Detail from map-based search results on Redfin.com using map data from Google.
Maps and real estate websites seem to go hand in hand.
It only makes sense, I suppose.
Everyone wants to know where the house is, what the neighborhood is like, how far it is from stuff, and so on.
A map is one of those crucial bits of information display that gives a wide variety of context about one of the things we assume people are looking for when they’re on a real estate website: the house.
In this way I suppose it could easily be argued that maps are a sort of data visualization tool. They take a handful of variables and plot them using symbols to show relationships.
There is even a little bit of standardization to them. That’s why we can look at a Rand McNally road atlas and Google Maps and figure out that both are maps and that we use them to get someplace.
– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/05/22/are-maps-obliterating-your-visual-branding-efforts/#sthash.tiqYsoA7.dpuf
While the residential real estate market is generally believed to be improving nationwide, some of the residual effects of the Great Recession still affect the ability of real estate agents to facilitate home sales.
Emerging employment opportunities in many parts of the country are bringing workers into new communities. Even though financial institutions have brought reserve levels back to all-time highs within the past few years, banks are unable to fund loans due to restrictive lending criteria.
For buyers, the regulatory pendulum has swung too far. Though fully capable of making payments, many are marked with imperfect credit or low cash reserves as a result of short sales, foreclosures or plummeting values of their prior residences. For sellers, this means a significantly smaller pool of potential buyers, which negatively impacts their home values as well as their financial well-being.
Prime opportunity
According to the Pew Research Center, about 10,000 people will turn 65 every day for the next 17 years. With baby boomers entering retirement at an exponential rate, many are looking to their homes as an additional source of revenue to supplement Social Security or other insufficient income.
Today’s rising home values present a perfect opportunity for sellers to capitalize on their homes’ increasing market values, and savvy real estate agents recognize the prime opportunity that seller financing presents. The trend of tight lending standards combined with willing buyers, sellers and an appreciating housing market is certainly not permanent, so this nontraditional financing option must be quickly leveraged to yield maximum benefit.
– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/05/22/seller-financing-an-untapped-resource-for-real-estate-agents/#sthash.glExI8Fd.dpuf
A glance at a property in Greenwich that is reported to be the most expensive listing in the United States. It is listed for $190 million.Photo Credit: With permission from David Ogilvy
Listing agent David Ogilvy says the 12-bedroom Neo-French Renaissance Victorian and the 50.6-acre property is “a fantastic piece of property.” “It’s just an incredibly beautiful spot,’’ said Ogilvy, whosereal estate office is part of Christie’s International Real Estate. “There were a few other major houses down on the water. The only one of this size that has sold was in Riverside in 1952 or ’53. There hasn’t been anything else on either side of the water like this.” The property includes a mile of shoreline and two islands. Other features include a 75-foot pool and spa, grass tennis court, poolhouse, carriage house and gatehouse cottage. The home was built in 1896 – Ogilvy had no record of its original cost – and was purchased by the Lauder Greenway family. Harriet Lauder Greenway’s father helped Andrew Carnegie start what would become U.S. Steel, according to the Wall Street Journal story. The article also said the home is owned by John Rudey, the chairman of U.S. Timberlands Services. He purchased the property in 1982. The property is being listed for the first time since 1904, according to the Ogilvy listing. Ogilvy said the price tag was based on appraisals and previous waterfront sales. “A home with 4.2 acres went for $39.5 million, or about $9 million an acre,’’ he said. “You multiply that by 50, and you get a hefty number. Sometimes people are shocked at how much it is. It’s the only one with 50 acres left in Greenwich.” The Realtor said he and Rudey have had conversations over the past few years about the property. “I knew the property, but I was even more amazed when I saw it,’’ Ogilvy said. The owner has no timetable for a sale, Ogilvy also said. “There was a property that I listed and sold back in 2004 for $45 million,’’ Ogilvy said. “People told me I had rocks in my head, and we listed it, sold it and closed on it in 100 days. A timetable is not a problem.”
