Transparent Real Estate

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Domino effect of Bad Economic News
2007-09-05 13:54:00
There are days like this when all the news is bad... the continuing domino effect of the sliding housing markets > global credit crunch > foreclosures > consumer credit hit > dissipating consumer confidence has elevated fears of recession. Housing continues to get slammed September 5 - Housing recovery further away - National Association of Realtors reports that the number of homes going under contract for sale in July plunged by 12% to the lowest level in six years Commercial real estate, commercial paper, REITs and structured finance vehicles all falter September 5 - Commercial real estate in US poised for 15% price dropSeptember 5 - Commercial paper and structured finance downgraded by Moody's September 5 - Real estate funds fall may have plus side Credit crunch hits the consumer August 28 - Credit card defaults keep risingAugust 28 - Consumer Confidence in U.S. Falls the Most in Two Years; Home Prices Drop Refer to Timeline of the Global Credit...
More About: News , Economy , Effect , Economic , Domino

Download this RSS Feed file
2007-09-04 03:06:00
Loren asked me about it.... it's Mark Flavin's opml file that lists 500+ blog feeds, including most of the known blogs related to real estate, all recently filtered for dead feeds. A very comprehensive set of blogs to monitor on your feed reader, with lots of tech... once uploaded, edit as you please.Dang! looks like the blog webserver won't allow opml files  - so get the opml file here at file sharing app 4Shared, click on the Flavin export file and download it >>>>Download the opml file here to your hard drive and upload it to a feedreader you're not currently using... why? Uploaded opml files generally overwrites your subscribed feeds in a feed reader you're using, so just try a new one from this list of free online RSS feed readers:Google Reader NetvibesBloglinesNewsgator Webwag PageflakesIn order to upload the opml file, click on the function: Add a feed or Manage feeds... then follow directions to upload the opml file.Note: I had to quickly find a free ...
More About: File , Feed

"Bernanke put" in play
2007-08-31 11:33:00
Bernanke put: Fed action to drop the Fed Funds rate on September 18 predicated on a worsening economic scenarioCNBC had been lauding Bernanke's comments to the Fed retreat this morning the most important speech thus far in his tenure as Fed Chairman, but it was anticlimatic as expected. This is a good, boring one sentence recap excerpted from David Gaffen @ WSJ Marketbeat: ?We?ve got the impression that he?s very much of the view that not the Fed?s job to bail out financial markets when they get in trouble but should only respond to the economic outlook,? says Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital. Frankly, Bernanke has been consistent with his message. The "Bernanke put" is real... on September 18, if the economy continues to sustain itself and the stock markets aren't dropping drastically, the Fed will have their excuse not to drop the Fed Funds rate. During the week before September 18, if this calm scenario is in play and the Fed seems to be signaling n...
More About: Economy , Play , Bernanke

Home buyers are returning this fall - part 2
2007-08-31 00:08:00
Ten days ago after the Fed calmed the markets' credit panic with a 1/2 point cut in the Discount rate, I postulated that home buyers will come back this fall when the Fed finally drops the Fed Funds rate, and mortgage rates drop. It's now almost certain to happen. Here are the parameters in play now: 1) The stock market upticked yesterday because the Fed has essentially admitted to following through on the rate cut and support the ailing housing market. Expectations have been set:: from David Fry's Market Outlook for Thursday ?Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reiterated that the Federal Reserve is closely monitoring markets and is ready to act if necessary.? MarketWatch Bernanke also suggests that some ?creative thinking? be applied to allow subprime borrowers a chance to refinance. This reads to me like a bailout proposal. These statements ignite a rally. 2) I haven't seen any discussions on this yet, but the stock market now has a cei...
More About: Economy , Home Buyers , Home , Part , Buyers

The Small Intersecting World of Real Estate and Search Engines
2007-08-29 04:44:00
At Search Engine Journal today, I've authored the second in a series of articles related to search engine and Web 2.0 strategies for real estate. I discuss why real estate agents are so reluctant to blog, even when they finally understand how powerful a marketing medium it is, and introduce solutions to getting agents on board with blogging and Web 2.0. One of the solutions is the broker blogsite, which Jim at Tomato unveiled yesterday. Kudos to Jim and EVM !I'm fascinated by how small the intersecting worlds of search and real estate is. Yes, there are entrepreneurs like the teams at Second Space and Terabitz who prominently apply search strategies to real estate, initially as industry "outsiders". I've also met some very influential, creative people who, as techies generally do, work behind the scenes at largish real estate institutions. As "insiders", they apply their past experience and knowledge to tech-enabling an industry that seems to finally be getting it. Here are a few...
More About: Search Engines , World , Estate , Real Estate

