Daily Archives: January 16, 2013

3 Core Link Baiting Strategies for 2013 | Katonah NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

The search engines are always changing, but link baiting strategies never die. Here are the three core elements of an effective link bait campaign, which will only be more vital in the year ahead:

1. Understand Shareability

strategies SEOA link is, fundamentally, really just a social share from somebody who happens to run a website. While the platform (HTML) is different, the psychological forces in play are the same. Content that goes viral on social networks will tend to attract links as well.

And, if you pay attention to social networks, you’ll notice that there are definite patterns. Most viral content has at least one of the following attributes:

It’s opinionated

The popularity of conspiracy theories on the Internet is perhaps one of the best examples of how bold opinions attract attention and propagate rapidly. A strong stance can alienate you from a large portion of your potential audience, but it can also expand your existing reach and strengthen your following. It’s probably best to stick to values you actually believe in, of course, to avoid a PR disaster at some point down the road.

It’s funny

The humor site Cracked currently has over 2.3 million Facebook likes and a Domain Authority of 88. They have accomplished this simply by collecting interesting facts and making them hilarious.

It’s insider information

The Wall Street Journal linked to WordStream, an online ad-consulting firm, because they published their own proprietary data about Google. The original source of new information tends to attract more links than the site that re-purposes it, unless they are extremely good at re-purposing content, or already have a larger following.

It’s cute

Cats rule the internet, and according to this article on the science of Internet cats, this is largely because they’re cute and vulnerable. Cute pictures and videos of babies and dogs also abound on the Web. There’s something about cuteness that demands to be shared.

It’s bizarre and quirky

Gawker hired Neetzan Zimmerman to produce the viral content that, as Gawker’s primary editor said, “for the sake of the other writers, [is] a necessary cog.” Zimmerman, who created The Daily What, says “When something goes viral, it tends to be something that is not expected to go viral.” Headlines like “This Pizza Has a Crust Made Out of Cheeseburgers,” and “Dead And Buried Hamster Emerges From Grave Alive And Well And Hungry For Brains,” tend to go viral more than what would traditionally be called “headline news.”

As Zimmerman said, A “taxidermied cat being that’s been turned into a helicopter—that’s clearly going to be successful, right? Because it’s got that element of shock, it’s got that element of a cat, you know, it’s basically just tailored to the Internet.”

It should hopefully be obvious from all of this that shareability is only one component of success. A piece of content that’s designed only to go viral is also likely to be poorly branded, irrelevant, and unlikely to lead to conversions down the road. For some more examples of successful link bait campaigns, we recommend taking a look at these 10 examples from WebPageFX.

2. Brainstorm Frequently

What should also be obvious from all of the above is that linkbait demands originality in some form. If the information isn’t new, the presentation must be. If the topic is “boring,” it takes creativity to transform it into something bizarre, quirky, or hilarious.

And while “cuteness” doesn’t necessarily demand creativity, if you keep pushing that button too often, it’s going to be seen as obvious pandering. Besides, it will still take creativity to transform a branding message into something even remotely cute.

Here are a few brainstorming tips to help you launch a successful link bait campaign:

Small groups are best

Put too many people in a brainstorming meeting and most of them won’t contribute. Groups of three to five are better for group brainstorming. In larger groups, people forget their ideas before they’re called on, and it’s difficult to get into a productive rhythm.

Individual brainstorming is a must

Some of the brainstorming should be done by individuals brainstorming alone. Many psychological experiments on the subject have demonstrated individual brainstorming sessions result in more ideas. Group brainstorming is a necessity in order make sure ideas are aligned with business goals and long-term strategy, but individual brainstorming is an important component that shouldn’t be ignored.

Try “brainwriting” instead of brainstorming

Studies have shown that this technique beats the pants off of traditional brainstorming. The process is simple. For three minutes, everybody writes at least three ideas. Then they pass their sheet to the left, read the previous ideas, and again record as many ideas as they can for three minutes. Keep doing this for either a set amount of time or until the group feels its ideas are exhausted.

Write it all down

Whether you’re brainstorming alone or in a group, write down every single idea. As we mentioned over at ProBlogger, psychology suggests that we reject creative ideas, even when we think we want them, and rationalize this by telling ourselves the idea wasn’t creative. Do not reject any idea that comes to mind. There’s plenty of time to weed through the list later.

Encourage constructive debate

This probably goes against everything you’ve ever heard about brainstorming, but the science is clear. Debate has a positive effect on brainstorming. While you should definitely record every single idea, debates paradoxically make people feel more liberated, and more comfortable sharing minority viewpoints. This allows more ideas to make their way into the discussion. Don’t get carried away with this, of course.

