Terms like “short sales” and “bank-owned” are on many people’s tongues and minds in the real estate industry. The recent addition of the Short Sale and Bank Owned fields on RMLSweb now allow us to look at data for these listings individually.

Before there was a short sale field on RMLSweb, there was only a “3^rd Party to Transaction” field. As you may know, “3^rd Party to Transaction” listings are not always short sales. They may also be estate sales or relocations. In order for you to identify short sales more efficiently, the RMLS^™ Board voted to add these new fields, a change that occurred July 29, 2009. This also helps the other types of properties that require 3rd Party approval to get fair attention. RMLS^™ has added the following fields regarding short sales:

Short Sale Yes/No – will be required when entering a listing and 3rd Party to Transaction will be automatically checked when Yes is selected.

Short Sale Offer (Seller Accepted; Submitted for Approval) Yes/No– The rules will be revised to require updating this field when an offer is made.

In a blog post last year, we compared 3^rd Party to Transaction sales to the total active listings on the market. Now, with the recent addition of these new fields, we can look at short sale data and bank owned data more specifically and also compare them to the market as a whole. The graph below shows you the total number of active listings in RMLSweb as of today July 23, 2010, compared to the number of active listings that are checked Short Sale Yes, and also compared to those that are marked Bank Owned. The number of active short sales in comparison to the total number of active listings is approximately 11.7%, while the number of active bank owned properties in comparison to the total number of active listings is about 5.4%.

As you can see from the above graph, the number of active short sales and bank owned properties is a small fraction of the number of total active listings. There were 31,762 total active listings, 3,731 total active short sales and 1,715 total active bank owned listings.

Now that we’ve looked at active listings, let’s compare total pending sales in the market with pending short sales and pending bank owned properties. The graph below depicts this comparison using data from RMLSweb on July 23^rd, 2010:

There were 5,094 total pending listings, 877 pending short sales and 913 pending bank owned properties.

Last, let’s take a look at sold listings. The graph below shows that there were 17,751 total sold listings from the period of January 1, 2010 to June 30^th, 2010. The number of sold short sales was 1,620, just 9.1% of total sold listings. Bank owned listings sold at a higher rate with 3,422 sales, which is approximately 19.3% of total sold listings.

Visit the National Association of Realtors® website for more information on short sales and bank owned properties.

Also, stay tuned for future blog posts that will compare prices and the number of days on market for short sales and bank owned properties, to the market as a whole.

Can anyone say “DUH!”?

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Attention all Realtors®

Numerous Realtors® have reported receiving emails and phone calls from a person out-of country who claims to need assistance with an all-cash real estate purchase. The caller may also insist on the need to retain a lawyer with a trust account, and requests a referral. The Realtor® or referred lawyer soon receives a substantial check (reports are from $150,000 to $500,000) to be deposited into broker trust account or lawyer trust account. Soon thereafter another call is received from a person purporting to be the attorney for the scammer in his home country. The foreign attorney says that the funds were sent out of country without appropriate government authority and must be immediately returned in order to avoid sanctions and penalties. Holder of the funds is pressed to wire the money without delay. Needless to say, the purchaser and the check are a fraud.

If you receive questionable requests for service or referrals, be cautious and inquire further.

The new, improved CMA report has arrived

The transformed RMLSweb CMA (Comparative Market Analysis) has a brand new look and feel, as well as a new location! In addition to an extensive remodel of CMA, RMLSweb also now contains a Radius Search and enhanced User Preferences. Creating a CMA has never been easier and yet offered so many customizable options to set your CMA apart from the rest!

Highlights of the CMA include:

1) Navigate forwards and backwards without losing data
2) Adding comparables via seven different methods (MLS Numbers, Radius Search, Map Search, Address Search, Advanced Search, MLS Number Search, Saved MLS Numbers)
3) Saving the CMA in progress
4) Printing to PDF, printing to your printer, or e-mail with the touch of a button
5) Reorder your comparables or the pages of your CMA report by dragging and dropping them into the order you desire
6) Incorporate properties that are in different categories (ex: Farms/Ranches + Lots/Lands)
7) Display your recommended price through a graph
8) Customize your report with pages dedicated to Company Information, your Resume, and/or color themes to match your office/team
9) Auto-populate subject property information with Tax ID or previous MLS #

For more information, print out our quick reference guide.

