press coverage

We released the latest National Real Estate Report today. You can download it here [PDF].

The data inspects 26 metro markets around the country and tracks home prices, inventory and days on market. We also track the Altos 10-City Composite for a National perspective on the trends.

Here's the press release:

HOUSING PRICES DOWN BY 0.3% IN MAY

Listing Prices Fell in Only 11 of 26 markets

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA � June 10, 2008 � The Altos 10-City Composite Price Index showed a decline in asking prices of just 0.3% in May. Prices of properties listed for-sale increased in 15 of 26 major markets according to the Real-Time Real Estate Report, jointly published by Altos Research, the premier source for real-time real estate research, and market analysis consultancy Real IQ�.

Asking prices fell at the fastest rate in Las Vegas - down 3.7% during May and 6.5% over the most recent three-month period. Listing prices rose at the fastest rate in Denver up 3.7% and Dallas up 2.2% during May. Prices increased by more than one percent for the month in 11 of 26 markets.

"The weakest markets continue to be concentrated in Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada which all experienced the fastest price increases during the boom times," said Michael Simonsen, CEO and co-founder of Altos Research. "Now these same markets are outpacing others on the downside as foreclosures and price declines continue relentlessly. We�re seeing some stability in many markets outside of these hard-hit states."

Listed property inventories increased substantially with the 10-City Composite markets showing an increase of 7.9% during the first quarter and 3.7% in May. Inventory rose in 25 of 26 markets with the Miami market being the only exception. Inventory actually declined 1.3% in Miami during May and 2.4% during the past three months.

Data in the Real-Time Housing Market Report is based on analysis of over one million properties currently listed for-sale in 26 metropolitan markets across the country. The report is the most timely source of housing market data on current market activity.

For the Altos 10-City Composite, the average days-on-market was 106 � an improvement from 111 in April and 113 in March. Miami experienced the longest time-on-market span with an average days-on-market of 152. San Francisco led all markets with the fastest rate of inventory turnover at an average of 73 days-on-market.

"Continued growth in inventory across virtually all markets will restrain near-term price increases," said Stephen Bedikian, partner and research director for Real IQ. "Markets like Denver and Dallas are showing strength because they did not experience high price inflation during the boom and are showing only limited inventory growth now. Affordability and limited inventory are the keys to a healthy market."

The report examines housing pricing, inventory levels and market conditions in 31 major U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs): Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington, DC. The first report was published December 7, 2007 and is released every month. Report downloads are available at: www.altosresearch.com.

Our latest National Real Estate Report is out this morning. The headline this month is that while the Altos National 10-City Composite price fell by 0.6% from last month, prices only fell in 7 of the 25 markets covered in the report. Maybe some signs of life? Too soon to call. Probably just spring.

Here's where you can download the full PDF May 2008 National Real Estate Report.

Here's a chart of our two national housing market composite price metrics.

National Real Estate Prices as measured by the Altos 10-City and Altos 25-City Composites. Data through the first week of May 2008

Here's the full press release:

Housing Prices Down by 0.6% in April 2008

National real estate report sees prices falling in only 7 of 25 metropolitan markets. Real-time real estate data also indicates rising inventories and stabilizing market time in many parts of the country.

Mountain View, May 8 2008 - The Altos 10-City Composite Price Index showed a decline in asking prices of 0.9% over the past three months and continued that decline in April with a decrease of 0.6% for the month. Prices of properties listed for-sale fell in only 7 of 25 major markets according to the Real-Time Real Estate Report, jointly published by Altos Research, the premier source for real-time real estate research,

Asking prices fell at the fastest rate in Las Vegas down 2.7% during April. The largest three-month declines occurred in Las Vegas and Philadelphia, off 5.1% and 4.5% respectively. Listing prices rose at the fastest rate in Denver up 2.6% and Charlotte up 2.1%. Prices also increased by more than one percent in April in Boston, Houston, Dallas and San Francisco.

