Monthly Archives: April 2012

Assaults, murders of real estate professionals on the rise

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Fatal workplace injuries in the real estate industry have reached their highest level since at least 2003, with assaults and violent acts accounting for the largest share of deaths, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In 2010, the latest year for which the BLS has released statistics, there were 63 workplace fatalities in a BLS-defined real estate industry subcategory. The subcategory includes lessors of real estate (landlords); real estate agents and brokers and others who work in brokerage offices; and those who conduct activities related to real estate, such as property managers and appraisers.

That’s up from 53 such fatalities in 2009 — a 19 percent year-over-year increase and the highest level since at least 2003, the earliest year data is available.

Those deaths included 23 homicides, including 12 people employed as property lessors (landlords), and six people who worked in real estate brokerage offices.

In 2010, 940 workers in the real estate and rental and leasing category, which includes but is not exclusive to real estate agents, were victims of a nonfatal assault, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 620 in 2009 and 170 in 2008.

The rise in violence against real estate professionals prompted Inman News to publish a three-part series focusing on personal safety last year.

A recent survey of Inman News readers found that more than 27 percent who don’t employ open houses as a marketing strategy are worried about safety and liability issues.

A number of companies offer mobile apps that help users broadcast their locations to police dispatchers and other emergency contacts.

The real estate subcategory is part of a more broadly defined "real estate and rental and leasing" BLS category in which there were a total of 89 fatal work injuries in 2010.

In the eight-year span between 2003 and 2010, workplace fatalities were at their lowest level at the height of the housing boom in 2005, with 39 such fatalities recorded. They rose dramatically the following year, to 58, and haven’t been below 50 since then.

Fatal occupational injuries in real estate subcategory, 2003-2010

2003 52
2004 48
2005 39
2006 58
2007 50
2008 56
2009 53
2010 63

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Fourteen of the 63 fatalities in 2010 were attributed to falls, nine to transportation incidents, and another eight to exposure to harmful substances or environments.

The largest share, 30, were the result of "assaults and violent acts," up from 24 in 2009. These include assaults by others, self-inflicted injury, and attacks by animals. Of the 30, 23 were homicides and six were self-inflicted injuries. Seventeen out of 30 died of gunshot wounds, two more than in 2009.

Between 2003 and 2010, the number of real estate workers who died as a result of homicide was lowest in 2005, at 10, and highest in 2008 and 2010, at 23.

Fatal occupational injuries due to homicide in real estate subcategory, 2003-2010

2003 18
2004 17
2005 10
2006 15
2007 16
2008 23
2009 19
2010 23

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

By contrast, in the U.S. as a whole, the 518 workplace homicides reported by the BLS in 2010 was the lowest level since the bureau began tracking fatal work injuries in 1992.

Of the 63 fatally injured real estate workers, 21 (one-third) were in management occupations, 13 worked in installation maintenance and repair, nine worked in building and grounds cleaning and maintenance, and six worked in construction and extraction occupations.

The number of workplace fatalities among those in sales and related occupations rose to 10 in 2010, from four in 2009.

In terms of what the workers were doing when mortally wounded, the biggest share of injuries (19) occurred while workers were involved in constructing, repairing or cleaning.

More than half of the fatal injuries, 37, occurred in a private residence, up from 30 in 2009. Eleven occurred in a public building, up from eight in 2009.

Wage and salary workers accounted for 35 of the 53 deaths in 2009, and self-employed workers accounted for 18. In 2010, the number of self-employed workers fatally injured on the job fell to 17, while wage and salary workers accounted for 46 deaths.

The vast majority of workplace fatalities in 2010 were among men: 50 out of 63. The number among men was largely unchanged from 2009, rising from 48 deaths, while the number of fatalities among women rose from 5 to 13 in 2010.

Among those fatally injured in 2010, 44 percent were between the ages of 45 and 54, up from 25 percent in 2009. Those age 55 or above accounted for 38 percent of deaths, down from nearly half in 2009.

Just over half (57 percent) of the 2010 fatalities were among non-Hispanic whites, down from two-thirds in 2009. Non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 13 percent of fatalities in 2010, the same share as in 2009. Hispanics accounted for nearly a quarter (24 percent) of deaths in 2010, up from 19 percent in 2009.

Of the 10 additional workplace injury deaths among real estate professionals in 2010, eight occurred among those who work in real estate brokerage offices. Fatal work injuries in that subcategory jumped from five in 2009 to 13 in 2010, a 160 percent increase.

Seven of the 13 deaths were due to assaults or violent acts. Of the seven violent deaths, six were the result of homicide, up from zero in 2009 and three in 2008, according to BLS data. In order to be included in the data, injuries had to take place while on the job, among other criteria.

On Sept. 20, 2010, in incidents that were otherwise unrelated, two real estate agents showing homes in Ohio were killed on the same day.

Violent fatal occupational injuries occurring among those who work in the offices of agents and brokers, 2003-2010:

  2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
  Assaults and violent acts 9 5 5 - - 3 - 7
    Homicides 7 4 5 - - 3 - 6

Note: Dashes indicate no data or data that do not meet publication criteria.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Nine of the 13 workers were in sales or related occupations. Seven of the 13 were self-employed; the remaining six were wage and salary workers. Eight were men and five were women. Seven were seniors (age 65 or above) and four were between the ages of 45 and 54. Ten were non-Hispanic whites. Seven of the fatal injuries occurred in a private residence, and five occurred in a public building.

Nonetheless, it is lessors of real estate (i.e., landlords) who were hardest hit by fatal occupational injuries. In 2010, lessors of real estate accounted for more than half, 34, of real estate workplace fatalities, a slight increase from 31 in 2009. All but four were men.

Half, 17, died from assaults or violent acts, the same number as in 2009. Of the 17, 12 were from homicide, down two from 2009, and four were from self-inflicted wounds, up one from 2009. Ten died from gunshot wounds. Nearly two-thirds of the deaths occurred in a private residence.

Twelve of the workers were in management occupations, eight in installation maintenance and repair, six in building and grounds maintenance and cleaning, and five in construction and extraction.

There were 16 workplace fatalities among those who worked in activities related to real estate, down from 17 in 2009. Of the 16, all but one were property managers. All but four were men. At least 13 were 45 or above. 

Six were killed by assaults or violent acts, up one from 2009, including five by homicide. Three died by gunshot wound. Four deaths were due to falls, and three were due to transportation incidents.

Seven of the workers were in management positions and five worked in installation maintenance and repair. Six of the workers were involved in constructing, repairing or cleaning at the time of injury. Eight were injured in a private residence and three in a public building.

 

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Blight fight: New programs deal with vacant foreclosures

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Editor’s note: The following item is republished with permission of AOL Real Estate. See the original article: "Foreclosure Rehab: Ramping Up the Battle Against Blight."

By Teke Wiggan

The foreclosure crisis, which has caused around 4 million people to lose their homes, has wreaked havoc on many neighborhoods. Foreclosed homes drag down property values when they swell the housing supply and sell at below-market rates. These bank-owned homes also can erode the character of communities by attracting all manner of blight as they sit unoccupied.

The foreclosure scourge is especially acute in minority neighborhoods, according to a recent report by the National Fair Housing Alliance, which found that banks take much better care of their foreclosed properties in predominantly white neighborhoods than those in minority communities.

