Category Archives: General

Better Late than Never

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Smiling SashaJohn Cook’s Venture Blog pointed out today that Zillow got a new look and is now looking for beta users… Much to Zillow’s credit, they’ve created an aura of excitement despite the fact that no one knows what their product will look like, or when it will be available.

This got me thinking that it is clearly time for some updates on real estate search. The past two weeks, I’ve been too busy at work (WAY TOO BUSY) to write any posts, so I was glad that Anna took up some slack and wrote about Home Pages. However, I’ve had this nagging need to write a little more about the site, and I’ve finally found some time. Here are some of my notes from my test-drive of Home Pages:

The great:

  • Neighborhood information: It is really great that they’ve integrated so many different layers into their map. Just like Home Values, in the very near future all home search sites will need to include information like schools, parks, etc.
  • Sold Home Info: It’s great to have this information integrated into the search site

The good:

  • Personalized UI/mapping: I really like that they’ve developed their own user interface instead of relying on one of the big three providers (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft). That should give them lots of flexibility into the future, although it also means they’ve taken on a whole host of update issues instead of passing the buck on that one. I’ll be interested to hear from someone at Home Values about their experience with this hosting their own mapping.

The bad:

  • Small map: Why so small? Blow up the size of the map at least 2X
  • Mac Issues: Elements of the screen don’t show up on my Mac. I lose the entire map at times… (by the way, I don’t notices this problem on my PC at work)

The ugly:

  • Contact Information: I hate websites that make you give personal information in order to get the full features. As a real estate agent, Anna already gets 2 to 3 junk emails a day from House Values (the company behind Home Pages), so I’d hate to think of the consequences of a potential home buyer giving them a phone number. Be VERY weary of giving them an email unless you want lots of emails that border on spam.

Home Pages is the only real estate search site that I’ve seen that even remotely compares to Trulia… and it has one MAJOR advantage over Trulia in that it is using updated Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data instead of screen scraping real estate sites. This is a huge advantage in that I’ve been told via email, IM, comments, etc that the data on Trulia is incomplete and outdated.

In many ways, my heart is really with the Trulia team because I think they are offering a superior search. I really like the clean UI, the RSS feeds, the home statistics, etc. but if they don’t have the most up-to-date homes available on the market, then I’d be hard-pressed to recommend their site to anyone looking to buy a home. For this reason, I’d have to say that Home Pages currently leads the market at the best publicly-available home search. If you haven’t checked their site out already, then use this post as inspiration to get an idea of where the future of real estate search is heading!

Seattle’s hot housing market

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Hot September Market Chart
According to the latest statistics from the Seattle Times, the housing market is still hot. “Homes sold last month in King County were on the market an average 37 days, compared with 52 days for homes sold the previous September. Properties in neighboring counties also were snapped up faster than a year ago.” The article notes that while home prices in Boston and Washington DC have started to decline, our market stays strong.

Interestingly, the home market has remained strong despite the recent increases in interest rates. Frank Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac is quoted in the Seattle PI as saying “The most likely pattern is for mortgage rates to gradually rise over time. It is likely that they’ll hover at 6 percent or just a bit over.” He added that “will translate into somewhat weaker demand for housing, lower home sales volume and lower house price growth.”

Further interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve will likely increase rates even higher:

At the same time, a few consumers prospecting for properties – especially those prequalified by lenders – may be spurred into action by the rising interest rates.

“People may start buying before it (the mortgage rate) goes up any more,” Binczewksi said. “They would make offers because they have rate locks. Now, with rates increasing, they won’t want to lose rate locks.”Further interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve probably will push ARM rates even higher, analysts said.

With the rapid growth in home prices, I’ve seen many of my clients opting for smaller homes and/or condos. The Time article reflects this pattern by showing the the total number of available condos is way down (1,347, compared with 2,121 a year earlier) while the median price is up ($229,950, up from $205,000).

home search progress…

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house Values House Values launched a new site today that combined aerial photography with real-estate listings and extensive neighborhood information. The Seattle Times notes that Home Pages “has information covering 92 percent of the nation’s metro areas.”

