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Tons of fun new features going on here at Altos Research. Today we get to announce AltosXplorer: our full database query and charting system, is now mobile! That's right folks, a couple terabytes of real estate statistics and pretty charts right at your fingertips.

Altos subscribers: Get your AltosXplorer mobile link by logging in to your account and selecting My Xplorer, Xplorer Mobile from the menu. Then send the URL to your phone. That's it! (You will, of course, need a phone with a web browser. And it'll need to have javascript enabled. My Blackberry did not have javascript enabled by default, FWIW.)

On your phone, you'll be able to select market area, city, zip code, and any of a bunch of different statistics. Want to take a peek at condo inventory trends while showing properties to a buyer client? Just a couple of clicks and you're at the data.

Lead Contact Form Goes Mobile Too!

Many of our realtor subscribers like to use the data to reach new clients. What do you do when you find yourself engaged in a conversation about the market with a someone? Well now you can say, "Here, let me send you a report, you can check for yourself." The AltosConnect mobile lead-sign-up form is super handy. Pop in their name and contact information and they'll have a local market report in their inbox before you're even done with the conversation. How cool is that? We rolled this out a couple weeks ago. Lots of positive response.

To get the link to the mobile version of your AltosConnect contact form widget, sign in to your account, select My Connect from the left hand menu, Save and Preview the widget, and enter your phone number. Again, that's it! Bookmark it on your phone and you'll always have access to your Altos database.

Give both features a try and let me know how they work for you!

Big week here at Altos Research World Headquarters. We get to announce our latest addition to the team, Kris Miranda!

Kris is taking the role of Customer Service Guru. That means most of the time she'll be working with our Realtor subscribers - helping them maximize their benefit of working with Altos, getting them up to speed quickly, holding hands when necessary.

Her talents include all those areas that our clients care about - strong web technical chops, excellent experience with internet marketing and she's a great problem solver.

We have ambitions here at Altos to really distinguish ourselves with our customer service, much the way the team at Zappos and our friends at RealEstateShows have done. It took us a long search but we found someone who has the skills and style to be totally focused on the strategic and tactical success of our clients. We couldn't be more excited.

Everyone bid Kris a warm welcome. She's your new best friend!

Our latest National Real Estate Market Report is out today. Prices continuing their drop nationally, with some evidence that the price declines are even accelerating. Here's the press release. The November 7, 2008 PDF Report can be downloaded here.

Report: Real Estate Prices Decline by 1.5% in October
The Altos Research Real-Time Real Estate Report measures current real estate data in major markets around the country. The latest data shows home prices continuing their decline, dropping 1.5% in October. Inventory of available homes declined in all 26 markets monitored in the report, but demand levels are dropping faster than supply.

Mountain View, CA (PRWEB) November 9, 2008 -- The Altos 10-City Composite Price Index showed a decline in asking prices of 1.5% in October and 2.9% for the past three months. Prices of properties listed for-sale fell in 22 of 26 major markets according to the Real-Time Housing Market Report, 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 October - and 7.1% over the most recent three-month period. This marks the seventh consecutive month that Las Vegas has posted the fastest rate of declining prices among major markets. Listing prices rose at the fastest rate in Denver - up 0.7% in October - followed by Houston where prices were up 0.6%. Denver and Houston are now the only markets showing three months of sequential price increases.

"The fleeting signs of price stability that we saw during the summer have now completely vanished," said Stephen Bedikian, partner and research director for Real IQ. "October's stock market crash has crushed consumer confidence and housing price declines have resumed across most major markets."

Inventory levels declined in all 26 markets. Inventory fell by the largest amounts in Boston and Charlotte with inventory contracting 7.9% and 5.7% respectively. Several other markets showed inventory declines of more than four percent for the month including: San Jose, Detroit, Houston and Phoenix.

"During October the steady trend of declining inventory continued with every single market showing a drop," said Michael Simonsen, CEO and co-founder of Altos Research. "However, economic conditions have been eroding housing market demand faster than supply is contracting with the result that listing prices continue to fall."
Twenty-three of 26 markets had an average days-on-market of 100 or more. The average days-on-market rose in all 26 markets. By far, the market with the slowest rate of inventory turnover was Miami at an average of 172 days-on-market. Miami has experienced the slowest market turnover in every month since September 2007. Miami's rate of turnover is now twice as slow as San Francisco which enjoyed the fastest rate of inventory turnover at an average of 86 days-on-market.