Some nonprofits are taking robust measures to combat the epidemic of foreclosures, also known as REO (for "real estate owned") homes. Three of them — Rebuilding Together, NeighborWorks America and the National Community Stabilization Trust — recently announced a new partnership designed to ramp up efforts to revitalize clusters of bank-owned foreclosures, highlighting what appears to be a growing focus on maintenance as a means to mend the housing market.

NeighborWorks America, which coordinates with affiliates that were awarded more than a total of $500 million from the $7 billion Neighborhood Stabilization Program fund in 2010, is teaming up with local affiliates of the nonprofit Rebuilding Together to train the groups to rehabilitate vacant foreclosed homes and sell them to low-income Americans.

The National Community Stabilization Trust, which was created in 2008 to facilitate the transfer of bank-owned homes to nonprofits, will work with the two groups to identify homes that will receive repairs under the program.

"This is a unique effort in that it’s focused on transforming vacant and dilapidated properties into safe and affordable homes in the communities they serve," Rebuilding Together spokesperson Janice Walker told AOL Real Estate.

The announcement of the collective nonprofit initiative marks one of the latest attempts to reduce the strain of neglected foreclosed homes on neighborhoods and the housing market. Nonprofits, banks and the government use rehabilitation to combat REO blight, and sometimes provide affordable housing to low-income Americans after the homes’ restoration. They’ve appeared to bolster their efforts in recent months in order "to figure out how to move upstream," says Ascala Sisk, senior manager of Stabilization Strategies at NeighborWorks. And there are "many different structures" to use to accomplish this.

For nonprofits, the Neighborhood Stabilization Program plays a key role in rehabilitation efforts, furnishing them with the necessary funds to invest in mass-scale neighborhood revitalization, which often takes the form of REO rehabilitation.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development administers the fund, which has received $7 billion in appropriations so far, Sisk says. And the National Community Stabilization Trust, one of the three partners of the new nonprofit initiative, helps put these funds into action by "providing the only nationwide platform that gives local housing providers a clear, consistent, and straight path to acquire foreclosed and abandoned properties from financial institutions," the National Community Stabilization Trust’s website says.

NeighborWorks America affiliates across the country helped homeowners rehabilitate more than 8,700 homes and 43,000 rental homes in 2011, group spokesperson Douglas Robinson says.

With NeighborWorks’ guidance, Rebuilding Together, which purportedly completes 10,000 projects that assist low-income homeowners per year, is now beginning its first foray into REO rehabilitation. Rebuilding Together’s plan is to rehabilitate REOs and sell them to community members who make between 80 and 120 percent of the local median income, and also provide them with homeownership education, Walker says.

Since the partnership has just formed, Rebuilding Together says that it can’t provide an estimate of how many homes the program will impact.

Coinciding with the two nonprofits’ newly formed partnership is another program launched in February that takes an alternative approach to combating REO blight. Under the REO Rental Initiative, the Federal Housing Finance Agency will sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-owned REO properties in bulk to private investors, if they agree to rent the properties.

By mandating that the properties be converted into rentals, the program aims to lower rents where foreclosures have hiked up rates and provide the homes with caretakers who are motivated to maintain them, namely, the investors themselves. After a few years of renting (and maintaining) the once-dilapidated properties, investors are expected to push the homes onto the market and sell them.

The program has its critics, including the National Association of Realtors. Detractors say that selling in bulk to investors could chip away at home prices (private investors often buy homes at discounts because they pay banks in cash, not borrowed money) and encourage prospective buyers to rent, instead of buy.

"Over time, servicers have adjusted their models to accommodate selling properties quickly rather than holding onto potentially wasting assets," the 2010 Federal Reserve report on neighborhood stabilization says. "At times this may mean selling to a cash investor immediately, at a slightly lower price, instead of waiting for a prospective owner-occupant to receive financing for the purchase."

Bank of America has launched a similar pilot program, called the "Mortgage to Lease Program," that forgives the outstanding debt of some homeowners headed toward foreclosure and offers them the opportunity to rent their homes from Bank of America in exchange for handing over the titles to the bank. If homeowners opt for the program, they may rent for up to three years.

"If this evolves from a pilot into a more broadly based program, we also see potential benefits from helping to stabilize housing prices in the surrounding community and curtailing neighborhood blight by keeping a portion of distressed properties off the market," Ron Sturzenegger, a servicing executive of Bank of America, said in a statement.

For all the two programs’ possible shortcomings, they reflect a growing interest across the real estate industry in finding innovative ways of ameliorating the housing crisis by attending to the REO threat, Sisk says.

"And that’s great to see," she says.

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10 quirky homes for anti-establishment types

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Editor’s note: This article is reposted with permission of Zillow. View the original item: "Off-Beat Homes Perfect for the Off-Beat Personality"

By Erika Riggs

When hippies retire among the waves of baby boomers, where do they hang up their tie-dye? Because not everyone wants a condo on a golf course in Hilton Head, or fits the Florida lifestyle where mall walking is a daily form of exercise.

Not that there is anything wrong with either of those, but perhaps the answer for anti-establishment types is an offbeat home. A dwelling that fits so seamlessly into the landscape — unlike its occupants, maybe — it’s tough to tell it’s there.

Whether the brainchild of an artist, architect or just someone with a penchant for unusual design, we rounded up some of the most unusual examples of offbeat real estate, with homes that vary from a grass-covered dune to a rotating dome.

Art Meets Architecture
3331 Erie Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio
For sale: $349,000

This Cincinnati home for sale took architect Terry Brown more than 10 years to pull off. Brown and students from University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning sculpted the home from a variety of mixed materials, including wood, colored glass, shell and ceramic. See more photos of the home.

…CONTINUED

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3 strategies to price your listings right

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Persuading sellers to price their properties realistically is always a challenge. This can be especially difficult when your market is still experiencing price declines. The question is how to unhook your sellers’ price anchors and then persuade them to list their property at a price where it will sell.

In psychology professor Daniel Ariely’s book, "Predictably Irrational," he discusses how people become firmly attached, or anchored, to ideas. According to Ariely’s research, these anchors are extremely strong when it comes to the price of someone’s home.

For example, when a homeowner sells his home for $500,000 in Los Angeles and moves to Dallas where the same home would cost $250,000, in almost every case, the homeowner will purchase a new home that is at least $500,000.

Breaking a seller’s price anchors can be challenging. Here are three proven strategies that really work.

1. Rate of absorption
A tried and true approach for addressing this situation is to use the rate of absorption (i.e., how much inventory is on the market and how quickly it is selling).

To illustrate this point, assume that there are eight months of inventory on the market. In other words, only 12.5 percent of homes on the market will sell in any given month. The other 87.5 percent will not. Sellers who want to place their properties under contract must position their property in the marketplace where they will be in the best 12.5 percent in terms of value, which is a combination of condition and price. If not, their listing will sit on the market until it expires or until they lower their price sufficiently to motivate a buyer to purchase it.

The way to close the buyers on using this approach is to say:

"Mr. and Mrs. Seller, you have an important decision to make. Will you position your property where it will be in the top 12.5 percent that will sell next month or will you position your property where it will be in the 87.5 percent that will still be listed next month? It’s your choice, what would you like to do?"

2. Use the price-per-square-foot data
A different alternative is to use the price-per-square-foot data. As a general rule of thumb, properties fall into three price-per-square-foot categories based upon their condition and location.

a. Top price per square foot
The first category is the property is either new and/or in excellent condition and in a top-notch location.

b. Midrange of the price-per-square-foot numbers
The second category is for properties that have "amenities similar to many of the homes found in this area." This is a nice way of saying that the home is in an average location and in average condition.

c. Bottom price per square foot
The third category is there is either something wrong with the location, the condition, or both.

