Real Estate Bust?

Are housing prices finally coming down? Thank goodness!
CNN had a good article that lists the % change of real estate prices in each major cities.

First-quarter real estate
Median U.S. home price: $217,900
Gain from a year ago: 10.3%
Change from 3 months ago: - 3%
Areas gaining more than 10%: 60
Areas posting declines: 16
Fastest grower: Phoenix, up 38%
Cheapest: Danville, Ill., $52,500
Source: National Assoc. of REALTORS

Real Estate Blog

If you are interested in starting a real estate blog or related site in your area, check out the Toronto Real Estate Blog - A weblog about trends in the Toronto area real estate market.Toronto Real Estate Blog

Although you might not be interested in the real estate market in Toronto, its a great example of how a real estate blog can really suck readers in and make them engaged in your area of interest...

Historic Properties

I love historic properties. My house was built in 1924 and my husband and I have spent the greater part of each weekend since we bought it fixing it up. If you have a similar passion for old houses, check out HistoricProperties.com to see what's new. You can really can find great deals and hard to find properties on this site.

Vacation Homes

The LA Times had an interesting article this morning about people renting out their own homes to make extra cash. Go to It's a Vacation On The House to read the whole thing. One person rents out her home for $2000 per night during the high season. Wow, that's some serious cash!

If you are thinking of renting out your own place, a good place to start with is TripHomes.com
Here, you can list your own house to be rented out.

Happy Rentals!

Neighborhood Comps

One of the things I love to see when I put offers on a house is the neighborhood comps list. Now you can see your home's value with HomeGain.com! You will get a free comparative market analysis plus neighborhood comps! I found all the comps in my neighborhood, and it gave me a pretty good idea of how much my house is currently worth. Check it out for yourself!

Time To Refinance?

We all know that interest rates are going up, but I read an interesting article on CNN Money today that put it all into a little more perspective.

"The Mortgage Bankers Association estimates that some $330 billion worth of ARMs will adjust in 2006 and $1 trillion worth will reset by the end of 2007. With a $200,000 loan adjusting upward from 4 percent to 6 percent, the monthly bill would increase to about $1,200, from $955," stated the article.

Well, that's a much higher payment! To read that full article, go to CNN Money.

If you are getting nervous about interest rates get even higher, fill out the form at Ameriquest Mortgage to find out if you can reduce your interest rate. Ameriquest also has a great mortgage calculator where you can get a good estimate of how much your payments will be with various interest rates.

Another site that will give you up to four, customized refinance quotes is CustomizedRefinanceQuotes.com. Fill out the forms and maybe you will be able to lock in a better rate than you already have.

Google Real Estate Search

A couple days ago I wrote about the google base real estate housing search. Well today, I found something better! You don't even need to go to Google base to find real estate listings. Instead, you can just type in the keyword "home for sale" in the usual Google bar and you will get one more search field where you can put in your location etc. To see a print screen of the Google real estate search go to Shimon Sandlers ppc and search marketing blog. I think that the Google base real estate housing site will soon come out of beta and we will definitely start seeing more of it in the months to come.

Realty Blogging

As a blogger, I'm constantly reading other peoples blogs, especially real estate blogs and online marketing blogs. My two real passions are search engine marketing and real estate. When I tell people about my two seemingly different passions, people usually say something like ", Hmmm I guess I could see a passion for real estate, but a passion for search marketing. That's weird." Even my husband (who also loves real estate and anything that allows him to use power tools) does not understand how the two passions have anything in common.

But I do, and today, I found another blogger who shares my passion. Paul Chaney from
RealtyBlogging.com (my new favorite blog!) asks the question "How is blogging and real estate alike?"

Well Paul, here is what I think in a nutshell:

The kinds of people who are attracted to real estate are usually entrepreneurs who are willing to put hard work and elbow grease into a project. Online marketers and entrepreneurs need to have the same scrappiness in order to be successful. Both are industries that are constantly changing and growing. Most industries have some kind of guideline or education to teach you how to be successful. For example, doctors, lawyers and engineers all have formal training, and if they do their due diligence, and go to the right schools and get the right grades, then they will most likely be successful.

Bloggers, search marketers and real estate investors don't have any real guidelines or formal education. They are more or less just flying by the seat of their pants, testing things as they go, and hopefully making the right decisions as they go. As anyone who has started a blog or bought their first house or investment property will tell you that there is no class or formal education that can teach you nearly as much as down and dirty hands on experience. I guess that's why I think bloggers, search marketers and real estate investors are the same. It takes equal parts scrappiness, hard work and good timing in order to be successful in either industry!

Thanks for posing the question Paul, and thanks Realty Blogging!

Google Base For Real Estate Investors

I love Google. Doesn't everyone? Google just keeps coming out with more and more amazing tools that really do help organized the worlds information (which is exactly what they say their goal is). My latest discovery is Google Base. Actually, its not a new discovery, Google Base launched a couple months ago (some time in late 2005) but when it first came out, I just did not see the value. I mean yes, its like Craigslist, and all listings are free, but I didn't see the value in it for me.... Until the other day when I was looking for new ways to advertise some clients online. I decided to do a quick search on Google Base just to see if anything had changed since it first came out. Well, now, there really is something to be found there, including housing listings!

If you go to Google Base and click on Housing, you can put in the usual criteria that you would put into Realtor.com or a similar site. What's cool about this search compared to others like Realtor.com is that you actually get a Google Map that shows you exactly where the advertised house is located on the map! That's great when you are trying to find houses in a certain area, with specific criteria such as price and number of bedrooms etc.

Google Base is not only great for people looking to buy (such as myself). But it also seems great for real estate agents, or sellers who are selling their home without an agent, because you just post your information in a couple easy steps, and then you have a free listing for your property that is there for all the world to see. Free!

The one major problem I found so far is that it is so slow! It seems to get stuck on every page, and this is an annoyance factor that may keep people away. Hopefully, this will get worked out very soon!

Foreclosures

I'm trying to start learning about foreclosures, and I found a great site to get started on the research proccess, its called Foreclosures.com. They provide current property listings for foreclosures, preforeclosures, bankruptcy homes, and tax liens. The services costs $9.95 per week if you decide to subscribe, but there is a free trial that you can sign up for. You have to put your credit card information in for the free trial, so don't forget to cancel if you don't like it! Otherwise they will continue to charge your card! Good to know!

Anyway, once you go on the site, even if you don't have a free trial membership, at least you can see the streets where there are listed foreclosures, and pre-foreclosures etc.

Let me know what you think!

The Zillow Real Estate Blog

A couple weeks ago I wrote about one of my favorite sites called Zillow. Today, as I was visiting the site I found a link to their blog. So far, I'm linking this as much as Zillow itself. It's jam packed with information for investors, and it offers some great insight. Check out the ZillowBlog.com as soon as you can!