How’s Lamorinda Real Estate Doing vs. the “National Market”?

10 11 2011

A flurry of media attention is once again turning to the performance of the “national real estate market” as third quarter performance shows less than encouraging results.  According to a Wall Street Journal article, US home prices dropped 4.7% for the third quarter 2011 over 2010.  A nationwide interactive map shows locally that the San Jose metro area dropped 5.3%, the SF-Oakland-Fremont metro area dropped 10%, and the Sacramento area continued its decline with another 10% loss over the same period.  Looking just at the Lamorinda market, we also saw a 10% dip in the third quarter on a year-over-year basis — clearly sharing in the pain of the uncertain European economies and a turbulent stock market.  Inventories in Lamorinda dropped almost 26% versus the same period last year, while the number of closed sales dropped 11.5%.

Looking at just the month of October 2011, we saw a healthy 30% drop in inventory over October 2010, while seeing only an 8% drop in new pending sales, representing the leading edge of the market.  The sub-million dollar segment has been the strongest of all price segments in the last couple of years, and we saw a 14% rise in inventory in October vs. September of this year.  Perhaps more sellers were trying to jump in and capitalize on the segment’s strength with the month’s unseasonably warm weather. Pending sales as a percentage of total inventory in the segment was very similar to 2010, yet the median price for the segment sunk by a surprising 13% over October 2010.

The $1M – $1.5M segment showed a remarkable resurgence last month in the world of Lamorinda real estate.  Inventories dropped 28% over October of 2010, while pending sales jumped up 62% to a total of 13 sales for the month against an inventory of 41 homes.  Pending sales in the $1.5M – $2M segment showed some improvement over Oct 2010, as well, with a total of 3 units in this category against an inventory of 16 homes. The Lamorinda real estate market above $2M continues to be almost non-existent. There was just 1 new pending sale in October against an inventory of 20 homes — equating to 20 months of inventory in this segment!

Clearly, the last quarter was a very challenging one economically across ALL markets, not just real estate.  Ultimately, consumer confidence and jobs drive the real estate market, and we have a ways to go in both areas.  On a positive note, we’ve received several calls from agents representing buyers who are not finding good matches for their clients in the $1.5M+ segments, and have been seeking an opportunity to have us arrange showings of homes that are not on the market.  As the market continues to adjust, over-pricing is an issue in all segments, but particularly in the upper tiers of the market.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Lafayette CA Real Estate Market, Lamorinda Housing Market, Lamorinda Real Estate, Lamorinda Real Estate Market Statistics, Lamorinda Real Estate Pricing

Six Reasons Why the New HARP Refi Plan Will Be Good for Lamorinda Real Estate

24 10 2011

Since all markets are governed fundamentally by supply and demand, keeping unnecessary supply off the market is a favorable outcome when it can be accomplished.  This is exactly what the administration’s new HARP Refi Plan will accomplish in the Lamorinda real estate market, and across the nation.  The new plan will allow borrowers to refinance to today’s much lower rates, regardless of how far their homes have fallen, according to today’s Wall Street Journal.

1)  The borrowers will be able to do it in a much more streamlined manner, in many cases without the need for a new appraisal or extensive income documentation, as long as the borrower is current on their payments and can demonstrate a steady stream of income sufficient to cover the new loan payment.

2)  If you’ve got a second mortgage, the good news is that most major lenders have agreed to subordinate the second under this new program.

3)  Fannie and Freddie fees normally charged to riskier borrowers will be waived if the borrower refinances into a shorter term mortgage, e.g., a 15-year term from the previous 30-year mortgage.

4)  Lenders are expected to start taking applications for this new program in early December.

5)  There’s an easy way for you to find out of your loan is owned by Freddie or Fannie.  Just click on the links provided — Freddie or Fannie.

6)  Finally, allowing these borrowers to refinance to much lower rates will put an estimated $24B back into our economy AND keep many homes from drifting into foreclosure.  Going back to my original premise that markets are governed by supply and demand, keeping unnecessary supply down will help bolster prices which is always good news in the world of Lamorinda real estate!

 


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : Lafayette CA Foreclosures, Lafayette CA Real Estate Market, Lafayette CA Real Estate Refinance, Lamorinda Foreclosures, Lamorinda Housing Market, Lamorinda Real Estate, Lamorinda real estate loans, Lamorinda Real Estate Refinance

It May Be About the Inventory in the Lamorinda Real Estate Market.

