San Francisco: "Aesthetically, it's a very good bid: the location, the scenery, that kind of aesthetic value. The challenge was the plan last time around [for 2012]. It was widespread, a hard environment to work with trafficwise. They made a lot of changes... which seemed to have improved it. So, if they can pull it off that way, I'd say they're probably a front-runner at this point."
The NIMBY crowd will make sure this all comes to nothing, and I can't say that I disagree. The entire Olympics process has become so degraded and corrupt, I can't see why anybody would want to participate. It is also, in San Francisco, at least, highly questionable whether the ROI makes any sense at all.
So despite the good news that the real estate market is softening, the bad news is that there's an underlying issue that's going to make housing unaffordable for years to come: California isn't building enough to meet the demand.
"Our department estimates that in order to keep up with population and job growth, there needs to be 220,000 new housing units constructed every year, and that hasn't happened since 1989," Huston told me. "Depending on who you speak to, we have a housing deficit of 1 to 2 million units. And every year we don't meet our demand, it increases."
That's a lot of unbuilt bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchens. Generally, those unmet demands fall into the categories of housing that few developers will touch: low-income and moderate-income housing.
Not entirely. Which is why I continue to point out that while prices (and sales) may get really soggy elsewhere in the SF Bay area, the City itself is unlikely to experience much of a drop. In a crashing market, the beginning consists of two stages: First, offering prices remain as high as ever, but time for sale increases, and eventually increases drastically, leading to the second stage, which is re-pricing, and falling prices overall.
San Francisco is at the first part of the first stage. I'm seeing prices in the City about as high as they've ever been, but inventory is sitting quite a while before it moves, and, occasionally, I see the dreaded "Just lowered by twenty thousand," or some variation.
To be honest, though, I don't think we're going to see much other than a plateau in prices along with some extended wait times until sale. Not only is San Francisco not building enough housing to meet demand, the demand isn't coming from low-income folks, who can no longer afford to buy here under any circumstances, but from DINKS making 200K plus, and professionals and executives making more. They can afford housing here - barely - but there isn't much for them to buy.
SeniorSF.com, a new service for relocating senior citizens, simplifies the confusing process of comparing living options for senior adults.
"There are so many different options for today's mature adults that it is mind-boggling," noted Steve Peletz, manager of SeniorSF.com (www.seniorsf.com) and CEO of Peletz & Company Real Estate (www.peletzco.com) in San Francisco.
"Having worked with many seniors preparing for the next phase of life, we designed SeniorSF.com to help mature adults review the various living alternatives available in the marketplace. We help seniors review lifestyle, geographic, and financial considerations. The many financial arrangements alone can confuse the most business savvy amongst us, but with a little help, senior citizens and their families can find the living situations most suited to their needs and preferences," Peletz added.
Like a bowling ball moving through a snake's digestive tract, the Boomers drag their own markets with them as they move ponderously, overwhelmingly through life.
As the first of them reaches sixty this year, look for all sorts of new goods and services designed especially for them. I was born in 1946, so I am one of them. When I was a kid, it was a "young peoples' world." Now its a world of "mature adults," (which is what I guess is the new moniker for "geezerhood"). And what we are selling these mature adults is upscale quasi-nursing homes under the guise of real estate.
I expect at some point in the future that graveyard sales will become an adjunct to the real estate industry.
GuideToRealty.com has created web domains exclusively devoted to Boston, Washington, D.C., Miami, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle as well as hundreds of other cities.
“Our local city realty portals include custom local graphics, local demographic and trend information, and a selection of the best local real estate agents and brokers," says John Spottiswood, Vice President of GuideToRealty.com.
