Since we’ve been busy with the relaunch of our site this week, I haven’t been able to keep up with my posting as much as I wanted to, so you’ll all just have to be satisfied with these wonderful links instead.

Simplifying the Buying Process - (Rain City Guide) - A great list of seven questions to ask if you’re looking for (or representing someone who’s looking for) a new home.
Zillow Poll Results: Agent’s Labor Still Needed - (Sellsius Blog) - An interesting poll conducted by Sellsius tells us in black and white why Zillow won’t run traditional agent’s out of business.
Freedom’s Friends: The Curbed Instant Guide - (Curbed) - The Freedom Tower’s gonna have 3 little brothers, making Greenwich Street the home to a whole Freedom Family! The New York based bloggers I read have covered this one to death, but here’s one post that pretty much sums it up.
The Brits, the Aussies, and the Price of Your House - (Hot Property) - An interesting analysis of how the behavior of British and Australian real estate markets may foreshadow our own fate.
Real Estate Advertising Moving to Internet from Newspapers - (The Real Estate Bloggers) - It’s not the first time we’ve heard it, but this sums up the concept quite well.
Are you in an “untraditional” relationship? You can still buy a home - (Boston Real Estate Blog) - Some option for ‘untraditional’ couples seeking home ownership.

Our new site went live this morning bringing maps closer to the forefront of navigation and showing the great progress we’ve made recently in expanding our coverage (we have over 1.5 million transactions now).

One thing that we’ve been wanting to do for a while is make our mapping features more interactive and useful to consumers. Now mapping takes center stage as a way for people to find and compare homes sold in a particular area. On the new site, you’ll be able to get all of the pertinent information about a home that’s been sold or is for sale (i.e. who sold it, when, and for how much) from helpful markers right on the map! Then, if you want to learn more about the sale or the agent involved, you can simply click on the link for additional details.

But just as important as the site’s new look is what’s under the hood. We’ve been working nonstop to increase our coverage of home sales transactions for 2006, and those efforts are really paying off. With all of the new data we’ve collected (and will continue to collect) we can offer even better service in the locations we cover, while rapidly incorporating new locations which were previously unavailable to us.

If you want to view the full press release, you can do so here, and below is an example of a map you can place on your blog through an emerging standard called GeoRSS - which is an extension of the commonly used RSS. You can find out more about the map you see below by going to this page on our site.

-Tony Floriani

»Get a recent home sales map for your site.
» About: Homethinking monitors what each real estate agent has done and consumer reviews about them.

about this article in the New York Times, that is. The article has stirred up quite the hornet’s nest of activity in the real estate blogging community, and since everyone seems to be talking about it, now I’m gonna get my two cents in.

Getting straight to the point, I definitely don’t think that internet based companies like Redfin will kill off traditional real estate agents, or even degrade their commission significantly. At least not any time soon. For starters, according to the article, they’ve closed 89 transactions since they went into business. This doesn’t seem like an earth-shattering number to me, considering how many homes are bought and sold here in the US each year, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they aren’t the final word in real estate.

What Redfin, and sites like it, are doing is filling a niche. It’s obviously not the lion’s share of the market right now, but there are people out there who feel that they are competent enough to find or sell a home without professional assistance. For people like this, a service that allows you to save money by doing most of the leg work yourself may be just what the doctor ordered. There is, however, still a huge demand for real estate professionals and their services, and I don’t see that changing in the forseeable future.

Why? Two reasons: Time and expertise.

Sure, with the internet, everything is becoming so easy to just do-it-yourself. Everything from trading stocks to booking flights to (gasp!) real estate searches! But real estate is a bit more complicated than finding discount airfare, and dealing in it can be very hard work, especially if you’re not familiar with it. In terms of buyers, not everyone has the time to do all that work that a realtor does to find a home that’s right for them. Furthermore, many people value the expertise of a good agent who can take on the burden of sniffing out appropriate homes, do it quickly and efficiently, and maybe even find a gem which they wouldn’t have looked at otherwise. And for Sellers, the potential time saved, coupled with the financial benefits that can be gained from hiring a real estate professional are tremendous, even moreso than for a buyer.

So the long and the short of it is, traditional real estate agents shouldn’t fret. Just keep doing what you do best and make the buying and selling process as smooth and advantageous to your clients as possible. People vote with their wallets, and right now, they seem to be saying that they will pay for that kind of professional service. And if they need help finding one of these professionals, we’re more than happy to lend a hand!

-Tony Floriani

David Lerah, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, is usually one of the more optimistic forecasters of residential real estate. “I’m hoping for prices to drop” and “sellers are not bringing prices down fast enough” are two statements that home owners would prefer weren’t uttered by Lerah. But those are two quotes from a Wall Street Journal interview he did in relation to the July housing statistics that recently came out.

An increasing numbers of homes are coming onto the market, while the number of homes selling declines as compared to a year ago. That means there is a virtual stalemate, where sellers aren’t budging while buyers are being spoiled for choice and feel that there isn’t a need to offer the list price.

Lerah, traditionally the optimist, may have dealt another card to buyers, particularly in California and Florida.

The newest carnival of real estate is up at Nubricks.com. There are a lot of good articles in there, so go ahead and check them out!

-Tony Floriani

This is our first weekly linkage to some articles that I found particularly interesting. Enjoy!