Mix ideas

If there is only one thing you should take away from all of this, it’s that mixing and matching ideas together is the best way to come up with new ideas. Don’t confine yourself entirely to your niche: Pull in ideas, concepts, facts, and stories from other disciplines in order to spice things up and draw analogies with your own subject matter.

Clearly, some of these tips contradict each other (debate vs. brainwriting vs. working alone, for example). Use more than one brainstorming method and measure the results. You may find that some techniques work better than others, or you may find that you need many different types of brainstorming in order to achieve the right variety of ideas.

3. Find Effective Sources of Information

Sometimes research comes before brainstorming, and sometimes it comes afterward. Both methods work fine, but result in different kinds of posts.

When the research comes first, it provides the raw material to combine and mash up into a unique idea. The advantage here is that you already have some idea of what facts and elements are going to go into the post. The disadvantage is that your ideas will be somewhat confined by the body of knowledge you’ve researched.

When the ideas come first, it forces you to stretch in your research and pull information from more unique sources. This can result in more unique ideas. The downside, however, is that you may discover  the facts contradict your original idea, and that making your idea work would simply stretch things too far.

Hopefully, it’s clear that you need both kinds of posts, and that it’s actually a good idea to do some research both before and after brainstorming in most cases.

As we said before, “insider information” is far more likely to go viral than a redundant article. You can’t always be the next Bob Woodward, but you can get your information from places most people aren’t willing to look:

Google Scholar

Peer reviewed articles and scholarly papers aren’t easy to read, but that’s precisely what makes them so useful as a source of information. There’s a lot of information contained in these texts that has never made it’s way into the blogosphere, and most of it is only “boring” because it’s presented in a very technical way. Pull out the most surprising facts and the key takeaways and you’ve got yourself some “insider” information, of a sort.

Your Client

This isn’t the first time we’ve mentioned how useful your client can be as a source of information, and it won’t be the last. Odds are your client has a proprietary database of some kind. If you can, take advantage of it as a source of raw data.

Industry Experts (and People in General)

Get in touch with experts in your niche. The well known ones can help with exposure, and the less well known source can also offer some “from the front lines” information that you can’t find anywhere else. Watch the nightly news and notice how even an interview with a random person on the street can help a bit with credibility. There’s no reason to limit sources of information to your own research. Mine people for ideas, opinions, and information. Be a journalist.

The Library

Yes, it still exists. Believe it or not, this is also a great place to look if you want to find information that’s never made it’s way online. Yes, this still happens sometimes!

Anything That Could be Considered “Raw Data”

Whether it’s government statistics or an industry survey, raw data that’s never been turned into an article or blog post is one of your most useful “insider sources.”

Other Disciplines

We might be repeating ourselves a bit by saying this, but we can’t emphasize it enough. While the other research strategies demand looking through dense material, this one allows you to skim lighter blog posts and news articles and use them as insights for your own field. This makes the research part easier, but the creative part becomes more involved. This is the tradeoff.

Conclusion

To produce linkbait, you need to “get” the Internet, and understand why things go viral. It takes a comprehensive brainstorming strategy and a keen understanding of where to find original data in order to pull this off. The sweet spot between these three strategies is the launching pad for your most successful link bait campaign.

Did you learn anything new from this post, and do you have something to add? Let’s keep this going in the comments, and please pass this along if you liked our contribution. Thanks!

Image Credit: Shutterstock / Melpomene

via searchenginejournal.com

December home prices jump 19.6% in Southern California | Pound Ridge NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

Southern California’s housing market ended the year with sharp gains, rounding out the first solid year of sustained improvement after nearly five years of real estate malaise — and helping set up further improvement in 2013.

The region’s median home price registered a sizable 19.6% pop in December compared with the same month last year to hit $323,000, real estate firm DataQuick reported Tuesday. A record level of cash buyers flooded into the market and more move-up homes sold last month.

While Southland housing is on the mend, the steep increase in the region’s median price last month probably reflects a variety of factors, such as the mix of what sold in December, and the run-up may not continue at that brisk pace, experts said. The median is the point at which half the homes in the region sold for more and half for less.

“There is no possible way that number can be sustained nor should anybody look at that as a long-term trend,” said Stuart Gabriel, director of the Ziman Center for Real Estate at UCLA. “We haven’t shifted from bust back to bubble, and nobody should think we have, and nor likely will we.”

