Luxury Real Estate Market Is On a Roll

The debate continues, is the real estate market picking up or not? Well, new statistics from NAR and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development show that the luxury real estate market buyers have really gained back confidence and have began putting serious money down on properties.

Overall, exsiting homes priced at $1 million or more have seen a 17 percent increase in sales when comparing April 2012 to April 2011. The Miami market has seen a 16 percent increase in sales over the first quarter and New York's luxury market has seen a rise in condo purchasing.

Have your own luxury real estate success story? Let us know about it by leaving a comment!

Foreclosure Can Be Valid Without Holding the Mortgage Note

New foreclosure updates from the state of Massachusetts highest court - a foreclosure can be valid even if the foreclosing entity does not have the mortgage note but as long as they have proper authority to act on behalf of the note holder. This new decision was made by the MA Supreme Judicial Court, overturning the lower court.

The entire basis of this recent decision by the Supreme court started with a foreclosure law case at the lower court level between Fannie Mae and Henrietta Eaton of Rosindale, MA. Eaton's claim was that Fannie's foreclosure lacked validity as they were not holding the note of her property or the proper authority to act on the foreclosure. This is believed to be a step forward for homeowners as it will put more due diligence on the servicer and allow homeowners to understand who exactly owns their home loan.

View the court case Eaton v. Federal National Mortgage Association

Real Twitter Success Stories

By now we are almost all social media believers, well almost all of us. One of the most misunderstood social media channel is Twitter. People find it hard to comprehend how a measly 140 character blurb can gain any true potential of a lead. Here are a few real Twitter success stories to prove it:

• Tim Ayers, Realtor - Sooke, BC
• Wins 3 clients from one simple Tweet
• Jay Thompson "Phoenix Real Estate Guy" - Phoenix, AZ
• Top RE professional ranking on top of the Real Estate blogs
• Uses Hootsuite to set up alerts for the words "moving" and "Phoenix" in order to offer polite advice to newcomers and gain their business
• Kurt Opray, homeowner - California
• Sold his CA bungalow for a whopping $1.05 million using tweets along with videos and blog/website postings

Who Attends Open Houses........

An open house can be a great asset for real estate agents, and their sellers, for placing their homes on display. However, sometimes the people who attend are not always the prime target market and this is something any real estate agent will attest to. Zillow.com published a great story about this very subject which shares the 5 top kinds of people who attend open houses. There are as follows:

1. Real Buyers - The top of the list are the people that an agent actually wants to see at an open house. They may or may not be fully ready to take action yet but they are certainty open to negotiation.
2. Noisy Neighbors - Everyone has that neighbor you catch peering in your windows when they think your not looking. They are curious to see what color you have on your walls, how you decorated your foyer, what style furniture you decided on for your living space. This is their chance and they will be there.
3. Buying Agents on the Prowl - Many times there will be buying agents attending open houses on behalf of their clients. As long as the are respectful and keep their opinions to themselves, they should not be worried about.
4. Curious Listing Agents - Sellers will sometimes interview and use the advice of many listing agents before settling. Some of these listing agents may drop by the open house to see if any of their long consulting hours had any affect on the seller.
5. Old Inhabits - An open house will undoubtedly bring forth people who used to live at this property. They are interested in seeing how the house looks currently, what changes have been made and what memories they can evoke by setting foot on the property.

Thinking About Retirement? Check out These Places!

Are you thinking about retiring in the near future? Or maybe you just want to evaluate a few places you may want to eventually settle down? We have compiled a list of areas that may be of interest according to geography, property value, climate and other factors:

• Pensacola, FL
• Average house value: $215,000
• Sales tax: 7.5%
• Crime rate: 5.45%
• All over warm climate, beach atmosphere and close proximity to urban living
• Boone, NC
• Average house value: $216,000
• Cost of living average: 93.4 (U.S. average is 100)
• Average appreciation rate over past 10 years: 6.30%
• Mountain living with plethora of outdoor activities
• Walnut Creek, CA
• Average house value: $657,000
• Open acreage available: 2,704
• Amount of retiree population: 36 percent of the population is 55 or older
• Open green area equipped with a downtown area full of high end shops and restaurants
• Santa Fee, NM
• Average house value: $421,000
• Amount of homes built after 1970: 60%
• Average appreciation rate over the past 10 years: about 5%
• Diverse culture and old city charm
• Lincoln, NE
• Average house value: $155,000
• Amount of violent crime per 1,000 residents: 4.9%
• Lowest unemployment rate: 3.5% in 2010, added more than 15,000 jobs since 2000
• Great opportunity for those seeking additional hobby work

Texas Helps Their Firefighters Through Real Estate Assistance

Goldwasser Real Estate from Austin, Texas has joined forces with the Texas State Firemans and Fire Marshal's Association to develop a home buying and selling program for firefighters. Goldwasser real estate will give 20 percent of their typical 3 percent home sale commission to each firefighter who uses them to buy or sell a home. The Texas Wildfire Relief Fund will then be given 5 percent and the other 15 percent will be given to the firefighter.

This has started a trend with a few other organizations contributing such as Proficio Mortgage Venture of Dallas and Capital Title Company of Austin. Proficio's State Heroes program discounts closing cost on purchase and refis for firefighters nationwide and Capital Title will donate $500 to the Wildfire Relief Fund for every closing.

Eventually this service is hoped to also reach police officers, veterans and corrections officers.

Social Media Tools for Real Estate Agents

The National Association of Realtors distributed statistics recently quoting that 90 percent of Real Estate Agents use some sort of social media. This is no surprise as one log into Facebook will uncover a plethora of agents placing property pictures and success stories all over. Even so, there are a few avenues that agents may not be utilizing that could prove beneficial:

• Google Alerts: This allows you to insert particular keywords for industry information to share with your clients or potentials. Then Google will search online for this information for you and send you a list of relevant news topics.
• Google Analytics: If you have a personal website for your properties, hooking up an Google Analytics is one of the best free analysis tools you can use. It will show you demographic statistics of your readers, hits per page, suggested keywords, etc.
• Hootsuite: This is a third party content distributor which means that when you post something on this site, it will automatically post it amongst all of your social media sites for you. This can help reduce time but keep in mind if you are looking for page rankings for your social media sites, automatic postings can slightly minimize the points you get with search engines.
• RealBird: A Real Estate social media platform that has a Facebook application that allows you to add a "Home for Sale" tab on your business page.

"Unearned" Fees are OK by the Supreme Court

It was recently announced by the U.S. Supreme Court that "unearned" fees charged by service providers in real estate transactions are not against the law unless they are split amongst more than one party. This presents some uproar with many as it is believed to bring back the unethical practices of creating unnecessary fees and/or raising up fees by service providers that both the Justice Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development have fought against.

 It is important to note two things:

1. This decision will not affect state laws against individual fees and therefore will not override certain practices
2. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau still has an independent set of regulations in which it can place upon companies which it feels are being unethical. This means that this decision will most likely not give free reign to all service providers looking to charge "unearned" fees.