"While this is not shaping up to be a typically strong spring selling season," said Stephen Bedikian, partner and research director for Real IQ, "we are now seeing price stability or price increases in most markets. During April, only the most troubled markets such as Las Vegas, Miami, Tampa, Philadelphia and Phoenix, continued to show asking price declines."

For-sale property inventories increased in 19 of 25 markets during April. Inventory in the Altos 10-City Composite markets rose just 0.8% for the month and 5.6% during the most recent three-month period. Data in the Real-Time Housing Market Report is based on analysis of over one million properties currently listed for-sale in 31 metropolitan markets across the country.

The report is the most timely source of housing market data on current market activity. For the Altos 10-City Composite, the average days-on-market was 111 an improvement from 119 in March and 122 in February. Miami and Detroit experienced the longest time-on-market spans with an average days-on-market of 153 and 143 respectively. Austin led all markets with the fastest rate of inventory turnover at an average of 67 days-on-market.

"Inventory buildup is typical during the spring selling season but so far it has been fairly modest and that is reflected in the decline in average days-on-market," said Michael Simonsen, CEO and co-founder of Altos Research. "Tight mortgage credit, foreclosures, and economic fears continue to put pressure on the real estate market but if inventory growth remains restrained, we may see supply and demand balance out. "

The report examines housing pricing, inventory levels and market conditions in 31 major U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs): Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington, DC. The Real-Time Real Estate Report is released every month.

What we found mirrors much of the rest of the country: the close in, nice neighborhoods are where the demand is. Go further out and time-to-sell a home climbs into the many months range.

Click on any city name for the real estate report for that town.

I did a bunch of press calls last week and they all had one question in common: Everyone wants to know if it's a good time to buy.

Our BusinessWeek article from Friday carries the theme:

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.

Prices are down so much, there must be bargains, right?

Well, yes. But don't kid yourself. Getting a steal on a great property is NOT a slam dunk.

Glenn Kelman at Redfin has an excellent post on the challenges involved with mining for bargains in short sales, foreclosures, and other distressed properties. (aside: Glenn's Redfin corporate blog is consistently cogent and entertaining. If you're at all interested in real estate or startups, you should read it.)

Some of our Wall Street clients are well-financed funds that buy distressed mortgages from the banks. In many cases they're actually taking ownership of hundreds of properties every month. Guess what. As a buyer looking for a bargain, these guys are your competition.

So what's the recipe for investing in this market?

1. Be well-financed. In fact, be over-financed. Even good-credit first-timers are having trouble getting loans this spring. But if you're a well capitalized investor with a solid loan-to-value portfolio and a good relationship with your lender, you have a strategic advantage right now.
2. Build insider channels. Chances are if you're only driving around on weekends, you're going to miss the deals. You'll need to augment your search with other avenues, like foreclosure auctions or even direct lender relationships, to truly capitalize on the opportunities. Kelman points out that Redfin's buyers making offers on short sale properties are only succeeding at a 15% rate. Remember that you're competing against professional investors and specialized Wall Street firms for these deals. Also know that these specialized firms don't really want to be long-term owners, so the opportunity occurs when you work directly with them.
   
3. Do your homework. Know your market and your strategy. How are you finding the property? Where are you going to find them? Has your realtor handled many? Is she already selling some? You already know Altos for market analysis, but there are lots of excellent investment analysis websites (some marvelous Altos partners include Deedquest.com and InvestmentRiches.com, check them out.)
4. Be persistent. There's no question the bargains are out there. But your bid on a short sale or foreclosure will be subject to lender approval. (Kris Berg did a great illustration of the trend San Diego.) That means if you're aiming for a bargain, some of your offers will be getting rejected. That means you'll have to keep shopping.
5. Hope against large-scale bailouts. Every government deal aimed at helping owners ironically hurts buyers. You can argue right or wrong, but if you're a buyer, bailouts shrink your opportunity.

In short, bargain shopping for homes is like any bargain hunting. It takes insight and perseverance. It takes relationships. And above all it takes the financial wherewithal to capitalize when the opportunity strikes. Good luck.