Listing agent David Ogilvy says the 12-bedroom Neo-French Renaissance Victorian and the 50.6-acre property is “a fantastic piece of property.” “It’s just an incredibly beautiful spot,’’ said Ogilvy, whosereal estate office is part of Christie’s International Real Estate. “There were a few other major houses down on the water. The only one of this size that has sold was in Riverside in 1952 or ’53. There hasn’t been anything else on either side of the water like this.” The property includes a mile of shoreline and two islands. Other features include a 75-foot pool and spa, grass tennis court, poolhouse, carriage house and gatehouse cottage. The home was built in 1896 – Ogilvy had no record of its original cost – and was purchased by the Lauder Greenway family. Harriet Lauder Greenway’s father helped Andrew Carnegie start what would become U.S. Steel, according to the Wall Street Journal story. The article also said the home is owned by John Rudey, the chairman of U.S. Timberlands Services. He purchased the property in 1982. The property is being listed for the first time since 1904, according to the Ogilvy listing. Ogilvy said the price tag was based on appraisals and previous waterfront sales. “A home with 4.2 acres went for $39.5 million, or about $9 million an acre,’’ he said. “You multiply that by 50, and you get a hefty number. Sometimes people are shocked at how much it is. It’s the only one with 50 acres left in Greenwich.” The Realtor said he and Rudey have had conversations over the past few years about the property. “I knew the property, but I was even more amazed when I saw it,’’ Ogilvy said. The owner has no timetable for a sale, Ogilvy also said. “There was a property that I listed and sold back in 2004 for $45 million,’’ Ogilvy said. “People told me I had rocks in my head, and we listed it, sold it and closed on it in 100 days. A timetable is not a problem.”
After falling in March, existing-home sales increased in April, although they were still not enough to meet underlying demand due to limited inventory and tight credit, reports the National Association of Realtors. All regions recorded year-over-year price gains.
“The powerful combination of all-time low mortgage rates and home prices that were significantly reduced after the housing crisis is fueling demand,” says Quicken Loans Chief Economist Bob Walters. “It’s quite likely that we will look back on this period as being among the best times in history to purchase a home. As the economy continues to firm, the likelihood that interest rates will rise increases and home prices will continue their upward climb as well.”
In April, existing-home sales — completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops — rose 0.6% to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.97 million from an upwardly revised 4.94 million in March. April’s numbers are up 9.7% from the 4.53 million-unit level in April 2012.
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said the market recovery is solid. “The robust housing market recovery is occurring in spite of tight access to credit and limited inventory. Without these frictions, existing-home sales easily would be well above the 5-million unit pace,” he said.
Buyer traffic is 31% stronger than a year ago, according to Yun, but sales are running only about 10% higher. “It’s become quite clear that the only way to tame price growth to a manageable, healthy pace is higher levels of new home construction,” he said.
Existing-home sales are hovering at the highest pace since November 2009, when the market saw 5.44 million sales in response to the homebuyer tax credit. This marks the 22ndstraight month of year-over-year sales gains and the 14thconsecutive month of year-over-year price increases.
Inventory inched up slowly to 2.16 million existing homes available for sale. This represents a 5.2-month supply at the current sales pace versus 4.7 months in March.
The median sales price for existing homes was up 11% year-over-year, reaching $192,800. The last time the nation saw 14 consecutive months of year-over-year price gains was April 2005 to May 2006.
Home sales in Illinois rose 25.3% year-over-year in April, while median prices increased 7.7%, according to the Illinois Association of Realtors.
Home sales in the state totaled 12,621 in April, up from 10,076 in April 2012. This marked the best April performance since 2007.
The median price in Illinois was $145,900 in April, up 7.7% from April 2012 when the median price was $135,500.
“The spring numbers are very encouraging, especially as we see substantial tightening of the numbers of homes on the market,” said Michael D. Oldenettel, president of IAR.
He added, “While prices are inching up slightly due to strong demand, the interest rates continue to be a powerful lure for those who want to own a home and the spring housing market looks to be a strong one.”
Illinois’ home inventory in April was 62,503 units, a 30.6% drop from April 2012, which had 90,041 units for sale. The time homes are spending on the market plummeted from 111 days to 89 days, a 19.8% drop, year-over-year.
Of the 102 Illinois counties, 55 reported year-over-year increases in home sales in April 2013, while 42 showed year-over-year median price increases.
“The housing market is exhibiting signs of a more stable recovery with an anticipated strong early summer led by strong sales gains and more modest but still positive gains in median prices,” noted Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, director of the regional economics applications laboratory of the University of Illinois.
Several factors are contributing to the market’s need for speed these days, writes Redfin. Demand is high and supply is low, which forces people to make decisions very quickly. Also, new technology is compressing the timeline from listing to tour and offer.
