Mortgage rates for a 30-year fixed loan are below 6% in Zillow Mortgage Marketplace for the first time in two weeks. The average national rate for a 30-year fixed loan (with < 80% LTV and good credit) is around 5.8% right now, down from 6.4% a week ago. Get ‘em while they’re hot!
The debate is on today, and there’s certainly no shortage of issues that the presidential candidates must be prepared to contend with when one of them is elected this November. A new survey we’re putting out today shows 58% of Americans think that, between the two major candidates, Sen. Barack Obama will better address the current state of the housing market than Sen. John McCain (42%). The survey of 2,016 U.S. adults was conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Zillow.
The perception of who is better equipped to address the housing market is heavily influenced by whether respondents own a home. For example, the spread between the two major candidates is much wider among those who have yet to become homeowners: 67% of non-homeowners think Obama will better address the housing market than McCain (33%). Among current homeowners, there is far less of a difference: 52% of homeowners think Obama will better address the market versus the 48% who think McCain will.
The survey also showed housing market issues are among the top three most important issues affecting the United States that the new president should be prepared to address after taking office. The most import issues are:
Interesting to note, however, is that the importance of these issues varies based on which candidate respondents plan to vote for. For example, of the 41 percent who said they plan to vote for Obama in November, 71% think housing/mortgage/foreclosure issues are among the most important compared to 52% of those who plan to vote for McCain, which represents 30% of adults. According to the Zillow® survey, 14% of adults say they don’t know who they plan to vote for, 6% declined to answer and 7% say they do not plan to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
What do YOU think? Chime in with your opinion on the Zillow Discussions boards new Economic Watch tab. We’ve created a new thread “Which Candidate Do You Think Will Better Address The Current State of the Housing Market?” and would love to hear your opinion. Other hot topics inside Economic Watch include Friday’s debate and the government bailout.
Originally posted here:
Survey:Obama Expected to Better Address Housing Market Issues than McCain
The debate is on today, and there’s certainly no shortage of issues that the presidential candidates must be prepared to contend with when one of them is elected this November. A new survey we’re putting out today shows 58% of Americans think that, between the two major candidates, Sen. Barack Obama will better address the current state of the housing market than Sen. John McCain (42%). The survey of 2,016 U.S. adults was conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Zillow.
The perception of who is better equipped to address the housing market is heavily influenced by whether respondents own a home. For example, the spread between the two major candidates is much wider among those who have yet to become homeowners: 67% of non-homeowners think Obama will better address the housing market than McCain (33%). Among current homeowners, there is far less of a difference: 52% of homeowners think Obama will better address the market versus the 48% who think McCain will.
The survey also showed housing market issues are among the top three most important issues affecting the United States that the new president should be prepared to address after taking office. The most import issues are:
Interesting to note, however, is that the importance of these issues varies based on which candidate respondents plan to vote for. For example, of the 41 percent who said they plan to vote for Obama in November, 71% think housing/mortgage/foreclosure issues are among the most important compared to 52% of those who plan to vote for McCain, which represents 30% of adults. According to the Zillow® survey, 14% of adults say they don’t know who they plan to vote for, 6% declined to answer and 7% say they do not plan to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
What do YOU think? Chime in with your opinion on the Zillow Discussions boards new Economic Watch tab. We’ve created a new thread “Which Candidate Do You Think Will Better Address The Current State of the Housing Market?” and would love to hear your opinion. Other hot topics inside Economic Watch include Friday’s debate and the government bailout.
Original post:
Survey: Obama Expected to Better Address Housing Market Issues than McCain
Now here’s an interesting way to get your house sold in a down market: Raffle it off! That’s exactly what Angela Schaab plans to do with her 750-square-foot Boardwalk Condominium located at 940 Monroe Ave NW, Grand Rapids, MI.
According to Michigan TV station WZZM, Schaab plans to sell 2,500 raffle tickets for $100 each, at which point she’ll pick a lucky winner in a live raffle. On her page with information and pics of the condo, Schaab claims the winner will get the home “free and clear.” She will also donate 10 percent of the proceeds to Habitat for Humanity.