In Phoenix, web users can find average household income, home valuation, and other local information. Los Angeles real estate ransactors surfing http://www.losangeles.guidetorealty.com can get an information edge in a tight new housing marketing. This free online real estate help targets the specific needs of buyers, coast to coast:
• boston.guidetorealty.com (now labeled a "buyers market")
• phoenix.guidetorealty.com (where investors compete with home seekers)
• seattle.guidetorealty.com (a red hot market where prices are on the rise)
• sanfrancisco.guidetorealty.com (a stable, high end market)
• washingtondc.guidetorealty.com (great city properties offer renovation potential)
• miami.guidetorealty.com (a real estate market based on distinct local communities)
If you're going to send out a lot of press releases that lazy journos can slightly rewrite into news "reports," you should probably try to have your ducks in a row. When I tried to visit sanfrancisco.guidetorealty.com, I got this message:
This site is undergoing some scheduled maintenance. We appreciate your patience. Please check back at another time.
Thank you.
Nice job, guys. Very impressive. Want to sell some houses for me?
Condos for sale on cruise ships. Great views. Changing seaside sites all around the world. From $500,000 to $8 million. Motivated sellers. May be coming to Bay Area soon.
...Condo Cruise Lines International, also anchored in Florida, says it will float its first condo-carrying ship in February. Condo Cruise Lines plans to homeport one or two ships at the Port of San Francisco if a deal can be worked out.
Around the world
That would bring an unspecified amount of new spending to the city. The ships are to be provisioned here, and between 400 and 500 condo owners and passengers would arrive in town and prepare to embark on what Condo Cruise Lines President and CEO Mark Boyd said will be around-the-world cruises sailing from the Golden Gate.
Cool. Not only will the real estate buyers be from out of town, the properties themselves will be heading out of town as well.
Although I was taught about 1031 exchanges in Principles of Real Estate (or was it Practices - who can remember?) it was one of those MEGO (My Eyes Glazed Over) subjects that left me hoping I'd never have to deal with one in the real world. Well, for those of you lucky enough not to have been bored blind by the subject in class, here is a useful primer on the subject: 1031 Exchange Lowdown: How Late Is Too Late?
You can actually read it without feeling an uncontrollable desire to scream for help.
The concept of New Villages shares some similarities with the so-called "transit villages" you can already see around the country. Starting in the mid-'90s, when architects and local planners became more interested in more pedestrian-friendly, urban developments, transit villages started to spring up outside cities along revitalized rail lines, from Mission Valley near San Diego, to Ballston and Bethesda outside Washington, D.C.
They were very attractive to young city workers and empty-nest parents. Their defining characteristics: They were eminently walkable, densely constructed without feeling overcrowded, and offered a real community feeling with plenty of common spaces.
The difference between transit villages and New Villages is location: While transit villages mostly reinvented older suburbs that are close to cities, New Villages promise to reinvent the sprawl further out.
The demand for such developments is real, and it's only going to get greater as consumer preferences rapidly shift away from the McMansions preferred by boomers. According to a study by the nonprofit Congress for New Urbanism, while less than 25 percent of middle-aged Americans are interested in living in dense areas, 53 percent of 24-34 year olds would choose to live in transit-rich, walkable neighborhoods, if they had the choice.
I think most of this is just wishful thinking from the same sort of eco-advocates who keep predicting the death of the automobile and euro-sized housing. The truth is, we buy more autos than ever before, and our average house size has increased every decade for the past century.
Does your homeowners insurance cover the cost of duplicating or replacing your landscaping? What is a fifty year old tree worth? Maybe you should find out.
For Garrett Gitchell, the difference between an online real estate service and a traditional agent is simple: $32,800 in his pocket.
The customary approach, shelling out 3 percent of the sales price to the buyer's agent and another 3 percent to the seller's agent, would run Gitchell more than $52,000.
By listing and marketing his $870,000 Castro Valley home for sale through www.Redfin.com, he expects to pay about $19,400. That includes a 2 percent commission to the buyer's agent and a $2,000 flat fee to the Seattle-based company, which launched its service in the Bay Area in May.