HomePages combines aerial photography with neighborhood demographics. When you click on an icon, neighborhood data such as local school information is given such as the student-teacher ratio, average class size and even the name of the principal. Of course you can view all the homes for sale , but I really like that it displays the homes in relation to neighborhood amenities — libraries, restaurants, theaters, churches, banks, police and fire stations among them. If you are interested in seeing where the future of real estate search is heading, this site is definitely worth checking out.

By the way, don’t overlook the value in their House Invaders’ game… 🙂

Ballard History.

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[photopress:shilshole_boats.jpg,thumb,alignright]The City of Seattle’s website has an interesting tour of Ballard history that has some fun gems of information (including some wonderful historic photos).

“The first claim in the future city and neighborhood of Ballard was filed in 1852, the same year settlers arrived in Seattle itself. Development proceeded slowly until railroad entrepreneurs Thomas Burke and Daniel Gilman (remembered now with the Burke-Gilman Trail) assembled a large tract in 1888 for the construction of a new community.
Meanwhile, a ship’s captain named William Rankin Ballard lost a bet with a business partner and found himself the owner of 160 acres of seemingly worthless logged-off land adjacent to the planned Gilman Park development. Burke and Gilman hired him to manage their project, and appreciative residents named their new city after Ballard when they incorporated in 1890.”

“The large wave of Scandinavian emigrants were coming to this are and in 1889, when Seattle all but burned down, Ballard’s sawmills supplied materials to rebuild the city. For years, Ballard was the No. 1 producer of wood shingles in the world, earning it the nickname “Shingle Town USA.”

“Back than Ballard was a rough-and-tumble town. Factory whistles signaled the start and end of the day. Ballard was also a fishing town, and on Salmon Bay – the birthplace of Ballard – Alaska fishing trawlers remain a dominant presence. Men heading home would stop along Market Street to buy supper or hoist a beer in one of Ballard’s many saloons.”

“Now we define Ballard by boundaries on North 110th NW st. , South and West Salmon and Shilshol Bays and the East by 3rd Ave NW and Phinney Ridge. Ballard includes the neighborhoods of Loyal Heights, Crown Hill, Blue Ridge, Bitter Lake and Broadview. While the others are primarily residential, Broadview, roughly the area between North 105th Street and 145th Street from Puget Sound east to Aurora Avenue, is a community that has seen big changes in housing and urbanization. “

Ballard Treasure: Hiram M. Chittenden Locks

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[photopress:404_0447_IMG.JPG,thumb,alignright]This is the first post in what I hope will be a regular feature. My plan is to post on local treasures… Potential topics include interesting places, events, people, businesses that make Seattle a special place to live.

The Hiram M. Chittendem Locks (also known as the Ballard Locks) map

What are they?
The Ballard locks opened in 1916 and were built to raise or lower vessels 6 to 26 feet (depending on tide and lake level) to compensate for the difference between the levels of Lake Washington and Puget Sound. Back when the locks were first designed and built, Ballard was a major economic center with a substantial portion of Seattle’s fishing and freight traffic passing through this area. Today, commercial fishing boats still pass through the locks but almost all of the freight traffic has moved to much larger and deeper ports in other parts of the state. The majority of the boat traffic passing through the locks are personal boats either returning from an ocean trip (likely to the beautiful San Juan islands) or a visiting boat from some other part of the world.

How do the locks work?
Think of it like a huge modified bathtub. The important elements of this bathtub are that it has a plug (to stop water), a spigot (to let water in) and two gates (one on the freshwater side and one on the saltwater side). In order to get a boat from the saltwater to the freshwater, the saltwater-side gate is opened and the boat enters. Then the saltwater gate is closed (forming a bathtub) and the tub is plugged. When the spigot is turned on, freshwater fills the water level of the bathtub up to the level of the freshwater canal (thanks to gravity!). Then the freshwater-side gate is opened and the boat can enter the canal.