When compared with the prior month, the median was essentially flat, up only 0.6%. San Bernardino and Riverside counties posted the strongest year-over-year increases, up 20.0% and 19.1%, respectively, indicating that the once hard-hit Inland Empire is now probably in recovery.

The median is heavily influenced by the types of homes selling, and some of last month’s pricier sales may have been driven by fears of increased tax burdens on the wealthy, as Washington wrangled with the “fiscal cliff” negotiations.

A rise in prices will mean more homeowners who had been underwater — owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, a condition also known as negative equity — can now put their properties on the market. That would help ease the region’s inventory squeeze, which is another major factor driving up prices.

Last year was the first year of solid improvement since housing crashed in 2007. The strong performance last month indicates that 2013 will continue to bring home price gains, analysts said.

“Our forecast over the next 12 months is for equally strong appreciation,” Zillow.com chief economist Stan Humphries said. “Even though we have got a lot of homes still in negative equity in Southern California, the tight inventory is definitely creating some price appreciation.”

An estimated total of 20,274 new and previously owned homes and condominiums sold throughout the six-county region in December. That was a 5.1% increase from November and up 5.3% from December 2011. Last month’s tally was the highest for a December since 2009.

The 2012 housing rebound came after foreclosures declined, housing inventory plummeted, mortgage interest rates hit record lows and demand from investors surged last year.

In addition, the overhang of the last housing bust resulted in some unexpected benefits.

For instance, the high number of underwater borrowers actually served as a boost to the market rather than being a drag, as people kept their homes off the market, decreasing inventory.

“The lock-out phenomenon, combined with the rise in investors converting foreclosures into rentals, led to a lack of for-sale inventory,” CoreLogic economist Sam Khater wrote in a research note. “With home prices rising in 2012 and 2013, tight for-sale inventory will begin to ease.”

Nationally, CoreLogic reported that home prices were on a sharp upward trajectory in November, with almost all states posting gains that month. The firm’s home price index report, also released Tuesday, showed that home prices nationwide increased 7.4% year-over-year.

“Consistent price increases throughout 2012 have started the process of lifting households out of negative equity, which will support home sales and refinancing volumes,” Paul Diggle, an economist for Capital Economics, wrote in an emailed analysis. “Lower levels of negative equity is good news for housing market activity and sets up a virtuous circle of rising activity leading to rising prices and pushing negative equity down further.”

In California, buyers can anticipate a tight market in the near term. A supply of only about 2 1/2 months’ worth of single-family homes for sale was available statewide at the end of December, the California Assn. of Realtors reported Tuesday. A supply of six or seven months is considered healthy by most economists.

Supply from distressed sales, particularly from foreclosed homes, will remain limited as those homes are being quickly snapped up by investors while the number of troubled borrowers entering foreclosure continues to decline. The number of notices of default — the first step in the formal foreclosure process — fell 14.5% in December from November and dropped 39.8% from December 2011, according to foreclosure tracker ForeclosureRadar.com.

The decline in foreclosures has been aided by an increase in short sales, as The Times recently reported, as well as other loan aid for borrowers. The drop in foreclosures should continue to help lift prices.

“For 2013, we largely expect more of the same,” Sean O’Toole, chief executive of ForeclosureRadar, wrote in a blog post this week. “Demand will remain strong thanks to Federal Reserve-manipulated low interest rates and affordability. Housing supply will remain constrained, largely due to government foreclosure intervention. As a result, prices will rise, though likely at a slower pace.”

The increase in the median home price in Southern California reflects market dynamics as fewer sales are logged in cheaper neighborhoods and pricier places take off.

Throughout Southern California, sales of mid-to-higher-cost markets rose in December, DataQuick reported. Sales of homes between $300,000 and $800,000, the typical move-up range, jumped 31.4% year-over-year. Sales of homes above $500,000 soared 40.0% year-over-year, while sales of homes of more than $800,000 were up 36.3%.

Meanwhile, cheaper neighborhoods posted weak sales. Most notably, the number of homes throughout the region that sold below $200,000 dropped 28.1% while those below $300,000 fell 18.2%.

Sales of foreclosed homes made up just 14.8% of the market last month, down from 15.4% the month before and 32.4% in December 2011. That compares with a high of 56.7% of the market in February 2009.

Cash buyers and investors are playing a big part in snapping up home inventory. Cash buyers bought up 33.8% of all resale homes last month, while absentee buyers purchased 29.1% of Southland homes in December, DataQuick said.

via latimes.com

Dotloop invites lenders, service providers onto platform | Chappaqua NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

Paperless transaction management provider dotloop is partnering with LendingTree, ClosingCorp and Whitefence to allow real estate agents using dotloop platform to help their clients choose services offered to home buyers and sellers through those companies.