Want a trainer to come out to your office and demonstrate this enhanced functionality? Call our Training Manager, Kerry Meeuwsen at 503-872-8051 or e-mail kerry.m@rmls.com.

I thought it was time we revisited the earlier analysis we did on how home value trends vary by the typical home value of a city.  Previously, we found that most metros displayed a pattern in which cities with higher-priced real estate had experienced less decline in home values since the peak of home values in the metro market (relative to cities with lower priced real estate in the same metro).

Returning now to the issue armed with May 2010 data from the Zillow Home Value Index, we find a much more mixed picture in terms of the relationship between prevailing home values at peak and peak-to-current declines in home values. The table below shows the classification of metro regions according to whether the higher-priced cities within the metro have seen more, less or the same degree of decline in home values since the peak in the market.

In the San Francisco metro area, the price level of a city has had a huge impact on how far home values have fallen. At peak, a typical home in Antioch – in Contra Costa County east of the Bay – had a value of $516,000 but home values there have fallen 63% since then. That’s in sharp contrast to Hillsborough – in San Mateo County – where a typical home was valued at almost $2.6 million at peak and home values have declined only 10% since then. Some of this effect is due to the timing of the housing downturn in these two cities. Antioch went into decline before Hillsborough but the former is now seeing positive monthly appreciation (0.9% in May) whereas the latter is still seeing negative appreciation (-0.6% in May). So stay tuned, peak-to-decline values may look quite different than they do today in this market.

Below the table is an interactive chart showing the patterns for each metro region (as an aside, Tableau visualization software is truly remarkable.  While we’re an open source R shop for the most part, Tableau has certainly found a place here when visualization of data is needed).

Relationship Between Typical Home Value of City and Total Decline in Home Values Since Peak

Why not display an address when marketing a property? The two big reasons I’ve heard are:

1) Use it as a marketing tactic to generate more calls

2) To protect privacy, or fear of theft.

Now, there is data to support that you will get more contacts if you show the address.

Zillow analysts found that properties on Zillow that display an address receive 6 TIMES more page views than properties that hid the address. Further, properties with the address displayed also received 6 TIMES the inquiries.

Why is this? 3 main reasons:

1)    Map search – Today, almost every real estate site has some kind of map search, as well as a list search. On Zillow, if we are told not to display the address (NDA), then the home’s location on the map will appear in a general area for that home’s ZIP code – it will not appear in the exact location. We all know one street can vary widely from the next street and having the location – especially if it’s a desirable location – will help the seller.

2) Mobile real estate search – Many mobile applications have GPS-enabled search to answer the question “what’s for sale in the area I am in right now” (such as the Zillow iPhone App or Zillow Android App). Without being able to map properties exactly, NDA properties are missing out on the huge opportunity of mobile exposure. This one will continue to grow in importance.

3) Search engines – We all know that search engines are important website visitors that can’t be ignored. There are huge opportunities for specific addresses to be found in search results, and the likelihood grows as people become more specific in their searches – even searching for actual addresses. Again, if the address isn’t displayed, Google can’t see it, and can’t serve it.

All three of these significantly contribute to the amount of traffic a listing will receive if the address is displayed versus if it is not. The exposure loss can be huge. And with less page views, there are less inquiries, as the data shows.

In pulling the numbers, one thing that did surprise me was that the percentage of times someone did send an inquiry was actually the same whether an address was displayed or not. So this finding contradicts the idea that hiding the address generates more responses. My guess is that the people who do reach out to find out where the property is located must counteract those who are annoyed by the lack of data or discount the property altogether because the location is hidden.