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 timeliest source of housing market data on current market activity.

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.

About Altos Research
Altos Research LLC pioneered real-time real estate research. Founded in 2005, the company's information products serve investors, traders, and thousands of real estate professionals. Because real estate data is traditionally obscure and highly latent, Altos built the Real-Time Market Intelligence(TM) platform to monitor dozens of housing market metrics as they are right now in local markets across the country. The company publishes real estate reports and real estate data each week for thousands of zip codes around the country.

...what's going to happen to condo prices in Manhattan?

We've noted elsewhere that New York city real estate has managed hold up reasonably well while Rome burns, though 2009 is looking a bit smoky for condos in the financial services capital of the world. On the horizon watch the three confluential variables:

1. The layoffs be a-comin'
2. Bonuses are heading down for those who remain
3. The dollar is strengthening

Here's what we know about the Manhattan condo market as of September 12, 2008.

• Year over year, we see condo prices in Manhattan (all zips) basically flat at a median price right around $1.6 million.
• That buys you on average, incidentally, a 1200 square foot, 2 bed, 1 bath place in a 64 year old building. Of course the "average" condo in Manhattan is as elusive as the "average" family in the country. Let me know when you meet one. By the way, we're talking condos specifically here. NYC's bizzarro-world co-op structure is examined in different data.
• They've been on the market, on average, for over four months. My guess is that this number skews higher than it might feel like if you're actually shopping in Manhattan, because, more than anywhere else in the country, the best properties move with behind-the-scenes, my-broker-knows-someone kind of deals.
• [self promotional aside: if you want to dig into all these details yourself, start on our free data for New York, and register. Subscribe to the Condos report for NYC and dive into the parts of town you care about. end promotion]

Where do we go from here?

• Securities Industry employment fell by 11% in the last bubble burst. Bear Sterns, Lehman, Merrill, AIG: they're coming fast and furious this time too.
• It's well known that bonuses drive much of the seasonal demand, on the Street in the
  past couple years a very simple, very common trade has been to short the builders and go long commodities. The evaporated funds behind the long commodities positions alone are going to eat big chunks from the 2008 bonus pool.
• Other things eating at this year's bonuses - M&A is way down, IPOs are non-existent. New product innovation ("Hey," says some underwriter at AIG, "let's insure these sub-prime loans against losses! We can't lose!") is crushed by internal or governmental forces. The liquidity that leveraged it all. Sheesh, I get
  exhausted just listing the down forces.
• International money (particularly Europe and Middle East) has been a prop for New York real estate for over a year now. For some in the world, Manhattan real estate hasn't been this cheap in a long time. Likely a small percentage of over all transactions, these push the margins enough to keep a floor on demand and therefore prices. But now: The last couple months have seen a dramatic turn in the dollar as the European economy weakens also.

So, look, the top-end of most regional markets has weathered the storm so far (see the discussion on my Fox TV interview). And Manhattan is notably the top-end for the region. But the fact is we're just starting this recession and this time around it's a financials-led recession. The few factors keeping Manhattan condos afloat into 2008 are evaporating in front of our eyes. My guess: Median price for Manhattan condo will down 20% in 2009. That part is just a guess. I'm simply finding it difficult to identify any factors to be sanguine about.

We have another cool slide show up at BusinessWeek.com this week. They asked us to dig out the local markets where homes are selling the fastest. Here's a newsflash, folks, even the highest demand markets are moving like molasses. A fun look at the data nonetheless. We looked at 20 metros around the country and picked out one or two zip codes where the rate of turnover wasn't abysmal.

Also, in case you missed the bulletin to the Altos Research fan club: I'll be on the Fox Business channel tomorrow morning (September 9) between 8:00 and 8:30am California time with Brian Sullivan. We'll talking the housing market, natch. Check it out. Let me know if you find the live stream on the FBN site.

The folks at IAC (NASDAQ:IACI) broke into five different companies this week with the real estate and mortgage related assets now under the umbrella of a company called Tree.com (NASDAQ:TREE) Is escaping from the conglomerate goo going to help this group prosper? Tree ostensibly has a bunch of internet properties but from where I sit, only two are viable, ahem, branches- LendingTree.com and RealEstate.com.




