Tag Archives: Cross River Real Estate

Local Housing Prices hit 31-Month High | Cross River Real Estate

Leave a reply

A significant jump in July home prices and leap in housing inventory are the latest statistics confirming that the Rockford real estate market is realizing the return of home sellers. 
The three-month rolling average price hit $113,178 in July, the highest monthly average since $117,520 in January 2011. 
The July 2013 price was up slightly from $112,679 in July 2011. However, this marked seven out of the last eight months of year-over-
year price increases.
Housing sales were up 2.7 percent in Winnebago, Boone and Ogle Counties from 364 home sales in July 2012 to 374 home sales this July. 
Year-over-year monthly sales have been up 10 out of the last 12 months.
“This extended run of year-over-year sales gains shows the drive to own a home is powering the Rockford housing market,” said Steve Bois, CEO of Rockford Area Realtors.
“Rising home prices fuel the selling market because existing home owners feel more secure about selling their current homes at a profit and moving up to bigger houses.”
Rockford area housing inventory reached 2,093 homes in July, the highest all year and marking the first time properties hit the 2,000 level this year.
“Enthusiasm on the part of buyers shows no signs of flagging,” Bois commented, “and add to that the addition of more than 100 sellers to the market. This indicates that both buyers and sellers believe the time is right to get into the market.”
Driving sales are the return of two key home buyer groups: millennials and move-up buyers.
Almost a quarter of now-married millennials purchased a home with their current spouse before their wedding, according to Coldwell Banker’s new Mortgage and Homebuying study. 
By comparison, just 14 percent of those 45 and older purchased a
home with their current spouse before marriage.
Rising Rockford housing inventory levels indicate the return of sellers to the market.
“Existing home owners looking to purchase a better or larger home are coming back in the housing market,” Bois remarked. 
“Move-up buyers coming back into the market is a true sign of housing recovery and economic growth.”
Bois said inventory should continue to expand as existing homeowners put their homes on the market, giving first-time buyers more opportunities to find a suitable home.
New national research confirms this move. Nearly half of Americans (47 percent) say they feel morecomfortable purchasing a home today than at any other time in the past five years, say results of a survey by Mayflower Research.
“The data reflects an easing of the wariness Americans have felt in recent years following the housing bubble.” Bois said. 
“The top two reasons for a delay—economic instability and declining real estate market—are now falling by the wayside. Americans
have rising faith in the housing market.”

 

 

Local Housing Prices hit 31-Month High.

Local Housing Prices hit 31-Month High | Cross River Real Estate

Leave a reply

 

A significant jump in July home prices and leap in housing inventory are the latest statistics confirming that the Rockford real estate market is realizing the return of home sellers.
The three-month rolling average price hit $113,178 in July, the highest monthly average since $117,520 in January 2011.
The July 2013 price was up slightly from $112,679 in July 2011. However, this marked seven out of the last eight months of year-over-
year price increases.
Housing sales were up 2.7 percent in Winnebago, Boone and Ogle Counties from 364 home sales in July 2012 to 374 home sales this July.
Year-over-year monthly sales have been up 10 out of the last 12 months.
“This extended run of year-over-year sales gains shows the drive to own a home is powering the Rockford housing market,” said Steve Bois, CEO of Rockford Area Realtors.
“Rising home prices fuel the selling market because existing home owners feel more secure about selling their current homes at a profit and moving up to bigger houses.”
Rockford area housing inventory reached 2,093 homes in July, the highest all year and marking the first time properties hit the 2,000 level this year.
“Enthusiasm on the part of buyers shows no signs of flagging,” Bois commented, “and add to that the addition of more than 100 sellers to the market. This indicates that both buyers and sellers believe the time is right to get into the market.”
Driving sales are the return of two key home buyer groups: millennials and move-up buyers.
Almost a quarter of now-married millennials purchased a home with their current spouse before their wedding, according to Coldwell Banker’s new Mortgage and Homebuying study.
By comparison, just 14 percent of those 45 and older purchased a
home with their current spouse before marriage.
Rising Rockford housing inventory levels indicate the return of sellers to the market.
“Existing home owners looking to purchase a better or larger home are coming back in the housing market,” Bois remarked.
“Move-up buyers coming back into the market is a true sign of housing recovery and economic growth.”
Bois said inventory should continue to expand as existing homeowners put their homes on the market, giving first-time buyers more opportunities to find a suitable home.
New national research confirms this move. Nearly half of Americans (47 percent) say they feel more comfortable purchasing a home today than at any other time in the past five years, say results of a survey by Mayflower Research.
“The data reflects an easing of the wariness Americans have felt in recent years following the housing bubble.” Bois said.
“The top two reasons for a delay—economic instability and declining real estate market—are now falling by the wayside. Americans
have rising faith in the housing market.”

