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Settling the score on settlement services

By Inman News, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.

The complexity of the home-sale process can leave buyers and sellers alike feeling dazed and confused, with real estate brokerage and mortgage professionals surrounded by a host of other supporting professionals to complete a single transaction: home inspectors, pest inspectors, appraisers, title insurance agents, escrow agents, attorneys and land surveyors, among others.

And the various fees and other costs associated with this gamut of primary and ancillary real estate services can be a source of frustration for consumers, adding thousands of dollars in additional costs to the sale.  more...

HomeServices acquires Koenig & Strey Premium Content

By Matt Carter, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.

Brookfield Residential Property Services has sold Chicago-based luxury broker Koenig & Strey GMAC Real Estate to HomeServices of America Inc., completing a planned disposition of corporate-owned brokerage offices Brookfield RPS acquired in its purchase of GMAC Home Services LLC last year.

As was the case in other recent sales of corporate-owned GMAC brokerages, Koenig & Strey will remain a franchisee of Canadian-based Brookfield RPS' North American real estate network.  more...

Life, liberty and financial happiness

By Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.
Image courtesy of <a href="http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780143115267,00.html?strSrchSql=Richard+H.+Thaler+and+Cass+R.+Sunstein/Nudge_Richard_H._Thaler" target=blank>Penguin</a>.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- the inalienable rights of every American. Does this mean that Americans view property and the pursuit of happiness as essentially interchangeable? I'll buy that. Why, then, do so many of our consumer decisions -- from what we eat to the mortgage loans we borrow -- result in disease and unhappiness?

In "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness," happiness researchers Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein explore just this question, then provide lots of ways we can all "nudge" each other toward making happiness-creating choices.  more...

Pending home sales surge in West

By Inman News, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.

Pending home sales rose 3.2 percent from June to July, with a surge in sales in the Western U.S. outweighing declines in the Northeast and Midwest, the National Association of Realtors said today.

It was the sixth consecutive monthly increase in pending home sales, a trend that NAR Chief Economist Lawyrence Yun expects to continue before falling off in the first quarter of 2010 if a tax credit for first-time homebuyers is allowed to expire Nov. 30.  more...

ZipRealty tool reveals commission rates

By Inman News, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.

ZipRealty is offering new online tools for sellers that show the commission rates offered by sellers and the number of active buyers shopping for homes in a neighborhood.  more...

State of the nation's homeowners

By Marcie Geffner, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.

When will house prices go up again?

That's the question, worded in various ways, that I'm frequently asked by my neighbors, who happen to know that I write about real estate for a living.

My answer, always the same, is: I have no idea, and neither does anyone else.

There are plenty of forecasts of what may happen to house prices. Up. Down. Flat. U-shaped. V-shaped. L-shaped. Even W-shaped. But personally, I don't think any of the forecasts are all that reliable.  more...

Redfin gets on iPhone app bandwagon

By Inman News, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.

Seattle-based broker Redfin is offering a custom-built iPhone application that allows users to upload photos they take on home tours to their account on Redfin.com.

The iPhone app can access all data from multiple listing services where Redfin is a member, as well as for-sale-by-owner and bank-owned (REO) properties. The app also shows how long properties have been on the market and what they last sold for, according to a blog post by Redfin founder and CEO Glenn Kelman.  more...

How to buy a 'lucky' house

By Bernice Ross, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.

Sellers often stage their houses to make them more attractive to potential buyers. What can you do as a buyer, however, to make sure that you're buying a "lucky house"? The ancient Chinese tradition of feng shui has some interesting answers.

How can you recognize a lucky house vs. one that is unlucky? Here are some of the key principles from feng shui that can assist you in finding your personal "lucky house."  more...

AgentWorld mashes up profiles, posts, ratings Premium Content

By Gahlord Dewald, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.

While attending the Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco last month, I took a moment to chat with Tyler Kraemer of AgentWorld, a site that is building a list of real estate agents in the U.S. and internationally (international is in beta). A few things stuck out in my mind as being potentially useful for agents looking for an additional tool for their online marketing -- especially those using profile marketing.

First, a quick rundown of profile marketing: If you sign up for a service and there's a profile page, there's a good chance this profile page will show up in searches for your name. Search engines put up 10 or so links on their first page of search results.  more...

Seattlepi.com partners with Zillow

By Inman News, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.

The Web site of the defunct Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper, seattlepi.com, is the latest of 180 news sites expected to offer co-branded versions of Zillow.com by the end of this year, the companies said today.

Zillow announced in April that it would "power" co-branded Web sites of 11 newspaper publishers, including the Post Intelligencer's parent company, Hearst Newspapers.  more...

Realogy quietly exits Homestore scandal Premium Content

By Matt Carter, Tuesday, September 1, 2009.

When circular deals that artificially pumped up the revenue of Realtor.com operator Homestore during the dot-com boom unraveled, the crash of the company's stock and subsequent criminal trial of founder and former Chief Executive Officer Stuart Wolff grabbed headlines.

Nearly a decade later, Cendant Corp. has quietly become the last company accused of helping Homestore inflate its revenue to settle with Homestore investors, who filed a class-action lawsuit in December 2001.  more...