The former is the web 1.0 mortgage holdover with traffic now supported by TV ads. The latter a straightforward real estate broker with simply the best domain name in the business. The rest of the properties are a collection of, shall I say, unimpressive lending and home-search affiliate web sites.



Needless to say, being a volume mortgage player is a scary business right now. Maybe the secondary markets recover enough to support this model on-going, maybe, um, not. According to their S-1, Tree has limited exposure to the subprime and Alt-A mess. Surprising that they escaped that temptation that hit the etrades, etc. so hard. Good for them.

What does Tree have to offer? As a web site, RealEstate.com is decent enough to get a solid stream of leads by virtue of being many home searchers' very first stop on the internet. (Evidenced by the steady 800k visitors/month). The domain name is a built-in low-cost marketing channel for a brokerage. A really nice asset for sales and to recruit agents (the real business of brokerages). Is it enough? The site risks getting walloped by innovation happening in the intensely competitive home search space. (see Trulia, Estately, Redfin, Roost, Zillow, heck even Realtor.com is lumbering more quickly these days.) The big question for the future of this unit is whether the technology costs of keeping competitive continue to remain cheaper than traditional marketing channels for brokers.

Of Tree's lesser brands, I identify with the business proposition of Improvenet - home contractors and service guys need a better way to be found). But the competition with craigslist has to be brutal. And Angie's List is starting to run away with the premium end of the contractor referral market.

The bottom line for TREE is this: in the internet real estate space, it's a tough time to be an incumbent and a great time to be an innovator. Tree, despite the new name, is the incumbent.

[disclosure: we have realtor clients in the RealEstate.com brokerage and like all our clients we sincerely hope they kick ass.]

It's been over a year since we last hosted the Carnival of Real Estate (my how the landscape has changed). We like hosting because it gives us an opportunity to find new voices and highlight the good work going on out there in the blogosphere. Plus, this time around we have a ready-made clever metaphor to use in highlighting the best blogging submissions to the carnival. Not content with a simple gold-silver-bronze metaphor, we thought we'd prowl around the margins of the Olympics to highlight the things that make these games unique. Enjoy.

Let's kick things off with the opening ceremonies

• For articulately exposing an insider tale of don't-believe-your-eyes-trickery, David Blockhus gets this week's award for The Best CGI Enhanced Opening Ceremonies.

The Games are an international affair

• The Countries with Fewer Medals than Michael Phelps award goes, of course, to Canadian John Pasalis at movesmartly.com. John takes a look at an IMF report and why Canada's housing market may be less volatile than the US.

As the week progresses we get to see the competitors up close

• How do you get foreclosed on when someone gives you a new home? Why, take out a $450,000 second mortgage, of course! Since it pains me to read this, TheDigeratiLife gets the Inverted Elbow award.
• Karen Goodman gets Synchronized diving is a sport?! recognition for her straightforward take on St. Louis Market data (and a blog titled, ahem, Real Estate Insights)
• The Underage Gymnasts award goes to Pam Buda for a Cinderella story that has just begun.
• The Seven-Foot-Wingspan award goes this week to Dan Green for his take on the broad reach of the latest trends in mortgage lending.

Finally, no Olympics is complete without The heartfelt story of overcoming personal adversity to rise to glory.

• This week the Bob Costas narrated vignette goes to Riley Smith and the Coconut's tale of a horrifying foreclosure purchase process that actually ends well. [dabbing tears of joy from corner of eye].

So there you have it folks. I've been mildly ambivalent about these games, but there's always entertainment to be found when dig a little. Hopefully you'll find the same with this week's carnival. Next week hosted at ValleyMarket.com (Alaska!)

Over the past couple of years, we've built our client base with realtors and investors, buyers and sellers, with appraisers and traders, with planners and researchers.

During that time, our products for those folks have taken the form of either detailed analytical reports or simply raw data. Either we do all the analytical work, or you do it.

More and more though, we found that there is a big group of people who need an easy way to solve more unique problems than we can possibly address in our pre-designed local reports, but these folks have neither the time nor the experience to sift through the mountains of real estate data on their own.

We realized we needed a product that lets our clients easily query the vast Altos Research database to get the specific answers they need, and use the output in any number of different ways. Thus AltosXplorer was born.


AltosXplorer is for you if you've ever looked at our report products and said, "I don't need just one city, I need to be able to investigate any stat for any zip in the whole area (region, state, country)." Think about the investor who has opportunities that may come up anywhere in Florida, and wants to quickly compare two markets when a new deal arrives.