Highlights from the March 2008 National Real Estate Report:

• The Altos 10-City Composite median home price declined by 0.4% in February. That's a slightly slower pace than the 1.6% three month decline from December 2007 - February 2008.
• Central cities like Denver and Dallas continue to outperform the coastal bubblevilles. By outperform, I mean housing prices were essentially flat. The Dallas Morning News already picked up the story. As I said in the article, Dallas never climbed as high as say, San Diego, so it has less to fall.

Here's the press release

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - March 12, 2008 -
The Altos 10-City Composite showed a decline in asking prices of 1.6% over the past three months and continued that decline in February with a decrease of 0.4% for the month. Prices of properties listed for sale fell in 15 of 22 major markets according to the Real-Time Real Estate Report, jointly published by Altos Research, the premier source for real-time real estate
research, and market analysis consultancy Real IQ™.

Asking prices fell at the fastest rate in San Diego, down 3.0% during February and 5.2% for the most recent three-month period. Prices also fell by more than two percent in the Detroit, Los Angeles and Las Vegas markets during February. Prices increased in Chicago, Charlotte, New York, Dallas, Phoenix and Houston during February and were flat in Seattle.

"We are seeing some stability in asking prices as a result of seasonal reductions in inventory during the past winter months," said Stephen Bedikian, partner and research director for Real IQ. "Unfortunately we also saw an increase in listed property inventories this month which is atypical this early in the year. Only a sustained reduction in inventory will arrest the market's fall nationally."

For sale property inventories increased in 19 of 22 markets during February. The Altos 10-City Composite showed a supply increase of 2.5% for the month. Property inventories declined in only three markets: Chicago, Indianapolis and San Francisco.

Data in the Real-Time Real Estate Report is based on analysis of over one million homes currently listed for-sale in 22 metropolitan markets across the country. The report is the most timely source of real estate data available.

"Inventory growth combined with the recent rise in mortgage rates and reported job losses does not bode well for future price stability," said Michael Simonsen, CEO and co-founder of Altos Research. "We expect housing price declines to resume in earnest during the next several months."

The Real-Time Real Estate Report also found that time-on-market remained high. Miami and Detroit experienced the longest time-on-market spans with an average days-on-market of 146 and Minneapolis was close behind at 145 in February. Seventeen of 22 markets had an average days-on-market of over 100. Denver led all markets with the fastest rate of inventory turnover at an average of 77 days-on-market, followed by Dallas at 79 days.

The report examines housing pricing, inventory levels and market conditions in 22 major U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs): Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington, DC. The Real-Time Real Estate Report is released every month.

Links:

The Altos Real Estate Data services

This month's National Real Estate Report PDF

RealIQ

Some Altos coverage in Wall Street insider publication Merger Market recently. I met writer Hana Askren in New York last month at the O'Reilly Money:Tech conference. Her article on us is out now. Merger Market's output is all behind a paywall, so here's a snippet of the contents.

Note: Since this pub writes about mergers and acquisitions, the article is centered on the very hypothetical question, Who might acquire Altos Research? With that caveat, enjoy some rampant, totally unfounded speculation:

Altos Research, a Mountain View, California-based real estate data company, could become a target for strategics in the information industry...The startup is profitable, self-funded, and is not actively seeking investments, Simonsen said. Several companies have approached Altos seeking strategic partnerships and some have sought to buy a stake in the company, he added, although none have yet pursued a buyout. One of these strategics may eventually buy the company, he said, but declined to name potential bidders, adding that Altos already has "several relationships in place" with partner companies.

...

An industry executive ... said it would make sense for title insurance companies to acquire a real estate data startup like Altos in order to add to their data offerings. This news service reported that First American has acquired a number of data and analysis companies in recent years, including Basis100.

...

Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist in the financial technology industry, also said it would make sense for Altos to be acquired as a "tuck-in" by companies like Fidelity National Information Services or Core Logic. He added that a company like Thomson would also find Altos attractive, as an addition to its information services...A futures exchange might acquire Altos, said the industry executive. Kedrosky agreed, saying that exchanges are becoming aggressive about providing more services to listed companies...Altos collects weekly real estate data and sells it to individual brokers, realtors, and real estate information companies, said Simonsen, as well as Wall Street firms and hedge funds which use the data for trading. Because of the nature of real estate transactions, he added, publicly available data can be more than six months old.