As some of the commenters on the WZZM article have pointed out, who knows if this is actually legal (some states may consider this gambling). And the winner of the raffle won’t exactly get the place for $100, since they’ll need to pay taxes on the actual value of the condo. But you have to admit — it is creative!
Originally posted here:
Michigan Woman to Raffle Off Condo
It looks like the lakefront residence of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin has created some challenges for the Secret Service, who had to enlist the help of the U.S. Coast Guard to protect the waters around the Palin home. during her two-day visit home Sept. 11-13 where she held an interview with ABC News’ Charlie Gibson.
That’s First Dude Todd’s floatplane pulled up on the shore, the Palin house in the background and an unlikely scene on serene Lake Lucille: a 25-foot Defender class patrol boat owned by the United States Coast Guard. But wait — doesn’t Democratic VP nominee Joe Biden have a lake (or some body of water) behind his house?
Speaking of Lake Lucille, this article (reprinted from Salon.com, which requires registration), says the lake is dead. I’m wondering if the property values around the lake have dimished because of this, but as the article says, the lake is merely used as a runway for floatplanes.
How do MySpace and Facebook make money? What are the emerging, successful revenue models that eschew display ads? Stop by the Westin Hotel in Bellevue tomorrow night and hear Spencer Rascoff, Zillow CFO and VP of Marketing, discuss this issue on a panel titled “Cashing In on Web Services: The Display Ad Model and Beyond.”
Thursday, September 25, 2008
5:00-6:00 PM Networking & Technology Showcase
6:00-8:00 PM Panel
Westin Hotel, Bellevue, Grand Ballroom
Online registration (until 10 AM Thursday)
WTIA Members: $50 | $70 General Admission
At the door: WTIA Members: $70 | $90 General Admission
Also on the Panel:
* Matt Hulett, Chairman and CEO, WidgetBucks
* Andy Liu, CEO, BuddyTV
* Mike Metzger, CEO, PayScale
* Spencer Rascoff, CFO and Vice President of Marketing, Zillow.com
* Tony Wright, Co-founder and CEO, RescueTime
* Scott Jacobson, Principal, Madrona Venture Group – moderator
For more information, visit the Washington Technology Industry Association website. Hope to see you there!
Here is the original:
Say Hello to Spencer: Thursday @6PM
We already have two mortgage widgets (mortgage rates and a mortgage calculator) that allow other sites to pull in mortgage rates from Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, but we realize widgets don’t satisfy the needs of all of our partners. As a result of feedback over the past few months from real estate technology companies and larger web properties that require more design flexibility, we built two new Mortgage API calls to satisfy their development needs and added them to the Zillow API Network.
The fact that you can now retrieve raw mortgage rates via our API is very cool, but I think the fact that you can now pull an estimated monthly payment for a specific loan amount based on today’s live rates is the bigger win here. For the brokerages and technology providers out there, the GetMonthlyPayments API means you can now build a custom monthly payment estimator module on your own listing pages (which we’ve integrated on Zillow listings pages).
We’ve been busy figuring out additional ways for Web publishers to utilize our data on their sites and the last addition to the Zillow API was for sale listings. We know school data, neighborhood boundaries, and local amenities are of interest, but I’m curious what other types of data you think would be valuable content for your Web site? If you have additional ideas of Zillow data you’d like access to, don’t hesitate to let us know!
A New Way to Integrate Mortgage Rates Into Your Web Site
Last week, the California Association of Realtors’ released results from its 9th Annual “Survey of California Home Buyers” (formerly the I”nternet vs. Traditional Buyer” Survey). The survey looks at changes in buyers’ behaviors in the housing market, driven in part by the economy, increased usage of the Internet in the real estate industry, and changes in consumer psychology.
What should come as no surprise is that more consumers than ever before are using the Internet during their home purchase process. The survey revealed that 78 percent of buyers used the Internet “as an important part of (their) home buying and selection process,” compared to 72 percent in 2007.
Also worth noting, when it comes to the web sites that consumers are leveraging during the process, the survey found that the most-visited sites include Realtor.com, Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate among others. It is encouraging to know that so many people find Zillow to be a valuable resource.
