The country’s top housing official has an urgent message for potential home buyers: You may have heard that the credit markets were “frozen,” but FHA has been open for business throughout the credit squeeze, and so are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, FHA’s volume has tripled and the agency is now insuring well over a hundred thousand new loans a month.
View post:
Washington Report: FHA Still Going Strong
Housevalues lost $1.3 million in the 2nd quarter of 2008, the company reported in a press release last week. John Cook also reported that they lost over 400 customers in the same period.
But don’t shed a tear for HV - they’re still sitting on $62.7 million in cash. And that’s a bucket of cash that they’ve been willing to swing around a bit recently.
The press release highlighted RealtyGenerator, a company HouseValues acquired in November of last year. RealtyGenerator is a pretty slick product that functions as a lead generation and CRM tool for brokers and agents.
Personally, I was more curious in seeing what HouseValues had to say about its other investment - the $2.75 million they plunked down in January into ActiveRain.
Took a while for me to find any mention, but I did manage to dig this out of their Letter to Shareholders from the 2007 Annual Report (PDF link).
While the acquisition of Realty Generator will go a long way toward enhancing our products, we believe our investment in ActiveRain will help us broaden our sales reach. ActiveRain is a leading community and social networking platform for real estate professionals. The company has attained a high level of user engagement and has rapidly grown to more than 80,000 members. While ActiveRain will continue to operate as a completely independent business, our strategic relationship creates the potential for a new and rapidly growing channel.
Clearly Housevalues is excited about their new properties. I’m not sure investors were similarly moved however, as the stock price (SOLD) has remained relatively static.
Here is the original:
New Sales Channels for HouseValues
You gotta love Jon Stewart of the Daily Show. He is making news more accessible to young people (my kids and, of course, me) by delivering it as entertainment. He’s had some interesting guests on the show to cover the housing market. The housing market situation is so ridiculous, it is a natural fit on this kind of show.
John Stewart: People would come in and say “I don”t have good credit, or a job, and my car has been repossessed and I’d like a house, what do you think?
Lender: Ok
Last night I saw the interview with Richard Bitner who is humping his book, Confessions of a Subprime Lender. I was in a BN a few weeks ago and almost picked it up. I had read the interesting review in Daniel McGuinn’s Newsweek Resident Expert column in the spring but was already OD’ed from subprime talk.
But after hearing the interview last night, and the fact that he speaks with such clarity, I would imagine it’s a fun read. He was a wholesale lender, providing mortgage money to mortgage brokers…and guess what?…underwriting standards eroded.
Looks like another reason to delay reading War & Peace.
See the clip [it starts at 15:00]
Read the original:
[This Just In] There IS Meaningful Housing News On Comedy Central
Recently Roger Theriault released a new plug-in for WordPress that makes displaying and marketing your real estate listings on your WordPress blog a snap. This new plug-in is called “Great Real Estate.” I was amazed with the thoroughness of this first release. In my opinion, Roger has built powerful plug-with lots of future potential. See my introduction to Great Real Estate here.
Shortly after I discovered this plug-in I reached out to Roger for an Interview. I was intrigued and wanted to know more about the motivation behind the product and more about the future road map. Please enjoy our conversation below.
Hello Roger, I’m very impressed with your new real estate plug-in. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Are you a real estate agent?
Yes, I’ve been an agent for 4 1/2 years, with Illustrated Properties, specializing in listings. I’m also still in web development. I was with Motorola for 13 years and was their first corporate content “webmaster” in the days when they didn’t have a corporate web department and the various product groups were just starting to get on the web. I got into the real estate industry in 2002 (starting with mortgages) after Motorola started shutting down its facility here in Palm Beach County, Florida. I may wind up doing more software development and less real estate. I’m originally from Canada and grew up doing both software development and photography and publishing, so the web kind of brought the two together for me and real estate allows me to continue that.
What was the motivation behind your Great Real Estate Plug-In for WordPress?
I have always been an advocate of content management over HTML editing of web pages. I developed custom content management at Motorola’s paging group back in 1996 and when I set up my real estate site in 2004, I developed content management capabilities using PHP and MySQL so my site would be consistent, and to make it easy for me to add photos and update listings. Late in 2007 I started using WordPress and this year decided its content management capabilities were mature enough that I could toss all my old code and rebuild upon WordPress. A good web presence is becoming even more important in real estate every year… I’d always planned to create a solution for other agents to use, and the ability to make a plug-In with real estate functionality (and not have to worry about the complex engine it runs on, or replicating other features), allowed me to finally accomplish that. That’s what’s great about building on WordPress. The plug in is still a work in process… my goal is a plug-In that is clear, not convoluted, and that supports real estate practices around the world and not just the US. (Hopefully the plug-In is already relatively easy to install and use for the average agent.)