Now you may be curious as to how you get the sellers to accept their house is average or even less than average. There are several ways to approach this issue.

First, you can take the sellers out to look at the competition. Next, ask them which house is most like yours? If you don’t want to take them out to see the competition, another way is to gather as many interior photos of closed sales as possible. Let them choose which houses most resemble their house. You can then use the price-per-square-foot sales numbers to generate an accurate list price.

The beauty of using the closed-sale statistics (i.e., showing the sellers pictures of properties that have closed) is that it shifts the discussion from list prices to sold prices. This makes it easier for the sellers to choose a more realistic price.

3. The pricing line
The late Lee Coats, who wrote much of the training for Coldwell Banker back in the 1990s, invented what he called a "pricing line." If you haven’t worked with this approach, it’s extremely effective. The system is fairly simple. Imagine a page with three different charts that resemble rulers marked in 1/4-inch segments. The top chart has the "recently sold" properties. The agent records each property that has sold on this pricing line using the price-per-square-foot data. The agent then repeats the process by recording the properties currently for sale on the second line and the properties that did not sell on the third line.

The sellers can quickly see the range of the most recent sales, what the current competition is, as well as how much higher priced the expired listings were on a price-per-square-foot basis as compared to those listings that sold.

When you show the seller the listings that are currently available, the closing question is, "Which line would you choose?" When properties have comparable amenities, it’s easy to demonstrate that the lower-priced listings usually sell more quickly.

The next time you’re facing a seller who wants to overprice his listing, try one of these three approaches. There’s a good chance you’ll walk away with a property that is priced to sell.

Bernice Ross, CEO of RealEstateCoach.com, is a national speaker, trainer and author of the National Association of Realtors’ No. 1 best-seller, “Real Estate Dough: Your Recipe for Real Estate Success.” Hear Bernice’s five-minute daily real estate show, just named "new and notable" by iTunes, at www.RealEstateCoachRadio.com. You can contact her at Bernice@RealEstateCoach.com or @BRoss on Twitter.

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Benefits of 15-year mortgage hard to beat

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The case for 15-year fixed-rate mortgages has never been stronger because, in the post-crisis market, the rate advantage over the 30-year has never been larger. The rate advantage is about 0.875 percent, whereas prior to the crisis, it was 0.375 percent to 0.5 percent.

Consider two $100,000 loans, one a 15-year at 3.125 percent and the other a 30-year at 4 percent. The respective payments are $696.61 and 477.42. After 15 years, the borrower with the 15-year loan has paid $39,454 more but is out of debt whereas the borrower with the 30-year loan still owes $64,543.

But there is a counterargument. A disciplined borrower can choose the 30-year loan and invest the difference in payment between the 30- and the 15-year loans, in that way offsetting the higher interest rate on the 30-year loan. Some financial planners recommend this approach to their clients as part of a program to build wealth faster.

The challenge in making such a program work is that the rate of return on the invested cash flow must exceed the rate on the 30-year loan by an amount that depends on how much higher the 30-year rate is than the 15-year rate.

For example, in 2006 when I first looked into this issue, I used rates of 6 percent and 5.625 percent on the 30- and 15-year loans. I found that over a 15-year period, the cash flow savings had to yield 7 percent, or 1 percent more than the rate on the 30-year loan, to just offset the higher interest rate on the 30-year loan. This can be termed the break-even return on the cash flows. To come out ahead, the borrower has to earn a return above the break-even return.

I recently repeated the exercise using rates of 4 percent on the 30-year loan and 3.125 percent on the 15-year. With these rates, the break-even return is 6.15 percent, or 2.15 percent higher than the rate on the 30-year loan. The larger rate spread between the 15- and 30-year loans increases the difficulty of developing a profitable reinvestment strategy.

The challenge looms even larger if the borrower holds the mortgage for less than the 15 years I assumed. The break-even rate is higher over shorter periods because the difference in the rate at which the 15- and the 30-year loans pay down the balance is largest at the outset and declines over time. The shorter the period, the higher the reinvestment rate must be to offset the larger difference in balance reduction.

Average mortgage life today is somewhere between five and 10 years. At 10 years the break-even rate rises to 8.02 percent, and at five years, it jumps to 13.69 percent — a whopping 9.69 percent above the rate on the 30-year loan.

These calculations assume that the borrower makes a down payment of 20 percent or more. If the down payment is less than 20 percent, the borrower must pay for mortgage insurance, and the premiums are higher on the 30-year loan.

For example, if you put down 5 percent and pay standard insurance premiums, the break-even rate rises from 6.15 percent to 7.01 percent over 15 years, from 8.02 percent to 9.56 percent over 10 years, and from 13.69 percent to 16.88 percent over five years. Note: All the break-even rates shown above are derived from calculator 15b on my website.

These required returns are forbiddingly high for any borrower who would invest the cash flow savings by acquiring financial assets. There is no way a borrower can earn such returns without taking very large risks. Most borrowers probably fall into this category.

But there are some borrowers for whom the cash flow reinvestment strategy might make sense. One is the borrower who is eligible for but not currently utilizing IRA, 401(k) or other qualified tax-deductible or tax-deferred plans. Borrowers who use their cash flow savings to invest in these vehicles, who would not do so otherwise, can earn a very high rate of return because of the tax benefits. If the borrower’s employer makes matching contributions, the return is even higher.

A second category of borrowers who can earn a very high rate of return are those with high-cost debt. A borrower paying 18 percent on credit card balances earns a return of 18 percent by paying down the balances.

In my 2006 article on this topic, I argued that borrowers who have not fully exploited all tax-advantaged investments, or who have high-rate credit card balances, are unlikely to have the iron discipline required to invest the cash flow savings on their mortgage month after month. But the financial planners who wrote me argued that they have developed special plans for borrowers in such situations that provide the discipline that is required. But until I see such plans along with evidence that they work, I will remain skeptical.

The writer is professor of finance emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Comments and questions can be left at www.mtgprofessor.com.

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5 real estate assumptions to rethink

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Real estate appraisal reports are almost always accompanied by a set of assumptions: statements or conditions that the appraiser assumed to be true for purposes of drawing some of the conclusions necessary to create an estimate of the home’s value. Interestingly, though, many appraisal reports give their basic set of assumptions the subtitle "Limiting Conditions." This implies that the assumptions may limit the validity of the appraisal findings in the event the assumptions turn out to be invalid.

For example, appraisers commonly assume that the land on which a home is built is not contaminated; if it turns out later that it is, all bets are off in terms of the property’s value.

The same goes for our decision-making in real estate and in life, generally, for that matter. We get so accustomed to our thought shortcuts and assumed beliefs about a subject that they can actually limit the integrity of our thought processes and decisions — especially if we fail to notice, question or ditch assumptions that are flat-out false or have become invalid over time.

The housing recession has changed the facts of the market, and has changed our minds about real estate. Those changes warrant a deep rethink of some widely held real estate assumptions, old and new. Here are a handful of the real estate assumptions that we should all reconsider:

1. Renting is cheaper than buying. The days when this one was a given are long gone in some places, and in some cases. In some places, the housing recession delivered a sound spanking to home prices. But it had the opposite impact on rental rates almost everywhere else. On top of all the would-be buyers who had to keep renting because they couldn’t qualify for mortgages over the past few years, there was also an influx of former homeowners who had lost their homes to foreclosure into the rental market.

