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We Don’t Always Give That Data To The Marketplace

A report from WLTV in Tennessee. “We went to a mortgage expert to break down some information. Michael Borella, the sales manager at Movement Mortgage, said if you’re looking to buy a new home, now is a good time to do so. There are options out there whether you have 20 percent to put down or zero. ‘THDA is a great option there are a lot of 0% down loans. I always tell people, be prepared to spend $1,000 . You’re going to have to put down earnest money, you’re going to have to pay for an appraisal. Those things could possibly get refunded to you in the end, but I don’t ever tell people to count on it. It’s nice if happens.'”

“So where do you begin? Find a loan officer and bring important documents with you. ‘Bank statements, W2’s tax returns and tax returns aren’t always needed but they’re good to have,’ he said. Most importantly, he said find someone you trust. ‘You want someone you trust and someone you get a long with, someone like you.'”

From ABC 6 On Your Side in Ohio. “Columbus has been named one of the hottest housing markets in the country, but just how hot? When it comes to the city’s housing market, there’s a lot of misconceptions. ‘I think there is that misconception for sellers that anything will sell at any price because they’ve heard it’s a sellers market,’ said Realtor Sara Walsh.”

“She said only certain homes are selling under the 30-day mark. Mostly, it’s homes within the $200,000-$300,000 range. ‘What we realize is if you get above $600,000-$750,000, it takes about four months to sell a home on average. We don’t always give that data to the marketplace,’ she said. ‘The higher the price, it slows down the time and less people can afford it.'”

From Lubbock Online in Texas. “It’s hard to believe a property could be overpriced in our current market, but it’s still possible. Every neighborhood is different. Overpriced properties discourage potential buyers, who may not even view the property if they think it’s worth much less than the asking price. If your Realtor® suggests you might be overpriced, you should strongly consider their recommendation. Lubbock Realtors® have the best information about similar properties in the neighborhood.”

“If you think your home is appropriately priced and everything else seems to be in order, it could be that the market has changed since your initial listing. It’s important to understand the state of the current housing market and to stay on top of what’s happening in Lubbock, and that’s why your Lubbock Realtor® is so valuable.”

From Westword in Colorado. “Some things are so blisteringly terrible that their failures speak for themselves. That’s the case with the music-video ad from the real estate pros at Team Denver Homes, who up until last week were Kentwood Real Estate’s number-one-selling agents.”

“Just weeks after a vitriolic mayoral race largely defined by the city’s housing crisis, these realtors posted an incredibly chirpy, thoughtless video in which they treat rapidly gentrifying Denver like their playground, riding scooters and doing the worm in front of trendy street art, spinning massive inflatable cell phones while ripping off the opening rap to the Will Smith sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”

“They grin. They brag. They gloat. They claim they have turned the real-estate market upside down, as they stand in front of properties that other people have developed. ‘This market can be scary, but don’t be scared,’ one agent raps. ‘You’re working with the best team in Den-Vair.'”

“They should be scared. Anti-gentrification activists in Denver immediately blew up, accusing the creators of the music video of all manner of crimes: Smug, rich white gloating? You bet. Cultural appropriation? Oh, yeah. After the video blew up, Kentwood Real Estate did, too.”

The Wall Street Journal. “Real-estate brokerage giant Realogy Holdings Corp. launched a new partnership with Amazon.com Inc. on Tuesday, a fresh attempt at jump-starting the property firm’s flagging business and tumbling share price. Under the new program, known as TurnKey, home buyers searching for an agent on Amazon.com will be directed to a Realogy agent in their market. These buyers get up to $5,000 of smart home devices and free home services from Amazon.”

“Realogy has struggled as shrinking margins in the residential brokerage industry have collided with a slowdown in the housing market over the past year. Its market cap has sunk to around $600 million, down from a high of more than $7 billion in 2013.”

“News of Amazon’s partnership with a real-estate company is likely to cause unease in the brokerage industry. In late 2017, Amazon posted a ‘Hire a Realtor’ landing page on its site—with a banner that read ‘Coming Soon’—drawing alarm within the industry. The page was removed soon after.”

“‘It was like ‘Oh my God, the sky is falling in.’ People were scared to death,’ said Steve Murray, who specializes in brokerage mergers and acquisitions for REAL Trends. But the e-commerce giant has said it isn’t interested in selling real estate, at least for now.”

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This Post Has 60 Comments

  1. Bank statements, W2’s tax returns and tax returns aren’t always needed’

    Zero down, no-doc. Eat yer crowz jingle male.

  2. ‘What we realize is if you get above $600,000-$750,000, it takes about four months to sell a home on average. We don’t always give that data to the marketplace’

    Do say Sara…

    1. Me thinks DOMs might be a lot higher than that. Really case by case as an appropriately priced home will likely come under contract fairly quick, and over priced homes can languish indefinitely.

      In my market area, one home I was kind of interested in on its location and design, had a price I thought was a bit excessive. Looked at the DOM and it is over 650 days. Seller obviously not serious. Why would agent keep this listing? Waterfront property on island. Nice features, prime location, overpriced. Simple as that. Mass data conclusions are just nonsense.

