Tag Archives: South Salem Real Estate for Sale

Builders: Don’t forget Realtors brought you to the dance | South Salem Real Estate

<a href="<a href=Dance image via Shutterstock.

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles on homebuilders’ willingness to pay commissions to real estate agents who can bring buyers to their properties.

As the housing recovery picks up steam and new-home sales return to historical levels, will builders stop courting Realtors?

Sales of new single-family homes were up 28.9 percent from a year ago in January, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 437,000, according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report. That’s the best January since 2008, and there’s plenty more room to run — new-home sales exceeded 1 million a year during the last boom.

“It is safe to assume that new homes construction will continue to move forward, if not surge,” said David Crowe, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, in a February report.

Capture international buyers as they pursue their real estate fantasies | South Salem NY Real Estate

I have a thing for property in France, but Italy is pretty interesting, too. Love those dusty old villas, chateaus. It is probably no coincidence that both places have great wine … but I digress.

The point here is that I am referring to countries, because I have only broad-brush knowledge of their geography.

Just as I window-shop listings in Italy and France with little regard for the actual placement of regions and towns, international buyers are prone to that here, too. All of America can be more or less the same to them, at first.

US economy shows modest growth in uphill climb | South Salem NY Real Estate

Time and time again, the housing recovery has been deemed a reflector of overall U.S. economic health. And right now, both seem to showing fairly modest growth.

In the week ending Feb. 23, seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims dropped to 344,000. This is 22,000 fewer than the previous week’s revised total of 366,000 filings, according to the United States Department of Labor.

However, according to analysts at Econoday, this is nothing to get too excited about, as this drop follows an upwardly revised spike of 24,000 one-week prior.

“What may be signaling improvement are continuing claims which for the Feb. 16 fell a sizable 91,000 to 3.074 million with the four-week average down 36,000 to a recovery low of 3.155 million,” said Econoday.

Also at a recovery low is the unemployment rate for insured workers, which is at 2.4%, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point.

“Initial jobless claims have been more or less stable throughout February and other survey measures of both firing and hiring point to little change,” experts at Capital Economics said.

According to Capital Economics, payroll employment increased by 175,000 filings in February. “Assuming that the household survey shows a similar gain in employment and there are no wild swings in the size of the labor force, this suggests that the unemployment rate remained at 7.9%,” said Capital Economics

Home price gains running out of steam? | South Salem NY Real Estate

All three home price indices maintained by S&P/Case-Shiller finished 2012 with strong gains, but showed signs of losing momentum in the final three months of the year.

Case-Shiller’s National Home Price Index was up 7.3 percent from a year ago in the fourth quarter. The 20-City and 10-City Composite indices saw annual gains in December of 7.3 percent, 6.8 percent and 5.9 percent, respectively.

It was the seventh month in a row that the 20-City Composite posted an annual gain, with every market in the index except New York up for the year.

The National Home Price Index, after strong second and third quarters, slipped 0.3 percent from the third quarter to the fourth on a non seasonally-adjusted basis. When adjusted for seasonal factors, the national composite posted a 2 percent gain from the third quarter to the fourth.

The 20-City and 10-City composites were essentially flat from November to December, each growing by 0.2 percent on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. If adjusted for seasonal factors, those indices were up 0.9 percent from November to December.

David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee S&P Dow Jones Indices, said home prices ended 2012 “with solid gains,” but warned that future growth might not be as dramatic.