 

Local Housing Prices hit 31-Month High.

Six Ways to Grow a LinkedIn Group, Tips From the Pros | Cross River Realtor

Leave a reply

Are you part of a LinkedIn group that has stalled?

Do you want to create a LinkedIn group?

LinkedIn groups can be a great way to network with your customers, peers and other professionals in your industry.

But it can be challenging to grow your group and get the people you want to join and participate in the discussions.

We asked the pros to share their best tips to grow your LinkedIn groups.

Follow these tips and you’ll find it easier to create the type of community you’re looking for.

#1: Use Email to Send Invitations That Convert

viveka von rosen

Viveka Von Rosen

You’ll need to send out invitations to get your contacts to join your LinkedIn group and LinkedIn has a form for you to do this.

The default LinkedIn message that’s sent when you fill out the form below is: “Subject: Name invites you to join Group” and “Welcome Message: I would like to invite you to join my group on LinkedIn.” Unfortunately this has about 1% chance of getting someone to your group.

linkedin tweetchat participants

Standard LinkedIn group invitations can be boring. (Note the link field at the bottom gives you the link to your group. Copy this and create a custom URL for your group to use in your email invitations.)

Let’s face it. There’s enough noise out there. If you want to get someone to join your group, you need to give them a good reason. Instead of using the standard LinkedIn invitation, use email to craft the kind of message that will get your contacts to join your LinkedIn group.

In my opinion, the person who does this best is Jill Konrath. She has created a beautifully branded email that she sends out to her email list. It not only shares the link, but some of the reasons you might want to join her group, Fresh Sales Strategies.

 

Six Ways to Grow a LinkedIn Group, Tips From the Pros | Social Media Examiner.

Real estate prices rebound but it’s still a buyers’ market | Cross River Real Estate

Leave a reply

The average sales price of a home in South Mississippi in June reached its highest level in three years, a sign that the Coast real estate market is following the national trend upward.

Homes and condos sold on average for $134,721 in June, according to the Mississippi Gulf Coast Multiple Listing Service. That was up $8,000 from May and almost $11,000 from a year ago. The last time

South Mississippi saw that price was in July 2010.

While that’s good news for some sellers, it doesn’t yet mean homeowners who owe more than their home is worth can move without bringing thousands of dollars to the closing table to satisfy the loan, said Kathy Elias, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Alfonso Realty in Gulfport.

She’s been a real estate agent for 18 years and said most everything has changed since the real estate bubble burst. Since 2008, it’s much harder for buyers to get a loan, harder for sellers to get their homes appraised for what they feel their property is worth and extremely tough to buy or sell a condo.

Elias said people who bought a condominium in South Mississippi for $650,000 after Hurricane Katrina can’t sell it today for $200,000, and only a few lenders will finance a condo purchase.

‘Steadily rebounding’

Ray Gonzales Jr., a real estate broker and consultant with Century 21 Williams & Associates in Gulfport, said the inventory of bank foreclosures and short sales has tumbled from 23 percent of all closed sales last year (July 2011 through June 2012) to 11 percent for the same period this year. The rate of homes closed is the best in six years.

 

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2013/08/04/4848863/real-estate-prices-rebound-but.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Real estate prices rebound but it’s still a buyers’ market | Business | The Sun Herald.

With Home Prices Soaring, Has Success Spoiled San Francisco? | Cross River Real Estate

Leave a reply

Joe Kelso and John Winter probably waited too long. The couple has been together for a dozen years but only got serious recently about buying a house in San Francisco.

They saved enough to be able to afford anything under $500,000, but houses at such prices are now few and far between.

This spring, the median home price in San Francisco topped $1 million, up by a third from last year.

There are still houses listed for under $400,000, but that’s just to get the bidding going. Those types of properties will sell for more than $500,000, while still requiring maybe $100,000 worth of work.

A T-shirt for sale reflects the sentiments of people who find the cost of living in San Francisco too high.Enlarge image

A T-shirt for sale reflects the sentiments of people who find the cost of living in San Francisco too high.

Alan Greenblatt/NPR

“By the time we made our first offer in February, prices had shot up $100,000 to $150,000,” Winter says. Since then, they’ve been outbid seven more times.

Their experience has become typical. With San Francisco drawing both employees and tech companies from Silicon Valley, houses have become an unaffordable luxury for people in the middle class and even the very highly paid.

It’s changing a city historically known as friendly to outsiders wanting to pursue alternative lifestyles. That’s harder to do in an environment where brokers speak blithely of $600,000 and $700,000 “starter homes.”