23 10 2011

A recent Wall Street Journal article raised several questions about supply and demand in the housing market, and it struck a resonate chord with what we are seeing in the world of Lamorinda real estate.  The Journal article raised the question about whether “it’s low demand or poor supply that’s hurting the housing market.”   Due to the fact that we tend to market a substantial number of homes in the Lafayette real estate market, we’ve received at least 5 calls from other agents in the last couple of weeks, asking if we have any new inventory that will be coming on the market.  The agents all explain that their clients simply aren’t finding what they want among the current Lafayette real estate offerings.  Almost all of the calls have have been in the $1.5M – $2M segment — an area of the market that has been one of the most negatively impacted over the last couple of years.

The Journal article discusses a number of factors contributing to the perception of poor quality or inadequate inventory, and notes that over-pricing is a significant factor.  We have found this to be true, particularly over the last few years as the market has been declining. In at least 50 percent of all of our interactions with sellers, the challenge for us is to help the client understand the state of the market and where their home should be priced in order to compete effectively.  It’s often as emotional as it is intellectually challenging, because it is sometimes very hard for sellers to grasp that the home they cherish so much has been impacted by the broader market conditions. They often want to believe that they’ve somehow been spared from the degradation in home values, or that “the right buyer” will come along who “will pay our price”, but ultimately they need to face the market realities.  In the end, over-pricing hurts them as the market discounts their price over time, and consumers begin to wonder “what’s wrong with that house”.

As we look at the current Lamorinda real estate inventory, there is a fair amount of over-pricing in certain segments that is undoubtedly keeping buyers away, coupled with overall declines in inventory over the last year.  Some sellers have simply taken their homes off the market and are deferring plans to downsize until they see stabilization in prices.  That stabilization is already happening in certain price segments, and may spread to others if we see broader confidence in the economy as we move into the Spring market. Ultimately, that may solve our inventory problem.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Lafayette CA Real Estate Market, Lafayette Real Estate Forecast, Lamorinda Housing Market, Lamorinda Real Estate

A Look at the Lamorinda Real Estate Market YTD 2011 and What Lies Ahead

21 10 2011

Let’s look at our local market as we work our way into the last quarter of the year and near the end of October.  Inventories have decreased significantly from this time last year… running about 25%+ below where they were last year.  In fact, we have been experiencing about 3 months of inventory in the Lamorinda market over the last several months – representing a very sound relationship between supply and demand.  This compares favorably to the 4-5 months of inventory that we were running at this time last year.  Absolute sales volumes have decreased from last year, particularly in August and September where we saw a reduction of about 20 percent from 2010.  This clearly reflects the uncertainty emanating from global financial markets, and the extreme volatility we’ve seen in the US stock markets.

As one would imagine, the most active markets have been those most approachable to buyers.  Approximately 70 percent of all Lamorinda sales this year have been at price points below $1M.  Other trends worth noting include the move toward more central, urbanized locations.  This began on a more macro basis as people began moving back to urban centers such as San Francisco several years ago.  It has been a function of rising gas prices; aging baby boomers selling suburban homes; and general movement favoring locations where one can walk to shopping, entertainment, and restaurants.

This trend has played out within our community, too, as we’ve seen distinct premiums paid for perceived central locations such as Lafayette’s “Trail Neighborhood” and Happy Valley.  In some cases, a 5 minute commute differential can command a 15% premium in the market.  As an example, we had a recent listing near the “Trail Neighborhood” get bid up by $100,000 in the sub-million dollar price range within 3 days of going on-market.   There have been larger properties in this area that were bid up several hundred thousand dollars during the peak of our spring 2011 market.  Other segments have been much slower, such as the $1.5M – $2M range where there wasn’t a single home that went pending in the month of September throughout Lamorinda.  Sales above $2M have been scarce this year, averaging about 1 per month in Lafayette.

So, what lies ahead?  As we enter the wet winter months, we will see normal seasonality seize control of the market, and overall transaction volumes decrease.  Typically, the market lies mostly dormant until mid-February when it seems to slowly come out of hibernation.  Interest rates will remain low for the next couple of years, so job creation and consumer confidence will play the most dominant role in dictating the performance of the housing market as we enter 2012.  Another “wild card” in the equation involves the disposition of bank assets… the properties in some phase of financial distress and not yet in the marketplace.   Recent bank industry announcements have suggested this process will accelerate — a necessary element to cleansing the market and creating more stabilization.  In the short term, it could increase inventories and put additional pressure on prices.