Higher rents and lower sale prices mean that, in many areas, renting costs just as much or more than buying or owning a home. Real estate website Trulia’s recent Rent vs. Buy Index found this to be the case in 98 percent of America’s 20 largest cities, taking into consideration both the added expenses and tax advantages of owning vs. buying (the exceptions were areas like San Francisco and Manhattan, the markets that were the most recession-resistant).

If you’re operating on this assumption and it has kept you in the rental market, you might want to actually do some online house hunting, meet with a local real estate agent and a mortgage broker, and run your own numbers to see if your assumption might actually point to homeownership as the more affordable option for you.

2. Buying is better than renting. For various reasons throughout the last century, the American dream evolved to include homeownership virtually without question. But on today’s market, it is absolutely not the case that everyone who can afford to buy a home should.

If your own personal finances are immature or you’re living paycheck to paycheck, or if you are in a career or relationship situation that may cause you to have to move in the near term (less than five years or thereabouts), it might be advisable to rent instead of buy a home. You’ll lose out on the tax and other financial advantages of owning, but you won’t find yourself unable to make your mortgage if you have a bad month, and you will avoid being stuck in an upside-down home you can’t sell.

Of course, these guidelines apply mostly to your primary residence. With the increased mobility younger generations seek, I have already started to see a trend of young people with strong incomes taking advantage of low prices and interest rates to buy income and vacation properties that they can rent out and possibly retire to before they settle down enough to buy their own residence.

3. Sellers are greedy. OK, so some sellers are probably greedy. But so are some buyers, for that matter. The reality is that sellers are protective of their biggest financial asset and the place where they have often spent some of the precious moments of their families’ lives, and are not willing to give their homes away at a bargain-basement price.

The deeper reality is that sellers often have mortgages they must pay off from the proceeds of sale or face a short sale or even a foreclosure. Even those that are not upside down or in mortgage distress may have money invested in the property that they want to try to get back out, or may be looking to the proceeds of the sale to fund their family’s next move.

For some sellers, this translates into an unrealistic fantasy about what their home is worth. For many others, though, the reality of their financial investment and involvement with their home simply underpins their willingness to invest in preparing and staging their home for sale — and an unwillingness to take the first lowball offer that comes their way.

4. Buyers are cheap. Many buyers are certainly frugal, and especially so when it comes to trying to squeeze the absolute most bang from their hard-earned, hard-saved homebuying bucks. That said, buyers absolutely will pay for properties and locations that press the emotional buttons that activate the vision of the lifestyles they crave for themselves, their families and their futures.

Speaking of emotional priorities buyers will pay for, they will also pay for the certainty of securing their dream home and eliminating threats to it, whether those threats come in the form of competing offers or feet-dragging, short-sale staffers at the seller’s bank.

That’s why, even on today’s slow-to-grow real estate market, homes that are in great condition, in great neighborhoods, and in great and thriving cities are getting multiple, over-asking-price offers. And this is especially true for "regular" equity sales, in which buyers are manifesting their willingness to pay a premium for the luxury of not having to do a deal with the seller’s bank.

5. Buyers can name their price on today’s market. We’ve all heard the pundits crowing and read the headlines blaring about the buyer’s market that many buyers have begun to believe the hype. Unfortunately, many buyers will have to house hunt for months, make several lowball offers and lose several dream homes before they understand the truths discussed in the points above — namely that no seller will give their home away for less than what it’s worth, and that great properties will be subject to great competition even on today’s market.

Smart buyers are the ones who work with their local agent to understand the recent neighborhood sales and other market and personal factors to make an educated, reasonable offer based on the fair market value of the property — an offer that neither throws money at the seller nor unreasonably lowballs them, wasting everyone’s time.

Tara-Nicholle Nelson is author of "The Savvy Woman’s Homebuying Handbook" and "Trillion Dollar Women: Use Your Power to Make Buying and Remodeling Decisions." Tara is also the Consumer Ambassador and Educator for real estate listings search site Trulia.com. Ask her a real estate question online or visit her website, www.rethinkrealestate.com.

                                                   

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Get the best price possible for your home

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Wouldn’t it be nice to sell your home without the hassle of exposing it to the public? Selling off-market works occasionally, but most sellers who try it eventually end up having to put their home on the market. This wastes time and could delay the sale.

There are other drawbacks to trying to sell without full market exposure. One is that it’s difficult to prepare your home for sale if prospective buyers are coming through. You have to stop work, and buyers see a work in progress.

It doesn’t make a good impression if your home is shown before it’s ready. Buyers remember what they see, not what you tell them it will look like when you finish painting a room or replacing outdated light fixtures.

Sellers in a desirable Oakland, Calif., neighborhood were asked by neighbors who needed a larger home if they could see the house before it went on the market. The buyers were so turned off by the poor appearance that they not only didn’t buy the house, but they didn’t even want to see it when it came on the market. So you can lose buyers by letting them see the house before it’s ready.

A potentially more serious downside of selling without exposing your home to the market is that you’ll never know what it could have sold for with the benefit of promotion. You might be leaving money on the table.

HOUSE HUNTING TIP: Effective marketing is one of the essential components of realizing the best price possible for your home. The other two are properly preparing your home for sale and pricing it right for the market.

You’ll get the best results by listing with a real estate agent who has a marketing plan that includes broad exposure. Find out exactly what an agent will do to encourage buyers to look at your home.

More than 85 percent of homebuyers today use the Internet as a part of their home search. Make sure that when your home goes on the market there are plenty of good photos that show your home off to advantage. Studies have shown that buyers ignore online listings that don’t have photos.

In order for buyers to connect with your home, the photos should be laid out in such a way that the buyers feel they are walking through your home. You don’t want to convey that the home has an odd floor plan by placing photos in a haphazard order.

It can’t be emphasized too much how important it is that the photos of your home are good-quality photos that represent the property accurately. Yard and view photos will help sell your home, or photos of any special feature your home has that can be displayed photographically, like a built-in outdoor barbecue.

Video is becoming a popular way to introduce buyers to a home. However, just as with still photos, poor videos can do more harm than good. Make sure that whoever takes the video is skilled. Some photos and videos look like they were taken by someone who was on the run, with no attention to whether the subject was in focus or properly lit.

Photos and videos capture what’s in view, so make sure your home is uncluttered and staged for sale before photos are taken.

The latest marketing tool that appeals to buyers who want information now is the QR code. Your agent should create a website for your home with its own URL and QR code. A rider with the website address and QR code can be attached to the real estate sign in front of your home.

THE CLOSING: Buyers with smartphones will scan a QR code to receive pertinent information about your home quickly.

Dian Hymer, a real estate broker with more than 30 years’ experience, is a nationally syndicated real estate columnist and author of "House Hunting: The Take-Along Workbook for Home Buyers" and "Starting Out, The Complete Home Buyer’s Guide."

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Estately grows in Texas

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Seattle-based online real estate brokerage and referral site Estately has launched in Houston and Austin, adding some 50,000 listings to its property search database.

Estately expanded to Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio in January and February. The latest additions bring the site’s market total to more than 22 markets, according to Galen Ward, the company’s co-founder and CEO.

"Texas is wrapped up … so we are moving on to other markets next," Ward told Inman News.