      Anyone seen CNBC today? Existing home sales down 1 7%. Of course, contributing factor: shortage of affordable housing. Same conclusion with recent reduction in building permits and other data. They quote NAR, naturally.

      1. Yeah, the media doesn’t question DOM all over the place being a month or two, yet the market has been in a “slump” for a year or more with price reductions galore. Why would people slash 100k if they could sell in 60 days? Stench of failure!

    2. DOM is always gamed , was my impression, because agents who are paying ANY attention just re-list the problem cases. Towns like mine have very active RE boards that likely actively police these sort of statistic- affecting things.

  4. “‘What we realize is if you get above $600,000-$750,000, it takes about four months to sell a home on average.”

    Oh, then this must mean that the sales statistics regarding price lags the market by four months. IOW, the perceived values of the comps as represented by the price lags the actual values of the comps as represented by the price by four months. So if you are going to gage the value of the house you want to buy by the values of the comps then you will be four months behind. This may not matter if the prices are stable (meaning the price – the value – today is the same as it was four months ago) but it would matter a great deal if prices were rapidly falling.

    So, what is one to do? Here’s a clue …

    “‘We don’t always give that data to the marketplace,’ she said.”

    1. ‘If you think your home is appropriately priced and everything else seems to be in order, it could be that the market has changed since your initial listing’

    2. It takes longer to find a greater fool, or ,it’s takes longer to get the buyer to lower the price in that price range, or, it takes 4 months for the seller to get sick of having open houses with no shows.

      1. Yes, they invested $500M in Rivian. Amazon invested $700M. I think Ford is using Rivian’s expertise on to electrify their own F-150, but I’m not sure. They are a bit late to the EV game, but seem to be sprinting now.

    2. against Tesla

      Tesla’s “pickup truck” is vaporware.

      “Tesla hasn’t announced any firm plans about producing a pickup truck yet. The only thing we know about it so far is a partial image of the concept vehicle that Musk flashed during a March company event and his bold promises that it will have a battery strong enough to support a range of up to 500 miles, calling it ‘a pickup truck that can carry a pickup truck.’”

      “’Much of the excitement around the Tesla pickup stems from the out-of-this-world specs Musk has repeatedly promised,’ wrote John Engle, president of venture capital firm Almington Capital, in a June column for Seeking Alpha. ‘Yet, upon closer examination, most of the promised performance specifications appear to be physically impossible to achieve.’”

      https://observer.com/2019/07/tesla-pickup-truck-popularity-beat-ford-f150-twitter-study/

      1. Tesla’s “pickup truck” is vaporware.

        So is Ford’s electric F-150 at this point. But it’s good to see them trying. I would be thrilled if Ford beat Tesla to making an electric truck available for purchase.

    3. Take that garbage to another blog that cares. It’s a glorified train and the people into that nonsense are historically, technically and financially ignorant.

      In other words, Tesla fanboys.

      1. Occasionally we get to go off topic. Electric and self-driving vehicles have been an off-topic subject for a while.

        While some of us are fans of electric vehicles, we aren’t fanboys of Tesla in particular. Evidently they make decent cars, but they are draining VCs to do it. At least for me, IMO one day the gasoline is going to run out, and we need to have alternate transport in place that very day. So we need to start on that switch decades in advance, like, now. Therefore, I’m all for electric cars (Tesla or Hyundai or someone else) as long as they can be as affordable as ICE cars, and the refueling infrastructure is as convenient as ICE cars. And if a competition between Ford and Tesla gets us closer to that point, so be it.

  7. From the link above:

    “Real estate agents make spoof rap video about Denver’s gentrification”

    That’s painful to watch.

    3. Ben Jones I don’t spend money in Denver anymore. I buy my food and gas and pay utilities here but other than that I don’t contribute to Denver’s consumer economy.

      On a sad note, and a rare exception to the above, the owner of the Brew On Broadway in Englewood, Paul, is retiring. They will be closing after the farewell party this Saturday and re-opening under new owners. Most of the staff are leaving, it’s the end of an era for South Denver.

    1. This is the typical crap that happens at end of cycle. Saw same kind of stuff circa 2006-7. Soon, same guys will be touting themselves as short sale specialists. Saw that one back in the day. It’s all about comissions, nothing else matters. Not complicated.

      1. With the nosebleed levels of fraud involved and the investigations just just getting off the ground, they won’t be around to call themselves shortsale specialists.

  10. I dont know. Saw the realtors video. Tacky, but dont know why all the blowback. Just video equivalent of the usual nonsense. Those who owned and were later “jentrified” probably faired well and no one put a gun to their head to sell. They are profiting just like everyone else. If markets tank they will feel fortunate they sold when they did.

    1. IIUC, the blowback is not to defend the landowners. The objection is that gentrification displaces renters, that is, POCs who built a community. Rap music is a hallmark of POCs. So I can see how using POC’s rap music to displace POC renters could offend a few people.

