10% Increase the Last Year? Not According to Agents According to the latest Case-Shiller Home Price Index (“Case-Shiller”), the U.S. housing market is up about 10% the last year. However, if you ask in-the-trenches Realtors (like me), they’ll tell you the real number is lower — something like up 5%. Who’s right? Put is this way: it...Read More
As Opposed to “Abnormal” Sales?? In the course of checking MLS for new listings a couple times daily, it sure seems (at least to me) that there’s been an increase in the number of “normal” sales lately. What’s that about? Instead of using “traditional sale” — the accepted term for a sale that isn’t a short sale or...Read More
Lender-Mediated Deals Now Down to 25% of Housing Market Deals Nationally Is the housing market doing better? Absolutely. Has it fully recovered? No way. Or should I say, “half-way.” I base that not just on where home prices are now — off the bottom, but still well below their 2006 peak — but on the fact...Read More
Pricing a Home When the Comp’s are Tough “You have to know the rules before you know when you can break them.” Normally, the standard way of doing a CMA (“Comparative Market Analysis”) is to limit your focus to three Comp’s, or “Comparable Sold Properties.” By definition, those are the nearby homes most similar in...Read More
Are “Traditional Sellers” Waiting For Fewer Foreclosures? Want a shorthand for knowing when the housing market has truly turned around? Watch what’s called “the median sale price” — statisticians’ term for the midpoint of a given group. So, the median price of 101 sold homes would be that price which is lower than 50 of...Read More
‘Non-Distressed,’ ‘Unforced,’ ‘Optional’ A continuing thread on this blog has been the so-far lurching efforts to label key features of today’s economic landscape (“We Have Some With Ham, Too”) So, while it’s certainly not a household term yet, “The Great Recession” looks increasingly likely to be what we collectively call what’s happened the last two...Read More