With people unable to afford San Francisco, prices are jumping in neighboring cities such as Oakland as well.

“Buyers are facing frustration,” says Colleen McFerrin, a real estate agent. “Prices are going up and when they lose one or two [houses] they begin to panic.”

Higher Costs All Around

San Francisco has long attracted waves of people seeking a pleasant, progressive life — immigrants and hippies, gays and beatniks.

Jorge Cino, an aspiring fiction writer, was drawn all the way from Argentina. “I loved the city and I did love its bohemian, reckless culture,” he says.

 

 

With Home Prices Soaring, Has Success Spoiled San Francisco? : NPR.

Chicago Property Once Part of Original Playboy Mansion for Sale | Cross River Real Estate

Leave a reply

Before the Playboy Mansion was in a location beneath palm trees and the Hollywood sunshine, it was on the Gold Coast in Chicago. Today, the original mansion holds condos, and one of the connected properties is currently on the market for $7.85 million, according to the Huffington Post.

Hugh Hefner bought the limestone-and-brick building at 1340 N State Parkway in 1959, shortly after his divorce. Newly single and pouring money into his new Playboy Magazine, Hefner wanted to create a space for people to live out the lifestyle showcased in the publication. The historic mansion was just the place.

Built in 1899 for a prominent Chicago doctor, the mansion had previously entertained prestigious guests, including Theodore Roosevelt. The kind of guests Hefner envisioned for the home were slightly different. He created an enormous ballroom, measuring 60 feet by 30 feet, added an indoor pool, underwater bar accessed by a fireman’s pole and furnished suites for live-in guests. The house also included a game room, movie theater, steam room and tanning beds.

For several years the home and the nearby Playboy Club were at the height of popularity, with well-known celebrities, writers and artists continually dropping in to party. However, by the 1970s, the death of a friend and following drug investigation led Hefner to spend more and more time in Hollywood, where he had purchased another mansion. In 1984, Playboy lent the Chicago mansion to the School of the Art Institute, and in 1993 the house was finally sold to developers, who turned the residence into condos.

No evidence of the pool, underwater bar or any of the other Playboy amenities remain. The particular property for sale today — located at 1336 N State Parkway, Chicago, IL 60610 — was once connected to the Playboy Mansion; the original owner built the home for his daughter.

Measuring 9,000 square feet, the home has 5 bedrooms, 7 baths and according to the listing, was updated with “no expense spared.”

 

Chicago Property Once Part of Original Playboy Mansion for Sale | Zillow Blog.

Xinyuan Real Estate: Trading At 36% Of Book Value | Cross River Real Estate

Leave a reply

Xinyuan Real Estate (XIN) has been growing its book value steadily and consistently for 16 consecutive quarters. It pays quarterly dividends and does share buybacks. It is conservatively managed and has built a strong balance sheet. It trades at 1.87x P/E and 0.36x P/B. The current share price of $4.16 is about 68% of its unencumbered cash on the balance sheet.

 

 

Xinyuan Real Estate Co., Ltd. (ADR) (XIN): Xinyuan Real Estate: Trading At 36% Of Book Value – Seeking Alpha.

Home sales dip, but still ‘enough momentum’ to sustain housing | Cross River Real Estate

Leave a reply

It was an up and down month in June for the real estate market. While existing-home sales dipped compared with the prior month, the trend line was still upward as sales surpassed their prior-year level. The median price popped for the 16th consecutive month and sales of new homes—counted separately–rose significantly.

Existing-home sales

 

Completed sales of existing detached houses, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops dipped 1.2 percent in June compared with May, but remains above levels seen in June 2012, according to the National Association of Realtors. The national median price for those homes was $214,200 in June, up 13.5 percent from June 2012.

These numbers are seasonally adjusted, so the normal cyclical rise in springtime home-buying activity is factored in.

In a statement, NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said there was “enough momentum” to sustain the market, despite a mid-month spike in mortgage rates. Houses are still affordable–in terms of price and financing–in most of the country and pent-up demand from buyers is still strong, though higher mortgage rates will “bite into” high-cost regions of California, Hawaii and New York City, Yun said.

Supply broadens some

 

The supply of for-sale homes rose nearly 2 percent to 2.19 million existing homes on the market at the end of June. That represents a 5.2-month supply at the June pace of sales, up from 5 months’ supply in May. A year earlier, the supply stood at 6.4 months.

“Inventory conditions will continue to broadly favor sellers and contribute to above-normal price growth,” Yun said.