    1. “Clueless, low monitoring morons!!”

      You left out exploitable and highly profitable.

      Here: “Clueless, low monitoring, exploitable and highly profitable morons.”

      There.

  13. “They should be scared. Anti-gentrification activists in Denver immediately blew up, accusing the creators of the music video of all manner of crimes: Smug, rich white gloating? You bet. Cultural appropriation? Oh, yeah. After the video blew up, Kentwood Real Estate did, too.”

    Black flight vs White flight from the 90’s

  14. Yawn…

    CEO of one of Switzerland’s largest banks says lofty asset prices are a ‘very dangerous development’ in markets
    Published: July 23, 2019 11:28 a.m.
    Asset prices up but not correlated with investor sentiment
    By Mark DeCambre

    Asset prices went up but it’s not really correlated with investor sentiment, which is in my point of view, of course, a very dangerous development.

    — UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti

    The head of UBS Group AG warned that a global rise in asset prices isn’t a development that is likely to portend well for markets.

    In a Tuesday interview on Bloomberg TV (paywall), Sergio Ermotti, who has run Switzerland’s largest bank since 2014, says monetary policy across the world is creating unnatural conditions that he finds unsettling—even problematic.

    The value of sovereign debt with negative yields has surpassed $13 trillion, as central banks attempt to juice slowing economies. That has led to a scramble by investors for assets that yield more than zero but are also comparatively riskier than government bonds.

    The 10-year Treasury note (TMUBMUSD10Y, +0.72%) was yielding 2.06% on Tuesday, while German bonds (TMBMKDE-10Y, -2.96%) often viewed as a proxy for the health of the European economy, were at negative 0.353%.
    …

    1. Knight to Queen 4: Check

      “The bottom line message from past history is that if we are on a rece$$ionary course, either by the level of debt or the level of overconfidence in the economy, the Fed may not be able to prevent it even with multiple rate cuts,” he said.

      Stack thinks we could be two or three years away from a bear market and “one of those great buying opportunities.” For now, he says watch the warning signs that are already creeping up — weakness in small-cap stocks via the Russell 2000 and in transportation names, softness in the manufacturing sector.

      If the downturn takes back just half of the current bull market’s gains, “it could mean a loss of close to 40%,” he said”

      The Fed can’t stop a market meltdown, warns forecaster who called the 2008 housing bust

      Published: July 23, 2019 | MarketWatch | Barbara Kollmeyer

  15. “…Michael Borella, the sales manager at Movement Mortgage, said if you’re looking to buy a new home, now is a good time to do so….”

    Hey Michael, has there ever been a time in the history of the known universe that it *wasn’t* a great time to buy?

    HBB readers can hardly wait for your response.

    1. Someone should inform that guy that 2020 will be EVEN better time to buy so he should go on extended vacation.

    2. This is the lunkhead who tells buyers to be prepared to spend $1000. Such people have no business buying a house.

      1. Saw a bumper sticker I liked today. It was on a pretty old dumpy Toyota Yaris. The sticker said: “Dave Ramsey makes me drive this.”

        1. For a second I thought you had written “Yugo.” I wouldn’t put it past Dave. He still thinks that you can buy a beater car for a thousand bucks.

          1. He still thinks that you can buy a beater car for a thousand bucks.

            If you’re a car guy and keep your ear to the ground and have time to wait you can. But you have to be able to work on it yourself or it makes no sense. He may be implying that if you’re that poor you need to learn how to fix your car.

    1. Fake news sites have real-world consequences:

      The Cop who said AOC Needs a Round Reportedly Just got Fired

      “Rispoli, a 14-year-veteran of the police department, appeared to be alluding to Ocasio-Cortez’s past as a bartender. The article he shared, headlined “Ocasio-Cortez On the Budget: ‘We Pay Soldiers Too Much’” came from a satire website called “Taters Gonna Tate.” The website proclaims on its “About” page that all of its content is fictional.

      1. I love home from the 1920s, particularly storybook and Craftsman styles. The home to which I linked is reminiscent of 1920s Spanish style but tastefully updated. I especially like the use of windows.

      2. One of the most amazing pieces of property I’ve ever seen was a 1-bedroom unit at 40 Remsen St., Brooklyn, NY. The living room was the original library with the most gorgeous carved bookcase and the bedroom was the original hexagonal or octagonal dining room overlooking the garden.

        Building overview:

        In the 1860’s the barons of New York city built their mansions along the picturesque streets of Brooklyn Heights and The Heights remain one of the most gorgeous, convenient and sought-after neighborhoods anywhere in the world.

        Today, 40 Remsen street is that rarest and most coveted of New York City jewels: a 25 foot wide grand city mansion converted to 9 distinctive co-op apartments. And one of the best parts of co-ops is they have approximately 20-30% lower closing costs than condos, so you can own the penthouse in this Brooklyn Heights mansion for less.

        1. Eye seriously doubt that @ $2/month … For $1.8 million$, make ’em waive it for 40 years.

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