Credit crunch - and now, the Consumer
2007-08-28 17:35:00
The big stock drop today was expected... like the second wave of a tsunami - media reports the credit crunch tangibly affecting the consumer. Today's bad news revolving around consumer panic reminds me of the lender panic of two weeks ago. Cons umer Confidence in U.S. Falls the Most in Two Years; Home Prices Drop Home prices fall record 3.2% nationally Credit card defaults keep rising List of housing sector layoffs The media really shifted its focus - it wasn't about the lenders and the hedge funds today, it was Everyman. September 18 - the date of the next FOMC meeting to decide on cutting the Fed Funds rate -  has become the red letter date that determines whether the Fed will, in essence, support the housing and credit markets... and thus, the consumer. Fed watchers are wary of the arguments the Fed has to keep from dropping the Fed Funds rate and that's what is making the markets nervous.Technorati Tags: credit crunch, consumer debt, credit card defaults, housing pr...
More About: Crunch , The Con

The Fed and Puritanical Ethics
2007-08-27 15:19:00
A week ago, the Wall Street Journal explained a Puritan ical financial concept underlying the Fed's hesitancy to drop interest rates - no bailing out players who bend the rules: Wall Street has a dream: that the Federal Reserve will rescue financial markets with a sharp cut in interest rates. Behind that dream lurks a problem, something financial people call moral hazard. Moral hazard is an old economic concept with its roots in the insurance business. The idea goes like this: If you protect someone too well against an unwanted outcome, that person may behave recklessly. Someone who buys extensive liability insurance for his car may drive too fast because he feels financially protected. The August 25 Economist pipes in further with "Does America need a recession?", implying a little bloodletting will be just the ticket...Mark Thoma at Economist's View counters with sane reasoning why the economy doesn't necessarily need to get worse to get better and most of his commenters agre...
More About: Ethics , The Fed

Virtual World meets Real World
2007-08-27 01:51:00
Virtual world participation in massively multiuser strategy games like Warcraft and 3-D immersive communities like Second Life have reached critical mass - both over 9 million members each - and can potentially be used to model real world crises. The Economist points out how Warcraft fabricated a viral epidemic and epidemiologists monitored the reactions of the participants (excerpt for those without Economist subscriptions): A couple of years ago [Warcraft's] owners, a Californian firm called Blizzard Entertainment, accidentally spiced things up by releasing a plague far more virulent than they had intended. It started in a sparsely inhabited area but soon found its way to the cities, where it wreaked havoc. So far, so cod-medieval. However the plague, and the reactions of the game's players to it, recently came to the attention of Eric Lofgren and Nina Fefferman, two epidemiologists at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Writing in this week's Lancet Infectious Dis...
More About: World , Virtual , Real , Virtual World

Latest video ideas
2007-08-25 15:00:00
Reggie @ MyTechOpinion says - incorporate your own real estate video channel on your blog or website using Kyte.tv: Your TV channel can include still photos, slide shows, video, music, voice and instant polls to help enhance your online presence and in turn, provide you a competitive edge in your real estate business. You may choose to include videos outlining industry trends, steps towards home ownership, the selling and buying process, real estate investment, or even showcase local attractions & hotspots. Of course you would also include video tours and photos of your listed homes for maximum appeal. Why not also invite colleagues such as your preferred lender to talk on evaluating loans, and improving credit. The ideas are limitless. Go2Web2 and Techcrunch find new startup Tubecast.tv - in essence, full screen internet "TV" that broadcasts channels like a cable box... click the up/down arrow to peruse channels (and no client downloads necessary). Most of the channels - for ...
More About: Video , Ideas

Countrywide saved / exploited by BofA today
2007-08-23 11:57:00
Investors cheer BofA's $2 billion investment into Countrywide ... an iconic bankruptcy threat dissipates. On CNBC, BofA is being lauded as providing proactive support to their industry, but look at the sweet deal BofA received: Under the terms of the deal, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America acquired $2 billion in the form of nonvoting, convertible preferred stock yielding 7.25 percent annually, Countrywide said. The shares can be converted into common shares of Countrywide at $18 per share, with certain restrictions. If Bank of America were to convert its shares under Countrywide's current share count, it would hold between 16 percent to 17 percent of Countrywide shares, said Robert Stickler, a Bank of America spokesman. As of Thursday 9:30pdt, Countrywide shares are up to $22.83 (up 4.6% from yesterday, of course the uptick was predicable). So BofA gets a nice preferred yield, but more strikingly, they received stock convertible at an $18 strike price. a 17% discount off ye...
More About: Economy , Today