The last seven days in Real Estate - (Rain City Guide)
People Have To Live Somewhere - (The Real Estate Bloggers)
Slow News Cycle = More Housing Coverage = More Confusion - (Matrix)
The Natural Cycle of a Real Estate Market - (Blueroof)
Upgrading Apartments? Sell First! - (Urbandigs)

-Tony Floriani

Not into that whole tabbed browser thing? Well Zillow’s got your back! For everyone who struggles with multiple browser windows, tabs, and all manner of internet hocus-pocus while trying to view two pages at the same time, Zillow has a solution: Zip-2-Zillow. In conjunction with ZipRealty, Zillow has instituted this new utility which makes jumping between the two sites a breeze. Now, instead of having to arduously cut and paste addresses from one window to another (seriously, it’s a pain in the a**!), you can just click the link and instantly get Zillow information for whatever property you’re looking at. And now that they’ve done their good deed for the day, they can get back to their plot to take over the world!

or maybe they’ll just keep on providing free and easy home estimates with ever increasing accuracy… It’s really a toss up at this point

-Tony Floriani

Recently we’ve noticed a lot of activity in the online home auctioning market and we decided to find out more. It appears that due to growing inventories and high rates of foreclosure in some areas, sellers are finding it harder to gauge their homes’ value and are uncertain about what marketing strategies to pursue. As these people seek alternative methods to sell their homes, some are finding that the auction block can offer a quick exit from stressful or disappointing real estate transactions. It can also help speed the process if the homeowners find themselves in financial trouble with mortgages, or if they are forced to relocate on a moment’s notice.

The auction block holds promise for sellers because it is a relatively quick way to guarantee a sale at a time when more and more homes are languishing on the traditional real estate market. Unfortunately, the rapidity of this medium comes at a price. In addition to steep auction fees, which can sometimes amount to over 10% of a home’s total value (compared with the 5% or 6% typically charged by traditional selling agents), there is no certainty that you will get what you think your home is worth. By comparing Zillow estimates with auction results, we found that many sellers can expect the final bid to fall somewhere within Zillow’s ballpark figure for the time period. Unfortunately, there is a fairly strong possibility that you will sell in the lower range of your home’s value, or even drop below it, before having to pay the expensive auction fees. Here are a few examples:

This home sold for 10% above the Zestimate before auction fees.

This one sold for about 4% above the Zestimate.

This one sold for slightly below the Zestimate.

And this home sold for significantly less than the Zestimate at a 35% discount

In one other extremely expensive example, a 1.2 acre Californian property brought in a final bid of almost $5.2 million, but according to Zillow estimates, the property was worth more than $6 million at the time of the sale three years ago. Even taking into account the ballpark nature of Zillow estimates, this seems to be an enormous discount. Indeed, it seems that more of the homes we checked out lost money than gained money from their auctions, and losers lost badly while winners tended to stay roughly within the range of their home’s Zestimated value.

So if you’re considering an online auction for your home, bear in mind that you may stand to lose a significant portion of your home’s value in the process. Even professional online auctioneers readily admit that their services aren’t for everyone. They believe the best potential sellers are the ones who have realistic expectations for the minimum prices of their homes, and those who are financially stable (those who don’t owe more in debt than they could earn in the sale). I would personally say that if you aren’t in a rush to sell your home, this method probably is not for you, and if you do try it for any reason, be prepared to lower your expectations. If you want to learn more about the auctioning process, you can practice bidding on real estate at RealtyBid International.

-Tony Floriani and Sandy Leung

While I was looking for a new sublet on Craigslist last night (my current one runs out sept. 29th if anyone wants to pitch me an offer) I saw something that made me feel nervous, confused, irritated, and just generally icky. The listing is for an apartment in Williamsburg, reasonable rent, decent looking interior, good location (if you don’t mind dealing with the L train)…and I would have sprung for it instantly if not for one shady detail. The guy subletting this place wants the entire amount, $2,575, up front, non-refundable, half a month before the move-in date.

So the question is, is this guy crazy? Or am I crazy for thinking he’s crazy? Or is it just a straight up scam? I realize that real estate in New York is shifty business, but that is an awful lot of money to just plop down in this price range, I don’t care how many “leases” he writes. And yet I still feel the urge to call this guy up and see the place!

This is a classic case of how the rental and temporary (because not all of us are in a place where we can get a real lease) market in New York is getting very uncomfortable for renters. I see this deal, know that it makes me uncomfortable, and am still considering ways to make it feasible in my mind. I’ll probably chalk this one up as a lost cause, since I know from experience that past the third or fourth day, if not sooner, all bets are off anyway, but if you have any thoughts about whether this is reasonable or not, I’d love to hear them.

-Tony Floriani

My mom always used to tell me that her generation expected to fly airplanes out of their garages to go to work in the morning. I, of course, always laughed and chided her about how ridiculous those childhood fantasies were. Naturally, most of us are still caught up in the same old morning commute that our parents were, filled with buses, subways, and gridlock traffic. Right?

Well as it turns out, not everyone thought the idea of an airplane in every garage was so crazy after all. Certainly not the residents of Rosamond Skypark, a subdivision of Kern County, California, where, according to the LA Times, a community of airplane enthusiasts has congregated to create an aviator’s paradise.

Built around what used to be Rosamond Airport, the entire community has access to an airstrip where private plane owners can come and go as they please. Additionally, every home has a taxiway built onto the property, so home owners can take off right from their own backyards. Some use this rather unusual perk purely for recreation, while others really do fly to work in the morning! Now I guess it’s my mom’s turn to laugh…

-Tony Floriani