Estately is licensed in Washington, California, Illinois, New York, Georgia, Texas and Pennsylvania, and pulls listings from more than 20 multiple listing services that serve those states and some adjacent areas, such as Oregon, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Listings are updated every 15 minutes, Ward said.

Earlier this month, Estately accused one of Canada’s largest real estate brokerages, Sutton WestCoast Realty, of copyright infringement, alleging Sutton WestCoast’s property search site was "a near-perfect clone" of Estately. The Canadian brokerage was forced to refer website visitors to its franchisor’s national website following the dispute, but its property search capabilities have since been restored.

Ward said he had "no new news on our dispute with Sutton WestCoast Realty right now."


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Zillow’s new Android app only for rentals

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Property search and valuation site Zillow today released its first mobile application devoted solely to rentals.

"Renters shop differently from buyers, looking at many homes quickly, in specific locations, in a short amount of time," said Jeremy Wacksman, Zillow’s vice president of consumer marketing and mobile, in a statement.

"Zillow Rentals for Android was created specifically to address their needs by organizing listings in an easily accessible way and allowing them to shop for the right home on location, in the neighborhood where they want to live."

The free app includes access to Zillow’s estimated rents, called Rent Zestimates, for the 100 million homes in its database, as well as the ability to compare favorite homes side by side on a list. Both features are unique among rental apps, according to Zillow.

 
Screen shot of Zillow Rentals for Android 

Zillow’s app also allows users to search by voice, trace multiple search boundaries on a map, see search results color-coded according to time on market, and receive notifications when new homes matching a saved rental search come on the market.

 
Screen shot of Zillow Rentals for Android 

When users contact an agent or landlord directly from the app, the relevant listing is automatically added to the user’s saved list of favorites and time-stamped with the time of the contact. 

The app runs on Google’s Android platform and is the company’s 10th mobile app overall. The company offers apps that run on Android smartphones and tablets, Apple iPhones and iPads, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry, Windows’ Phone 7, and Amazon’s Kindle Fire.


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Survey: Open houses still have their place

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Real estate professionals have scheduled at least 31,078 open houses this weekend with a total listing price of $14.3 billion in conjunction with Realtors Nationwide Open House Weekend, according to data from Realtor.com.

The annual event, organized by state and local Realtor associations with support from the National Association of Realtors, is popular with Inman News readers who self-selected to take an online poll this week.

Some brokers and agents grumble about the effectiveness of open houses in a day and age when the vast majority of homebuyers start their search process on the Internet. But 60 percent of 218 Inman News readers polled said open houses are currently part of their strategy for marketing listings.

Source: Realtor.com

If open houses have a slightly musty whiff of tradition surrounding them, the methods used to promote them are not. Nearly all (98.3 percent) of the agents and brokers polled by Inman News who hold open houses said they promote them on the Internet, posting details on multiple listing service (MLS), broker and agent websites, and listing portals like Realtor.com.

Most (57.6 percent) said they also use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Yard signs were also seen as an essential tool for promoting open houses by 89 percent of those surveyed, but only 46 percent advertised the events in newspapers. 

Most who don’t hold open houses said the results aren’t worth the time and energy involved (84.7 percent). But some (27.1 percent) said they’re also worried about safety and liability issues. 

Nearly half of those who said they do conduct open houses said they’d held 10 or more in the last year, and 38 percent of all those polled said they planned to participate in Realtors Nationwide Open House Weekend.

Right-click graph to enlarge.

More Inman News readers thought the primary purpose of the event was to promote Realtors and real estate professionals (62.6 percent) and homeownership (39.7 percent) — goals outlined by NAR in a press release template and media talking points — than to connect buyers and sellers (20.1 percent).

Right-click graph to enlarge. 

"I’ve done too many houses where no one comes, even the neighbors. And no one would have come even if I’d guaranteed the second coming of Jesus to occur," said broker William Metzker of Portland, Ore.-based Terradigm Real Estate Consultancy.

"A few sellers want no part of them, but most do, because they’ve bought into the myth that people often buy homes during an open house," Metzker said. "Statistically, that’s far from true."

But open houses can help agents prospect for buyer-clients, Metzker said, and create a "buzz" around well-priced and well-located properties.

Those are sentiments shared by Inman News readers who do hold open houses — more than half (56.4 percent) said they use them to prospect for clients they can represent in other transactions and generate a buzz or exposure for their listing (43.6 percent).

Right-click graph to enlarge. 

"I hate them, but if I were a beginning agent, I’d beg to host as many open houses as I could," Metzker said.

Most of the Inman News readers surveyed are anything but beginning agents — 62.6 percent said they’d been an agent or broker for 10 years or more, and 28.3 percent said they had four to nine years of experience. Only 1.6 percent said they’d been in the business for less than a year. 

Scott Gill, senior vice president of Realty World Northern Calif. Inc., said he was once told by a top-producing broker that open houses are "the penalty a Realtor pays for having a seller ‘sell the Realtor’ that his or her home is worth more than legitimate market conditions can sustain. I think he’s correct."

Steve McKenna of Arlington, Mass.-based The Home Advantage Team said open houses "have their place in the marketing mix, just as yard signs, ads and postcards do. You wouldn’t solely market a house using postcard, nor would you rely on an open house as your only means of promotion."

At the end of the day, he said, "it doesn’t matter whether we think open houses are effective. We should be asking potential buyers and sellers whether they think it is useful in the homebuying (or) selling process."

Doug Miller, a Minnesota-based attorney specializing in real property law and the executive director of Consumer Advocates in American Real Estate (CAARE), is advising buyers to "just say no" to open houses.

"Open houses do not help sellers sell homes, and they certainly do not help buyers buy homes," Miller said in a post on the group’s website. "In fact, open houses are not only bad for consumers, they are downright dangerous."

Miller said unsuspecting buyers may lose their right to be represented by their own agent if they walk into an open house and agree to be represented by a listing agent or broker who’s seeking to "double end" a transaction.

Open houses also create the potential for commission disputes between Realtors, he said, because a listing agent might refuse to split their commission with a buyer’s agent brought into the transaction later on.


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You forgot to file your taxes, now what?

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The deadline for filing your federal income tax return — or an extension of time to file — was April 17. If you missed it, what should you do? And, even more important, what will the IRS do to you?

If you fail to file a tax return or contact the IRS, you are subject to the following:

  • Penalties and interest will be assessed and will increase the amount of tax due. You’ll have to pay the IRS interest of 0.5 percent of the tax owed for each month, or part of a month, that the tax remains unpaid from the due date, until the tax is paid in full or the 25 percent maximum penalty is reached. The interest rate increases to 1 percent if the tax remains unpaid 10 days after the IRS issues a notice of intent to levy. You’ll also owe a late-filing penalty, which is usually 5 percent of the tax owed for each month, or part of a month that your return is late, up to five months. If your return is more than 60 days late, the minimum penalty for late filing is the smaller of $135 or 100 percent of the tax owed.
  • If you’re self-employed, you will not receive credits toward Social Security retirement or disability benefits. Failure to file results in not reporting any self-employment income to the Social Security Administration.
  • The IRS will file a substitute return for you. But this return is based only on information the IRS has from other sources. Thus, if the IRS prepares this substitute return, it will not include any additional exemptions or expenses you may be entitled to and may overstate your real tax liability.
  • Once the tax is assessed, the IRS will start the collection process, which can include placing a levy on wages or bank accounts or filing a federal tax lien against your property.