Finally, with immense amounts of cash on their books, we could also see significant hiring increases from corporate America in the months ahead if our elected representatives can find some common ground to provide the needed confidence and incentives to grow their businesses.  Should that happen, we could see better than expected improvement in consumer confidence and the housing market as we move through the coming year.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : Lafayette CA Real Estate Forecast, Lafayette CA Real Estate Market, Lamorinda Home Search, Lamorinda Housing Market, Lamorinda Real Estate, Lamorinda Real Estate Market Statistics

Refinancing in Lamorinda? Some Tips to Think About…

14 10 2011

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal is providing the stimulus for today’s post, as well as some very recent and highly mixed interactions I’ve had with appraisers in the Lamorinda real estate market.   With so many people refinancing their existing loans, the potential pitfalls of the appraisal process becomes very relevant to the achievement of your objectives.

On a fundamental basis, there are wide swings in the competence levels of appraisers, and the lender has does not control who does the appraisal.

My list of appraisal imperatives:

1.  Screen the appraiser when he/she calls for the appointment.  Make sure the appraiser is LOCAL and EXPERIENCED in doing Lamorinda real estate appraisals.  Even though the lender may think that a San Jose, Fremont, or Vacaville-based appraiser is “local”, they are not and they won’t be competent in our market.  If the appraiser does not meet this initial criteria, do not allow them to start the appraisal.  Ask your lender to resubmit the appraisal order and insist on someone who is truly from this area.

2.  First impressions can make a difference.  Put your home in as close to “show” condition as you possibly can.  You want the appraiser to “like” your home and believe that it stands above the “average” home he/she sees in the community.  If it has obvious deferred maintenance, weeds over-grown in the yard, and the rooms are overflowing with 20+ years of accumulated junk piles — your appraisal will reflect this.

3.  Sell your improvements.  If you don’t tell the appraiser what you’ve invested in your home’s improvements, they’ll never know about them.  This is not to suggest that you’ll see a return on all of your investments in improvements, but the knowledge of them can help to make your home standout, and may tip the scale in your favor during the final determination of value.

4.  Help your appraiser with the “comps”.  Appraisers are required to find “like” properties, ideally sold within the last 90 days and within a 1 mile radius of your home.  It always helps to go online and to pull sales data on homes that meet this criteria.  Even though Zillow’s “Zestimate” of value has little grounding in reality for homes in Lamorinda, the site does allow you to search public records for the needed comp info.  Consumers can utilize a wide variety of other real estate sites to find this information, too.  Since appraisers almost never see the interiors of the “comps”, any personal knowledge you may have about these properties should be shared IF it helps support a higher valuation for your home.

5.  Rigorously scrutinize the final appraisal.  Do not assume that the appraiser accurately completed the appraisal.  Last year, I had an appraiser almost cost a client $50,000 in a contract renegotiation when the appraisal came in that far under the price agreed upon between buyer/seller in the purchase agreement.  The appraisal had been subjected to two levels of underwriting review, but no one caught the computational error that I found when I reviewed the appraiser’s work.  As it turned out, the appraisal should have come in OVER the contract purchase price, NOT under it.  The appraisal was corrected and the transaction proceeded to a successful close.

Last month, a “local” appraiser was sent from Concord to appraise a client’s Lafayette property.  The appraiser passed the initial screening, and we provided him with a detailed set of comps, including written explanations of each property.  The appraiser ignored our comps, and decided to go OUTSIDE the Lafayette School District for two of his six comps, and then threw in two bank foreclosure properties for good measure.  No valuation adjustments were made for these factors.

The appraisal was absurdly completed and came in $100K under the purchase contract value.  I ended up spending hours writing a detailed rebuttal to the appraisal which ultimately helped set it aside, allowing the transaction to eventually close at the contracted purchase price.  It was an incredibly frustrating experience that could have potentially caused a client to lose their buyer or up to $100K in their sales price.