"It's the way the real estate market ought to be -- fee based," said Gitchell, an organizational development consultant who bought a home in Danville last year. "Realtors are just needed ... for the paperwork."
And, frankly, it's only a matter of time - and not much time, either - before most of the paperwork is technologically automated.
The biggest threat to the current sales agent structure is the high-tech augmented FISBO. And you're going to see more and more of that in the near future. Me? I'm already looking for ways to cash in on the new developments. Because the traditional six percent sales agent career is rapidly becoming one with the dinosaur.
One of the neat things about the internet is that it brings the technological toys that affect our business to the attention of interested parties very quickly. I'm alway happy to bring you another potentially useful tool - like this one.
Are you, or would you like to become, a landlord? This deceptively simple set of anlaysis tools will let you evaluate almost any landlord real estate deal by answering only a few basic questions.
US Housing Crash Continues
San Francisco Bay Area Hit Hard
Here is a very detailed justification for the proposition that the SF Bay Area is already in a crashing market. I don't agree with everything here, but it is well worth a read.
I'd be interested in your comments on this one, too.
PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 10, 2006--Movoto, the spot on the internet to find and buy a home in the San Francisco Bay Area, today announced expansion to San Francisco. Movoto's dynamic Web 2.0 real estate search tools make it easy for home buyers to find a their next new home and now include up to date MLS listings from San Francisco. In addition to expanded online coverage, the company announced it has added a group of experienced, San Francisco based real estate agents to its network.
Movoto's website, www.movoto.com, was launched to an enthusiastic reception from home buyers in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties in December 2005. Henry Shao, CEO of Movoto comments: "We're excited to launch in San Francisco because we believe Movoto is the first company to offer San Francisco home buyers the a complete set of internet tools and expert agents they need to be successful at finding and buying a house using the web. We plan to bring Movoto's unique web tools and client friendly agents to more Bay Area home buyers as we expand into even more areas this summer."
Yet another chip in the once-monolithic and impregnable real estate sales community.
That's the problem at the heart of the dispute over the plan to build 230 luxury condominiums and apartments on the site of the old Public Health Service Hospital Complex just off Lake Street. Neighbors want a smaller project, one more in sync with the (relatively) low density district. More important, Sup. Jake McGoldrick, who represents the area, wants to see the developer add some affordable housing to the mix.
But the Presidio Trust has no interest in affordable housing. For the Bush appointees who run the park, the only thing that matters is the bottom line. Luxury units mean more profit for the developer and more cash for the trust. The needs of San Francisco aren't even part of the equation.
If the SF Bay Guardian was really serious about developing affordable housing in San Francisco, it would move heaven and earth to do away with all rent controls. No reputable economist disagrees - and bitter experience all over the nation demonstrates - that cities with rent control have the most expensive housing in the country.
Probably the best thing that has happened to the Presidio is that it is not under the quixotic thumb of the day-to-day San Francisco authorities.
Salem City Councilor Lucy Corchado is worried, Berry's efforts notwithstanding. Just as Forbes indicates, she fears that much of the new housing is pegged for the rich.
"In Salem, we have luxury condos for $400,000 plus," she said. "It's created for that upper-class echelon - that's certainly not the working-class rate."
The high prices have hit hard on families. Corchado knows some that have left the area.
"I'm not surprised," said recently retired Realtor Diane St. Laurent of Marblehead. "I knew this was coming. ... I know that people are moving out of Massachusetts. Their income and the cost of living do not mesh. As housing costs went up, the incomes didn't match."
Here's a reax to an earlier post about Forbes ranking Essex County as having the most overpriced real estate in the nation.
This seems to me a typical politician's response to the economics of markets - that it's somehow "rich peoples' fault" for expensive condos. Condos sell for what people are willing to pay for them, no more, no less. But it's this sort of economic ignorance that leads politicos to call for price controls - usually rent controls - that have the perverse effect of increasing prices overall by artifically creating a scarcity of real estate inventory.
