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Showing posts with label real estate marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label real estate marketing. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Monday, August 31, 2015
Explaining the Housing Affordability and Livability Advisory (HALA) Committee
This is a great article that explains the Housing Affordability and Livability Advisory (HALA) Committee
The recommendations reflect a range of housing types that actually already pepper our single-family neighborhoods.
IN 1993, when I was 28 and my second child had just been born, I rented a two-bedroom house in the Central District near where I grew up. I paid $800 a month.
That’s how my Seattle housing story begins, and it’s typical of my generation. In that house, I started the venture I still run, which now employs 14 people. In time, I was able to buy a house in Ballard that has somehow appreciated to a shocking $700,000.
The housing stories of young people nowadays are radically different. My friend Travana, who grew up in the CD a generation after me, cuts hair downtown and commutes by bus from a row house in Everett. That’s the closest family-sized place she, her husband and their baby girl can afford. She hopes to start a business as a clothing designer soon, if she can get ahead of her bills. My friend Meaghan, a new mom, may move to Renton to find an affordable two-bedroom place. Her husband is starting a new career and Seattle’s rents are crushing their finances. Travana and Meaghan are among the lucky ones — they have jobs and supportive families. Thousands of members of our community sleep under bridges or in cars each night, pushed there in part by our city’s white-hot real-estate market.
Housing affordability has become the defining challenge of Seattle’s growth. For the past 10 months, I’ve served on the Housing Affordability and Livability Advisory (HALA) Committee. Mayor Ed Murray asked us for a plan to turn Seattle back into an affordable city.
First, the purpose of changing single-family zoning is to welcome families who aren’t rich. It’s to enable the Travanas and Meaghans to live in these neighborhoods, too, renting and perhaps buying someday, and contributing their talents to our city along the way. The point of affordable housing is not the housing; it’s the people who will live in it.Of all the recommendations in HALA’s 65-point plan, the most controversial part concerns the city’s single-family neighborhoods. It deserves explanation.
Second, HALA had no choice but to recommend changes to single-family zoning. Affordability demands the reforms. Almost two-thirds of Seattle’s zoned land is currently reserved for detached houses. Seattle cannot accommodate the tens of thousands of people who are moving to our community without many of them landing in the single-family zones. Already, growth has made these neighborhoods exclusive to the point of exclusion — intensifying scarcity means only people with money or people from families with money can buy there now. Even small houses in popular neighborhoods start above a half-million dollars. Seattle is well down the path to Silicon Valley’s $1 million entry price for homeownership.
Third, HALA’s recommendations for bigger buildings in single-family areas are limited and fiddle around the edges, literally. HALA recommends an upzone to just 6 percent of the single-family zones. This 6 percent sits inside or adjacent to the city’s designated growth hubs, urban villages, or alongside arterial strips already lined with big buildings.
Fourth, HALA recommends more flexibility, but not bigger buildings, on the other 94 percent of the city’s single-family zones. These areas would stay under existing rules for building sizes: same height limits, same restrictions on total square footage, same setbacks. What would change is that city codes would allow more options in dividing up the allowable square footage. We recommend more in-law apartments, backyard cottages, cottage clusters, miniature duplexes and triplexes, courtyard housing, row houses, town houses, and stacked flats. We also recommended allowing separate ownership of these dwellings so that more people can afford to buy homes.
These suggestions reflect the range of housing types that actually already pepper our single-family neighborhoods, left over from before current restrictions. My friends Chris and Mary live in Wallingford on a neighborhood greenway. The three-story home they have restored themselves is surrounded by gardens and a chicken coop. It’s divided into three flats and they live on the top floor. My friends Valerie and Brian live in a classic old Capitol Hill house with a downstairs in-law apartment, which they rent to a single mom. Two doors up from my friends Pete and Christine, in a single-family zone in Ballard, is a triplex — two up, one down — built decades ago. My friend Rick lives near Green Lake and can point to the converted corner stores with apartments up top that are sprinkled through his neighborhood.