In your mind what advantage does WordPress offer real estate agents?
Just a few years ago agents had a choice of two evils: a very expensive custom designed website that might tie them to a developer or solution provider (and usually difficult to update), or a template real estate solution that resulted in less than optimal search engine friendliness. Content management capabilities have been poor. When your site has the exact same boilerplate on buying or selling as a few thousand other sites and it’s not specific to your market, you’re not going to turn up in a search. I’ve always suggested to other agents that they write all their own web content, or if they hire someone to help them write, that it reflect them and be unique, useful, and highly relevant to their market. Closing procedures are vastly different between California and Florida, for example, and consumers need specifics. It’s still a local industry requiring local knowledge. WordPress allows you to have a unique site at a low cost, and easily create new pages without worrying about HTML or paying a web designer each time you need to tweak your wording. It just hasn’t allowed agents to manage their property listings as well as a custom or template real estate site. Hopefully I can help with that.
Can you share any future plans for “Great Real Estate” Plug-In?
Sure! Part of the future of the plug in is going to come from user feedback. I’m already hearing from some agents who want to use it for vacation rentals. They need a few extra fields and things. And the first release only has the basic features to get your listings exposed… so I have a small list of ideas for additional features and modules. The next release will have a few extra “featured homes” widgets, including a map display of all your listings (you can preview that at http://rogertheriault.com/listings), and some admin user interface improvements. Maybe a few more XML listing syndication formats. I don’t expect every install of my plug-in to come from an agent, there are a lot of WordPress service providers setting up sites for agents, but I know from my experience that the interface will need to be agent friendly so the agents can use it as part of their business.
Some possible new features might be a Flash “virtual tour” app that could be an option for presenting a listing on a click-through from sites such as Realtor.com. Not as a replacement for XHTML but as an additional interface. And I’m also looking at a showings manager so that agents can keep track of home showings. This would lead to a home seller login so the sellers can see how their listing is being managed and facilitate better agent-seller communication.
Most of the features are aimed at listing agents at present. The quality of marketing and relationship management between an average agent and a good agent can really make a difference in how quickly a home sells and a seller’s satisfaction level. I think listing agents need to provide the best possible marketing and service to succeed so consumers can get better value and be less likely to turn to some of the “post your listing” sites out there, and this Plug-In will hopefully help many agents do just that.
Thanks for your time Roger! And for all you real estate agents looking for a powerful and effective way to display your listings with WordPress you have a new tool! Have fun activating!
The rest is here:
MTO Interview: Behind the Great Real Estate Plug-In
This morning I was invited to comment on housing starts for Fox Business Network’s Money For Breakfast show hosted by Alexis Glick.
I wasn’t at my best on this one - no coffee prior to the interview - but it was interesting to see starts fall yet again. The May housing start figures were released by US Commerce just as the interview began at 8:30am.
Privately-owned housing starts in May were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 975,000. This is 3.3 percent (±10.7%)* below the
revised April estimate of 1,008,000 and is 32.1 percent (±5.1%) below the revised May 2007 rate of 1,436,000.
Single-family housing starts in May were at a rate of 674,000; this is 1.0 percent (±9.9%)* below the April figure of 681,000. The
May rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 280,000.
April’s rise seems to be an anomaly. Expectations for housing continue to be negative as evidenced not only by these start figures which suggest there is excess inventory, but the record low NAHB/Wells Fargo Builders Confidence Index announced yesterday, was at a record low. In other words, builders, who are some of the biggest risk takers and optimists out there, are not feeling good about the situation.
It’s funny but with all the excess inventory out there, I find it hard to believe that builders continue to build, even at their “half full” output compared to 2006 levels. The decline in housing starts (which are fraught with crazy statistical problems to begin with) would likely be lagging the drop in demand as measured by inventory.
We really need a better national inventory figure.
Read the original here:
[In The Media] Fox Business Interview for 6-17-08
[Note: To follow is an excerpt of an interview with William Carter, CR, CKBR, first vice president for the National Association of the Remodeling Industry and owner of the Carter Carter Company in Sacramento, California. To listen to, or download the show archive MP3, go to www.IncomePropertyInvestmentTalk.com.]
The Professional Remodeler’s Impact on Real Estate Values
Back in March, I was invited back to do another appearance on Lawline TV. I had the pleasure of appearing with Jacky Teplitsky of Prudential Douglas Elliman. Alan Schnurman has been hosting this show for nearly 30 years I believe. He’s good interviewer and apparently a very successful real estate investor.
This interview was done before I had compiled my Q1 08 stats but it wouldn’t have changed the content of my presentation.
View the clip (There is no direct link to the interview so look for “The Impact of Economic Downturn on the Real Estate Market”)
Excerpt from:
[In The Media] Lawline Clip for 5-22-08
Ok, not really.