At this point, boats that want to go from freshwater to saltwater can enter the bathtub. Once the freshwater-side gate has been closed, the plug is pulled causing the water-level to fall until it reaches the level of the saltwater. At this point the saltwater-side gate is opened and a boat can enter the salt water!

Other Activities at the Locks
In addition to watching the boats rise and fall with the water level at the locks, there are other activities at the Ballard Locks that can make for a wonderful afternoon. There is a nearby Salmon run and during the summer, some interesting gardens and sculptures, and the grounds are home to some great entertainment on weekends during the summer.

From the locks it is just a short walk along a spillway to get to the “fish ladder” that allows fish to bypass the locks and get to their natual habitat on Lake Washington and beyond. Sockeye, Chinook and Coho salmon, as well as cutthroat trout and steelhead use the ladder to migrate through the canal to Lake Washington. All of this is fun and educational making it a great place to take kids!

Another fun activity at the Ballard Locks is to visit the beautiful botanical gardens. Spreading over seven acres bordering on the canal are some 500 species and 1,500 varieties of mature trees, shrubs and flowers from all over the world. In addition, a small stage is set up most weekend days during the summer on a grassy knoll making this a fun place to spread a blanket and enjoy a picnic.

More links:

Do you have an idea for a local treasure that you’d like to see featured on Rain City Guide? Let me know.

The future does not belong to the collective, long-term agent

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I’ve been having an interesting dialog (via email) with a real estate agent who I completely respect. He brings up some interesting issues that I thought were worth bringing to the general public (these ideas want to be free instead of locked up in Google’s email archive 🙂 )

…I can certainly appreciate their (Trulia) desire to ‘break the monopoly’ but keep in mind that the MLS is just a compilation of broker-represented listings. Brokers own those listing and ultimately decide where they go for marketing purposes. ‘Breaking the monopoly’ would mean one would either have to get consensus of a critical mass of the Brokers (90%+) or become a broker oneself and start listing lots of homes. Both are unlikely… Much better to find a way to accomplish the goal of improving search within the ground rules of existing copyright law (think old Napster, new Napster)…

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I really dislike the inefficiencies in the current MLS system, and yet, I can see how everyone benefits from the increased information sharing. If the choice was between the current MLS set-up and a situation where agents all held onto their own data, I’d definitely prefer the current MLS situation…

sunflowersBut that’s not the choice anymore. Before the advent of the internet, it was only logical that agents needed to work together and form a cooperating system so that they could share listing information. And I can totally understand that agents needed listing rules in order to ensure that one rogue agent (or homeowner) didn’t screw up the whole listing situation. I can completely appreciate this history…

But what I’ve described is the historical legacy of the the MLS, not the future. The internet has changed the situation dramatically by making the sharing of information extremely easy! Rather than protecting themselves from one rogue agent or one greedy home owner, real estate agents now need to protect themselves from an onslaught! There is no way that a company that aggregated listing data from agents (as in Trulia) could have been built 10 years ago. And yet today, it seems shocking that such a site wasn’t available a week ago.

I think the comparisons to between Trulia and the old Napster are misleading, and ultimately wrong.

But first the similarities: The old Napster was fought by the recording industry because they facilitated the sharing of valuable information (music), just as Trulia will likely be fought by the real estate industry because they are facilitating the sharing of valuable information (listings).

But the way that music and listings gain value could not be more different. The value of music is embedded in each and every song and can be easily monetized for consumers (Recording industry: “that song will be 99 cents!”). The value of listings are embedded in the entirety of all the listings and each individual listing cannot be easily monetized for consumers (Real estate industry: “that listing will be 99 cents!”).