HALA means to say, in short: more like that! Neighborhoods would feel the same — the same tree cover and lawns, porches and rain gardens, chicken coops and tiny lending libraries — but with more people like Travana and Meaghan and their husbands and children. More people like my own children, now in their 20s, who I hope could live in their hometown someday and possibly own homes. And more people like 28-year-old me.
Alan Durning is executive director of the Seattle-based policy research center Sightline Institute and author of “Unlocking Home: Three Keys to Affordable Communities.” He lives in a single-family zone in Ballard.
Friday, July 3, 2015
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Existing Home Sales Increase But Overall Market Continues To Underperform
While existing-home sales inched up a slim 1.2 percent in February, the National Association of REALTORS® recently reported that constrained inventory levels pushed price growth to its fastest pace in a year.Total existing-home sales grew to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.88 million in February, up from January’s 4.82 million. Sales are 4.7 percent higher than a year ago and above year-over-year totals for the fifth consecutive month.
The median existing-home price for all housing types in February was $202,600, which is 7.5 percent above February 2014. This marks the 36th consecutive month of year-over-year price gains and the largest since last February (8.8 percent).
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says although February sales showed modest improvement, there’s been some stagnation in the market in recent months. “Insufficient supply appears to be hampering prospective buyers in several areas of the country and is hiking prices to near unsuitable levels,” he says. “Stronger price growth is a boon for homeowners looking to build additional equity, but it continues to be an obstacle for current buyers looking to close before rates rise.”
First American Chief Economist Mark Fleming believes that the market is underperforming and in response, has developed a proprietary model using market fundamentals to provide perspective on the current level of actual existing-home sales, gauging whether actual existing-home sales are outperforming or underperforming.
“Existing-home sales are currently below expectations because significant numbers of existing homeowners lack sufficient equity or remain underwater,” says Fleming. “Nonetheless, the virtuous cycle of rising home prices and increasing homeowner equity should help actual sales to close the gap with the level of sales we should be seeing based on current market fundamentals.”
Total housing inventory at the end of February increased 1.6 percent to 1.89 million existing homes available for sale, but remains 0.5 percent below a year ago (1.90 million). For the second straight month, unsold inventory is at a 4.6-month supply at the current sales pace.
Freddie Mac found that the average commitment rate for a 30-year, conventional, fixed-rate mortgage in February slightly rose to 3.71 percent from 3.67 percent in January, marking the first monthly increase since September 2014.
“We continue to expect the economy to drag housing upward as we move into the second quarter,” says Fannie Mae Chief Economist Doug Duncan. “The economy is getting a boost from the strong employment numbers we’ve seen last year and at the start of 2015. When this employment growth partners with income growth and consumers experience a rise in their personal household income, we should see a similar boost in the housing sector. Overall, we expect an improving 2015 with continued economic growth bringing housing above 2014 levels.”
“With all indications pointing to a rate increase from the Federal Reserve this year – perhaps as early as this summer – affordability concerns could heighten as home prices and rents both continue to exceed wages,” adds Yun.
Fleming believes that as the Fed contemplates raising rates because of strengthening economic conditions, pent-up demand rises. “According to my model, current market fundamentals support a higher level of actual existing-home sales due to the strength of continued labor market improvements and rising house prices,” he says.
It’s important to note that Fleming’s model does not track actual housing sales directly. Instead, Fleming notes, it looks at the economic factors that traditionally drive the housing market and provides perspective on the health of the housing market compared with traditional norms. According to Fleming, today’s housing sales are underperforming based on current market fundamentals: economic, demographic, price and interest-rate trends.
“If we have a sense of how much home sales volume there should be given the fundamentals, then we have context to understand the actual amount of sales volume that we observe,” says Fleming. “Right now, we believe the underperformance of actual sales is largely because a significant number of existing homeowners lack sufficient equity or remain underwater.”
Fleming stresses that it’s important for real estate professionals to educate consumers that affordability is higher than the historical average, and that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) continue to work to make credit available to more borrowers by providing access to low down-payment mortgages. “While interest rates may rise, that is because of healthy economic conditions benefiting borrowers,” says Fleming. “As demand for housing continues to increase, the market will continue to heal. Real estate professionals have an important role to play in speeding that healing by ensuring that consumers are aware of all their options for homeownership.”