Last month I did an interview on BBC Radio and the producer said the interview was based on the old adage that “when America sneezes, the world catches a cold.”
There was a pretty interesting article in The Economist, which has been a housing bear since 2003, called Structural cracks: The pain in Spain falls mainly on Mr Drains
Other than trying to get the inner mean of the title, the chart clearly shows that the countries on the list are performing differently or are in different phases of their respective cycles.
So in a global sense, housing is local after all?
It is, but there are a heck of a lot of local markets that comprise the global housing market.
Some locales that stood out to me:
Singapore and Hong Kong are doing well lately while Japan and Germany are not.
Both Spain and Ireland have parallels with the American housing market, where the inventory of unsold homes has hit a 20-year high, according to Capital Economics. There the pace of price decline, as measured by the S&P/Case-Shiller indices, has been accelerating.
Monetary policy is changing across the globe, weakening buying power like it is in the US. Because (insert tired phrase here:) when America sneezes, the world catches a cold.
Or something along those lines…
If house-price weakness does spread more widely, there may be important economic consequences. There is plenty of debate about the size of the “wealth effect” of higher property prices on consumer demand. But it will hardly help that fuel and food prices are soaring at the very moment when the value of bricks and mortar looks about to sag.
Read more from the original source:
[Achooo!] Proving Once Again That Real Estate Is Global, Not Local
Well this morning, I got up at 4:15am to do a live C-Suite interview on Fox Business News at 6:45am. Always fun and I enjoyed meeting Jenna Lee in person after having known her only via telephone when she was a reporter. I must have done ok since they invited me back next friday morning. 
We talked about both housing starts and my appraisal firm, Miller Samuel. I had thought that the April numbers would show further decline. March was the lowest in 17 years and was down by 2/3 from the January ‘06 high. Economists surveyed generally thought starts would be down around 1.4%.
Starts jumped 8.2% but that was due to multi-family starts. Single family starts were actually down 1.7%. Overall starts are down 30.6% from the same time last year.
Bad Stats 101
Check out the Census’ press release quote:
Privately-owned housing starts in April were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,032,000. This is 8.2 percent (±14.5%)* above the revised March estimate of 954,000, but is 30.6 percent (±6.7%) below the revised April 2007 rate of 1,487,000.
Translation of up 8.2 percent (±14.5%): Overall housing starts were anywhere from -6.3% to +22.7%. Seems wildly vague, doesn’t it?
Single-family housing starts in April were at a rate of 692,000; this is 1.7 percent (±11.7%)* below the March figure of 704,000. The April rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 326,000.
Translation of down 1.7 percent (±11.7%): Single-family starts were anywhere from -13.4% to +10%. Seems wildly vague as well.
If you think about it, nothing has really changed since last summer’s credit crunch that would change the direction of the housing market.
The credit markets are still frozen, mortgage rates have risen, underwriting standards are higher and reduced the buyer power of consumers.
“The headline increase in starts means nothing; it is all due to a rebound in the hugely volatile, but essentially trendless, multi-family sector,” said Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics.
Builders have been reluctant to build because demand for new homes has plunged and the supply of unsold property remained high. The latest data show new-home sales, for March, were down 36.6% from a year earlier. On Thursday, the National Association of Home Builders reported its index for sales of new, single-family homes slipped to 19 in May from 20. The gauge is based on a survey of builders asked about prospects for sales.
“The magnitude of the housing bubble was unprecedented, and the corrective process promises to be a long and painful one,” MFR Inc. Joshua Shapiro said of the NAHB data. “Hence, it is hardly surprising that builder sentiment is still languishing very near its all-time low.”
As far as Miller Samuel (my appraisal firm) goes, we have been booming since February. Fox Business inadvertently inserted a text banner during my interview that referred to our now defunct acquisition by RL from last fall. I had terminated the take-over in March.
Our firm is built for a down housing market because lenders as well as other clients actually want to know what the value is and the nuances of housing markets we cover, rather than only the number needed to make the deal. We did not fare as well as others during the housing boom because of the erosion of underwriting standards and the shift of appraisal work from retail lenders to mortgage brokers.
The current lending environment is encouraging, in a contrarian sort of way, by getting back to basics. Hopefully this will permeate the entire lending process.
The housing boom was tough for appraisers who refused to bow to pressure to push values higher than they should have been and the work was given to those who would.
But the world is changing, and like the IRS, we are here to help…
From the:
Who Cares But
It’s Still Cool Department:
Christine Haughney’s Collateral Foreclosure Damage for Condo Owners in the NYT yesterday that sourced and used us for background, was the most emailed article in the New York Times both yesterday and today. THAT is cool (to me). It was designated to be an A1 story but was bumped for the earthquake in China coverage.
Source:
[In The Media] Fox Business C-Suite Interview for 5-16-08
