Entries by Scott Sambucci

The April 2008 Case-Shiller Home Price Index was released yesterday. Just for fun, let's look at the San Francisco-Bay Area MSA (symbol: SFXR) using CSI data vs. Altos Research data. Using April 2008 numbers, San Francisco has been in a continuing decline since January 2007.

While it's interesting to look back to the early Spring to see what happened in the residential market, Altos Research prefers to show what's happening right now in the market.

Looking at an AltosCharts tracking real-time ask prices shows that there's been a recent uptick of about 8% since late March into June, then flattening a touch in June.

When the CSI number for June is released later this summer (and the end of August), check back to see if we saw this uptick before Case-Shiller reports it...

OK, aside from tomatoes, blueberries, Atlantic City, and rampant Philly sports team fans, South Jersey isn't really known for much. Where I (this is Scott writing today, not Mike...) grew up in Sicklerville, which was actually Cedar Brook but the post office was too small to have a mailmain, a trip to "The City" meant a visit to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

But, maybe there's a little something in South Jersey when it comes to real estate....Moorestown (not to be confused with Morristown in North Jersey where no one acknowledges that there is a Moorestown) and Cherry Hill ("Exit 4 off the NJ Turnpike) are showing some nice appreciation this spring. And Medford which now has more than the Indian Chief Restaurant (I worked there one summer in college) and the Medport Diner (great service!) has been stable over the past few months.

[Side note: If you're ever caught speeding in Medford, ask for Officer Sambucci. If you're nice and wearing a seat belt, she might go easy on you....]

As for the Moorestown-Morristown Battle Royale, it looks like the South Jersey version is winning right now...

We made in the news again!  This time in a recent piece by Prashant Gopal at Business Week. 

"It's Spring. Ready to Buy a Home Yet?" - looks at the buying upside in today's national real estate market.  Finally some positive press from the media in a sea of dismal reporting over the past year - yippee!  From the article:

"Where some see despair, others see hope. Sellers, who were once clinging to boom-time expectations, are trimming asking prices. But the news isn't all bad for buyers. In fact, for some the timing couldn't be better. The lower prices—at least in some markets—are making homes affordable for first-time home buyers and more attractive for investors on the lookout for fire-sale discounts."

The Texas markets look pretty solid over the past year with Dallas continuing to buck the national trends:

Sacramento, well, not so much.  Though, inventory has been steadily declining, so perhaps the market is clearing as prices continue to fall and perhaps could mean the beginnings of a turnaround (we hope!).  Or perhaps some sellers simply pulled their properties from the market given the price weakness out there.

Our tech/engineering team (the REALLY smart guys here at Altos Research) have developed a new way to display market stats using AltosCharts. We can now show two market stats on the same AltosChart! Check it out:

The Y-axis is labelled twice. On the left, you see Median Price. On the right, you see Inventory level. The end result? Tada - housing market supply and housing market price trends together. Pretty cool stuff!

This AltosChart shows that Inventory in Orlando has flattened out since about mid-2007, while median prices are continued to decrease throughout the year. We do see that prices in January 2008 have flattened out. The question is, of course, is this a stop on a continued downward trend, or could this mean that the market may be reaching it's bottom? (I think that's actually two questions....)

Forbes Magazine released its "Best Cities for Bargain Hunters" yesterday. They based their criteria on markets that have sound economic fundamentals, not necessarily markets hit only by the lending and mortgage events. Here's their list in reverse order. You can research the market trends for most of these markets here at Altos Research.

If you're a home buyer or seller, our "Market Reports" are a great way to keep up-to-date with your local market. We also have free research available on our main website. Just click on the city name -

10. Houston, TX

9. Richmond, VA

8. Jacksonville, FL (coming soon!)

7. Las Vegas, NV

6. Seattle, WA

5. Phoenix, AZ

4. Charlotte, NC

3. Orlando, FL

2. Raleigh, NC (coming soon!)

1. Salt Lake City, UT

Over my morning cup of coffee(s.. that is...), I was reading a bit about the Denver real estate market. John Rebchook keeps a blog on the Rocky Mountain News, and wrote yesterday about local prices in Denver and possible collusion to prop up the market. He offered some examples for relativity, including a mention about Las Vegas and Phoenix. For me, the alarms went off - "AltosChart alert! AltosChart alerts!"