Real estate agents will also be able to add their own service providers to what dotloop is describing as an “open ecosystem” for the provision of mortgages, title insurance, home warranties and other services offered to buyers and sellers.

The opt-in program “gives agents and brokers more control over the entire real estate transaction experience, from submitting an offer and finding a home inspector to securing a home warranty and activating utilities, and makes their preferred home services providers easily available to their clients within the dotloop platform,” the company said.

Dotloop says its partnerships with LendingTree, ClosingCorp and Whitefence will allow agents to choose from a “qualified menu” of services to offer to their clients.

In private beta testing dotloop has been conducting for several months, agents have been encouraged to upload their favorite service providers, and  many agents and brokers have uploaded hundreds, the company said.

Feedback from agents and buyers “has been extremely positive.” and dotloop says it “intends to expand on its success to create a full ecosystem of best-of-breed services to support the ultimate goal of giving agents control in delivering delightful home buying experiences at every phase of the process.”

Many agents and brokers have built their business around referrals and service provider relationships, dotloop CEO Austin Allison said in a statement.

The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) prohibits mortgage lenders and settlement services providers like title insurers from paying kickbacks to real estate brokers and agents in exchange for referring business to them. Although laws vary from state to state, brokerages are often allowed to own a limited stake in an affiliated businesses that provide such services, as long as consumers are provided with disclosures.

Real estate brokers and agents will also refer their clients to lenders and settlement service providers that they believe they can count on for fast, reliable service.

“I’ve created a Rolodex of relationships and credible service providers that I do business with and refer business to on a regular basis — all because I know that my clients will receive an amazing experience through that vendor,” said Amy Youngren, an EXIT Realty sales representative, in a press release issued by dotloop.

Tim Armbruster, CTO, ClosingCorp CTO Tim Armbruster is also quoted in the press release, saying dotloop’s announcement “underscores a fundamental shift in real estate toward a more open approach to software solutions that truly benefit buyers and sellers. The company is addressing the challenges of creating a seamless, digital experience to buy and sell real estate — while also empowering agents and brokers to bring their service provider relationships into the transaction process. It’s a win-win.”

Allison described the move as “the first step in what we expect to be an ongoing industry movement to give agents more choice and control in creating the incredibly simple, delightful experiences for buyer and sellers everywhere,” Allison said.

“We’re committed to making buying a home as simple as buying a latte,” Allison said, referring to a call by Inman News founder and publisher Brad Inman that the real estate industry simplify the process of buying a home.

Allison and other industry leaders will join Inman at 2:40 p.m. today at the Real Estate Connect conference in New York City to discuss “What Does the Industry Need to Do to Make the Latte Vision Happen?”

Joining Inman and Allison on the Connect stage for the discussion will be Glenn Shimkus, co-founder and CEO of Cartavi, a cloud-based real estate transaction coordination service; Stewart Morris Jr., vice chairman of title insurance provider Stewart Information Services Corp. (SISCO); Eric Bryn, vice president of digital innovation at Chicago-based Baird & Warner Real Estate, one of the largest brokerages in the U.S.; and Krisstina Wise, founder and CEO of the innovative Austin, Texas, brokerage The GoodLife Team.

via inman.com

Trulia’s mobile app for agents gets social media capabilities | Armonk NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

<a href=The added exposure gives up to four times more views than Trulia property listings without check-ins, said Heather Fernandez, Trulia’s vice president of agent services.

Trulia first released a mobile app for agents for the iPhone that featured property check-ins and lead notifications in December, 2011.

The following August, Listing syndicator ListHub instituted a policy restricting the use of listings in agent tools, including mobile apps designed for real estate agents by Trulia and others.

The change was required under the terms of a new syndication agreement between Trulia and ListHub’s parent company, Realtor.com operator Move Inc.

Although ListHub is the largest syndicator of listings data to third-party sites like Zillow and Trulia, those sites can also get listings directly from multiple listing services and brokers.

via inman.com

Mortgage applications jump 15.2% | North Salem NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

Mortgage applications soared 15.2% during the second week of January as both home refinancing activity and home purchases picked up.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that refinancing applications increased 15%, while the seasonally adjusted purchase index climbed 13% from a week earlier.

Refinancing activity represented 82% of total loan applications, unchanged from the previous survey.