You should file your return as soon as possible and pay all the tax that is due, if any. Even though you missed the deadline, you’ll still save money by doing so. This is because the IRS late penalty and interest charges are calculated from April 17, so the earlier you file, the less you pay.

If you can’t afford to pay all the tax that is due, you should still file and pay as much as you can. By paying as much as possible now, the amount of interest and penalties you’ll owe will be lessened.

You can enter into an installment agreement with the IRS. This is an agreement between you and the IRS to pay the amount due in monthly installment payments. You must first file all required returns and be current with estimated tax payments. If you owe $25,000 or less in combined tax, penalties and interest, you can request an installment agreement using the Online Payment Agreement application at www.irs.gov.

Stephen Fishman is a tax expert, attorney and author who has published 18 books, including "Working for Yourself: Law & Taxes for Contractors, Freelancers and Consultants," "Deduct It," "Working as an Independent Contractor," and "Working with Independent Contractors." He welcomes your questions for this weekly column.

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‘Innately good’ housing markets are turning

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On the surface, all is quiet. Since the first week of April, the 10-year Treasury note has not traded above 2.05 percent or below 1.93 percent. It’s 1.95 percent this morning. Thrill-a-minute.

Low-fee mortgages have been 4 percent for three weeks (depending on down payment and credit). The Dow has had 100-point days, but is just yo-yo-ing below the 13,200 top.

In widely scattered patches of exuberance, innately good housing markets are turning — not bottoming, turning. Markets are turning in attractive places with scarce land, in-migration, and good economies (global, IT, government, health care). Looking back at their distress curves, the dead-drop in listings last year has resulted now in competing offers and modest increases in price. However, do not confuse these places with the rest.

New data are disquieting, but nothing scary. March orders for durable goods fell hard, down 4.2 percent even excluding volatile categories, and the multiyear chart shows gentle but unmistakable weakening.

New weekly claims for unemployment insurance have departed the 350,000 range for 385,000, but historically it’s a jagged chart, not necessarily marking trend-change.

Gross domestic product (GDP) in first-quarter 2012 arrived at 2.2 percent annualized versus the 2.5 to 3 percent forecast, but consumers came in on target, plus 2.9 percent. The one figure in the GDP report that hinted at sub-surface conditions: The Fed’s favorite inflation measure, the "personal consumption expenditure core deflator," jumped from 1.2 percent in Q4 2011 to 2.2 percent in the first 90 days this year. That’s "core," excluding the gasoline pop.

Enter the Fed’s post-meeting comments. Lost in misunderstanding Fed politics (the distracting regional-Fed country-hawk bird-brains), and in suspended hopes for QE3, and in a meaningless collection of long-range forecasts, and in guessing at what the Fed will do after 2014 … lost was this: "Inflation has picked up somewhat. …"

Then Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was asked about new stimulus, including the Fed’s interest in inducing higher inflation, the darling proposal of Paul Krugman and his loyal propeller-heads. "That would be very reckless."

Thank you. As hammered at here last week, the Fed has neither the intention nor capacity to inflate away our debt burden. With personal consumption expenditures (PCE) above 2 percent, the Fed won’t even embark on something as mild as QE3.

Here in the U.S., a frozen Fed is not so bad. The greatest single strength of the U.S. economy is its adaptability, based on national acceptance of Schumpeter’s "creative destruction," no matter what pain it brings.

With the possible exception of German-hive collective adjustment, no other economy on Earth approaches U.S. tolerance for the pain of changing course. We do get on with it, and today’s improvements in labor, manufacturing, exports and housing — no matter how tepid — are testimony.

Elsewhere, disturbance on the surface understates the roiling trouble deep below.

Only 90 days ago, Frau Merkel seemed to have dragooned the rest of Europe into a new austerity treaty. This austerity has not even begun (Spain and Italy have already extended deadlines), but non-German economies have fallen out from under forecasts. Euro-zone PMI (just like ours, the descendent of the "purchasing managers’" survey) went negative in March at 49.1, deeper to 47.4 in April.

We used to refer to the European "periphery." Now it’s just Germany and non-Germany. Even the Dutch government collapsed last week under budget and recession pressure, and the next president of France will not be seen in Merkel’s lap. The non-Germans groveled last winter, desperate for German-allowed ECB bailouts. Now, like so many excessive borrowers who have discovered that they own the bank, Europe is refusing austerity and demanding growth measures.

However, welded to the euro while in desperate need to devalue, there are no growth measures available except for the European Central Bank to take on even more junk sovereign paper and/or reflate in the same manner Bernanke called "reckless." The ECB and the Bank of Japan are near the end of their supply of cans to kick, with one thing clear: Hope like hell that U.S. inflation subsides, so that the Fed can prevent a U.S. stall while worst comes to worst elsewhere.

Lou Barnes is a mortgage broker and nationally syndicated columnist based in Boulder, Colo. He can be reached at lbarnes@pmglending.com.

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Fees push new-home prices out of reach

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Local governing bodies face a real dilemma. Budget-constrained, they often seek to raise revenue by imposing new taxes and business fees. Taxes are visible and unpopular and harder to get past a public still not recovered from the Great Recession. Fees, however, often sneak through since they are not universal, more often than not directed at businesses and applied selectively.

One kind of fees, those applied to new housing development and construction, have been rising. And viscerally, you might think, "OK, not that important. Somebody has to pay for services, and it doesn’t really affect me.’"

But, you would be wrong.

According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), which monitors these kinds of data points, estimates show that, on average, regulations imposed by governments at all levels account for 25 percent of the final price of a new single-family home built for sale.

Nearly two-thirds of this number — 16.4 percent of the final house price — is due to a higher price for a finished lot resulting from regulations imposed during the lot’s development. A little over one-third — 8.6 percent of the house-price increase — is the result of costs incurred by the builder after purchasing the finished lot.

Now here’s where increased regulation and impact fees become counterproductive for local governments. Cities need population growth and, to some extent, new housing to thrive, but whenever governments increase the cost of a new home through fees, they are actually reducing the universe of potential buyers. This is known as the "price-out effect."

I checked in with Natalia Siniavskaia, NAHB’s economist and recent author of a study on the price-out effect, to see what’s going on.

As Siniavskaia computes the numbers, a $1,000 increase in home cost has the effect of pricing out 232,447 U.S. households; the size of the impacts varies across metros and largely depends on population and income distribution.

"The basic mortgage underwrites your home, and that should not exceed 25 percent of your income," Siniavskaia said. "We looked at household distribution across the United States to see who could afford homes in certain price ranges. Definitely, (when) you add on $1,000 to a house price, it translates to a higher monthly housing cost, so we can calculate how many people would be disqualified by mortgage underwriters; 232,447 households would not be able to enter that market for new homes because the household income is not enough to qualify for a mortgage."

That $1,000 is not difficult to get to because of another economic metric, the add-on. If, for example, a builder pays out for a permit, that additional fee will be applied to the construction costs of the house. If the builder takes a loan to finance construction, the loans would be accrued on the permit value as well. In other words, that permit value plus the finance charges are going into the cost of house, and the same would apply to all kinds other taxes and fees.

Local governments typically impose two types of fees on new housing developments: fees to cover the cost of permit processing, and impact fees that are intended to make sure developements "pay their way," for the cost of providing services like water and sewer, police and fire, and parks to new residents. Impact fees may also be levied to help cities cope with additional demands on roads and schools.

