A Real Estate Discussion Blog

We have all obviously heard about the mortgage delinquency program sweeping the country and finding its way into every headline today.  But seeing it on this interactive map from the Wall Street Journal helped me get my head around which areas of the country are getting hit hardest right now, and what the delta is between now and two years ago.  

On this map you can mouse over any of the cities to get the current delinquency rate, how this has changed since the market peak, median home price for the area, and how this price has also changed since the market peak.  You can change this view to see a quarter from Q1 2005 to Q2 2007. 

Thought this was interesting to pass along if you are a more visual person. 

Link to map on Wall Street Journal Online

These two have battled in out on the charts and Kayne West was the clear winner selling 957,000 CDs to 50 Cent's 691,000.  But now that the dust has settled around the music sales feud, let's take it to the streets and find out who is winning the turf war.

First up, Kanye West's 6 bedroom, 4 bath, 3,299 square foot home in the flats of Beverly Hills, CA.  The top selling rapper reportedly paid $7,150,000 for the home which had not been on the market for almost 45 years!  Good thing the seller used a listing Agent to price the home and didn't go straight off the Zestimate because since there hasn't been any sales activity on the home for so long, we were pretty far off.  However, Kanye was well represented on the buy side of his deal as well with the home originally coming on the market at $8,499,000, then reduced to $7,499,000 with Kanye ultimately getting another $349,000 off to arrive at his sales price.  

Then over to the other coast where 50 hangs his second place ribbons, in Farmington, NJ.  50 bought the home in September 2003 for $4,100,000 from Monica Turner Tyson (she acquire the home as part of the divorce proceedings from Mike Tyson).  The home has 52 rooms making up 51,657 square feet of living space.  So if we are looking at square footage alone, 50 definitely comes out on top of this turf war.  Unfortunately, this home isn't on Zillow, but I am not sure we could accurately value it because we haven't yet added stripper poles yet into our valuation algorithm that 50 had installed throughout the home.  

50 had said that if Kanye beat him in record sales, he would retire from the rap scene.  Oh no, how will he ever pay his bills you might be asking!?!  Well, apparently he hopes to supplement his retirement income through the sale of his home which is currently listed for $18,500,000!  Either the real estate slowdown isn't affecting
Farmington, NJ or those were some expensive stripper poles he had installed!  

So while Kayne is enjoying life at the top of the charts, I wouldn't feel too bad for 50 Cent who seems to be winning the turf war in both size and home appreciation.  

I attended the RIS Media Conference in New York City last week. There continued to be a lot of talk of how things are a bit slow right now and also how the media has used this slow down as fodder for countless stories. 

One industry leader talked about how Agents should be proactively working with their local media outlets to ensure all the positive things that are going on in real estate right now get the attention they deserve.  But one of the most interesting ideas came from Alex Perillo, president and chief executive officer of the Realogy Franchise. 

He told a story of how every day on his way to work, he drove past a home that was for sale.  A couple of months later he was driving by the home and noticed a SOLD rider on the sign.  A two days after that, the sign was gone altogether.  If you were not someone who drove past this home every sign day or might assume that the owners had simply decided to take the home off the market because they couldn't find a buyer and thus fuel the "nothing is selling right now" theory.  Yes, the Agent would have been well served to keep the sign up until the whole selling process was complete.  But if you think about it from an industry-wide prospective, what if every Agent kept every sign on every home until the sale was complete?  Alex contended that if this happened the public would have a very different perspective on the number of homes moving. 

Now, extend this thinking into your advertising and how if every Agent dedicated 20% of their advertising into promoting SOLD inventory- or essentially leaving a virtual or print sign up in their advertising.  So much of advertising is about creating a perception, and by doing this he felt Agents together could significantly change the perception of what is actually going on in real estate markets across the US.  This type of message from local Agents that the public knows and trusts, could go so much farther than any paid advertising campaign a local or national association could run, because it is referencing something that is much easier to relate to- the home that just sold down the street. 

Think back four years ago when things were selling so fast that there wasn't a lot of inventory to actually advertise.  What did you have to do then- advertise your SOLDs!  Why not revert to that type of advertising now, and try to create the same type of emotion home buyers felt four years ago- that now is a good time to buy because other people are. 

So as you put together your newspaper ads. magazine ads, post cards, and buying featured home placement slots online, think about dedicating some of this advertising space to SOLD inventory.  If enough Real Estate professionals do this across the country, the home buying temperature could rise and perceptions could be changed. 

I live in Wicker Park (Chicago, IL) and absolutely love it.  The mix of people here is terrific- from artists to professionals to families.  Overall, the neighborhood has a great vibe.  I found this video DreamTown Realty put together for the neighborhood and wanted to share it.  Enjoy!  If you have any questions at all about the neighborhood, please let me know and I will be happy to discuss them with you.

http://search.realtyproducer.com/neighborhoodVideo.do?m=get&vid=0011

Also, check out the Wicker Park / Bucktown Chamber of Commerce website at http://www.wickerparkbucktown.com/. 

And lastly, check out http://www.wickerpark.com. 

A few weeks ago, Zillow announced that we were going to begin accepting Broker feeds in the future. Since then a lot of development has been going on behind the scenes to be able to offer this functionality to Brokers. While we still have a lot more to do until we post the feeds live on the site, we have some updates to share with you.

First off, there is now an official URL to get the information you need to start the feed process, http://www.zillowfeeds.com/. We have centralized all of the available information on this page. Be sure to fill out the form and give us your contact information so we can continue to send you updates as more information becomes available. Also on the form, please supply your feed URL. We will then test the feed ensuring that when your feed get set live, your information will be properly displayed from the get go.

As we have been out talking to Brokers about displaying their listings online, we have heard a lot of great questions. We took the most frequently asked questions and compiled them into a convenient document called Zillow Listings Feed Guide, An Overview. Questions like "Why Should I Feed To Zillow" and "How Do You Handle Leads" are answered.

Next, we have posted the Technical Specifications for feeding to Zillow, called Zillow Interchange Format (ZIF), which will allow you to automatically create information rich listings. If you currently have your data in the Trulia Feed Format (TFF), we can accept this format as well. Simply supply the URL of the feed you wish for us to pull from and we will take a look at it. If there are any compatibility issues with the code supplied, we will let you know.

Finally, the Terms Of Service are also now available online. We tried to make these as non-lawyer speak and short as possible!

We are so excited to be partnering with Brokers to supply this marketing platform to the Real Estate community. We continue to work as quickly as we can to bring the automated feed to the market, as we have heard much demand for such a process. In the meantime, you can still upload your listings through the Post Homes For Sale page.

(Updated the Terms link on 9.17.07)