Of course, basic economics is no longer taught in our schools, so most folks under forty, including politicians, have no understanding of these facts at all. Besides, it's always easier and more satisfying to bash the rich, isn't it?
But the biggest savings come in the long-term, with green designs resulting in substantially lower energy and water costs. This is particularly important for the residents of affordable housing, "who need stable, lower utility bills," Carson said.
The city of San Francisco put these principles into practice at the Plaza Apartments, a nine-story building completed in January for very low-income individuals. Recycled materials comprise a high proportion of the linoleum and carpets. The concrete features fly ash and slag, waste byproducts of energy and steel production. High-tech insulation, solar panels on the roof and substantial use of natural lighting all slice energy needs.
As near as I can tell, almost all of the "green" building efforts are occurring in government built-and-financed housing. Private developers don't seem to see much in it.
Indianapolis - How many homes in your neighborhood have a "for sale" sign in the front yard? Thousands of Hoosiers hope to sell their homes only to find there's a lot of competition.
Cel Hamant has been living in her two-bedroom 1930's bungalow in Broad Ripple for 25 years. The home boasts plenty of amenities including a spa tub. But it's been on the market for six months.
"Had I been six months earlier, I probably could have sold it faster," said Hamant.
This is my hometown region, where I was born and grew up, and where my sister and I sold an 1800 square foot all brick ranch in decent condition (on a half acre lot) last year for about 75K after my dad died.
Indiana is not alone. Home Sales in Las Vegas dropped 17 percent from last year. In Miami, sales are down 26 percent. In San Francisco, they've declined 18 percent over last year. Real estate experts expect the market to balance out by the end of the year.
It's hard to think of the Central Indiana real estate market in the same breath with the San Francisco market, but it's interesting that Hoosier realtors see at least some similarities, don't you think?
Walter Knox spent years as a mortgage broker, but he didn't purchase his own home, a red floating house in Alameda, as an investment.
"You're buying a lifestyle," he said.
In the end, it worked out on both fronts.
Barnhill Marina, with Oakland's downtown office towers clearly visible across the estuary, serves as a sanctuary from the frenzied pace of city life, he said. On Friday afternoon, harbor seals were nibbling seaweed off floating home hulls, night herons rested on pilings and ducks squatted under the shade of lawn chairs. Neighbors said hello by name as they passed on the rickety docks and one invited Knox for a Sunday sail.
He paid about $75,000 for the two-bedroom, two-bath home 24 years ago.
Today, he estimates it's worth about $575,000. Most of his neighbors have enjoyed similar, if even faster, appreciation.
It's not very well known, but there is a small colony of houseboats in the very heart of San Francisco, about two blocks from AT&T Park, home of the Giants.
I don't think one of these has flipped in decades, and lord only knows what one of them might be worth today. I'd hazard a guess that these would be the most valuable boats in the Bay Area that aren't owned by the US Navy or some international cruise line or tanker outfit.
Editor -- Thank you for publishing the "Just say no to escrow" article (June 18). We were again reminded of local real estate agents' pricing structures and strategies of underpricing/overbidding homes, producing unprecedented housing costs in real estate in the Bay Area.
In the last few years, this has become the new paradigm for real estate agents in other major U.S. cities.
If supply and demand truly prevailed here, the dot-com bust and post-Sept. 11 economic downturn should have brought about a reduction in housing prices to match the exodus of jobs from the Bay Area.
Thanks to high-risk loans offered in 2003, many homeowners overbid and bought well beyond their means, only to feed the pockets of real estate agents, brokers, bankers and investors who flipped properties for multiple profits all throughout the economic downturn. If it sounds a little like stockbrokers riding the wave of inflated tech-stock tips, it should.
Fortunately, the National Association of Realtors was defeated in lobbying attempts to prevent online listings of homes. That hasn't stopped them from keeping an ironclad grip on pricing and sellers' expectations.