For more on the survey, check out Sara Bonnert’s post.
According to CAR, Zillow one of top most-visited real estate sites
When Zillow first launched back in 2006, we thought a lot about how we could satisfy the desires of home buyers, sellers and owners — what were they looking for from an online real estate website?
Today, it is also very important for us to think about what real estate professionals need from an online partner, like Zillow, in order to more effectively operate their business — how can we help enhance their bottom line?
In an effort to really get industry feedback, the Zillow Broker Advisory board was formed in July and the first meeting was held at the Zillow headquarters in Seattle last week (a day before our Open House).
The first meeting was a mix of conversation centered around how to better understand Zillow and feedback on current and future Zillow products.
Better understanding Zillow and our present products – Stan Humphries, VP, Data & Analytics, spent time with the Board going deep into how the Zestimate algorithms work and then how we further use these Zestimates to put together comprehensive market reports in 165 local metropolitan areas. He also spent a lot of time talking about Zillow’s home value index compared to OFHEO and Case-Shiller indexes, which was very interesting.
Many of the present products Zillow has for real estate professionals today offer tremendous SEO benefits. David Gibbons, Director of Community Relations, spearheaded a lively discussion around various sites’ SEO policies and also how to using listing syndication to better advance brand presence in the free search results. The brokers in attendance found this discussion to be very helpful.
Future products – Here is where I need to stay vague, sorry. But suggestions that we received from this core group of industry leaders were highly taken into account and future products will greatly reflect their feedback. Some of these yet-to-be built products were right on target, and some we need to go back to the drawing board and re-work. Thanks to this core group and the people they represent, the needs of industry professional will definitely be taken into account as we look to the future and continue to launch innovative products.
A heartfelt thank you goes out to all members of Zillow Broker Advisory board. We appreciate the time you spent last week working with us to further understand the needs of the industry.
The rest is here:
Zillow Broker Board Looks At The Past, Present and Future
If you’re a regular visitor to Zillow.com, you’ve probably come across our Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, where lenders send out thousands of real rate quotes to anonymous borrowers every day. All of that activity provides us with a lot of data — namely, real mortgage rates, quoted in real time.
We know how difficult it is to keep up with the mortgage market these days. With the Fannie and Freddie takeover, and now a bailout that will surely have some effect on rates, it’s important to stay informed. So, in addition to the rate tables available on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, where you can see mortgage rates by the day, week and month, we’ve started compiling a weekly average rate, and comparing it to the rate from a week before.
We look at rates quoted between Monday and Sunday, and will provide a weekly report on Tuesday. Here’s what we found this week:
Rates have remained relatively flat over the past week, with rates for 30-year fixed mortgages increasing slightly to 5.78 percent, up from 5.77 percent the week prior. Mortgage rates for 15-year fixed and 5/1 adjustable mortgages remained steady at 5.42 percent and 5.47 percent, respectively.
Here’s more information on rates from the Zillow Mortgage Rate Monitor.
|
Mortgage Type |
Average Rate Week ending 9/21/08 |
Average Rate Week ending 9/14/08 |
% Change |
|
30-year fixed |
5.78% |
5.77% |
0.2% |
|
15-year fixed |
5.42% |
5.42% |
0.0% |
|
5-1 ARM |
5.47% |
5.48% |
-0.2% |
Also, be sure to visit Mortgages Unzipped, a blog written by mortgage industry experts to help educate consumers during the buying/loan securing process. Mortgage bloggers have written posts and answered questions such as, “What will be the effect from recent announcements in the financial market?” and “What are the differences between FHA and conforming loans?” It’s a great resource for anyone trying to make sense of mortgages — especially in this turbulent climate.
Excerpt from:
Announcing the Zillow Mortgage Rate Monitor, and Other Mortgage Resources from Zillow
No state has more homes designed or commissioned by Frank Lloyd Wright than Illinois. In fact, taking a tour of his work is a very popular tourist attraction when in the Chicago area.
For a listed sale price of $625,000 you can now own a piece of historical work by this acclaimed architect, and in doing so, help preserve history.