Mortgage rates remained either unchanged or ticked up during the period, with the 30-year conforming fixed-rate mortgage still hovering at 3.61%.

The 30-year, FRM with a jumbo loan balance edged up to 3.88% from 3.78%, while the average 30-year, FRM backed by the FHA increased to 3.39% from 3.35%.

In addition, the 15-year, FRM remained unchanged at 2.88%, while the average rate for the 5/1 ARM increased to 2.66% from 2.64%.

via housingwire.com

Hubzu to open up auction marketplace to brokers and agents | Mt Kisco NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

Hubzu, the online marketplace and auction platform of real estate owned properties (REO), will open up its service for licensed brokers and agents and non-REO properties in early February, the company announced today.

Last fall, Hubzu completed its name change from “GoHoming.com” and announced that it would expand its user base and begin to deal with non-REO properties.

The 3-year-old site is operated by publicly traded Altisource Portfolio Solutions S.A., a provider of services to mortgage lenders, loan servicers, investors, mortgage bankers, credit unions, financial services companies and hedge funds.

Traditionally, all of the listings on Hubzu — about 4,000 active currently — are lender-owned. Most listings come from another Altisource-held company, Hubzu general manager Scott Wielar told Inman News last fall.

Hubzu’s new “Direct-to-Broker” channel will allow brokers and agents to list properties, both REO and traditional, on the site for a fee of 1.5 percent of the sales price, plus a tech fee of $299 per transaction.

The site will verify broker and agent licenses of potential users in a one- to two-day clearing process, said Eric Eckardt, vice president of Hubzu’s direct to broker program.

Article continues below

At the moment, the site features a variety of lender-owned properties, including single-family, one- to four-unit multifamily, townhomes and condominium units, and land parcels, which are sold by auction or traditionally.

Screen shot of Hubzu’s homepage.

“When we moved to Hubzu, we moved away from REO,” Wielar said of the changes announced today. Listings will be clearly delineated between REO-owned and traditional on the site, he said.

Hubzu also considered handling listings from property owners, but has decided to open up its platform only to real estate pros for right now, Wielar said.

Currently, 125,000 of the site’s 285,000 total registered users are licensed brokers and agents, Wielar said. They have not been able to list properties on the site, but that changes in February.

Each property on the site, which has facilitated the sale of 30,000 properties in the last 12 months, receives an average of nine bids, Wielar said. Properties can also sell without bidding. If they are listed with an “own it now” price, a buyer can move a sale forward if they like the price, short circuiting the bidding.

The auctions are timed. To prevent “auction sniping” — where a bidder waits to enter a bid just as the auction time runs out — 15 minutes are automatically added to the auction when the time is nearly up to maximize bidding.

Buyers traditionally have been the revenue engine of the site. No fees are charged to buyers until a sale. Buyers pay a flat technology fee of $299 and a “buyer’s premium” that ranges from $625 to 5 percent of the property’s value.

via inman.com

3 ways to start your workweek refreshed, productive | Waccabuc NY Real Etate

Leave a reply

Image courtesy of <a href=What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off”
Author: Laura Vanderkam
Publisher: Penguin, 2012; 47 pages; $2.99 e-book

Have you ever ended your workweek with a heartfelt “thank goodness it’s Friday” only to go back to work on Monday feeling more worn out and exhausted than you did three days earlier? It’s no wonder, what with the digital creep of work into our out-of-office time and lives and the fact that many Americans now maintain near superhuman recreational and household calendars.

Unfortunately, returning to work feeling depleted and worn out is a surefire way to start off an unproductive week — even if you did get your basement cleaned out or wrap up that lingering report that was due Friday over the weekend.

After her exploration of “What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending (Money)” and “What the Most Successful People Have for Breakfast,” author and time management expert Laura Vanderkam is back, sharing her findings on the topic of “What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: A Short Guide to Making the Most of Your Days Off.”

Here is just a sampling of the insights this super-short book has to offer:

1. “Keep a (tech) Sabbath.” Referencing Bible verses that explained that the Sabbath is intended not to create another rigid rule, but to ensure that people, their servants, oxen and donkeys had sufficient rest for the week ahead, Vanderkam encourages readers of all faiths to take time every weekend to observe a “stretch of time apart from the computer, phone and work stresses” in order to “create[ ] space for other things in life.”

Interviewing a number of A-list execs who swear by this strategy for preserving sanity and productivity, Vanderkam surfaces one surprising side effect of taking a regular tech Sabbath day: “[w]ithout the distractions of the Internet, you may find ideas rushing at you.”