Mortgage rates for 30-year fixed mortgages fell this week, with the current rate borrowers were quoted on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace at 4.70%, down from 4.79% at this same time last week. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate spiked early Friday to around 4.82 percent before falling to 4.70 today.  The last time the 30-year fixed mortgage rate was this low was in early December 2009.

Half of a percentage point in a 30-year fixed loan can save the buyer of a $300,000 home more than $26,000 over the life of the loan.

Additionally, the 15-year fixed mortgage rate on Tuesday morning was 4.13% and for 5/1 ARMs, the rate was 3.44%.

What are the rates right now? Check Zillow Mortgage Marketplace for up-to-the-minute mortgage rates for your state.

This May, get educated with FREE RMLSweb training

Here’s a quick rundown of upcoming real estate events & education for May in Oregon & Southern Washington. If you have an event that is not listed here, please let us know by commenting below. For future events, please send an e-mail to communications (at) rmls (dot) com.

Events around the Region:

-Through May 30: Prudential Real Estate Professionals offers its CRS111 Short Sales and Foreclosures course held on July 1st. Discounted registration is available until May 30th.

-May 3: Clark County Association of Realtors® offers Get Connected Boot Camp for FREE admission

-May 17: Clatsop Association of Realtors® co-presents Issues with Short Sales, Loan Modifications and Foreclosure Rescue in Seaside, Oregon

-May 19: PMAR® offers the Navigating the Realtor® Code of Ethics training seminar

-May 20-21: OAR® presents The Accredited Buyer’s Representative®, a two-day course series at the Oregon Convention Center

-May 23: Vancouver Fine Homes Group hosts the Vancouver Fine Homes Spring Tour

-May 26, 27: Earth Advantage offers Sustainability Training for Accredited Real Estate Professionals

Also, if you’re an RMLS™ subscriber, we have lots of FREE opportunities for continuing education credit at a location near you; click the link for your area to view the May Training Calendar:

- Coos County
- Eastern Oregon
- Eugene
- Florence
- Gresham
- Hood River
- Portland
- Roseburg
- Salem
- Vancouver

The key to a successful real estate blog is generating and
maintaining your blog’s position as an authority on real estate in your farm
area. A great way to do this is to connect with other real estate professionals
and potential clients through various social networks on the web. So what is a
social network? For those that don’t know, a social network is an online
community centered around a common interest. A very well-known example of a
social network is MySpace, www.myspace.com. While social networks may not
sound very business-like, they are valuable tools you should use to generate
traffic to your site. There are many professional social networks these days,
many not worth joining. Here
is a list of the five social networks all real estate professionals should
join:

• ActiveRain
  (www.activerain.com)-This is a community of real estate
  professionals that share real estate and mortgage information via their
  ActiveRain blogs. Membership is free to this site and the maintenance of a
  blog on ActiveRain can generate new business contacts and partnerships as
  well as increased traffic to your blog site.

• Squidoo (www.squidoo.com)-This
  site is a network of member sites called “lenses”. Each member creates a
  “lens” on a particular subject. As a real estate professional, you would
  create a lens based on real estate in your farm area. Membership is free
  to this site. A well-maintained lens can obtain its own traffic and
  generate ad revenue for you as well as drive additional traffic to your
  blog site.

• HubPages (www.hubpages.com)-This
  site is very similar to Squidoo. It is a network of member sites called
  “hubs”. You will create a “hub” for real estate in your farm area. Membership
  is free to this site. A well-maintained hub will generate traffic and ad
  revenue for you and your blog site.

• Facebook (www.facebook.com)-This
  is a well-known social network that was originally centered on connecting
  college students across the country. Now it has been expanded for use to
  people of all ages and businesses use it for promotion of their brand.
  Create a free profile for your real estate business and include a link to
  your blog site.

• Twitter (www.twitter.com)-This
  is a micro-blogging service that is based around one question:”What Are
  You Doing?” By answering this question and updating your Twitter account
  each time you make a new post to your blog site, you will attract
  “followers” that can later turn into leads.

