Monday, November 24, 2014

The most incredible real estate stats of 2014

Employment in the U.S. is projected to grow over the next decade. New-home construction is exploding. Shadow inventory is dropping. We pulled it all together in one place with “The Most Incredible Real Estate Stats of 2014.”

Market data comes from all over, with seemingly countless entities and organizations compiling the latest on mortgage rates, housing starts, home sales and jobs figures. This is both a positive and negative for industry professionals. On the one hand, agents and brokers have a bevy of resources at their disposal to educate them on local, regional and national market conditions. From NAR to Standard & Poor’s to Freddie Mac to CoreLogic, there’s certainly no shortage of in-depth industry information that comes to light each month. On the other hand, finding all of this data and discerning the important takeaways can be difficult.

Flip through the slides and you’ll find plenty of news to give you optimism about our industry:
http://www.slideshare.net/Placester/the-most-incredible-real-estate-stats-2014

Seth Price is director of sales and real estate marketing at Placester, a Cambridge, Mass.-based technology company specializing in building online marketing tools for the real estate industry.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Brokers say home buyers are back, but they’re choosy

Home buyers are back, and they’re savvy and selective, according to officials who commented on the latest statistics from Northwest Multiple Listing Service. For sellers, that means pricing a home correctly at the start is vital.

The new report summarizing October activity shows year-over-year gains in new listings, pending sales, closed sales and prices. Northwest MLS members reported 8,643 pending sales last month, which is up nearly 6.9 percent from twelve months ago when members reported 8,086 mutually accepted offers. Most of the increases are from sales of single family homes, which rose more than 7.8 percent while condo activity was flat with less than a 1 percent rise in sales.