5) S. Cal blog is chatty with general updates (spring cleaning, flipping real estate, etc.), while Toronto’s site is loaded with longer articles that would be right at home in a Realtor magazine.
6) Toronto’s blog is particularly slick and is loaded with links to good information!!! The clean photo of the blogger at his laptop sets the mood for the entire site.
7) Each entry on Toronto’s blog is categorized by type of information. This is quite nifty and very easy to use.
8) Both sites are very well integrated with a website (lots of links back and forth). My preference is to not keep up a traditional website, but instead, just find a way to host files that I can link to… I’ll have to think on that one.In summary, I think the Toronto blog looks a lot better, and I imagine with time, it will surpass the S. Cal Blog in google searches simply because it offers more and better information.
Did I answer the question of what it takes to be a real estate blogger? Definitely not completely, but I’m getting some ideas…
So what’s changed since I did my research 9 months ago? And why did this post affected the development of Rain City Guide? I’ll follow up on each of the numbered points:
Interestingly, my prediction that the Toronto blog would pass up the S. Cal Blog (now simply called “The Real Estate Blog”) on Google searches turned out to be correct. Toronto at Home has moved to #1, while The Real Estate Blog has dropped to #4. Nonetheless, they are both great sites, and I’ve learned a ton from both of them!
Do you have any comments on the direction of Rain City Guide? Would you like to see us cover a different part of the real estate scene in Seattle? You should always feel free to email us or leave a comment on any of the postings!
[photopress:soccer.jpg,thumb,alignright]CNN reports on some of the tax-reform proposals that have recently come out of a presidential panel. (note that none of these changes are law… yet… but rather they are just proposals and still have to go through congress.)
The panel recommended lowering the mortgage interest cap, which is the amount of a loan on which home owners would receive a tax break for interest paid, from $1 million to the average regional housing price in the range of $227,000 to $412,000.
The deduction would be converted to a credit equal to 15 percent of interest paid on mortgages up to the interest cap. A credit is a dollar-for-dollar reduction of the taxes you owe, while a deduction only reduces your taxable income by a percentage equal to your top tax rate. Deductions benefit high-income taxpayers the most and are limited to those taxpayers who itemize on the federal tax returns.
Generally speaking, the higher your mortgage loan and the higher your tax bracket, the more likely it is that you’ll see less of a tax break than you would under the current system. That’s because under the current system those in the highest tax brackets benefit most from the deduction.
CNN has more on how these changes could affect your tax bill here…
I really enjoyed Daniel Gross take on the issue in his article in his Moneybox column: Tax ’em Till They Turn Red.
In particular, he has a great description of the myopia experienced by both sides (i.e. blue-states vs. red-states):
Many of the people writing and talking about these issues suffer from one of two kinds of myopia. There’s blue-state myopia. Classic sufferers: Moneybox, Moneybox’s editors, many of Moneybox’s readers. These are people who think you have to pay seven figures to get a nice house with a nice yard in a nice suburb, or who think its normal to borrow $800,000 to buy a two-bedroom condo in a dicey neighborhood.
Then there’s red-state myopia. Connie Mack, the Republican ex-senator who is co-chairman of the tax advisory panel, is a classic sufferer. When asked by the New York Times Magazine whether limiting the deduction could “hurt the middle class and discourage people from buying, say, a $500,000 house?” he responded: “It depends on how you define middle class. I don’t think that there would be a large percentage of middle-income families that would have a $500,000 house.” Mack has obviously never spent much time in Staten Island, N.Y., where Vito Fossella, one of the few remaining Republican members of Congress in the Northeast, has already come out against the panel’s ideas. In the high-population, high-income states—the states that, by the way, produce a disproportionate share of federal income taxes—plenty of middle-class people live in $500,000 homes.
His analysis is definitely applicable to the Seattle market, where many people who would consider themselves squarely in the “middle-class” are living in $500k homes.
[photopress:archie_mcphee.jpg,thumb,alignright]Our first stop on our Halloween tour was Downtown Ballard where hundreds of kids gather to collect goodies from the local merchants! It is always a fun time, and a little bit of sprinkling definitely did not dampen the kids’ enthusiasm!
For those wanting to get a peak at a typical Halloween in Ballard, I put together a slideshow on Flickr…
Enjoy!
[photopress:greatstory.jpg,thumb,alignright]The PI had a funny story today about a typo on an engraved granite slab for a new park in Ballard’s Bergen Place Park.
The story would not be worth mentioning except Fark picked up the story and there are some pretty funny comments on their site (including this photo with the “a” flipped!).
[photopress:conversation.JPG,thumb,alignright]Part of the vision that I have for Rain City Guide is to add more contributors who can bring different areas of expertise in order to broaden our discussion. Along these lines, I want to extend a warm welcome to Craig Blackmon. Craig is a local real estate lawyer and I hope that he will continue to write more articles like the one he posted yesterday on The Financing Contingency.
Most real estate agents are not trained in the minutiae of real estate law… and there are times when the best response an agent can give to a client is: “you should talk with a lawyer.” I’m glad that Craig has decided to post some articles on Rain City Guide, and I’m sure that I’ll turn to him with questions in the future!
For those wanting a little more background on Craig, I’ve grabbed his bio off of his website (Law Office of Craig Blackmon):
I’ve been practicing law since 1999, when I graduated from the University of Washington. Prior to that, I worked as a public high school teacher, one year in NYC followed by three years in Chicago. I realized that, although teaching is very rewarding, it is extremely difficult being responsible for 150 kids in one hour increments of 30 each. So I followed my father’s career path and enrolled in law school. After graduation, I worked for five years litigating claims of negligence, usually defending health care providers against claims of malpractice. I tired of the stress and long hours, so I took a job as in-house legal counsel for Group Health Cooperative, a large, consumer-owned health care provider here in Washington. After several months, I realized I missed the human interaction that is so integral to both teaching and the private practice of law. At about the same time, my wife and I sold our house, and in the process I realized the importance of good legal counsel during the transaction. Shortly thereafter, in June of 2005, I left Group Health and launched the Law Office of Craig Blackmon.
While I’m a huge fan of people using real estate agents (surprise, surprise…), a quick glance at Craig’s website also reveals that he has reasonable fees for people looking at selling or buying their home via For Sale By Owner (FSBO). If you do decide to go sans agent (and you live in the Seattle area!), then it seems that the $500 or so that he charges could drastically simplify the process AND bring you some piece of mind! (a good night’s sleep should not be underestimated!).
By the way, you can also read some more from Craig on a new blog that he has started to fill in: http://residentialrealestate.blogspot.com/.