Click Here To Go To The Article
Monday, March 23, 2015
The one item needed to sell a home for top dollar
Naturally, all sellers want to get the most money possible for their homes when they sell them. There is one item that, if not perfect, will cause your home to sell for less than it should — that single item is the price.
Pricing your home properly to begin with is without question the single most important factor to selling your home for top dollar. It is a delicate balancing act that, when done properly, positions your home perfectly in the marketplace to sell for the absolute highest possible price. When the home is priced too low, it will sell quickly but for less money than it should. When the home is priced too high, it will sit on the market for a long period of time and ultimately sell for less money than it should.
The biggest mistake I see all the time by owners selling, as well as by real estate agents, is overpricing a home to start with and having to reduce the price multiple times. When a home is listed for sale, it reaches the highest number of potential buyers the first few days it is on the market. If a home is dismissed as being overpriced early on, you will lose potential buyers.
Typically, buyers will flip through listings online; they look at the main home photo first, then they look at the price. If the potential buyer does not like either of those items, they will move on to the next listing. Be honest: How many times have you done that? I do it all the time.
The challenge is pricing the home properly. You can use the Zillow Zestimate; you can see how much a neighbor’s home is listed for and price a home the same, or you can just price the home at the amount of money you “want” to get (or need to get) for it. I’m sorry to tell you that none of those methods work, and they certainly will not help you sell a home for top dollar. Let’s take a quick look at why these methods don’t work.
The Zillow Zestimate is a very popular, well-marketed tool. Zillow is in the business of generating leads for real estate agents, and it is very good at it. The Zillow Zestimate is an interesting tool, but it is not usually accurate. The entire system is computerized and based off of public records that are sometimes incorrect. There have been many occasions when I have come across public records in which the number of bedrooms, bathrooms or the square footage of a home has been incorrect. All of these errors lead to inaccurate Zestimate results.
In my opinion, the biggest issue with the Zestimate is its inability to take into account items such as home features, upgrades and the condition of a property. Those items require an actual human to take an in-depth look at your property and determine how it truly compares to another property. Once that determination is made, proper adjustments to the value are made.
I’m not here to bash the Zestimate. It works OK for general property value estimates, especially when the home is in a subdivision of similar homes. A home is most likely the single largest item you will sell in your lifetime. Do yourself a favor and do not use the Zestimate as a pricing tool for your home — it could end up costing you tens of thousands of dollars.
Looking at how much a neighbor’s home is listed for or seeing how much other properties currently for sale are listed for does not work because we want to know exactly what homes have sold for, not what they are attempting to sell for. The only thing a home still for sale or “active” tells us is that the home is probably overpriced. The most accurate way to predict what a home will sell for is by finding out what similar homes sold for.
Listing your home for how much you want or need to get is wrong. Truthfully, it does not matter what you want or need to get for a home. That is a poor pricing strategy. The fact is, a home is worth exactly what a qualified buyer is willing to pay for it. What you want or need has no bearing on that.
The key to selling a home for top dollar is to strategically price the home. To do that, you need to take a detailed look at similar homes that recently sold in the area. Hire a real estate agent who is an expert in the area where you are selling your home. Know the average current days on market for the homes that sold. Using this data, interview real estate agents and find out how many days on market their homes that are currently for sale and recently sold are averaging. Also find out how many price reductions were needed and how much those price reductions were. An agent who has an average days on market higher than the current sold average or multiple price reductions that total more than 10 percent is either not very good at marketing or is overpricing his listings.
A great real estate agent will know the local market and complete a comparative market analysis (CMA). This will allow the real estate agent to accurately compare a home to recently sold homes on the market. The trick is to price a home so it is considered to be the best value in the price range.
Remember that if a home is overpriced compared to the other homes on the market, all you are doing is helping other people sell other homes by making their homes look like a better value. The guidance of a high-quality real estate agent can help homebuyers land on the most strategic price and get a home sold for top dollar.