Some states, including California, require that cities collecting impact fees conduct "nexus studies," demonstrating a "reasonable relationship" between the specific amounts of the fees imposed and the costs of building or expanding public facilities. But critics say developers are often reluctant to challenge fees that might not be justified because they don’t want to jeopardize approval of their projects.

Not all fees have a price-out effect; it depends on when they are applied.

"Some builders buy impact fees before they start developing a lot, and some buy impact fees before the house goes on the market," Siniavskaia said. "Some builders pay a lot of regulation costs before they develop a lot, some during construction, some when the building permit is acquired. It all varies, so the cost of add-on charges varies depending on when the builders actually have to pay the fee."

As can be expected, governments continue to introduce new fees and raise old ones.

"Fees are getting higher," Siniavskaia said.

To which she adds, "When I started working at the NAHB 15 years ago, impact fees weren’t so common, but they were starting to be introduced by more and more localities. An impact fee is a kind of regulation and can include the cost to meet building code necessities, environmental rules or fees builders have to pay so the community can construct schools."

One of the newest fees being considered today is mandatory fire sprinklers in new homes. That could add at minimum another $5,000 to the cost a home.

As noted, increasing the cost of a home by $1,000 would have a different price-out effect on different metros.

The top five cities where $1,000 would affect the market the most are Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston. Even here there are discrepancies, Siniavskaia said.

Increasing the price of a new home in the Chicago metro by $1,000 disqualifies more than 6,000 households from buying a home. This is by far the largest price-out effect in the nation, partially because it is a relatively affordable metro area where 43 percent of households can afford a new home, and partially because it is a populous area with almost 3.5 million households residing there.

The second-largest number of price-out households is the New York metro where more than 5,000 households will be priced out. Even though this metro is double the size of the Chicago area, the price-out effect is smaller, simply because the area is less affordable to begin with.

At the bottom of the rankings, the markets where $1,000 would have the least price-out effect are the communities where homes are very high-priced and unaffordable to most Americans. These metros are: Napa, Calif.; Ocean City, N.J., Carson City, Nev.; and Sebastian-Vero Beach, Fla.

In Napa, where half of all new homes sell for more than $700,000, adding another $1,000 to the price would affect a total of 14 households since only 13 percent of the households can afford such an expensive new home in the first place.

If the price of a new home in Napa or Ocean City goes up by $1,000, who cares? So few of us can buy in those communities anyway!

Steve Bergsman is a freelance writer in Arizona and author of several books. His latest book, "Growing Up Levittown: In a Time of Conformity, Controversy and Cultural Crisis," is now available for sale on Amazon.com.

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ListHub revamps listing syndication dashboard

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Real estate listing syndicator and website analytics provider ListHub has rolled out new dashboard filters brokers can use to decide which websites they will send listings to.

ListHub is also allowing brokers to share their opinions about publishers using a 5-star rating system, and see which have been identified by multiple listing services as "preferred publishers."

The new features come as some brokers have expressed reservations about the accuracy of listing data displayed on some third-party websites, and advertisements and lead forms for other broker’s agents that sometimes appear alongside of listings. A few brokers have stopped sending listings to third-party websites — those not affiliated with a mulitiple listing service — altogether.

"These new tools provided by the Preferred Publisher program will allow brokers to quickly ascertain which publishers provide the best marketing opportunities for their listings," said ListHub General Manager Luke Glass in a statement. "Our MLS partners have told us that they want to provide guidance to their members, but without controlling their advertising choices. ListHub agrees that the final decision on where to syndicate should remain with the individual broker."

The new filters allow brokers to select publishers that promise "timely removal of inactive listings," "no re-syndication," and "shows broker contact information," for example. Clicking on the individual filters displays only those publishers that meet the selected criteria.

MLSs can now run customized performance reports at their convenience instead of waiting for a monthly report to be emailed to them.

Victor Lund, a real estate technology consultant with WAV Group, said in a blog post that "the industry has been quite critical about ListHub’s model for summarizing aspects of publisher websites that are important to brokers. In this new launch, ListHub is addressing those issues by better identifying publisher terms of use and data use policies."

Re-syndication of listing data "is an obvious problem for brokers," Lund said. "Brokers are responsible to the seller wherever the listing is displayed online. If a publisher sends the listing somewhere else without the broker’s consent — that is bad."

Although Minnesota-based Edina Realty said it’s stopped syndicating listings to all third-party sites except Realtor.com, Glass recently told Inman News that ListHub is signing up 600 to 700 brokers a month — a rate that’s unchanged in the last 18 months.


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Deck footings: How low should you go?

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Q: How do you determine the depth of the deck footings to assure you have gone below the frost line? I live in central New Jersey, and thought I’ve always heard that the frost line here was 18 inches. But from reading a few articles on decks, I’ve seen conflicting information. Do you have a reliable resource? –Frank G.

A: As you can imagine, frost lines vary widely by region. Also, most codes require that your footings be an additional 12 inches below the frost-line depth, as an added precaution against rare deep-freezing conditions. So, your best bet is to simply call your local building department and ask.

However, if you would like to try to figure it out yourself, there is a good booklet available for free from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Go to www.huduser.org. In the search box, enter "Structural Design Loads for One- and Two-Family Dwellings," which will take you to the booklet. It’s about 50 pages, in PDF format, so you can read it online or print it out. You can also order a copy from them if you’d prefer.

Q: We currently have a wood-burning fireplace and electric heat and a heat pump that work fine but are 20 years old. We are thinking that we would like to replace them with a new electric furnace and heat pump when the time comes, but would like to wait until the electric furnace gives out. In the meantime, we would like to install some kind of heating device in the fireplace.

We don’t know if we should go to the expense of having gas installed so we can have gas logs installed in the fireplace or do as a neighbor has done and have a propane tank installed in the yard to supply logs to the fireplace. We know the gas company will cover the cost of installing the gas line only if we change three or more appliances. Any suggestions? –April E.

A: It depends a lot on exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. Adding a vented gas log set to your existing wood-burning fireplace will get you the convenience of watching a fire without the mess of wood, but it won’t do much for heat, since a large amount of the heat generated by the gas logs goes straight up the chimney. If you’re looking for the convenience of being able to start wood with a gas lighter, then a small propane tank installation plumbed to a gas log lighter will do the trick.

If the goal is more heat, then you have a couple of options. You could install an airtight wood-burning insert in the existing fireplace, which still burns wood but does it more efficiently, and doesn’t require any gas connection. Or you could have a sealed gas insert installed in the existing fireplace, which is easier and cleaner to operate than a wood-burning one and produces more heat, but requires propane or natural gas.

As to which gas source to use if you go that route, it depends on the cost. You would need to talk with the gas company about how much a meter would cost to install with only a single gas connection, as well as a plumber to determine the gas line costs. I suspect propane might be less expensive, but you would also need to talk to a propane company. If you don’t like the looks of an exposed propane tank, you can have an underground tank put in, but that adds the cost of excavating.

A lot of this also depends on the condition of your existing fireplace, and whether it’s in good enough condition to accept an insert. So all that being said, I would start with an experienced, licensed fireplace company and have them come out, inspect everything, and help you out with some options and cost estimates.

Incidentally, if you are doing this to save on your electric bill by not running your furnace as much, you would need to look at the cost trade-offs — electricity savings versus installed cost and operating cost of the new gas unit. It’s doubtful you would see any kind of financial payback within any reasonable time frame.