It's time to end the smoke and mirrors games of supply and demand. Let's repaint the face of that little old homeowner lady trying to sell her "cozy, charming, needs TLC" home. Does she, or more likely her heirs, really need 1,000-percent profit? What's the real deal here?
Annemarie Badr
San Francisco
A lot of people in the business don't really understand just how much we are disliked in certain quarters, and on how much mis-information and ignorance that dislike is based. Real estate agents are responsible for high SF housing prices?
"Everyone I know who has moved from L.A. to San Francisco either loves it or takes one look and runs for their lives, shrieking," laughed a friend back in the big, warm, sunny south.
In California, the real divide, in real estate and just about everything else, is no longer between north and south. It's coastal versus inland.
The Modesto home where Scott Peterson may have killed his pregnant wife is for sale again.
Owner Gerry Roberts said he has been fired from three jobs since buying the three-bedroom, two-bath "cottage-bungalow" a year ago, and can't afford mortgage payments.
"I've had nothing but bad luck since I've owned that thing," Roberts said.
...Roberts' current asking price comes to $254 per square foot, compared with the $226-persquare-foot average of 20 similarly sized homes sold in the past year within a half-mile radius, according to RealQuest.com.
Let's see if the fact that a notorious murder most likely occurred on this property will be enough to let this guy charge a ten percent premium over the comps.
My guess is, given the greater fool theory, yeah, probably.
Not surprisingly some of the biggest jumps around the region in the last year have come in desirable spots such as Burlingame and Danville, where posh homes and strong schools abound. But others are in sections of Oakland and San Jose better known for rundown properties, slack test scores and, in some cases, higher crime rates.
What's the attraction? In a phrase, affordable prices.
I missed this the first time around, but since it affects me personally, I'm putting it up anyway. Matt Lanning goes on to comment:
In San Francisco, this means getting down the the neighborhood level, even beyond the sub-district level (we have 10 districts and 86 sub-districts on the San Francisco Association of Realtors map), and understanding what makes those economies work.
Glen Park used to be 'too far away', until folks realized that there's a BART station in the middle of a quaint commercial district. Now you pay a huge premium to be walking distance from the village core.
Or Potrero Hill, where one side has breathtaking views and great restaurants and the other side has violence and shootings (but also fantastic, breathtaking views). Both sides are in the same sub-district, but they are two VERY different economies.
Or Hunters Point, right next door to the shipyard, where some 1200 new units - most market rate, with sweeping Bay views - are being built today, and where the 1400 sq. ft. 3 br 3 ba condo I bought in mid-2003 for 250k has appreciated nearly 75 percent - and yet still remains at least 150k below the average for citywide comps.
This should be of interest to the growing number of realbloggers in the SF Bay Area, those already blogging as well as those of you thinking about jumping into the pool.
The five priciest markets in daily parking: midtown Manhattan ($40), downtown Manhattan ($32), Boston ($31), Honolulu ($30) and Chicago ($25).
Odd. I would have expected San Francisco to come in a bit higher on this list, especially given The City's officially stated hostility to private automobiles.
I won't bother pointing out all the mistakes in the article, as the author pretty much got everything wrong, but I have to note that the whole piece is riddled with thinly veiled insults to San Jose in general. They refer to Original Joe's as an "outpost of San Francisco's Italian institution." They also mention the San Jose Museum of Art's penchant for local work and then cite a San Francisco artist as an example. Arrogant bastards, I say!
The typical monthly mortgage payment that Bay Area buyers committed themselves to paying was $3,183 in June. That was up from $3,091 in May, and up from $2,651 for June a year ago. Adjusted for inflation, mortgage payments are 25 percent higher than they were at the peak of the prior cycle 16 years ago.
This is an absolutely amazing number, and entirely unsustainable. Remember, this is $3183 of take-home dollars. This means you need an annual income of $63,000 just to pay your mortgage!
If you want frills like food, clothing, and the occasional trip to the gas station, you need to make a lot more.