Or consider an appraiser who works all over Chicagoland. Any given day he needs to illustrate just a couple of key measures in a neighborhood to augment the rest of the data in his report.

For our Realtor clients, AltosXplorer is a lot of fun too. Previously, in order to use our AltosCharts you needed to formulate a long URL to get the right chart. With AltosXplorer, you build the chart you want with just a few clicks and then click, copy and paste! (See Kris Berg's first foray for the perfect example of how AltosXplorer was intended for our Pro clients.)

Can you tell we're giddy around here? I could go on and on but I'll wrap in a single (albeit multi-claused) sentence:

AltosXplorer is a rich internet application that enables you to do your own analysis, create your own trend AltosCharts, on our full database, and export the data to your own analysis in just a few clicks.

Learn more here. Try it out here.

Enjoy.

Longtime bear Nouriel Roubini is out today with this bit of apocalyptic, headline grabbing prognostication. Roubini, you'll remember, predicted recession for 2006 and 2007 before claiming prescience in 2008. I wish I could write him off as a perma-bear, but there's too much actual data supporting his argument. In his latest media alert, Roubini mixes some valid (and scary) points with plausible conjecture and oddly placed policy opinions (I wish he'd leave out the last group, they detract from the compelling facts of the situation).

The facts are:

• Small banks have massive exposure to real estate (the average small bank has 67% of its assets in real estate)
• Dozens of large regional/national banks (a la IndyMac) are also bankrupt given their extreme exposure to real estate and will also go bust
• The FDIC that has already depleted 10% of its funds in the rescue of IndyMac alone
• Losses are spreading all the way up to prime mortgages and commercial real estate; to unsecured consumer credit (credit cards, student loans, auto loans); ... to corporate bonds ... to CDSs where $62 trillion of nominal protection sits on top an outstanding stock of only $6 trillion of bonds
• In a typical US recession equity prices fall by an average of 28% relative to the peak. But this is not a typical US recession; it is rather a severe one associated with a severe financial crisis

Implications of the facts:

• FDIC will run out of funds and will have to be recapitalized by Congress as its insurance premia were woefully insufficient
• The collapse of many [risk] counterparties will lead to a systemic collapse of this market. Municipalities will go bust, hundreds of small banks, some major money center banks, the entire independent broker-dealer sector will evaporate along with $1-$2 trillion of credit losses.
• Equity prices will fall by about 40% relative to their peak. So, we are only barely mid-way in the meltdown of stock markets.
• Leaving aside the risk of a collapse of the US dollar given this easier monetary policy the Fed Funds rate may end up being closer to 0% than 1% by the end of this financial disaster
• The rest of the world is in for the pain too and as a result, energy and commodity prices will fall 20 to 30% from their recent bubbly peaks.

Dire stuff indeed. The skeptic in me can't help but ask why, in a severe global recession and with the subtraction of trillions of dollars of leverage, commodities that are up 500% in a few years would only pull pack 30%.

I always appreciate Brad Inman's perspective as a consummate real estate insider who is without obligation to cheerlead (like, ahem, some) and an entrenched market leader with the cojones to embrace change. Brad nails it today with 10 predictions for the next phase of the housing bubble burst. Here's a few:

• Exotic loans of any kind will be completely out of favor, leaving many borrowers and many properties unfundable.
• Home sellers will become active lenders, but only those who have equity. Seller financing will help some transactions.
• Second homes, expensive houses and certain types of investment property will be penalized and difficult to fund.

Read the whole piece.

My friend Jeff, the Xbroker, finally launched RateSpeed.com a couple weeks ago. This is a project he's been working on for several years, a personal crusade to clean up the mortgage brokering business. Jeff gave me a demo the last month, and I've since referred multiple people-real, live home buyers and re-financers, to the site. I've been meaning to blog about the site for a while, and I'm now here to say, RateSpeed rocks. The site is incredibly useful for finding current mortgage rates and understanding what they cost.
RateSpeed's model is very simple: they source mortgage rate data from tons of originators, and feed that information back to you. They've done it with three characteristics shockingly rare in the mortgage world.