In the final analysis, it’s important to be your own advocate in the process.  Never assume that the appraiser will see the value in your home, nor accurately complete a competent appraisal.  A set of watchful eyes on the process is imperative.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Lafayette CA Real Estate Appraisals, Lafayette Home Sale Resources, Lafayette, CA Real Estate, Lamorinda Housing Market, Lamorinda Real Estate

Lamorinda’s July Defies National Markets

17 08 2011

I couldn’t resist the sensationalized headline to this post, especially since traditional media sources have been relying upon these types of headlines to broadcast how anemic the “national” real estate market has been.  If you are a regular reader of this blog, you KNOW there is no such thing as a “national” real estate market.  Until such time as someone can convince me that a Lamorinda real estate buyer is concurrently considering buying in some place like Oshkosh, WI, I’m holding firm to my belief.  No offense to Oshkosh, I’m sure it’s a lovely place, just not for me!

In recent days, we’ve heard that housing starts are almost non-existent and even that the “Bay Area market” took a dip in July with a decrease in sales over a more robust June.  Although it’s certainly not on fire, the Lamorinda market performed much better than most.  The leading edge of our market is always represented by our “pending” sales… those that actually entered escrow in a given month.  Looking at the transition from June to July of this year, we saw a 29% jump in pending sales in July.  That also represents a 24% improvement from July of 2010.  An amazing 63% of those July 2011 pending homes were priced under $1M, so it’s pretty clear where the action is!  Just think back to about 2005 when you could not find a habitable home in Lamorinda for under $1M.  Even moving up-market a bit, July was a pretty good month.  Seven homes in the $1.5M – $2M segment went pending, representing one-third of the total available inventory.  Finally, we reach for the life support systems in the $2M+ market where only 2 homes went pending against an inventory of 21 homes — both were in Lafayette.

Most certainly, we have interesting times ahead.  The Fed has committed to low interest rates, and has shot what might be their last economic bullet to infuse life into the economy.  With essentially zero to negative returns for cash positions, the Fed is trying to stimulate investment in the economy… either in equities or real estate.  Jobs drive housing, so we should keep a keen eye on those numbers moving forward.  The good news is that Lamorinda real estate continues to distinguish itself from other markets.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Lafayette CA Real Estate Forecast, Lafayette CA Real Estate Market, Lamorinda Housing Market, Lamorinda Real Estate, Lamorinda Real Estate Market Statistics

June Swoon in the Lamorinda Real Estate Market?

7 07 2011

The stats were just released for June real estate sales, and it looks like buyers took a break from the market, while sellers were busy putting their homes on the market.  Let’s start with a broad brush view of what transpired last month. Inventories grew by 12% over May, but are running about 10% less than June of 2010.  Most notably, pending sales activity dropped by 29% from May of this year, and ran 22% under June of 2010.  The average price per sq. ft. for a Lamorinda home dropped by 7.65% from June of 2010.  The most positive stat for June was that home inventories held relatively steady at an acceptable level of 3.9 months of inventory, based upon pending sales.

The hardest hit segments continue to be the upper price ranges, so let’s take a brief look at some sub-segments.  The $1.5 – $2M segment has 6 mos of inventory.  The $2M – $3M segment actually showed some life in June, and has only 3 months of inventory.  The over $3M market in Lamorinda is essentially dead.  There have been only two pending sales in this segment since January 1st, and both occurred in February, yet only one has closed escrow.  There are presently 10 homes on the market in the $3M+ market and no buyers.

So, where’s all of the action.  Well, by volume, it’s clearly in the sub-$1M price range where 35 Lamorinda homes went pending in June, and where there is only 3 months of inventory.  Even with all of the activity, prices dropped about 7% in this segment from June of 2010.

None of these stats surprise me.  June was a tough month in the financial markets, and consumer confidence clearly slid.  We’ve recently seen some improvement in the European monetary crisis, and better than expected reports hitting Wall Street.  As a result, the stock market has been up over the last week, and we’ve also noticed a lot of showing activity on most of our listings.  I have a feeling that July will turn out to be a relatively strong sales month as buyers strive to buy ahead of the upcoming school year, and before the ceiling on conforming loan rates decreases this fall. More on that point in a future post.


Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : Lafayette CA Real Estate Forecast, Lafayette CA Real Estate Market, Lafayette, CA Real Estate, Lamorinda Housing Market, Lamorinda Real Estate, Lamorinda Real Estate Market Statistics, Lamorinda Real Estate Pricing, Orinda Real Estate Forecast, Orinda, CA Real Estate

Negotiating in the Lamorinda Real Estate Market

5 07 2011

Early in my business career, one of my mentors taught me the importance of understanding what the other party values in a negotiation and trying to appeal to those areas.  It’s important to put yourself in their place so that you can at least strive for the ideal “win-win” scenario.  You should also understand your limits in the negotiation… what you are willing to give up… how far you’ll go on key points, and also where you might give concessions with points that you don’t value highly.  As one of my former tech colleagues from Texas used to say, “Let’s give ‘em the sleeves out of our vest.”