Jeff Gould has been involved in the real estate industry for more than 30 years and is a top-producing Realtor in the Tampa Bay area.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Experienced Brokers
RE/MAX NW is hiring in 3 locations. Kirkland, Bothell & Northgate.
If you have done more than 15 transactions in the past two years, you qualify for a low monthly fee with a choice of your splits.
AND a free desk!
OR pay a desk fee and save $thousands!
This is for experienced Brokers only.
RE/MAX NW Closed $871.5Million in sales last year. We are well on our way to exceed that number!
Come join us and find out why the Brokers stay here and don't want to leave!
Love your office!!
Make appointment for a coaching interview on how to grow your business.
Call Shari today!
Shari Jansen
RE/MAX Northwest
RE/MAX Northwest
Business Development Consultant/Broker
Over $250Milion Sold and 21 years of Happy Clients
425.765.9411
sjansen@verizon.net
www.seeremax.com
http://online.1stflip.com/dnku/336e/
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Friday, January 30, 2015
Seattle Metro Chapter Women's Council of Realtors
ATTN WCR MEMBERS: Let's pack the house on 2/6 for Denise Lones! If you have a Realtor pal, bring a REALTOR GUEST on 2/6 for FREE!!!!! Yes, you heard us, if you know a Realtor who can benefit from our high energy, great content Chapter meeting - we invite them to come check out our Women's Council of Realtor Chapter out on 2/6! This meeting with be complimentary for 1st time REALTOR GUESTS!
Washington Realtors Meeting In Olympia
Rich Bergdahl
Olympia, last week.
Honored to be at the State Capitol in Olympia last week for Washington REALTORS (WR) Hill Day with RE/MAX NORTHWEST colleagues
• Jerry Martin (2015 WR Treasurer) and
• Karen Schweinfurth (2016 WR President)
to meet personally with State Senators and Representatives to discuss the Budget and, once again, the lack of funding thereof for the Education and Transportation needs of the State.
The deficit will be filled, have no doubt, with new taxes. Washington REALTORS are there to make sure they do not fall disproportionately on the services you provide ... er, your career!
Your REALTOR dues and REALTOR Political Action Committee (RPAC) investment dollars hard at work ... so we all can sleep a little better at night.
REALTORS ... carrying the water and doing the heavy lifting to protect Real Property interests, right and the Quality of Life in your neighborhood and community through active and effective political involvement locally, in Olympia and Washington DC.
Know and active and involved REALTOR?
Give 'em a Hug.
Volunteer work ... hard, important, vital, thankless. The Good Work.
They are here for You.
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Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Free Clock Hours Monday February 9th
New Rules and Old Issues in Title & Escrow
w/Kathy McKinley
Monday February 9th - 10:00am to 1:00pm |
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This 3 clock-hour class will discuss:
· New Rules-The upcoming changes to the settlement statement forms mandated by the CFPD and how they will impact title, escrow & broker business practices.
· Title & Escrow Fraud-Recent fraud schemes involving cashier’s checks & wires, forgery & elder fraud in title & escrow.
· Where do legal descriptions come from? - How do brokers know that the legal description they are using is accurate?
· Tips for reviewing deeds. Who owns this house anyway? - Discussion on vesting issues in light of the recent foreclosure crisis.
· “Limited Common Elements” as they relate to parking spaces in condominiums.
Sponsored by First American Title & Escrow
Barbie Van Horn bvanhorn@firstam.com
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Saturday, January 17, 2015
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Certificate Of Excellence For Remax Pacific Northwest Region
Congratulations To The Remax Team !!!!!!
Doug Williams Earned Lifetime Achievement Award
Mary Brubaker - 25 Year Anniversary
Ryan Patrick - 10 Year Anniversary
Greg Gillis - 20 Year Anniversary
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Congratulations To The 3 Local Re/Max Offices For A Record Breaking 2014
2058 Transactions Closed
$871,531,496 In Closed Sales Volume
$22,622,022 In Gross Commissions Earned
Average Agent Income $128,534
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