Q: We live in northeastern California. In 2002 we had our home constructed. This year we have decided to merely "cover" the existing small wire mesh [foundation vents] with something that can be removed in the summer.

Both my husband and I, have in our mind’s eye, a removable-type vent (my eye sees a little wing nut type, wooden frame with a small wire 1/8-inch square mesh encased in a plastic material-type thing that you can turn to release the cover for storage. I can’t imagine what my husband sees!) In any event, we can find no such type of product. We have approximately 30 vents to cover!

Internet searches reveal: flat 4 screw-type covers you leave on (don’t want that); then there are louvers (don’t want that); then there is one that appears to have a concave appearance (not exactly what we’re thinking of either). Do you have any idea of a "plan" so that hubby can build them out of a wood frame, plywood or other material? Or where we can find something described that we have in mind? –Jacquelynne M.

A: I don’t really have much to offer you in the way of plans. However, because your house is fairly new, I’m assuming you have standard foundation vents — a grey or black plastic, screened vent set in the concrete foundation wall. There are white foam blocks that are made specifically to fit in those vents and seal them off, and that’s what most people use for this purpose. Cost is typically around $1 each. Just press them into the vent at the start of winter, and pull them out again once the threat of freezing weather is past. They’re reusable, and will last quite a few seasons.

Remodeling and repair questions? Email Paul at paulbianchina@inman.com. All product reviews are based on the author’s actual testing of free review samples provided by the manufacturers.

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New player in international search: Real-Buzz.com

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Type "houses for sale in Las Vegas" into a search engine like Google or Yahoo and you’re likely to see results dominated by the big names in property search, like Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia.

Try the same search in Chinese or Spanish and the ecosystem is a little more diverse — there’s room for a new player like Real-Buzz.com to squeeze into the top 10 results.

The Real-Buzz.com Global Real Estate Network translates U.S. property listings into Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese, Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese), French, Italian and Russian.

The result of a merger of Immobel and Real Buzz Media, the operators of the site claim that just a few months after launch, "most major MLS and Realtor organizations now syndicate their listings" to the Real-Buzz.com.

Real-Buzz says it provides a B2B (business-to-business) networking channel to facilitate referrals — even when agents don’t share a common language.

The Real-Buzz portal and retail products are powered by Immobel whose founder, Janet Choynowski, serves as CEO of the Real Buzz Immobel Group.

Last year, Realtor.com launched an international site with 4.4 million listings and translation capabilities in 11 languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Other players in the international space include Proxio Inc., which operates a global real estate network and translates listings into 19 languages, and WorldProperties.com, the official website of the International Consortium of Real Estate Associations (ICREA).

Using public record data compiled by San Diego-based real estate data analysis firm DataQuick, Inman News recently identified the 10 most popular markets in the U.S. for foreign homebuyers. Six were in Florida; three were in the West (Arizona, Hawaii and Nevada); and one was in the Northeast (New York).


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Mortgage rates a hair above record lows

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Mortgage rates eased slightly this week, staying near record lows amid uncertainty about the strength of the economic recovery.

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee said Wednesday that it expects to maintain "a highly accommodative stance for monetary policy" to support a stronger economic recovery, but announced no changes to existing policies.

Labor market conditions have improved in recent months, the committee noted, but the unemployment remains elevated.  Despite some signs of improvement, the housing sector "remains depressed," the committee noted.

Freddie Mac’s weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey showed 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaging 3.88 percent with an average 0.7 point for the week ending April 26, down from 3.9 percent last week and 4.78 percent a year ago. Rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages hit an all-time low in records dating to 1971 of 3.87 percent during the first three weeks of February.

For 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, rates averaged 3.12 percent with an average 0.6 point, down from 3.13 percent last week and 3.97 percent a year ago. Rates on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages hit an all-time low in records dating to 1991 of 3.11 percent during the week ending April 12.

Rates on five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) loans averaged 2.85 percent with an average 0.6 point, up from 2.78 percent last week but down from 3.51 percent a year ago. Last week’s rates for five-year ARMs were at an all-time low in records dating to 2005.

For one-year Treasury-indexed ARMs, rates averaged 2.74 percent with an average 0.6 point, down from 2.81 percent last week and 3.15 percent a year ago. Rates on one-year ARMs hit an all-time low in records dating to 1984 of 2.72 percent during the week ending March 1.

Looking back a week, a separate survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association showed demand for purchase mortgages during the week ending April 20 was up a seasonally adjusted 2.7 percent from the week before, to a level essentially unchanged from a year ago.


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Pending home sales near 2-year high

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Pending sales of existing homes rose to their highest level in nearly two years in March, according to the National Association of Realtors’ latest Pending Home Sales Index.

The index, which represents contracts signed but not yet closed, jumped a seasonally adjusted 4.1 percent from February to March, to 101.4. That’s the highest index level since April 2010, when the deadline for a federal homebuyer tax credit program loomed. The index was 111.3 then.

Pending sales were up 10.8 percent from the same time a year ago on a non-seasonally adjusted basis.

An index score of 100 is equal to the average level of sales-contract activity in 2001, a year in which home sales fell in a range that’s considered "normal" for the current U.S. population. The index typically represents about 20 percent of all existing-home transactions. Contracts signed in March typically close one or two months later.

"First-quarter sales closings were the highest first-quarter sales in five years. The latest contract signing activity suggests the second quarter will be equally good," said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, in a statement.

"The housing market has clearly turned the corner," Yun said. "Rising sales are bringing down inventory and creating much more balanced conditions around the county, which means home prices will be rising in more areas as the year progresses."

Regionally, the Northeast saw the biggest unadjusted year-over-year increase in pending sales: 18.4 percent. The region was one of two to see a slight monthly decline, sliding 0.8 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis to 78.2.

The other region experiencing a month-over-month decline was the Midwest, where the index dipped a seasonally adjusted 0.9 percent to 93.3. Nonetheless, the Midwest experienced the second-biggest annual increase in pending sales: 14.7 percent on an unadjusted basis.

The index reached its highest level in the South: 114.1. That’s a 5.9 percent seasonally adjusted increase compared to February. On an unadjusted basis, pending sales were up 8.9 percent from a year ago.

In the West, pending sales rose 8.7 percent month to month, to 108, and 5.9 percent from the same time a year ago on an unadjusted basis.

In its latest monthly economic outlook, also out today, NAR upped its forecast for existing-home sales in 2012 slightly from last month, to 4.68 million — a nearly 10 percent increase from 2011. The trade group expects existing-home sales to rise an additional 1.5 percent in 2013, to 4.75 million.

NAR projects new-home sales will rise 31.6 percent in 2012, to 400,000, and increase a further 32.5 percent in 2013 to 530,000.

After falling 3.9 percent in 2011, NAR expects a 2 percent increase in the median price of existing-home sales in 2012, to $169,500. The association predicts a further 2.1 percent increase, to $173,100, in 2013.

Meanwhile, after rising 2 percent in 2011, NAR projects rents will rise 3.4 percent in 2012 and 3.8 percent in 2013. 

This year, NAR predicts the average interest rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage will be 4.2 percent, down from 4.7 percent in 2011. By 2013, the rate is expected to rise to 4.9 percent.

NAR expects this year’s national real gross domestic product to grow 2.4 percent, followed by 3.1 percent growth in 2013. The U.S. unemployment rate is expected to average 8.2 percent this year and drop to 7.6 percent in 2013.

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