I had the opportunity to observe a couple of unsuccessful negotiating strategies in the last week or so… one by a seller and the other by a buyer.  Both were in multiple offer situations, rare in the present market.  In the first scenario, the property was listed by another broker, and there was considerable interest in it the first day on-market. About 4-5 buyers and their agents requested disclosure documents and expressed interest in writing an offer.  All were told not to write their offers until a meeting had taken place the following day with the seller to discuss their offer review strategy.  The next day, we were all told that offers would not be accepted and reviewed for 5 days, so that the property could be fully exposed to the market.

When the “offer day” arrived, all but one of the parties had decided NOT to write an offer.  My client was one of the buyers who had decided not to proceed, but told me that they would have written an offer if the sellers would have reviewed it the second day the home was on the market.  In this case, the sellers of the property failed to value the buyers and their potential offers.  My client told me that the process “just doesn’t feel right” in this market.  They also decided that maybe they “weren’t in love” with the property.  Evidently, they weren’t alone in their feelings.

In the other situation, we found ourselves on the listing side of the transaction.  An offer came in on our listing within about 24 hours of the home going on-market.  The price was almost acceptable to the seller, but there was a term in the contract that would have legally been immaterial to the buyer unless they defaulted, but would potentially be very important to the seller in a buyer default scenario. Absent a buyer default, this particular contract term would have been financially neutral to the buyer.  The sellers countered the buyer on price and the contract term noted above.  It should also be noted that the sellers were countering the term in accordance with what is considered normal custom and practice in most of California real estate.  The buyers accepted the counter on price, but then countered out the change in the term mentioned above.  So, in this negotiation, the buyer had an opportunity to secure the property at an acceptable price, but countered out a term that would have had no financial or other impact upon them as long as they performed in accordance with the contract.

You can probably guess what happened.  While counter offers were being issued/reviewed, another buyer stepped forward with a better price and better contract terms.  When buyer #1 finally decided to concede on the term in question, it was too late.  The sellers had decided that they wanted to accept the second buyer’s offer. Buyer #1 failed to follow the Texas rule of conceding “the sleeves out of the vest!”


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Lafayette CA Real Estate Market, Lamorinda Housing Market, Lamorinda Real Estate

Does Anyone Really Know What’s Going On in the Lamorinda Real Estate Market?

28 06 2011

I apologize for the brief break in the continuity of my normally frequent blog posts.  The truth is that I’ve been swamped with real estate work, and getting that done is the first priority.  Quiet moments for reflection and writing have been few and far between the last couple of weeks.  With that said, does anyone really know what the heck is going on with Lamorinda real estate these days?

According to an article in today’s Wall St. Journal, “national” home prices were up a bit in April, even managing to get David Blitzer, Chairman of the S&P’s home index committee to refer to it in positive terms as a “welcome change”.  Naturally, it’s too early to tell if April was an anomaly, just a run of good weather, or if it’s the beginning of a national turn-around in the market.  I’ve given up on predicting these things as there are too many moving parts.  Besides, as I’ve said, there is no national real estate market, anyway.

There IS a Lamorinda real estate market, and I’m trying to figure it out.  Looking at the stats, one would come to the conclusion that anything priced over $1.5M will have an extended period of market time; $1M – $1.5M is looking fairly solid; and decent homes priced under $1M are a HOT item.  Looking at the overall Lamorinda real estate market and comparing it to the “national” market stats from Case-Shiller, we see some differences.  Whereas the “national” market was up in April over 2010, Lamorinda was down slightly with the average per square foot price dropping from $396 in April of 2010 to $379 in April 2011.  Since we’re a bit faster to record and publish our data than Case Shiller, the May prices took another drop — going from $442 per sq. ft. in 2010 to $389 per sq. ft. in May of 2011 — a 12% drop on a year-over-year basis.  One would think the market might be in trouble based upon the stats, but that’s not been my experience the last few weeks.