The home at 1027 Meadow Rd in Glencoe, IL is up for sale. It is one of six homes in the Ravine Bluffs that
were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and commissioned by his attorney Sherman Booth. Five of the homes, including this one, were designed as rental properties and marketed at the time of the original sale as a “fireproof house for $5,000.” They published this marketing campaign in the Ladies Home Journal in 1907 (I guess even back then women drove housing decisions…).
Unfortunately, today the home is in need of restoration and is being sold “as is.” Landmarks Illinois, a preservation group, just placed the home on its Chicagoland Watch List 2008 – 2009. Worst case, this could mean that the home could be bought and torn down. If torn down, it would be the first intact Wright house to be demolished in the United States in over 30 years.
Click here to learn more about what you can do to prevent this from happening and help preserve history.
Source:
Frank Lloyd Wright Home Up For Sale And In Need Of Help
The Donald warned us the Russians were coming (to New York City), but, who knew he was talking about Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google? It’s true. Mr. Brin and his wife, 23andMe’s Anne Wojcicki, just purchased a condo at 744 Greenwich St. New York, NY, for $8.5 million. This news comes by way of Valleywag, who got it by way of Cityfile, who got it by way of Real Estalker. The condo was purchased from Bill Brady, a Palo Alto-ite who is Managing Director of Credit Suisse and Co-Chairman of the Global Technology group. Maybe the littlest Googleite will have her (?) his (?) launch party in NYC instead of Palo Alto?
Read more:
New York Invasion: Sergey Brin Buys Greenwich Village Pad
From the Bears Stearns fallout to the government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to the buyout of AIG to the recent bailout proposal, everyone seems to want to talk about the economy — and members of the Zillow community are no different. Just look at these recent threads:
With that said, we wanted to give everyone a heads up that, by way of popular demand (and I mean DEMAND), we created a “Market Watch” category within Zillow Discussions for people to discuss the latest economic news and its impact on the housing market.
Enjoy!
From the Bears Stearns fallout to the government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to the buyout of AIG to the recent bailout proposal, everyone seems to want to talk about the economy — and members of the Zillow community are no different. Just look at these recent threads:
With that said, we wanted to give everyone a heads up that, by way of popular demand (and I mean DEMAND), we created a “Economic Watch” category within Zillow Discussions for people to discuss the latest economic news and its impact on the housing market.
Enjoy!
(Photo courtesy of Flickr’s wifeofvolsfan)
She might be a Coal Miner’s Daughter-turned country music star, but Loretta Lynn also claims psychic powers and has come in contact with many ghosts, including that of her father. According to some recent blogs, Loretta has been working with celebrity ghost whisperer James Van Praagh on trying to rid her gorgeous Hurricane Mills, TN home of ghosts.
Loretta Lynn’s home at 44 Hurricane Mills Rd, Hurricane Mills, TN, is located about 73 miles west of Nashville, TN. She found it back in the 1960s when she and her husband Oliver Lynn (aka “Doolittle” or “Doo,” or “Mooney” for moonshine ) went on a drive in the country to find a larger home for their burgeoning family. According to town lore, it is an old plantation with a dark history — 19 Confederate soldiers are buried on the property, and the home is haunted by the original owner of the plantation, plus a woman in white (isn’t there always a woman in white?) and slaves that worked the plantation and were kept in the “slave pit.”
Loretta evidently called in the help of Van Praagh to rid her haunted home of these spirits and during the filming for the TV show “The Insider,” Van Praagh said he could see blood everywhere. He was supposed to spend the night, but decided to leave when spirits told him to “‘Get out.” He thought, ‘I should probably get out…’ It feels like I’m in somebody’s place and they don’t want me to disrupt it.”
No word whether Loretta will stay and just put up with the spirits, but there is one millionaire in Nottinghamshire, England, who was so spooked by ghosts in his 52-room mansion that he told the bank take it back — even refusing to pay the mortgage.
For all you Loretta fans, here’s a song she wrote for her gal pal, the late Patsy Cline, who was her inspiration and reason for her success. The song? “This Haunted House,” recorded from a wonderfully scratchy album. Here are the lyrics.