Facebook's killer app
2007-08-22 03:32:00
It's the game playing...Inman News's Alice, bless her geogeeky heart, and I are addicted to geography - aficionado Facebook game Traveler IQ Challenge. Simply put, it quizzes you to find a city or landmark on a global map and awards points on how close you can click on the location (I've gotten within 10 km on such a small global map) and how fast you clicked it. With a little mouse-moving practice and arcane landmark memorization, your score improves.Frankly, this is what makes Facebook addictive - not only are you playing online games, but you're "competing" with others in your community. It's a kind of alpha introduction to the concept of massively multiuser games, like Warcraft, which are mostly played by teenage boys and... Korea. Also, since I'm a Columbia grad, all the Traveler IQ players' scores are aggregated and ranked by college.Note that foreign and international studies schools place well.I can imagine independent teams will form all over Facebook to play a varie...
More About: Killer

Embeddable Google MyMaps
2007-08-22 03:25:00
Damon alerted me to it, but it was already on my Googl e Map monitoring radar. It's as easy to embed a Google Map into a web or blogsite, just like YouTube, and frankly I was surprised Google hadn't gone through the simple steps to do so before. Last month, I wrote about how real estate agents can customize Google MyMaps to present map data to their online client base. Now I can easily embed these maps... here's my example of the San Francisco Bay Area's housing prices YoY from June 06 to June 07:View Larger Map (click on the map colors for details) Technorati Tags: Google Maps, mymaps, mashup, mapping, bloggingAdd to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Market pressuring Fed to lowering rates even more
2007-08-21 10:55:00
From Financial Times, Monday, August 20: The dramatic decline in the yield on short-term Treasury bills on Monday further strengthened market expectations that the Federal Reserve will soon embark on an aggressive series of interest rate cuts. By the close of trading the market was pricing in roughly one-and-a-half quarter-point cuts by the Fed?s next scheduled policy meeting on September 18. And more bad news Monday: Investors fled money market funds, considered among the safest instruments, on concern that the funds, which hold $2.5 trillion, have invested in risky collateralized-debt obligations backed by subprime mortgage loans. Sentinel Management Group, a US money manager at the centre of recent market turmoil, was on Monday charged with fraud and misuse of client assets by the SEC. The problems at Sentinel came as a particular shock to US and global markets as it was thought to be investing in relatively safe assets on behalf of hedge funds and futures brokers. Greenpoint ...
More About: Economy , Market , Rates , Rate , Erin

Home buyers, start your engines
2007-08-20 02:49:00
No one seems to be saying this, so... The Fed's switch to addressing the credit markets and the cooling economy with its surprise 1/2 point cut in the discount rate Friday will help the real estate market for conventional A buyers. The reason? --- mortgage rates will start heading lower as the credit markets calm down and factor in the lower interest rate window now being projected. Mortgage rates are highly correlated to 10-year and 30-year Treasury bond rates, but are determined by the price of mortgage bonds. However, last week mortgage rates generally increased over last week (30-year fixed up .03%), while 10-year T-bond yields fell .15%. This Bankrate analysis explains in part the logical reason - during last week's global credit crunch, investors rushed into T-bonds not only because they are one of the safest investments ("flight to quality") but also because investors believed that the Fed would drop interest rates (increasing value of T-bonds) and thus provide a quick p...
More About: Economy , Home Buyers , Home , Start , Engines

BarCamp Block - Web 2.0 Unconference
2007-08-19 11:44:00
I couldn't make it to this weekend's BarCampBlock , a free "unconference" for the Silicon Valley tech community, but the word is "nothing short of extraordinary". Simply put, the Web 2.0 community shows up at morning registration and assembles their programs adhoc on a program board. If you're near Palo Alto, Sunday's installment starts at 10:00 around the block of 600 High Street... it's a kind of block party so follow the crowds.
More About: Events , Barcamp , Lock , Ferenc