Flag over waterBut far more important… The ultimate client of the recording industry (musicians) benefit only if a song is sold and not if it is illegally downloaded. In contrast, the ultimate client of the real estate industry (home buyers and sellers) benefits every time a listing is seen (illegally or not!). As these aggregating services become more and more popular (options like Trulia, Craigslist, Ebay Real Estate, Google Classifieds, and Zillow), real estate agents are going to be constantly challenged to decide between their individual AND short-term interest (list the home as widely as possible) and their collective AND long-term interest (keep their monopoly on listings!).

In the battle of individual/short-term interests vs. collective/long-term interests, I’d put my money behind the former every time.

More on Trulia and their attitude

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I noticed that I’m getting a bunch of hits going to my “general real estate” category. It’s odd because it doesn’t appear that any of you are coming from another webpage (there’s no “referrer”). Is there an email being passed around linking people to my website? If so, I’d be very interested in seeing this email! Can you forward a copy to anna@raincityguide.com?

If I had to take a guess, I’d say that the email is probably titled “More on Trulia.com and their attitude.”

Agents: Are you prepared?

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[photopress:richard_williams_mining.jpg,thumb,alignright]In response to my post highlighting how great the technology behind Trulia is, I received some emails from real estate agents who completely disagreed with me, although only one agent, John Lockwood , took the initiative to responded on the record). Thank you John! I’m going to pick on your comments in this post only because you had the willingness to state a lot of agent’s fears publicly… With that said, I continue to welcome your feedback!

Hoarding the data? That’s a good one. Have you seen my Sacramento Search Page — to name just one place where I’m not hoarding it? I make my living publishing the data, and I’m licensed to make my living publishing it.

John, I clicked on your search site the other day for the first time, and I felt like I’d seen the site a million times before. The search is bad and does not serve your clients well. Sure you’ve published the homes that are for sale, but you haven’t added anything of value that I couldn’t get from 1000 other real estate sites in Sacramento. You haven’t taken it to the next step and provided anything particularly useful to your potential clients. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the goal of your search site is to tease your potential clients so that they will call on you to find out whether or not a particular home will work for them. And I don’t blame you for any of this because the coding required to build a more interactive site that would really serve your clients is very tricky. In reality, you are running on a business model that has been very successful and easily replicated all over the country.

I want a real estate search site that provides more useful information? I want recommendations. I want to know if the home is a good value. I want to know if the neighborhood is appropriate for me. You’re website provides none of that… and I’m not a good enough coder myself to implement any of these improvements. I think the search site that you offer lacks so much consumer friendliness, that I don’t even bother putting a link to my version of it on this site’s sidebar. Making interactive websites that improve with user experience is what gets the self-proclaimed web geeks all excited and sure that Trulia represents the first example of real estate entering the next version of the web.

[photopress:polina_vasily_stalin.jpg,full,alignleft]While the times are changing in the real estate industry, I think the majority of people WILL always want some expert advice before buying a home. It is not like buying a plane ticket, and consequently, the internet will not replace real estate agents in the same way it has replace travel agents. A home is simply too big of a purchase for most people to feel comfortable making it over the internet.

Onto another of your points, I wish I could say that I had more respect for a real estate license, but I don’t. (Considering you are from California, you might be interested to know that I’m licensed to practice traffic engineering in your state.) Recently, I decided it might be useful for me to have a real estate license, so I spent $250 and took an on-line course. It was the “60-hour” course that is required before you can take the Washington state exam. It was so easy, I doubt I spent 30 hours in total reading through their material and answering the multiple-choice questions. For comparison, I had to get a four-year degree and spend month’s studying before I was ready to take the all-day traffic engineering test. For me, all a real estate license means is that the person meets a minimal level of competency. It is all too common to find a licensed real estate agent who is simply not knowledgeable enough to do a good job. You have to search much harder to find a licensed lawyer, doctor, or engineer who simply cannot do their job.

Reading through the rest of John’s comments, I only have one general “big picture” comment. Nobody owes real estate agents anything, least of all their clients. That is an important enough comment to repeat in a different form. Home buyers and sellers do not owe real estate agents anything. Maybe it’s just the engineer in me that hates inefficiencies, but if someone else can provide a tool that makes home buyers and sellers better off, it is the real estate agents that need to adapt. Buyers and sellers should not have to adapt to an inefficient system designed by real estate agents for the benefit of real estate agents.