Luxury network expands in San Francisco Bay area and Plymouth County, Mass.
RISMEDIA, July 21, 2006— Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates, Inc. announced that a luxury real estate firm in the San Francisco Bay area, and a leading firm in Plymouth County, Mass., have joined the Sotheby’s International Realty® luxury real estate network. The firms joining the network are Legacy Homes Realty, Inc., of Hercules, Calif., and Macdonald & Wood Real Estate Group, located in Duxbury, Mass.
If you're looking for the sort of lux, top-dollar, high end goods that Sotheby's prefers to market, the SF Bay area is certainly a happy hunting ground.
Sales in the San Francisco Bay Area were down 24 percent in June compared to the same month last year, and up 9.1 percent from May, the firm said.
The median price of a home in the region rose to a record $644,000 last month, up 5.6 percent from $610,000 in the same month last year and up 2.1 percent from May.
These are the kind of numbers that make people crazy. Sales down huge year over year, but solidly rebounding, month to month. And an almost six point increase in median price, during a period when sales fell by 25 percent.
History says that eventually prices catch up (or down) with sales, but as I've said before, The City itself may be a special case. We still need to see if ARM repricing has a strong effect in the coming year, though.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the percentage of households earning more than $100,000 a year rose to over 30 percent in 2000 from approximately 7 percent in 1970, said Joseph Gyourko, a professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “Is that area worse off?” he asked. “At least so far, there’s a lot of evidence that economically they’re better off. Land prices are really high, lots of people want to move there.”
There won't be any such evidence, either. Rich people make lovely neighbors, pay enormous taxes, don't indulge in the sort of crime that impacts everyday life, and are willing to support the kind of top-end amenities that can make "superstar" city living an experience like no other.
There is no guarantee - or there should not be - to any faux "right" to live in any particular place. Costco had to fight for its life to build a store in San Francisco, but it has done very well in the suburbs, where consumers consider its three pound bags of Starbucks coffee for twelve bucks a highly acceptable tradeoff to a three dollar morning mocha latte half-caf full foam creation you get to stand in line at the Starbucks counter for.
The debilitating sense of entitlement that says, "Rich people live there, so I should be able to, also," is, at root, un-American. We are a nation of strivers, of doers and achievers, and the gold ring we pursue may well include a hillside San Francisco home with sweeping bay views for five million bucks. We've done very well as a nation - and as cities - letting nature, and the market, take its course with these kinds of issues. I suggest we continue to do so.
The overheated U.S. real-estate market is hurting many artists now. Not only can artists and musicians not afford to live in San Francisco, even teacher-headed households are now priced out of 98 per cent of the area, says the July 16 San Francisco Chronicle, which also reported, "Sky-high housing prices empty cities of all but 'fauxhemians' . . . trust-fund hipsters and those who fund their bohemian lifestyles through corporate jobs they can't stand." New York has the same problems. "Obviously there's a huge critical mass of creative activity there, but it shows what not to do," says Gertler. "They're letting escalating real-estate costs force artists to flee to the boroughs."
Would somebody please explain to me why the mere act of creativity should assure somebody of expensive living space in San Francisco or New York? And what the heck is wrong with having a day job, if you can't make enough money from your "art" to live in one of those places?
I have more than thirty published books, but for most of my career I had another "day job." That's one of the reasons why I ended up getting a real estate license. I've lived in both milieus, corporate and artistic, and let me tell you, the average "trust-fund hipster" or "corporate" employee does a hell of a lot more for their communities, when all is said and done, than some "artist" whose sense of entitlement is much more grandiose than his creative talents.
For a decade, Ji Jian-guang and his wife feared losing their cramped, two-bedroom Chinatown apartment.
Their home, where their adult sons share a bunk bed and thick tape holds a bathroom window inside its rotting wood frame, is typical of other apartments in the neighborhood, but families like the Jis have few housing options. Ji says he couldn't live outside this neighborhood where community groups and businesses cater to more than 18,000 residents -- many monolingual immigrants like him.
