What Do You Call the Opposite of Online Sales? Amazon has marched into every arena of commerce, building moat after moat — logistical, financial, customer service — to keep its rivals from catching up. It expanded into selling its own wares, into physical retail, entertainment and into all manner of home monitoring devices. And it...Read More
Once upon a time in residential real estate, there was just one kind of sale: between an ordinary Seller and a Buyer (usually represented by their Realtors). Then, after the Wall Street-engineered housing bust, every other deal (literally) involved either a bank owner (foreclosure), or an underwater homeowner who needed bank relief to sell (called...Read More
Don’t Call it a “Traditional” Sale — It’s a “Long” Sale [Note: for the uninitiated, a “short sale” is when the homeowner’s mortgage(s) exceed the home’s fair market value — a condition referred to as being “underwater.” Depending on the specific housing market, short sales have receded from more than 50% of all sales five...Read More
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
(The Term, Not the Type of Deal) In a post earlier this year titled, “Halftime at the Housing Recovery,” I posited that one sign that the housing market has fully recovered is that the percentage of lender-mediated sales (foreclosures and short sales) returns to pre-bust levels (5% or less). Want another sign? The term, “traditional...Read More