Today, people can find out within minutes when a new listing has hit the market and to schedule an in-person home tour with real estate agent, all from a smartphone. While market conditions like supply and demand will fluctuate over time, changes brought about by technology are most likely creating a “new normal” for the overall pace of home buying and selling, according to Redfin.
Low mortgage rates, returning consumer and investor confidence, and the new migration from New Jersey are all combining to turn this Maryland market around, writes CNBC. “We’re getting the calls again from people looking to really buy — buy into the market and start renting again,” said Deborah Lipscomb, owner of Eastern Shore Vacation Rentals.
The housing market appears to have recovered from the depth of its decline. Toll Brothers reported a whopping 46% jump in its latest earnings report and Home Depot‘s earnings soared 18%. Today theNational Association of Realtors reported that April existing home sales surged to their highest level in more than three years.
There is some bad news mixed in with all of these housing numbers, April housing starts recently plummeted from a 48-month high and applications for home mortgages dropped for the second week in a row.
Homes in the Las Vegas area sold at the fastest pace for an April in seven years due, in large, to investor and cash buying nearing record levels. Sales in the $200,000-to-$500,000 range in the Sin City picked up 81% from one-year prior.
The Las Vegas median price paid for a home increased to the highest level in nearly four and a half years, largely due to price appreciation,tight inventory, a surge in move-up buyers and a drop-off in foreclosure resales.
In the Las Vegas-Paradise metro area, 4,869 new and resale houses and condos closed escrow in April, an 8.6% increase from the month before and a 7.0% rise from one-year prior, according to San-Diego-based DataQuick.
Sales have dropped 4.2% between March and April, on average, since 1994. The year-over-year increase in total sales last month follows 10 consecutive months of year-over-year declines.
Do you really think Google would reveal its plans on how they want search to evolve? I sure do. If you don’t believe me just ask Matt Cutts. Or better yet just watch him answering the question below.
Popout
After bypassing the cyborg comments he makes some pretty profound statements that Google should be a “good assistant,” “understand the context,” and “synthesize information.” But more importantly he goes on to say that Google should be able to handle difficult syntax not just by data or knowledge but towards analysis and wisdom. Now what does that mean?
Quick Algorithm Recap
In the famous words of Hitch “You can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been,” so to get a better understanding of the future lets back up a few years and look at what Google has done with previous algorithm updates. I am only going to hit on the high points, but if you want to go further I would recommend referencing SEO Moz’s Algorithm History.
Florida Update – November 2003
Paid Links – October 2007
Rel Canonical – February 2009
Social Signals – December 2010
Panda – February 2011
Google Authorship – June 2011
Penguin – April 2012
Knowledge Graph – May 2012
EMD Update – September 2012
Many of the previous algorithm updates and iterations listed were aimed to dismantle spam, technical manipulation, and improving their infrastructure. It took over a decade of progress before Google was even able to begin to tackle the context issue.
Google Authorship and the Knowledge Graph implementation was the catalyst to bring data together in a sensible format. The Knowledge Graph pulls data from reliable sources to show images, descriptions, background information, people involved, and other related information while Google Authorship connects content with a specific author. The Knowledge Graph is even more sophisticated than it would appear at first glance. Bill Slawski at SEO by the Sea has uncovered that the information in knowledge graphs can be dynamic depending on what users are searching for, so not all knowledge graphs are created equal.
Back to the Present
So what does Matt Cutts mean when he says that search will be going toward analysis and wisdom? The simple answer is Google wants to answer every single question the user has on the very first try and if possible before the user even asks the question.
In an article in the Guardian, Google’s CEO Larry Page said that they are trying to reduce every possible friction between the user, their thoughts, and the information they want to find. He even mentions brain implants to answer questions at the time a thought originates. Maybe Larry and Matt are in cahoots to make us all cyborgs. But I digress…
In order for Google to get to the point where they can answer every possible question a couple of things have to occur. They need to have access to a lot of data and a way to relationally put it together. Part of the data gathering process has already been explained above with Google Authorship and the Knowledge Graph, but lets continue going down the rabbit trail on more sources they are using to get data.
First they have Google Analytics which is installed on millions of websites. Have you ever wondered why Google Analytics is free for up to 10 million pageviews a month? It is the amount of data that is now at their disposal. Google makes it very easy for you to share your data with them. When you’re setting up a Google Analytics account, they have conveniently pre-checked all the data sharing settings for you even though they are technically optional. This data allows them to understand user behavior for individual websites but more importantly for different verticals.
Detail from map-based search results on Redfin.com using map data from Google.