...

The company's first revenue-producing year was 2007 and it is growing at a rate of 20% each month, Simonsen said. While not disclosing revenues, he said that the company has thousands of customers and half of its revenue comes from Wall Street firms. Altos uses Farella Braun & Martel for its legal advising and does not have a relationship with an investment banker. Altos was founded in 2005 by Silicon Valley executives Simonsen and Jason Buberel, who own a majority of the company.

The Times points out today that some New York lawmakers are proposing legislation to prohibit mortgage foreclosures for a year.

Portfolio Magazine's Felix Salmon describes it as "too early." I'll describe it as "insane."

Look, if I'm a lender, and I can't rely on my ability to collect the collateral against which the loans are made, do you really think I'll keep lending? Next thing you know the legislators will be trying to compel me to lend.

Look out below.

Felix pointed out the strength in the Altos Manhattan Condo Index. We haven't yet started publishing the New York real estate data on our free research page, so I'll have to dig in manually to get the goodies on the rest of the area.

[trivial aside: I was the anonymous source of the visual details of the U2 concert described in the first paragraph of this article in the inaugural Conde Nast Portfolio magazine last year.]

Last week we published the February editition of our National Housing Market report [PDF download]. I was traveling and forgot to add it to the blog, so here it is. We've expanded the coverage this month and added a few more cities ebyond the initial 20 covered by the Case Shiller Index. We'll add a few more important cities in the upcoming versions of the reports too.

Here are the highlights from this month's report.

• Listing prices declined in 19 of 22 markets during January. Prices only increased in the New York metro area during January and were flat in Dallas and Phoenix.

• The largest monthly decline of 3.6% occurred in San Francisco. Over the three month period, listing prices in San Francisco have fallen by 6.1% from $708,551 to $665,100. The other California markets of Los Angeles and San Diego logged declines of more than 2% for the month of January.

• Property inventories declined in most markets except in the Northwestern markets of Seattle and Portland. Inventories tightened sharply in the Midwestern markets of Cleveland and Detroit with decreases of 10.4% and 5.4% respectively during January. Seasonal declines in listing inventories are typical during the winter months.

• Markets with the longest time-on-market are Miami and Minneapolis at an average of 144 days-on-market. Miami’s days-on-market only increased slightly from the previous month’s 143 days while Minneapolis jumped over 5% from 136 to 144 days. Sixteen of 22 markets had an average days-on-market of over 100.

• Denver led all markets with the fastest rate of inventory turnover at 61 days, followed closely by Dallas and San Diego at 80 days. The sharp decrease in Denver’s days-on-market indicator – almost 39% during the past three months – coupled with an inventory reduction of over 11% during the same period, should be a positive for listing prices in the coming spring selling season.

Money and technology are inseparable. Massive new tradable data sets are being exposed by the Web; new bottoms-up social networks are creating alternative ways of discovering investing ideas; a rising percentage of newswire content is being written and consumed by machines; new classes of monitoring services are revealing deep data that might otherwise go unnoticed and untraded for weeks; and real-time itself is being redefined.

"The conference is, of course, all about the confluence of Wall Street and Web 2.0. And what does that mean? Well, new ways of Web-2.0-style collaborating are changing money and investing, with the zero-sum game of Wall Street changing in the process. At the same time market mashups with new sources of web-based data -- auctions! real estate! pricing! weather! -- are transforming the never-ending hunt for a money-making edge."

I'll be presenting some data and observations on the Housing Futures markets, Case Shiller and Radar Logic RPX. Some cool stuff. If you're thinking about getting into the real estate derivatives trades, this is a session for you. Do try to stop by. Make sure you contact me if you do.

at the Inman Connect conference in New York a couple weeks ago. It's a great intro-to-Altos if you're wondering what we do.

Last week at the Inman Connect conference in NYC, one of the most-talked-about sessions was Brian Boero's "50 Tools and Technologies to Help You Win in a Slow Housing Market."