1. You don't have to give up anything but an email address.
2. Any RateSpeed affiliate broker has to fix and publish their fees. The system doesn't allow for the-no-fees-but-we-gouge-you-on-the-rate-spread and other opaque pricing nastiness the industry is so famous for. What you see is what you get.
3. The presentation of available mortgage products each with their costs and benefits is so straightforward, you can actually be making informed mortgage decisions in just a few seconds.

RateSpeed licenses the platform to mortgage brokers. In exchange, Brokers get an incredibly powerful marketing tool for their site - if I'm any gauge, consumers will gladly give up an email address to see the most current rates and a real, transparent picture of costs.

How cool is that?

A couple of events coming up at the end of July:

We'll be at the Inman Connect conference in San Francisco for the week of July 23-25. I'll be speaking in the blogging session on "Content That Hooks Readers" which, if you read this blog, you'll know I'm woefully under-qualified for. The good news is that the session is hosted by Kris Berg, and includes the inimitable Jeff Corbett, Benn Rosales, Ben Martin, and Sarah Hromack. Heavy hitters all. You're bound to learn something.

We've ponied up for a (gasp) sponsorship this time. Make sure you come by and help us pretend it's worth the investment.

The preceding Tuesday July 22 is the Real Estate BarCamp - conveniently also in San Francisco. Which, when shortened to REBarCamp it sounds like a concrete conference, I know, but I assure you it'll be more compelling. At a BarCamp the attendees get to create the conference on the fly - presenting content that you think others care about and interacting with those who know stuff you want to learn. I've been to a few bar-camps including the proto-FOO Camp last year and they're always a super enjoyable experience.

Scott and I thought we'd bring some Altos Research technology goodies to share with our partners and anyone else who wants to learn how to maximize all the Altos products. So if you're on your way to San Francisco for the Inman conference, stretch a day earlier and come for the BarCamp.

An eye-opening piece in today's Chicago Tribune today highlighting a recent Reason Magazine study that ranked the 35 biggest US on their propensity for laws restricting personal freedoms: alcohol, tobacco, food, sex, movement, gambling, guns, and a few idiosyncratic others.

The study reveals Chicago to be a stagnant brew of blue-state for-your-own-good paternalism and red-state moralism: the most governmentally controlling city in the country. And, as the article puts it, "it wasn't even close."

Maybe it's a stretch to tie this disheartening trend into the real estate market, but let me try: It's about where people want to live.

American cities have enjoyed a nearly two decades of prosperity and revitalization. They have done so as people (generally young people) sought a rebound from the stifling banality of American Suburbia. Cities bring depth and texture, excitement and engagement, grit and opportunity. These laws are designed to smooth out the very grit that people seek.

The legal activism that seeks a protective climate suitable for everyone's comfort-level winds up with a harsh climate tolerable by none.

No city is immune of course. San Francisco is incredibly nosy about what you eat, live, and move, but is ok if you like to partake in recreational drugs. Louisville may not like your bedroom practices, but a bourbon and a concealed weapon make for a good party anyway. Chicago just can't make up it's mind so Richie Daly steamrolls everyone.

The impact on housing prices is a long term one. Over time, these personal nuances are the underpinnings of a city's desirability for the next generation of creators, builders, innovators. These freedoms are what people seek cities for. Restrict at your peril.

REALTOR Magazine is out with their annual 30 Under 30 issue. I'm always a sucker for these types of articles highlighting the young and uncannily-good-looking - no matter the industry.

So I was browsing through this year's list of the preternaturally successful and - waitaminnit - I KNOW these guys! Check the Friends-of-Altos on the list:

Boston's Condo king Mike Dimella

East Bay AltosCharts hound Tyler Moxley

and the inimitable Jon Washburn of ActiveRain

(Even if I'm, ahem, a bit beyond the bounds for being included in the list, I'm ecstatic to see our friends on it. Look out, though, because next year Altos will be gunning for 25% reach.)

Congratulations on the attention, guys. It's well deserved.

NAR is out this morning with data from March (and updates to February). Thanks guys.

Summary: March prices ticked up from February ($195k to $200k), but sales volume resumed its decline.

The money quote from NAR's release:

[NAR economist Lawrence Yun] "Though mortgage rates are at historically low levels, some borrowers are facing restrictive lending practices in declining markets," Mr. Yun said.

Some borrowers?!

If you're looking for the inflection point at the bottom of this market, watch the trends in lending to people with good credit. Right now, even good buyers are blocked.

More at WSJ