Tag Archives: News

Yahoo Maps is Now Driving Innovation!

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Yahoo Map of Seattle DestinationsI’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:

  1. Multi-destination: This allows you to type in a bunch of addresses and get directions from one site to the next all on one map. This feature alone should make Yahoo Maps (beta) the default online mapping program for all real estate agents (and home buyers!). Thank you Yahoo!
  2. Best routing of destinations: theoretically, you’d be able to hit a button and have the mapping software tell you the most efficient route to get between multiple points. Yahoo does not have this feature (yet?), but they do let you manually change the order of your destinations! To do this, you simple have to drag the address within the sidepanel above (or below) another address.
  3. Remembering addresses. It is nice that Yahoo maps is integrated with my Yahoo Address book. The only problem is that I haven’t used my Yahoo Address book in years so all the addresses (and there are 100s) are old (including my “home”). It looks like it might be time to return to my Yahoo address book!
  4. Mobile Phone Integration: Getting directions via my mobile phone is currently a pain. I have a blackberry with internet access, but the current mapping sites are too slow and any misspellings require retyping things… I did try out Yahoo Maps a few weeks ago (and I liked that I had access to my on-line Yahoo address book), but, again, the addresses in my address book were so outdated, that it didn’t do me a lot of good. Seeing has how the Yahoo Maps has the “email map” and “Send to phone” options, it looks like it might be time to update my Yahoo address book!
  5. Live Traffic Data: I also like that Yahoo has integrated live traffic data (like freeway speeds). I’d be interested to see them add traffic cameras (Along the lines of Bus Monster).

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.

Tax Reform Hits Home…

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[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.

Stressful living!

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[photopress:IMG_5046.jpg,thumb,alignright] In reading today’s Seattle Times article on people who have used interest-only loans to get into homes they could not otherwise afford, I get the feeling that some people are much better at living under constant stress than me! 🙂

It can be a wonderful experience to own a home, but it still doesn’t make sense to me why people put themselves in these situations. I’ve heard some darn good arguments from investors regarding why it makes sense for them to use interest-only loans, but for the rest of us, it feels too much like gambling…

Dean Baker sums up the I/O like this: “In a falling interest-rate environment, you may be saving enough to make it worthwhile. But … in a higher-rate environment, there may not be a loan to bail you out.”

To quote the same phrase Dustin used a few days ago with regard to hiring a lawyer, “A good night sleep should not be underestimated.”

Inbox: Where to Live Based on the Quality of Seattle Public Schools?

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I’ve been having a dialog with one of my readers who is looking forward to moving to Seattle. His last email summarized some of the research he has done on Seattle schools, and I thought the entire email is so good that it deserved a wider audience:

Dear Anna —

I’ve got another issue you might want to explore on your blog, and get readers’ feedback. Do people looking to buy real estate in Seattle base their choice of neighborhoods on the quality of schools? From my understanding of the Seattle public school system, it seems that one does not need to consider high schools among ones neighborhood selection criteria, since at least in term’s of today’s system, there’s no admission advantage (other than just being close) that accrues to living in the “reference area” of ones preferred high school. However, there does appear to be an advantage to living in the reference area of ones preferred elementary and junior high schools. And if budget cuts ultimately mean cutbacks in school choice (though that has been averted for the time being), then it’s likely that it will be even more important. So, what this means is that if school quality is important to you, you should look at the neighborhood elementary and junior high schools.

However, if one looks at the Seattle city schools in comparison to suburban schools in terms of grade scores (as tabulated by the Seattle Times School Guide), quite a few elementary schools (e.g., Lowell, View Ridge, Wedgwood, Hay, Lawton, North Beach, Whittier, etc.) compete with the best suburban schools (Mercer Island, Bainbridge Island, etc.). However, at the junior high school level, all but a few junior high schools (Eckstein, Tops, Washington) fall out of step with the best suburban schools. And at the high school level, only the Center School ranks with schools on Bainbridge, Mercer Island, Bellevue, Issaquah and the Northshore. The obvious conclusion, then, is that if you seek top notch schooling in the upper grades, your choice comes down to having your child compete for a place at a few select Seattle city public junior highs or high schools, or else looking at private schools, or moving to the suburbs.

What do you think of this analysis? What other school related-factors are there to consider?

I hope you don’t see this as too self-serving. It strikes me as it is a fundamental part of buying real estate, but is rarely fleshed out in public, probably because of the hot-button racial issues involved.

(I’ve left the writer of this email anonymous at his request)

When he asks if any other factors should be considered, I think of some of the specialty programs that different schools offer. For example, all of the 5th grade students at Greenwood Elementary School are taught how to fly airplanes (Cessna 172’s). I imagine that some parents would be willing to give up a few test score points to know that their child was in a more stimulating environment.

What other specialty programs are there that might be of interest to parents moving to Seattle?

What other school-related factors should he consider in looking for a home in Seattle?

I would definitely like to open up his questions to other readers, so please feel free to leave comments below.

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).

Keeping Real Estate Entertaining…

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[photopress:twinkies.jpg,thumb,alignright]
David A. Smith, founder of the Affordable Housing Institute, has a great blog that is loaded with articles that are both interesting and informative (is that possible?). In terms of readability, his posts are up there with grow-a-brain except David keeps more focused on real estate.

He posts on a wide variety of topics. Today he gives some lessons on how home owners can learn from haggling in third world contries in the Economics of Haggling. A few days ago he had an article (What destroyed your home first) where he relates the killing of Rasputin to whether or not insurance companies will pay to rebuild homes in New Orleans (read the article and it will make sense!).

All in all, David is a great writer, and if you’re interested in real estate, I highly recommend adding him to your reading list.

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.