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Austin Real Estate BlogAustin Real Estate BlogAustin real estate market stats and related news and information Articles
Advise for those thinking about Real Estate as a Career
2008-02-26 19:11:00 I was reading an interview with web design guru Eric Meyer, and was struck by his answer to one of the questions and how much that answer rings true for real estate as well as technology fields. Q: If you could give one piece of advice to people starting out in the field, what would ... More About: Estate , Real Estate , Career , Real , Thinking
More Reasons to Stay Away from Starter Home Areas
2008-02-25 16:07:00 Buyers I’ve helped buy property in Austin have heard my real estate mantra - stay away from starter home areas. I don’t like starter home neighborhoods. I don’t own property in starter home areas and I never will. I advise buyers to be very, very careful if considering a home in such an area. I ... More About: Home , Reasons , Stay , Starter
Austin Real Estate Market Update - Jan 2008
2008-02-23 03:09:00 The real estate market in Austin was very slow for January 2008. Number of homes sold was down 15% over the same month last year, yet we continue to see sold price appreciation for the homes that do sell. I’ve added a new metric to my chart below. I’ve decided to start tracking “Not Solds”. ... More About: Estate , Real Estate , Real Estate Market , Market , Update
How to Leave a Proper Voice Mail Message
2008-02-16 21:58:00 As a Realtor, I leave and receive a lot of voice messages. Sometimes dozens a day or more if I’m showing a lot of occupied homes, or have a hot rental listing in Central Austin. The most I’ve ever had to return was seventy-something. One learns to get to the point when you have more ... More About: Mail , Voice , Leave , Message
Would you live next to a Strip Club?
2008-02-08 09:36:00 I was driving up S. Congress the other day, checking out the progress on the SoCo Lofts and wondered if the units on the north end, which overlook a strip club and its parking lot, will sell for as much as the others. The photo you see here is of the north side ... More About: Live , Club , Strip
Austin 2007 Real Estate Appreciation by MLS Area
2008-02-04 15:02:00 Below are the 2007 Austin real estate appreciation breakdowns by MLS area. Despite the negative media attention given to the real estate market nationally, Austin continues to see notable value appreciation in many areas. Overall, average sales prices in Austin were up 6.62% to $254,883 (excludes condos) and average sold price per square foot were ... More About: Estate , Real Estate , Real , Appreciation
Sylvia?s Notes from Central Texas Growth Summit
2008-01-31 20:01:00 Sylvia attended the Central Texas Growth Summit yesterday at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Austin. She typed up some pretty good notes that she emailed out to others, and I’m posting them below. Here are some highlights with Kirk Watson (former Austin Mayor, current State Senator) as the moderator: 1. Change in Hunting patterns - Since ... More About: Notes
How to set up a KW Agent Real Estate Blog
2008-01-31 01:39:00 Today at our Keller Williams office in Austin we had a “Blog ging 101″ class that I put together to help agents better understand everything involved with having a real estate blog. According to a National Association of Real tors agent survey, less than 2% of Realtors publish a real estate blog. I was joined in the ... More About: Agent , Estate , Real Estate
Redfin CEO Says He?s Being Picked On
2008-01-29 22:33:00 Below is an article about the Discount Realtor Redfin ’s CEO Glenn Kelman, who, having failed to achieve more than niche success in the real estate industry (despite a couple of years of gushing media adoration and favorable stories on shows such as 60 minutes), claims now that he’s being picked on. Dude, you were thumping ...
Austin Real Estate Market Update - Dec 2007
2008-01-29 14:16:00 Austin real estate market stats for single family homes in Dec 2007 saw a 20% drop in number sales of over Dec 2006. Average sold prices were up 5.9% and Median sold prices were up 7.8% in December. Average sold price per square foot is up 4.4% over a year ago, and Days on Market ... More About: Estate , Real Estate , Real Estate Market , Update
Really Cool Interactive Map on Statesman.com
2008-01-28 23:07:00 The Austin Statesman has an interactive map up on their website that shows median price changes and sales volume activity for Austin Travis County in 2007 compared to 2006. Jeez, I wish I knew how to create such a nice map for the blog, but I guess they have a bigger budget than me. I’ll ... More About: Cool , Interactive , Interact
Austin Sold vs Not Sold December 2007
2008-01-28 06:11:00 I predicted a few months ago that November 2007 might see an inverted Sold /Not Sold ratio in the Austin real estate market, that being a situation where more of the listings in the Austin MLS fail to sell than do sell. I was wrong about November but it did happen in December . For December 2007 ...
