We watched Spanglish last night. One of the greatest movie lines I have heard in a while – “Your low self-esteem is simply good common sense.”
Date Archives April 2005
More on boycotting
Boycotting exploits the one major weakness of the multiple listing service. The MLS’s upside is that it centralizes all homes for sale in a single electronic marketplace that can be accessed by all agents — and these days by Web-savvy consumers as well. The downside is that brokers must depend on one another to help sell their homes, and that discourages them from undercutting each other’s commissions. While boycotting the listings of discounters is generally considered an antitrust violation — if undisclosed, it’s also a breach of buyer’s brokers’ fiduciary duty to clients — industry insiders are well aware that boycotting goes on, even if they claim not to condone it.
A Crusade For Competition (washingtonpost.com)
A Crusade For Competition (washingtonpost.com): The Department of Justice has two blunt warnings for the American home real estate establishment: • Do not block efforts to save consumers money through rebates of real estate commissions. • Do not stand in the way of discount “fee-for-service†firms that will list sellers’ properties for a fixed-dollar amount but not perform all the traditional brokerage services, such as holding open houses or advising on buyers’ offers. I saw this the other day with some buyers; they asked why a property had been on the market for longer than the competing homes…. However, when working as an Exclusive Buyer’s Agent, it is that Agent’s duty to show ALL homes that may fit, FSBO’s, lower fee properties, etc. Simple.
Closing Day Disasters
The New York Times > Real Estate > Closing Day Disasters: IN a real estate utopia, there are no last-minute meltdowns and no buyers forsaking an apartment because of a $100 microwave…. No one acts like a character in an Edward Albee play.But in the ever-so-flawed real world, all those things do happen….There are no data to record how many closings die or are delayed, but brokers are seeing and hearing about more 11th-hour problems.At any time, finishing a real estate deal can be far thornier than just signing deeds, writing checks and handing over the keys to the front door. Closings may not end with a handshake but with failure, fury and two people nearly aborting a $400,000 apartment sale because they can’t decide who should pay $250 to replace a broken air-conditioning unit…. When parties place their own goodwill aside in order to beat out the other guy, even the most simple task can seem insurmountable.
More condos in the City
Just received an email about this new development – anybody interested in buying into the wacky Charlottesville market?… The project will consist of 41 upscale condominiums designed by Jim Grigg of Daggett & Grigg, the architect who designed Queen Charlotte and Carter Gilmer. Standard amenities will include a brick exterior, hardwood floors, granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, high end finishes, terraces and garage parking…. Units will range in size from 750 sf for a 1 bedroom to over 2,500 sf for the penthouse designs.
Another example
Real estate remains a local phenomenon, but let us not forget that the aggregate of local markets equals a larger national and international market…. The next day, the Mortgage Bankers of America (MBA), an industry group, reported that mortgage applications had fallen the previous week, despite a slight dip in interest rates…. Between 1997 and 2004, house prices more than doubled in Australia, Britain and Spain, and nearly tripled in South Africa and Ireland (see table). And while America’s ratio of house prices to rents is 32% higher than its average value from 1975 to 2000, by that metric houses are even more overvalued elsewhere: by at least 60% in Britain, Australia and Spain, and by 46% in France.
Bubble Talk – from April 2004
As interest rates begin to rise, concern has increased about a potential housing bubble and its effects if it were to burst. As individual investors consider the likelihood and implications of a real estate bubble, three questions have to be addressed: First, does it matter if there is a bubble and it bursts? Second, what is the likelihood that there is indeed a real estate bubble forming?… Each of these questions is addressed in turn below.