Looking at price in these three cities since the Spring, we can see that single-family homes in Denver held very strong throughout 2007 when Phoenix and Las Vegas were getting hammered, until the the fourth quarter, when Denver joined much of the rest of the nation with a strong downward pricing trend.

It's interesting to note though, that early in 2008, there's a bit of an uptick - some relative strength for single-family homes in Denver compared to Las Vegas and Phoenix.

I was interested to see how single-family homes compared to the Townhome/Condo market in Denver. Looks like the Condo market never weakened in 2007 and is even stronger in early 2008.

We're on pins and needles to hear from some of you in the local market as to what the reason might be? Does John's article make a good point, or are things just plain good in Denver?

Mike's at the O'Reilly MoneyTech Conference in NYC. (Shhh - don't tell him that I know where he hides the key to the Altos Research blog! And I get to be the first to use our new "intermediate" size AltosChart!)

I came across an article from Realty Times about the Arlington, VA market heating up over the last couple of months. We certainly saw this coming - both from the conversations with local agents and brokers, but also from the market data we've been collecting.

Overall, we've seen strengthen in the Northern Virginia market throughout 2007 and into 2008. Comparing median prices in Arlington, Alexandria, and Vienna since mid-2007 shows all three towns avoided the dip felt by many other real estate markets across the country.

Examining the Arlington real estate market in more detail, we also see strength across the board.

22201 - Rosslyn area

22207 - Includes the Washington Golf & Country Club

22206 - The southern end of Arlington, including the Army Navy Country Club and bordering Alexandria

22204 - Between Rosslyn and 22206, including Glencarlyn Park.

No surprise to us to hear that Arlington, VA is a strong market!

Kathleen Allardyce from BuildRealEstateResults.com has a series of great tips for Real Estate Marketing.  Just a quick click away.

We've worked with Kathleen on projects with several Altos Research customers to integrate AltosCharts into their websites for Market Stats pages and other applications.

Over the past couple of years, you’ve probably modified your marketing expenditures by increasing your spending on Internet-based marketing – developing your website and increasing your online presence while retaining your traditional print and snail-mailing activities.

Now that sales are down, you’re taking a look at the most efficient way to spend your marketing budget.  The natural reactions is the old – “last on the boat is the first off!” meaning that you're thinking about cutting back on your online spending to rely on the "tried and true" print mediums. 

Maybe that’s not the best course of action.

When the real estate marketing was hot, it was easy to pass by some of these great blog posts and news articles comparing print to online real estate advertising.  Here are just a few articles that provide mounting evidence with real statistics showing that your advertising and marketing budget is best spent online.

“Are Newspapers Dead?”  by Chris Iverson at 3OceansRealEstate.com

“Are Newspapers Dead? Part 2 – Another Data Point” also by Chris Iverson

“Print vs. Internet Advertising for Real Estate” by Base 10 Web Solutions

“Papers losing real estate ads to online” by Seth Sutel at theglobeandmail.com

“Print vs. Internet Marketing and Blogging” by Richard Nacht at RealBlogging.com

“Online Marketing: Internet Buyer vs. Traditional Home Buyer Study: The Real Estate World is Changing even Faster than You Think!” by Michael E. Parker

Many of you are not only real estate agents, but your own personal website developer and programmer.  (Not that working with clients and finding new ones doesn’t take enough time!)  As a way to help with developing and managing your website, we’ve collected a list of helpful online tutorials and websites dedicated to providing you with step-by-step help and hints on HTML. 

1. W3Schools is an Internet Developers Portal that is designed to help everyone learn how to develop their website.  Their section on HTML provides very basic steps to help you:

2. HTML Code Tutorial is the official website of The Idocs Guide to HTML:

3. EchoEcho provides a friendly page of helpful hints from the most basic to more advanced HTML:

4. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C's mission is “to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.   There is a great introduction to HTML on their website.