Fed finally reacts - the Global Credit Crunch Timeline
2007-08-17 15:37:00
This morning the Fed finally reacts to a most turbulent week of market activity and dropped the discount rate 1/2 point. Here's the domino effect that preceded the rate cut: April 2 - Subprime crisis takes down first major lender - New Century files for bankruptcy June 21 - First sign of widespread credit crunch - Wall Street hedge funds hit hard... Bear Stearns hedge funds near collapse July 19 - Dow closes at all time record high 14,000 - Fed says subprime crisis still contained July 27 - Credit squeeze spreading to higher grades of debt - Dow drops 520 in two days - Corporate debt dressed up, nowhere to go August 2 - Alt-A loans now suspect - American Home Mortgage shuts down August 9 - Global markets start crashing together - France's BNP Paribas and Countrywide, largest US lender unexpectedly send out warning signals begetting investor paranoia about other hedge funds with subprime holdings August 10 - No buyers for commercial paper - Central Banks start pumping funds ...
More About: Economy , Timeline , Finally

Web 2.0 Ahead of the Curve
2007-08-16 10:35:00
Widgetization has become emblematic of a cool Web 2.0 application. Widgets are simply small size applications that can be positioned on a web page, lately by dragging and dropping them into place. Google widgets (Google calls them gadgets) customize the user's home page. Facebook glamorized the widget by offering over 2,900 of them and counting. Web 2.0 applications become more complex A technology product developer wrestles with complexity versus simplicity of use. An internet application is no different... This 2005 Wharton paper  The upgraded digital divide: Are we developing new technologies faster than Consumers can use them? does a good job explaining new product evolution from "wow" to "geeky" to "usable" to "mainstream": "Today we're seeing a somewhat anomalous bump in the evolution of consumer technology products," Whitehouse says. "In the early phases of that evolution, which we are still in the midst of, there was a tendency for manufacturers to add features. G...
More About: Curve , Ahead

Why the stock markets keep falling
2007-08-15 23:50:00
Here's a typical economist speak WSJ article touted as a "primer" on how the Fed injects money into the economy. It is incomprehensible. Frankly, the bemused comments are hilarious. The simple reason markets continue to collapse is just bad news: Asian markets are crashing Wednesday morning following the US fall Tuesday. Investors in all countries are getting hammered by subprime CDO holdings. More significantly, subprime's deleterious effects are poisoning consumer demand for all kinds of consumer goods. Basis Capital, Australia, warns one of its hedge funds may exceed 80% - 8/15/07Mitsubishi UFJ and Sumitomo Mitsui, two of Japan's three biggest lenders, plunged to two-year low after reporting losses associated with subprime.Toyota Motor Corp. and Westfield Group, the world's largest shopping center owner, slid after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cut its profit forecast, adding to evidence that U.S. demand is cooling.In the US, hedge fund investors this week have a window of opportuni...
More About: Markets , Stock , Fall , Stock markets

ForeclosureRadar.com - like Zillow with vertical market research utility
2007-08-14 01:54:00
ForeclosureRadar's new UI mashes up foreclosure data parsed by properties in the various stages of default - Notice of Default, in auction, or bank-owned - plus Zillow estimates all in a Google Map. Maps are the perfect way to display foreclosure data that tend to clump in neighborhoods. Seeing ForeclosureRadar's maps, I realize Fidelity's Cyberhomes and Zillow could develop vertical products for foreclosures, new home developments, and maps that identify mortgage seasoning (years since last financing) and loan-to-value ratios. Then, real estate professionals can really mine these data... for example: Mortgage brokers can farm neighborhoods and tract developments that have histories of financing or refinancing in 2003 and whose occupants will require new loans when their 5 year ARMs are due to readjust within the next year. Investors or short sale experts can identify neighborhoods with high loan-to-value ratios that are ripe for default.Offer subscription services for onli...
More About: Research , Market , Market research , Utility

Explaining the Global Credit Crunch
2007-08-13 10:49:00
An Economics PhD isn't necessary to understand the global credit crunch now in full bloom since last Thursday. As a real estate professional, it's important to understand how to simply explain this latest permutation on the capital markets to your clients: Why the credit crunch? No institutions want to purchase any securitized loans (called CDOs - collateralized debt obligations ) that are tainted with the subprime loans now experiencing high rates of defaults. Last Thursday and Friday, France's BNP Paribas and Countrywide, the US's leading mortgage lender, sent up red flags that were unexpected - just one week ago both institutions posted press releases reassuring financial stability. So many warning signals have implicated financial institutions with potentially risky holdings (and that includes many of them) as categorically suspect.... globally. Wall Street investors "shoot first and ask questions later". Since money managers have no idea which institutions are exposed t...
More About: Credit , How-To , Global , Crunch , The G