[photopress:hurley_patterson_cousins.jpg,thumb,alignright]So where does this leave us…

It won’t take long for the industry to see some major changes. It may be through Trulia and their opt-in database. It may be from some type of Craigslist on steroids (think Google Classifieds). It may be the product of a dream from Rich Barton or Barry Dillar. Whatever the solution is, it is being created right now and it will provide huge benefits to home buyers and sellers. All this is happening while NAR still has it’s head in the sand and is worrying about whether or not discount brokers can get access to MLS listings…

Does this mean that every real estate agent is going to be out of a job in a year? No way! There are still so many people that require the expert handholding of a well-informed agent. However, it does bring up some interesting questions for real estate agents who rely on the internet to get clients:

Are you preparing for a time when everyone will have access to better information? How? Are you just planning to fight these changes? Most importantly, do you have a web strategy to take advantage of these changes?

Trulia better real estate search

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Just as the pun is obvious, the implementation by Pete Flint and his crew at RealWide of a new real estate search engine is obviously awesome… Their new real estate search engine available and can be found at: Trulia.com

If you’ve been reading my posts for a while, then you know I’ve been following the development of new mapping technologies pretty darn closely and this is far-and-away the best implementation yet. Pete and his crew didn’t take anything for granted and put together a whole new real estate search engine! I mentioned that this site was coming out a few weeks ago, and the implementation lives up to everything Pete told me it would be.

So here’s some features I like love:

  • The search interface is as simple as entering a city name or a zip code! The UI is beautiful.
  • The filtering by other features like Price, Bedrooms, Bathrooms and Price is fast and very intuitive!
  • When click on more detail for a listing, you get the VERY useful information like the price per square foot, the days on the market, as well as details for other recently sold homes and similar homes in the area!
  • The color coded recently sold homes is awesome!
  • I really like the the location of your search is stored in the url. This allows me to easily save and or send an area of interest. For example, here are the homes for sale in the part of Los Angeles where I grew up: http://www.trulia.com/CA/Eagle_Rock/90041/. (Also notice that it has neighborhood facts on this page.)
  • It has RSS feeds so that I can subscribe to my zip code and be updated each time a listing comes on the market.
  • And the best part is that I’m sure there’s more I’m going to like, but I’ve only had a few minutes to play!

I really liked the site when I first saw it, but the more I play the more my opinion of the site improves. The best part is that I’m pretty darn sure that if I keep playing with the site, I’m going to find more gems! This site is a true work of art! Thank you Pete!

The only problem I see with it is that it is not available for Seattle (yet!). THIS IS A HUGE DRAWBACK. I want Trulia! And Pete, I’ll wait for a little while, but I’m not a very patient person! 🙂

UPDATE: I just got an email from Pete and he says “You’ll be pleased to hear our primary focus is building out coverage to other states. No promises when Seattle is live, but we’re working hard on it.” I’ll try to be patient!

The Reservations of Greenspan

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Church Scene It’s no surprise that Alan Greenspan remains highly skeptical of the housing market, and considering he has access to a lot more data (and a lot better researchers!), I’m going to defer to him on the national issues.

Greenspan continued to register concern about soaring house prices and risky mortgages on expensive homes.

He also repeated his warning about signs of “froth” developing in some local markets that may be driving house prices to “unsustainable levels.”

Here’s are two quotes I found interesting:

  • “The vast majority of homeowners have a sizable equity cushion with which to absorb a potential decline in house prices”
  • “Speculative activity may have had a greater role in generating the recent price increases than it customarily had had in the past”

I think these quotes explain why the Seattle market is going to be fine despite his reservations. The employment market is healthy and I haven’t seen the type of speculation that is occurring in the SouthWest. Here’s a link I wrote a few weeks ago on the riskiness of the Seattle market.