I cover mortgages, title insurance and real estate services for Inman News. Have a story idea or comment? Please call or drop me a line at matt@inman.com.
@Malcolm Waring -- thank you for pointing out the error in the story, which was introduced in editing and was not the fault of the author. The story has been updated to correct that while NAR recommends that MLSs adopt rules requiring brokers and agents to "identify the listing firm in a reasonably prominent location" and to require "that the identity of listing agents be displayed" on IDX listing sites, that is not a requirement to conform with NAR policy.
Redfin's done an interesting analysis of more than 250,000 listings in 11 markets, which found there's tremendous variation from market to market in the prevalence of open houses.
According to Redfin, open houses are employed on only 3 percent of listings in Las Vegas and 5 percent in Phoenix.
At the other end of the scale, at least one open house was held for 83 percent of listings in San Francisco, 63 percent in Boston, and 53 percent in Seattle. In between were markets like Portland (32 percent), Los Angeles (29 percent), Chicago (22 percent) and Austin (21 percent).
But what everybody would like to know -- does holding an open house help sell it faster -- is hard to tease out from the data. Results differed from market to market.
In San Francisco, listings that didn't get the open house treatment were 7 percent less likely to sell within 90 days than those that did. In Las Vegas and Phoenix, homes that weren't marketed using an open house were 17 percentage points MORE LIKELY to sell than those that got the open house treatment.
Across all markets, when open houses were held within the first week a home was on the market, homes had a better than 50-50 chance of selling in the first 90 days, compared to 42.5 percent for homes not marketed with an open house and 29.4 percent for homes where the open house was held after the first week.
It's never easy proving cause and effect.
An open house in the first week "is just a sign that your listing agent is working hard to do everything he or she can to sell your home," Redfin speculated. An open house later in the life of a listing, however, may be "a sign of desperation" to make something happen with a listing that simply isn’t priced correctly or doesn’t show well.
In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee today Laurie Goodman of Amherst Securities said there are 4 million borrowers who who took out loans before the June 1, 2009 HARP cut-off date, are eligible for HARP 1.0 and HARP 2.0, and have an incentive to refinance. The decision to drop the 125 loan-to-value ceiling in October created almost 700,000 additional "eligible and incented borrowers," she said.
Goodman testified that one problem with letting lenders off the hook for reps and warrants (on both the old and new loan) is that only the current lender/servicer has an incentive to do a HARP refi, which limits competition and raises costs for borrowers because they can't shop around for the best rate.
National Mortage News has reported that lenders can make as much as $10,000 per loan on HARP refinancings -- secondary market investors like the fact that HARP borrowers are unlikely to prepay their mortgage because they have little equity in their homes.