Google Coming to Downtown Austin
2008-01-25 03:05:00 Google is opening shop in a Downtown Austin historical building. This is great news for Downtown Austin in many ways, not the least of which is the positive buzz created by Google’s move. Google brings with it a certain degree of “brand” buzz that will surely attract even more tech companies to downtown Austin. There are ... More About: Google
Showing Feedback Directly to Seller a Bad Idea
2008-01-23 14:56:00 I’ve been showing and previewing a lot of property lately - probably more than a hundred homes in the past week. After showing a home and syncing the MLS key each night, the lockbox owners (listing agents) are notified electronically that the lockbox was opened by my key. This normally results in what we ... More About: Seller , Idea , Feedback , Rect
Make Sure your Buyer Agent Provides a CMA before making an Offer
2008-01-22 19:26:00 The news snippet below briefly outlines a case in which a buyer is suing her buyer’s agent. The buyer feels like the agent allowed her to pay too much for the home she bought. I of course don’t know who is right or wrong in this particular case, ro all of the facts, and it ... More About: Agent , Buyer , Make , Offer
East Austin Real Estate
2008-01-12 23:24:00 The story below is from tomorrow’s Sunday Austin Statesman. It’s a pretty good overview of the optimism many hold for East Austin’s continued boom. I’ve stayed out of East Austin not because it doesn’t hold promise, but because rehabbing and flipping properties is a specialized and riskier form of investing, and we tend to take ... More About: Estate , Real Estate , Real
Mortgage Rate Looking Good - Below 6% Now
2008-01-12 05:26:00 WASHINGTON (Associated Press) Rising worries about a weak economy pushed rates on 30-year mortgages below the 6 percent mark for only the second time in more than two years. Freddie Mac reported this week that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages averaged 5.87 percent this week, down from 6.07 percent last week. The following types of mortgages also showed declines this ... More About: Mortgage , Good , Rate , Mort
Austin Sellers Still Making Homes Hard to Show
2008-01-06 16:22:00 I’ve been out showing homes the past couple of days and once again I observe something that astounds me. Sellers who obstruct the showing of their homes for trivial and dumb reasons. For those not aware of how showings work in Austin , most MLS listings have the agent showing instructions “Call and Go”, which ... More About: Show , Hard , Homes
Austin Job Market is Great
2008-01-03 23:53:00 From today’s Austin business journal is the report below describing Austin’s plentiful job market. Jobs bring more people, which means more renters and buyers. On a side note, Sylvia and I have been slammed the past two days. After a sluggish October thru December, our phones are ringing off the hooks with buyers and sellers ... More About: Market , Great
Former Boom Markets Hit Hardest
2007-12-27 17:57:00 Austin was not a “boom market”, but the sentiments and national news resulting from the markets listed in the news snippet below have contributed to a somewhat timid buyer pool in Austin at present. Hopefully, buyers will perk up this spring as the mortgage fallout further clears up and people realize that Austin is not ... More About: Markets , Boom
Austin Rental Market Update - November 2007
2007-12-27 05:03:00 The Austin rental market for November in Austin continues the strong climb in prices. The average rental rate of $1386/mo. is a 12% increase over the same month last year. The median leased price is $1200, up 4.3% from a year ago. The number of homes leased dropped 13% from 588 a year ago to ... More About: Market , Rental , Update
Austin Real Estate Market Update - November 2007
2007-12-27 03:04:00 The number of homes sold in Austin for November 2007 was down 19% from November 2006. Average sales price is up 6.5% $255,073 and Median sales price is up 7.9% from $175,000 a year ago to $188,900 this year for November. Average price per square foot is up 4.4% to $199 per square foot. Average ... More About: Estate , Real Estate , Real Estate Market , Market , Update
Austin Board of Realtors Shamefully Incompetent Rollout of New Austin MLS S
2007-12-27 01:34:00 As I have started to run the stats for November to post on my blog as I do each month, I shuddered to think what I might encounter trying to pull stats from our lousy new MLS system. My fears were confirmed. The new Austin MLS system does not properly compute the data. This is ... More About: Realtors , Board
Texas Home Insurance Premiums are Highest in Nation
2007-12-23 18:51:00 AUSTIN (Dallas Morning News) ? A new study from the Nation al Association of Insurance Commissioners shows that Texas homeowners pay far more for insurance than those in any other state. The average annual premium in Texas for the most common homeowner policy was $1,372, considerably more than the nationwide average of $764. Louisiana ranked second at $1,144, ... More About: Home , Remi
Agent Bonuses - Buyers Should Know
2007-12-21 19:07:00 The news snippet below discusses a proposed new law in North Carolina that would make disclosure of agent bonuses mandatory in real estate transactions. Good - it’s about time. Currently, very few states require this. I’ve long had a problem with the fact that most buyers have no clue whether or not their Realtor is receiving ... More About: Agent , Buyers , Gent
Are Older Homes Really Built Better?
2007-12-20 15:16:00 I really miss the old house we use to live in on Newning Street in Travis Heights, and the neighborhood. We lived there from 1991 to 1996, when S. Congress was still gritty and not yet “cool”. We certainly didn’t call it “SoCo”. It was still plain old South Austin and Travis Heights. The home ... More About: Homes
Moving Tips: How to get a better price on existing services
2007-12-11 17:17:00 We’re in the process of moving. I called Time Warner to move my internet service to my new address, but when they answered, I told them I want to cancel the internet service instead. I don’t want to cancel (though I truley was considering it), so why did I do this? To get connected to ... More About: Services , Tips , Moving , Price
Bush announces 5 year rate freeze - Texas borrowers in good shape
2007-12-07 21:38:00 WASHINGTON (Associated Press, Real Estate Center) ? President Bush announced this week plans for a five-year freeze on interest rates for subprime mortgages. “We should not bail out lenders, real estate speculators or those who made the reckless decision to buy a home they knew they could never afford,” Bush said. “But there are some responsible ... More About: Texas , Shape , Freeze , Good
ABJ: Centex pulls out of 1,400-home project
2007-12-06 23:16:00 Looks like Austin is seeing some contraction in the new home inventory, which is a good thing, at least for now. The fact that Centex is backing out of a 1400 home project tells us more about the national housing market, and the financial problems of the large production builders than is does Austin’s market. ... More About: Home , Project , Pull
Survey says what we already know
More articles from this author:2007-12-04 22:49:00 This news snippet below is from the Texas A&M Real Estate Center email newsletter. It’s a survey of Houston home sellers and buyers, but the same results would be found if they did the survey in Austin. The big news?…“Houstonians shopping for a home look for quality neighborhoods, good schools and short commutes to their jobs.” ... More About: Survey 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
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