Last week, a property went on the market in Lafayette with a so-so ranch style home that needs significant remodeling and expansion, on a superb lot of almost a half-acre — perfectly level and centrally located.  I’ve heard that there are at least 7 agents writing offers on it today.  Another home went on the market Friday… close to the “magical” Lafayette bike trail, substantially remodeled, but within proximity to a fair amount of road noise.  There was so much interest in the home that the sellers decided to wait 5 days to review offers. Finally, we put a home on the market late Friday at almost $1.5M.  Late Saturday, we got an offer that our clients countered.  Without a response yet from the first party, on Monday a second offer came in, followed by a third offer!  I guess the Larmorinda market isn’t on life support when the right home at the right price comes up.

The truth is, I’m still scratching my head a bit about what I’ve seen in the last few weeks.  I guess I’m seeing people step forward and be less tentative than in recent months.  Perhaps there is a fairly large unsatisfied demand for housing in this area that is jumping into the market… perhaps, it’s just a blip.  It’s impossible to tell at this point, but it certainly presents a much more positive view of the market than what we’ve witnessed in the months leading up to now.  Stay tuned… it could be an interesting summer!


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Lafayette Real Estate Forecast, Lamorinda Housing Market, Lamorinda Real Estate, Lamorinda Real Estate Market Statistics, Lamorinda Real Estate Pricing, Uncategorized

The Problem with Online Listings

14 06 2011

An article in the latest issue of Smart Money Magazine called, “Where Real Estate Listings Fail,” really rang true with my experience in dealing with many of the “major” real estate websites.  What few consumers realize is that many of the listings they see on sites like Trulia, Zillow, and many others is full of stale, inaccurate listing information.  The reason that the listing data is subject to a fairly high degree of inaccuracy is because these sites do not source their data from a direct data feed coming from the various MLS systems.  Rather, they are dependent upon secondary data that they “scrape” from other sites.

By way of example, when I post a virtual tour online, or build a Lamorinda real estate website for a Lafayette home we have listed, one of the options I might have is to “syndicate” the data to Zillow, Trulia and several other sites.  If I elect to do this, I’m essentially sending a stream of data to these sites informing them about the home in a format that gives them the opportunity to build a listing profile with most of the data.  In other cases, an agent might not syndicate the data, and then these sites “crawl” the web and look for listing information that they then use to build their listing database.  But, what happens if the information posted by an agent is in error, is later changed, or if the 3rd party site, e.g., Zillow, Trulia, etc., don’t capture all of the data and then make inferences about the listing that are inaccurate?

This scenario happens all of the time with homes in Lamorinda and in other areas.  In accurate information is sometimes posted on virtual tours or single property websites in error, or deliberately by agents who lack integrity.  More often than not, the errors are rectified when they are identified, but those corrections may never reach the 3rd party websites that have “scraped” the original data. One of the frequent problems we deal with is when sites like Trulia show school information based upon map proximity to the property, but NOT based upon school district assignment.  As an example, in certain areas of Lafayette, these sites will suggest that a Pleasant Hill elementary school is the “closest school”, inferring that the home is not in the Lafayette School District.  This is highly inaccurate and is detrimental to the seller of the property.  Unfortunately, these sites offer the real estate agent no way to manually override their faulty presentation of data.

Another frequent problem is the timeliness of the data.  Since these sites are extracting their data from sources sometimes quite afar from the MLS, they will show listings as being “active”, when in fact, they have been sold or removed from the market months or sometimes years ago.  These sites will blame the problem on the real estate community for leaving a virtual tour “floating” out on the web somewhere that shows the property as being active, but this is something that is easy to forget about and happens all of the time.  The property gets sold and marked appropriately in the MLS… but, the agent forgets that there was a virtual tour or other site associated with it that might still be seen by these third party sites.

So, where do you go for accurate information?  The largest national real estate site WITH direct feeds to the various MLS systems is Realtor.com.  Many individual agent sites have MLS feeds provided via a service called “IDX”.  The listing data provided on our TeamRothenberg site is provided in this manner and is updated from the MLS almost instantaneously.  In fact, if you prefer to have accurate, timely information “pushed” to you instead of having to search for it, you’ll find our email search system to be extremely convenient.  Upon entering your search parameters into the system, you’ll automatically be sent listing information essentially in real-time as listings hit the market, or change status and go “pending” or “sold”.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Lafayette CA Home for Sale, Lafayette CA Home Search, Lafayette CA Real Estate Market, Lafayette Home Sale Resources, Lamorinda Home for Sale, Lamorinda Home Search, Lamorinda Housing Market, Lamorinda Real Estate, Lamorinda Real Estate Search

« Previous Entries Next Entries »


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.