Maintaining these sites and profiles may seem like a lot
of extra work but there are ways to simplify that process. Here
are a couple of tips to make updating your social network profiles and pages
easy:

• Sign up for Ping.fm (www.ping.fm). You
  can update your Twitter and Facebook accounts right in one place. You can
  post new status messages here-include links to recent blog posts and any
  videos you may have on the web for additional exposure.

• Recycle blog posts for use on
  your ActiveRain blog, Squidoo lens, and HubPages Hub. Do
  this by rewriting an old blog post, making sure that it is different from
  the original by at least 30%. Post your rewritten posts to the other
  sites. This process makes sure that all of your sites are being updated
  regularly with fresh content.

To further maximize the buzz on your blog, consider the
use of FriendFeed (www.friendfeed.com).
FriendFeed gathers all of your updates to your various social network accounts
and creates an automatically updating feed that you can use on your blog site.
By creating a FriendFeed and implementing it on the home page of your blog
site, you can significantly increase your sites importance in the search
engines and get enhanced results.

For more information and additional tips on using social networking to promote your real estate blog, check out these great articles:

Problogger – How to Promote Your Blog through Networking

Kikolani – 9 Ways to Use Social Networking for Blog Promotion

Chris Brogan – Nine Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts

As a professional bio writer, I often get asked “how do I write a bio when I don’t have direct experience in the business?”

Don’t sweat it! I can tell you that your realtor bio is not necessarily JUST about your industry experience. More than anything, readers want to know that you:

1) know the local market;
2) understand the client’s needs;
3) are going to work hard for them.

And you can satisfy each of these criteria even if you are brand new to the real estate business.

Let’s take each of these client concerns and see what you can write in your professional bio that will wow them.

1. You know the local market.

OK, so maybe you don’t have 20 years experience as a realtor in the community. But you live in the community, right?

So talk about what your connection to the community: the hidden gems you treasure, the groups you’re involved with, or the networks you belong to.

Whereas an experienced realtor might write about their twenty years experience as a real estate agent, a brand new realtor can write:

Jane has lived in Townville for X years and just loves it. She knows all the neighbourhoods inside-out, and can help you select the best one for your family’s needs.

OR

As a lifelong resident of Mayberry, Andy can put his insider knowledge to work to find a special property in your neighbourhood of choice.

You’re showing that you know the local market, and the client won’t care how many years of experience you have.

2. You understand the client’s needs.

What do people really want when they are buying or selling real estate? They want an agent who will help them meet their needs. These needs might include understanding exactly what they mean by “cozy home”, having a particular type of business style, or using the latest marketing tools.

So how do you express this in your realtor bio? You might say something like:

Andy also uses the latest Internet marketing tools to expose your property to the widest possible range of qualified buyers.

3. You are going to work hard for them.

When thinking about how to write a bio, remember that the bottom line for clients is “are you the right real estate agent for me?” Often this translates into “Do I like you?”

So don’t forget about the personal qualities that qualify you for the job. People reading your real estate bio will feel confident knowing that you are pleasant, professional, hard-working, enthusiastic and organized.

Here’s one way to write this in your professional bio:

Why choose Jane as your real estate agent? For one thing, she really listens to you and will work tirelessly on your behalf.

Trust me, it makes all the difference when trying to sell yourself to show who you are and why you are enthusiastic about the topic.

You don’t need decades of experience and a wall of awards to write a winning real estate bio. Just show that you know the local market, understand the client’s needs, and are going to work hard for them. Then you’ll have a great professional bio that will be a strong part of your marketing materials.

About the author: Barbra Sundquist is an experienced technical writer and business coach who provides fill-in-the-blank templates for how to write a bio. Visit HowToWriteBio.com to get your free copy of “84 Sentence Starters for Writing A Bio”.

In this day and age when the hot topic seems to be about foreclosures and short sales, here is a question from servinghim in Anaheim Hills, CA, who asks in Zillow Advice:

How badly does a short sale affect your credit rating?

As usual, there are plenty of good answers and advice.