So this spring, Ji, his wife, Ru Mei Peng, and a dozen other families joined a land trust designed to improve living conditions for the poor and make home ownership a financial possibility.
In May, the San Francisco Community Land Trust purchased the dilapidated building where the Jis live. To help make ownership affordable, the trust will own the land beneath the building and each of the 21 households will pay $10,000 to own a unit at 53 Columbus Ave..
This is an interesting experiment. The difficult question is how it will do in the traditional culture that pervades Chinatown economic activity.
And will the ubiquitous Asian street gangs somehow see this as a potential income opportunity?
SAN FRANCISCO -- Pioneers in new media have some advice for real estate professionals coping with change: Use, don't fear, the public's voracious appetite for information acquired and shared over the Internet.
In some ways, journalists and real estate professionals are in the same boat because they have been accustomed to controlling the flow of information the public wants access to, said panelists who discussed "Citizen Journalism" Wednesday at Inman News' Real Estate Connect conference.
Technology and the Internet have traditional newspapers, radio and television stations scrambling to reinvent themselves, said Paul Grabowicz, assistant dean and director of the new media program at the University of California, Berkeley.
Make no bones about it - our business has been thrown into flux by the onrush of the internet and new technology, and old models are collapsing around us every day. Until we begin to understand how to use these new technologies for our clients' benefit, we won't understand how to use them for our benefit. Which means our livelihoods may be under some pressure until those questions are answered.
It's a moving target, too - just when you think you've got something figured out, along comes some new technology that throws everything into turmoil again. I'm not going to try to sugarcoat things and tell you everything will be easy, or good for you. One of the things technology does is destroy centralization, break down walls to proprietary information, and generally put enormous pressures on those who previously functioned as middlemen (something like priests guarding holy knowledge).
In the end, like many other businesses, we will find our industry re-shaped. The "gatekeeper" function of real estate agents will be greatly reduced - much of what we do in terms of handling paperwork will end up being push-button automated, and private listings will go the way of the dodo. But there will remain areas of human knowledge that can't be duplicated by computer programs, and we will discover and expand into those areas, whatever they may be.
I don't know what tomorrow will look like for us, but I can tell you this - those most resistant to change will be the ones most hurt by it.
RISMEDIA, July 27, 2006—Each day I see things being done to agents and brokers that curl my hair. I see how agents are taken advantage of, how “technical” people they trust steer them wrong, and how alleged gurus lead them down the road to continuing non-performance for the sole purpose of keeping hold over these agents.
And, just when I think that I have reached a new nadir in the lack of performance of these alleged “experts” and their “expertise,” things come along that make me shake my head, laugh, or simply let out an exclamation not appropriate for family magazines. Here’s two that I hope are not problems you ever need to deal with.
If you are new to the internet, or are only just now considering establishing a presence on the Web, I highly recommend this short article. It's well worth your time just for the two examples the author mentions, the "poisoned site," and the "incompetent guru."
Speaking from experience, I can tell you there are a fair amount of both out there. Make sure you aren't wasting your marketing dollars on either of them.
Sales of new US homes declined three percent in June to a weaker-than-anticipated annualized rate of 1.131 million units, the Commerce Department said Thursday.
The drop in new home sales was steeper that most market-watchers had expected. Wall Street economists had only predicted sales to decline to 1.164 million units.
Real estate, the experts like to tell us, is local. And, to a large extent, it is. But even the strongest local markets can be influenced by a nationwide slump.
Unfortunately, the long-running virtuous cycle in the housing markets, funded primarily by the plunge in interest rates, has reversed itself, and become a vicious cycle. Now, and for the foreseeable future, instead of buyers viewing all news through rose-colored glasses, they will see everything as bad news through a glass darkly.
Even stalwarts like the SF Bay Area markets will feel the effects of this, to one extent or another.