Distressed sales

 

Short sales and foreclosure sales dipped to 15 percent of the total in June, down from 18 percent in May. In June 2012, these so-called distressed sales made up 26 percent of the transactions. Both short sales and foreclosures typically sell at a discount, so their shrinkage as a percentage of the total accounts for some of the increase in the median price, NAR said.

Homes sold in June were on the market a median of 37 days compared with 41 days registered in May and 70 days recorded in June 2012. Short sales took much longer while foreclosures and non-distressed homes sold slight faster than 37 days. Forty-seven percent of all homes sold in June were on the market less than one month, NAR reported.

 

Home sales dip, but still ‘enough momentum’ to sustain housing | HSH Financial News Blog.

Study: Consumers more loyal to real estate companies than agents | Cross River Real Estate

Leave a reply

Agents, think your clients would follow you if you were to hang your license elsewhere? That may not be the case.

Less than 20 percent of recent homebuyers and sellers said they “definitely will” switch real estate companies if their sales agent moved to another company, according to a buyer and seller satisfaction study from global marketing research firm J.D. Power.

“A real estate company’s agent remains the most important aspect of the customer’s experience among first-time and repeat homebuyers and sellers; however, customer loyalty is first to the company and second to the agent,” said Christina Cooley, director in the diversified services industries practice at J.D. Power, in a statement.

“In the end, it is the combination of the company’s standards, processes and approach to addressing customer needs combined with outstanding execution by the sales agent that will truly differentiate the customer experience.”

The sixth annual study included 3,930 respondents who bought or sold a home between March 2012 and April 2013 with one of the nation’s largest real estate companies.

The shares of first-time homebuyers and sellers in the market jumped from last year’s study, opening up an opportunity for real estate companies who can better serve their needs, the study said.

 

 

Study: Consumers more loyal to real estate companies than agents | Inman News.

June Concludes Best Spring Home Shopping Season in Almost a Decade | Cross River Real Estate

Leave a reply

As the weather warmed up this spring, so did the national housing market, shaking off a relatively sluggish start to the year to register the highest annual rate of home value appreciation in any second quarter since 2004.

The U.S. Zillow Home Value Index rose to $161,100 as of the end of the second quarter, up 5.8 percent year-over-year and 2.4 percent from the first quarter, the largest annual gain since August 2006 and largest gain in any quarter since the fourth quarter of 2005. National home values rose just 0.25 percent during the first quarter.

Additionally, not only did the pace of home value appreciation quicken in the second quarter, but the recovery also fully took hold nationwide. Markets in some areas of the Northeast, Midwest and Southeastern U.S. that had previously been slow to turn the corner began to appreciate, which helped boost the overall national market. All of the top 30 largest metro areas covered by Zillow experienced annual appreciation as of the end of the second quarter, and all have hit their bottom. Metros with the largest annual gains in the second quarter included Sacramento (29.5 percent), Las Vegas (29.4 percent) and San Francisco (25.5 percent).

Home values are expected to rise another 5 percent over the next 12 months, according to the Zillow Home Value Forecast. Of the 30 largest metro areas, 29 are expected to show home value appreciation in the next year. Metros expected to see the highest appreciation rates through June 2014 include Sacramento (18.9 percent), Riverside, CA (16.6 percent) and Phoenix (11 percent).

Only the New York metro is expected to show home value depreciation over the next 12 months (-0.8 percent). One possible explanation for expected depreciation (however slight) in the New York metro area is because New York is a judicial foreclosure state, with all foreclosures requiring judicial review before completion, which can lengthen the foreclosure process. Because foreclosures take longer to work through the system, they continue to drag home value appreciation rates down, according to Zillow economists. This could also help explain why large metro areas in other judicial foreclosure states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois, are expected to show only modest appreciation over the next year.

As home values continue to rise along with mortgage interest rates, and different kinds of buyers and sellers enter and exit the market, the landscape is expected to change.

“The U.S. housing market as a whole is currently not experiencing a bubble, but in many places it sure must feel like one, with some markets experiencing annual home value appreciation approaching 30 percent. Homeowners are feeling a sense of whiplash after years of depreciation, but this kind of market behavior won’t last,” said Zillow Senior Economist Svenja Gudell. “Investors are starting to pull out of some markets and regular buyers are coming back, and more inventory is slowly but surely coming on line, both of which will contribute to slowdowns in appreciation. Additionally, in some overheated markets, rapid home value increases coupled with rising mortgage rates will lead to housing prices and financing costs outpacing local income growth, which will also contribute to a moderation of the market. Combined, all of these factors will help the market in the second half of 2013 and beyond normalize and become much more steady than it has been in these past six months.”

 

 

June Concludes Best Spring Home Shopping Season in Almost a Decade | Zillow Blog.