2. “Put first things first.” Vanderkam borrows an exercise from the late author and motivational speaker Stephen Covey that involves organizing your priorities by first articulating to yourself the various roles you play in life that are important to you, then specifying the top two or three priorities you’d like to accomplish in each role over the 168 hours (week) to come.

Vanderkam suggests doing as some of the highly productive CEOs interviewed in the book do, and sitting down on Sunday to carve out time on your calendar to hit just the top two to three priorities for each role for the following week. “First,” she says, “blocking six to nine priorities into a 168-hour week still leaves a lot of blank space. But second, if you accomplished all those things, you would have an absolutely amazing week.”

3. “Life cannot happen only in the future. It cannot wait for some day when we are less tired or less busy.” Vanderkam points out that marathon runners know they require rest and cross training to make progress and have breakthroughs. In the same vein, she proposes, those of us who work hard, long hours during the week need to spend our precious, weekend moments doing completely non-work-related activities in order to store up the fleeting, precious memories of present phases of life with our families and to build skills and have insights that will make us better at our work.

“If you work long hours,” Vanderkam writes, “then weekends are key to feeling like you have a life that is broader than your professional identity — even if, and probably because, you take that identity very seriously.”

You might think the idea of a book about how to spend your weekend is silly or unnecessary. If you are routinely frazzled on Monday or you are committed to achieving peak performance in your career and your personal life, suspend your skepticism. If you fall into this description, I strongly recommend taking this super-short tour Vanderkam offers through a different way to experience your weekends in order to elevate your experience of your entire life.

via inman.com

For-sale Inventory Only Half of 2006 Level | South Salem NY Real Estate

Leave a reply

Only half of many homes in America are listed for sale compared to the height of the housing  boom in 2006 while median list prices are about the same as they were a year ago.

The size of the inventory declined steadily in 2012, with the number of for-sale properties in December roughly 50 percent below the levels observed at the height of the housing crisis.  The national for-sale inventory continued to decline in December, falling by -6.51 percent over the month and by -17.32 percent on an annual basis. The large year-over-year decline in the for-sale inventory is a positive sign that the market has worked through much of its excess inventory, which should help to bolster housing prices and potentially set the stage for additional growth.

However, while list prices also increased significantly over the first half of the year, they have declined in recent months, with the median list price in December now roughly the same as it was one year ago.  In addition, a growing number of housing markets-primarily in older industrialized areas-are registering year-over-year list price declines, according to December data from Realtor.com

These potentially off-setting trends suggest that house price appreciation in the upcoming year is likely to be more moderate than it was in 2012. The median list price in December ($187,900) was essentially the same as it was a year ago despite the significant gains that occurred earlier in the year, when the median list price rose to as high as $195,000 in June 2012.

On a year-over-year basis, December median list prices were up by 1 percent or more in 66 of 146 MSAs, and up by 5 percent or more in 49 MSAs.  Median list prices were down by 1 percent or more in 49 markets, while 14 experienced a decline of more than 5 percent.  The remaining 31 markets have not experienced significant changes in their median list price compared to a year ago.

Over the past few months, the number of markets experiencing year-over-year price declines has steadily increased, while the number experiencing list price increases has steadily declined. In fact, compared to one year ago, the number of markets ending the year with a year-over-year price decline has more than doubled (49 in December 2012 vs. 20 in December 2011) and a significantly lower number of markets have a year-over-year price increase (66 in December 2012 vs.101 in December 2011).

California markets continue to dominate the list of areas experiencing the largest year-over-year increases in their median list prices.  In addition, Phoenix, AZ, Atlanta GA, and Seattle, WA are among the top performers. The 10 markets with the largest year-over-year list price increase are shown below.  All but one of these markets (Phoenix) experienced year-over-year declines in their for-sale inventories of -20 percent or more, while six of these markets had inventory declines of 40 percent or more.

For more than a year, older industrialized markets that never experienced the rapid run-up in prices that led up to the housing crisis have been registering the highest rates of list price declines.  This pattern continued in December.  While Jersey City and Chicago had year-over-year inventory declines of -31 percent and -22 percent respectively, most of the remaining areas experienced inventory declines that were well-below the national average (-17 percent).

The median age of inventory of for sale listings was 111 days in December,  up by 9.90 percet from November, but -9.01 percent below the median age one year ago (December 2011).  While the median age of the inventory is highly seasonal, the year-over-year decline is consistent with other data showing a general tightening of market conditions over the year.

via realestateeconomywatch.com