The US isn't the only country with housing problems
2007-08-08 22:36:00
Living here, most Americans would think the US is the only country in the world having a housing problem exacerbated by a subprime crisis.(UK housing appreciation)Real estate prices globally have had similar appreciation rates, and lenders around the world (with the possible exception of France) created similar products to facilitate home buying and investing. The "housing boom and aftermath" is actually a global phenomenon. Any US media attention on the impact of the subprime debacle on other countries has been isolated to their foreign investment exposure to the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs ) used to secure subprime loans. So, did you know other countries are struggling as much as the US? My initial reaction was other countries would likely have tighter lending restrictions or government controls, so they wouldn't have significant subprime or alt-A type liberal lending issues. I google checked some sample queries like "France housing bubble" and couldn't find any citat...
More About: Country , Housing , Problems , The U , The O

Transcendent Web 2.0
2007-08-07 02:00:00
(Web 2.0 makes people smarter)The first part of this two part article is Explaining Web 2.0. Stage 3) Collective intelligence The higher order of Web 2.0 is the potential to understand a topic at an intensely detailed level. Many tech pundits believe we're far from the tipping point; that's an indication of where we are on the internet timeline (it's still early!). Ignoring the arcane details of the "semantic web", Web 3.0 and the visions of the ideal internet, Web 2.0 amasses various perspectives and data from the masses. This content is presented and filtered through Web 2.0 applications like blogs, wikis, mashups, YouTube (or any other video content bank) and Facebook - and over time, begin to fill out the soft details around the hard facts that are generally known about a topic. Before the web appeared, enterprises were seeking solutions to data integration - getting data to talk with each other via systems - geekthink at its apex. With Web 2.0, it becomes evident that data...
More About: The Future , Tran

Explaining Web 2.0
2007-08-06 08:58:00
Web 2.0 was a major topic at Inman Connect last week... I put together this article to explain Web 2.0 to the real estate community and how to use it (with lots of links). What is Web 2.0 and how does one participate? The simplest explanation of Web 2.0's importance in the schema of internet evolution is it empowers all users with a voice and expression on the internet. In order to participate, the users (both real estate professionals and the consumers they are courting) must learn the new languages of Web 2.0 in several stages. Stage 1) Tools are transitioning from the PC desktop to Online Services Web 2.0 is pushing (or rather, attracting) users to proactively interact with the online world as a public forum. Before Web 2.0, the real estate professional simply put up an agent website or sent out a flyer. Consumers, if interested, then began a private offline dialogue with the agent. All this activity was performed using desktop email and publishing products... and ...
More About: Technology , Web 2.0

Giant Steps - a diversion
2007-08-05 01:47:00
Inman Connect was a wonderful experience last week... I'm recouping.. here are two interesting videos of one my favorite musical pieces - Coltrane's Giant Steps... Giant Steps movie (click for the high quality version) by Michal Levy (Really for geeky musicians!)
More About: Diver , Version , Dive , Diversion

Realogy on Yahoo! Real Estate
2007-08-02 14:48:00
Inman is great fun... I'm not real time blogging, nor even real time twittering like I thought Conferences are interesting for insider talk commonly known as gossip... yesterday, I found out before this morning's press release that Real ogy will be replacing Prudential (*not true, see footnote) as partner in Yahoo ! Real Estate . Realogy apparently convinced Yahoo! that they would "open up" the listings site by allowing users to view all data without registration. Consumers hate registration...even the San Jose Mercury journalist who interviewed the Prudential agent who emailed, and then called her because she had to "register" before seeing more information about a property. She mentions that the agent said only 2% actually expressed they were in house buying mode... it seems like a poor marketing strategy to alienate much of the other 98% potential clients just to possibily snare those 2%.Free, open information will boost the credibility of Yahoo! RE... Realogy seems ready to leve...
More About: Events , Real Estate