Brian is a partner at 1000Watt Consulting and a sophisticated marketer. The slides from Brian's rapid-fire presentation are now available at Inman. In it, he gave a nice (and totally unsolicited) plug for Altos Research (p49). Quite simply, "Know more about the market than your competition."

Inman's a marvelous confab for real estate professionals. The great thing about this message is that it applies to all our clients: Realtors, Wall Street traders, home buyers and sellers, investors, lenders, et al., captured in one pithy phrase. This from I guy I'd never met till I thanked him for the mention. Rock on.

This guy Brian has some mad skillz. For more, tune in to his blog on real estate marketing and technology.

Last month we started publishing the Real-Time National Housing Market Report with Steve at Real IQ. The January 2008 edition was published yesterday. You can download the full report here.

The report was picked up today morning by the Dallas Morning News. Dallas is notable because we've watched demand stay at less-bad-than-most.

Here's the press release that accompanied this months report.

HOUSING PRICES CONTINUED TO DECLINE IN DECEMBER

Time-on-Market Increased as Housing Market Demand Falls Faster than Supply

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – January 9, 2008 – Prices of properties listed for-sale fell in 16 of 20 major markets according to the Real-Time Housing Market Report, jointly published by Altos Research, the premier source for real-time real-estate market research, and market analysis consultancy Real IQ™.

Prices fell at the fastest rate in San Francisco, down 4.6% during the 4th quarter. Prices also fell by more than three percent in the Las Vegas, San Diego, Los Angeles and Detroit markets during the most recent three month period.

Data in the Real-Time National Housing Market Report is based on analysis of over one million properties currently listed for-sale in 20 metropolitan markets across the country. The report is the most timelysource of housing market data on current market activity.

The report also found that the time-on-market increased in virtually all markets. Miami experienced the longest time-on-market span with an average days-on-market of 143 in December. Minneapolis and Detroit both had the second highest average days-on-market at 136.

“Sellers continue to adjust their price expectations downward but not quickly enough to keep pace with declining demand,” said Stephen Bedikian, partner and research director for Real IQ. “Until we see
declines in both inventory levels and days-on-market, we won’t have any confidence that supply and demand are balancing out.”

For-sale listed property inventories declined in most markets during the past three months except in the Florida markets of Tampa and Miami which posted inventory increases of 10.5% and 4.0% respectively.

Inventories declined dramatically in Boston with a decrease of 21.7%. Inventory also fell more than 15% in Minneapolis, Denver and Seattle. “Declining inventory levels are essential to a recovery in the housing market,” said Michael Simonsen CEO and co-founder of Altos Research. “However, if the economy continues to slow or enters a recession, we may see inventories balloon again in the Spring and downward pricing pressure on sellers will intensify.”

The report examines housing pricing, inventory levels and market conditions in 20 major U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs): Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington, DC. The first report was published December 7, 2007 and will be released every month.

We've had some really nice attention in the press and blogosphere the past week or so. Here's a quick summary so you can see what people are saying about Altos.

O'Reilly Radar: Tim O'Reilly highlights our real-time data products for Wall Street and the housing derivatives markets. I'll be presenting on this topic at the O'Reilly-sponsored Money:Tech conference in New York February 6-8.

In SFGate.com / San Francisco Chronicle Carol Llyod finds her friends in the market for a home in San Francisco - everyone is surprised how hot the market is. I love this kind of analysis. The data reveal so much more than the headlines can capture. Carol - have your friends email me and I'll set them up with the neighborhood level and insights that we do in our detail reporting.

Dustin thinks we're going to get acquired. And Robbie gives us a nice plug on Rain City Guide.

The bloggers at Redfin have been especially prolific lately. I like the approach Redfin uses for their blogging work. They've got a team of bloggers, each with an intelligent voice, tackling the local real estate markets they're in. None of it is too controversial, but it's solid content, targeted well for their customers.

Altos Links:

National Data for the Housing Derivatives and Case Shiller markets

San Francisco housing market