With the general slowdown in housing markets, many of are considering ways to maximize your marketing budget.  Here are a couple of questions to help you with this exercise:

1. How much of your budget is spent using technology and online marketing tools?  Here’s an article published in 2005 that couldn’t be anymore timely if it was published this morning.   Real estate information is online. Your customers are online. If you are thinking about cutting back on your marketing budget, be sure that you expenditures match with the behavior of your potential clients.

2. Are you giving people a reason to visit your website?  More importantly – are you giving people a reason to visit your website again?  You can add fresh content to your site with a weblog.  Several sources for free weblogs include:

WordPress

Typepad

Blogspot (Google)

Blogs are free to set up and operate – you just need to spend 15-30 minutes/day posting an entry.  Don’t be intimidated – just start one and let it roll from there.

3. How “findable” are you online?  Have you set up a profile on LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, ActiveRain, and other online communities that can link you to potential clients?

4. Finally, here’s a checklist of Real Estate Marketing Tips to consider provided by Arming Your Farming.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070827/economy.html?.v=13

Is the market doing badly?  Well, I guess the correct answer is:

It depends. . .

Here's the Altos 90-day rolling average for Median Home Prices by Price QUARTILE for various cities across the US since the Spring.

Miami, FL

Phoenix, AZ:

Scottsdale, AZ

Portland, OR

Austin, TX

 
Palo Alto, CA

Washington DC:

Using <FRAMES> in your website can impact its “findability” on Google and other search engines. Search engines generally do not understand the <FRAME> tag. This means they do not read or see any of the content in the frame and move on the next website without counting the relevant content you may have that matches someone’s search.

If your website is using Frames, don’t despair! There are actions that you can take to help resolve this problem.  In short, you can use the <NOFRAMES> tag as a workaround to this challenge.

There is a great explanation describing the challenge that search engines have with websites using Frames and an explanation on how to use the <NOFRAMES> tag at SEOLogic.com. 

For more detailed information about Frames and search engine optimization (SEO), start at this overview about Frames and Google. There are links to additional resources that will help with increasing your “findability” if you are using Frames for your website.

We all know about Google and use it for web searches. Of course there are many more search engines out there that are frequently used – Yahoo!, MSN, AltaVista, Lycos, and others.

In thinking about the “findability” your website for each of the different search engines, take a look at the chart available at SearchEngines.com.  It lays out how each of the major search engines determines their individual page rankings.

This is a helpful tool to print out and discuss with your website developer as you continue to monitor and improve your website.

For many of the real estate professionals out there, August is the time of year to take a look at your marketing and web/online strategies as you gear up for the Fall season and plan ahead to next Spring. In developing and re-developing your online strategies, a key factor in effective implementation is whether or not you can be found online.  One way to increase the number of home buyers & sellers that find you on the web is through “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO).

In short, SEO is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to your websites and blogs. (thanks Wikipedia!) For real estate professionals, this means increasing the number of prospective home buyers and sellers that can find you via a web search on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and other search engines. 

Think of it as the “Findability” of your web site!

The good news is that you don’t have to pay an expense tech consultant to help you with this (though you can if your budget allows!). 

So you ask – “What are some quick and easy ways to begin to increase your SEO for your web marketing?”

1. Ask yourself – “What are the top 10 search terms that a home buyer or seller will use in searching for real estate and/or an agent in your area?”  Be sure that these terms are well-integrated into your web site and URL.

2. Add a catchy title and key phrase to your website that includes key search terms that you developed. (i.e. “Mary Smith, Anytown’s Real Estate Agent”). 

3. If you are not planning to add a Blog to your site, be sure to constantly update your website with new content on a regular basis.  This includes information such as real estate market information for you area or maybe a Commentary section to your site where you add new content at least once a week.

4. Be sure that the “key words” on your site are in TEXT, not in static images like .GIF or .JPEG files.  Many website that include an agent’s contact info integrated into a nice looking .GIF or .JPEG file.  The problem is that Google and other search engines cannot read this information and the information in a static image will not be found, thus hurting your Google page rank. An easy test is whether or not you can copy and paste text from your web page to a word document, such as your name, areas that you cover, and email address.  If you cannot copy and paste, then Google can’t find it.

Back later this week with some more SEO tips!!