Welcome to San Francisco
2007-08-01 01:17:00
Inman Connect has officially launched and today, I got the chance to introduce my Sellsius brothers (fresh out of that blog camper!), Teresa Boardman and Todd Carpenter to the best Pho shop in San Franc isco (a 5 star shop that is devalued by Yelp reviewers for its hole in the wall appearance). I was surprised to hear they never tried Vietnamese Pho (pronounced fuh), a noodle soup made with beef broth and various cuts of beef topped by fresh bean sprouts, basil and lime with a squirt of Sriracha hot pepper sauce, a full meal for $6-8. I speculate that Pho shops, already ubiquitous in the City and the Vietnam towns of SoCal, will become the next big ethnic fast food novelty spreading eastward to cities with significant Asian populations. I see them in Sacramento now... Hello finally to all the familiar faces that came alive from those 75x75's at tonight's bar run. Here's a cool map mashup guide of chic things to do in San Francis co.
More About: Events

Business cards > Rolodex > Outlook > Facebook
2007-07-31 10:03:00
Contact management is the killer app of a real estate agent's business. Basically, it's nothing more than huge databases of potential clients... targeted with some sort of drip marketing campaign amid the hopes that one of them will think of calling up when they decide to buy or sell a home. Here's the latest on contact management... and a few tidbits on business obsolescence: BUSINESS CARDS are disposable I threw out every business card I stockpiled in a drawer last month. Here's how I now manage my contacts: All my most relevant and current contact data today are contained in a database at HighriseHQ, an online contact management system. Any other online system will likely do. Most of my contacts in the two social networks I participate in - Linked In or Facebook - are bloggers and others who have simply embraced social networking. I barely maintain these networks, just adding in the relationships for now. All of my past contacts are backed up in Outlook . Note that ...
More About: Business , Cards , Look

All about Inman Week
2007-07-29 23:35:00
Inman Connect San Francisco, starting this Wednesday, August 1 at the Palace Hotel,  will be the focus of real estate this week. I'll be monitoring activities that fall within my range of vision through Transparent, but I'm assuming the main resource centers will be Connect's Facebook group, and the official Connect blog. I've been inviting a lot of new Bay Area bloggers to Blogger's Connect, the first official "pen pal party" of the nation's real estate bloggerati. I'll be acting as a kind of InviteShare and letting conference goers of some of the extracurricular activities going on... feel free to contact me about stuff - link to me at Facebook or TwitterInman's State of Real Estate Marketing Report Last week, Inman News and their fine reporting corps published the State of Real Estate Marketing 2007. The data itself, culled from the Inman readership, provides a mirror for Realtors to understand where they fit into the new marketing paradigm that takes them more...
More About: Events , San Francisco Bay Area , Week , Inman

Stock Market Crash's Silver Lining for Bay Area Realtors
2007-07-27 08:54:00
Another simple concept nobody is discussing... stock market crashes are good for some real estate markets, like the San Francisco Bay Area. Today's 310 point crash in the Dow is about the corporate credit crunch... bonds that back current LBO offerings, formerly called junk bonds back in the 80's, can't find buyers. Today's news was just plain bad... sliding new home sales, reinforcing the continuing saga of foreclosures and builder red ink just added fuel to the fire. This market crash feels like a panicky knee jerk reaction, that's why it bounced back from its 450 point drop. I would venture to say no one knows whether this is the beginning of the bear market or a temporal correction. LBOs aren't directly relevant to today's real estate markets. Simply put, everybody knows there is a lot of investment capital in float that migrates en masse from stocks to bonds to real estate and back again. Treasury yields are dropping as a palliative to cushion the housing markets' woes...
More About: Realtors , Stock Market , Market , Silver Lining , Silver

US Real Estate starting to look attractive to overseas investors
2007-07-25 16:54:00
No one is really out there talking about the wave of global real estate investors starting to eye the US market. Google "global real estate investors" and search through the news and blogs... there's no news about the wall of investment money ready to wash ashore into prime real estate markets in the US. It's a contrarian's dream - the media talks about how the subprime crisis is dragging down the US housing market, but just like in the San Francisco Bay Area, the US market is also somewhat bifurcated. Housing stock in the poorer neighborhoods of cities are impacted by subprime related foreclosures, but much of the market is still chugging along at stagnant appreciation rates. Here are some reasons why overseas investors think US commercial and residential real estate is attractive: 1) Transactions in the US are less risky than in closed, opaque real estate markets like China: The United States has the most transparent and liquid real estate market - Cushman Wakefield 2) Upwa...
More About: Estate , Real Estate , Real , Investors , Active