Zillow has announced that they have entered into a listing agreement that allows all Homes.com hand-entered property listings to be fed directly to Zillow.com at no additional cost to the agent or broker. The first listing Homes.com feed to Zillow was 105,000 active property listings. 

Daniel Mudd, Fannie Mae President and CEO, said yesterday that he expects no significant recovery for the US housing market before 2010. 

Fannie Mae is the largest US source of mortgage finance and although historically conservative has recently faced multibillion-dollar losses in the recent sub prime and foreclosure collapse.He predicted that the rockiness experienced last year will continue through the balance of 2009, some 18 months away.

What are your thoughts?

Foreclourses has become the new real estate Four-letter word.

In March one in every 538 households in the U.S. received a foreclosure notice with Nevada (1 in 139 homes) leading the pack, followed by California (1 in 204 homes), Florida (1 in 282 homes) and Arizona (1 in 283 homes).

And the bad news is just everywhere...CNN, Fox News, USA Today, the Web, etc. etc.

To assist homeowners Real Estate Wiki (see previous entry on launch of the new wiki in real estate) has added a bunch of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) covering questions such as:

According to the lead story in the Money section of USA Today yesterday, Foreign Buyers are snapping up US real estate. The article cites that agents are eager to win the business of foreign investors who due to low US real estate prices and the weak dollar are find eye-popping deals in places such as Miami, New York and San Diego.

According to the National Association of Realtors foreigners are enjoying an average discount of about 30%. Although approximately 25% of Realtors are reporting an increase in home buying by foreign clients in the past 5 years it is probably not enough to absorb the glut of properties currently for sale.

First American CoreLogic, a member of The First American Corporation family of companies and America's largest provider of advanced property and ownership information, analytics and services, announced this week the release of REiSource, a new Web-based real estate information gateway to the most complete and accurate suite of property profiles, new homeowner and refinance lists, resale trends, mortgage leads and custom reports for title insurance companies.

I just love the youth – their enthusiasm, their energy, their eagerness and their burning passion for life. 

It’s true that generations come and go and each one is unique – each reacting and changing what previous generations have done over time.   

And now it is time again. Baby Boomers are slowly making way for the next generation to assume leadership of the industry. Not that this is a one–day event, but rather a decade of transition. One that we are already part of. 

It is important to note that the impact of both Gen X and Gen Y outside real estate is already very significant – just think of MySpace, Dell Computers, eBay, Yahoo, Google, You Tube and Facebook – all legacy of that generations’ alumni. 

After only two hours of deliberation yesterday, the jury unanimously vindicated a buyer's agent accused by his clients of failing to disclose that two other homes in the neighborhood sold for less than what they paid. As a trial court case, this decision in Ummel v. Little is binding on the parties to the case, but has no binding authority for other cases. Moreover, the buyers may file an appeal.

ZIPVO is a newly launched real estate video sharing website that allows agents to enhance, market and broadcast their listings free and easily through the use of video, PhotVideo, blogs and agent profiles. After launching in September the company has now upgraded to their public beta 2.0 version. Their is also a whole social networking and blogging system in place. Visit www.zipvo.com for more information.

How to Reach Buyers in Today’s Market 

With an abundance of houses for sale and buyers still weary to return to the housing market, it is now more important than ever before that real estate agents improve their marketing, says the new, 170 page 2008 Swanepoel Trends Report from RealSure Publishing.  In Trend 3, titled ‘The New Digital Currency,’ the Report provides numerous statistics and information showing the shifting patterns of today’s home buyers.  

Realogy Corp. announced this week additional plans to further cut costs through about 70 company-owned office consolidations.  This follows the earlier announced closing of some 67 company-owned last year. 

At the same time a loss of $797 million was announced by Richard Smith, company Chairman. Annual revenue has also been declining steadily down to $5.97 billion compared to $6.49 billion in 2006 and $7.14 billion in 2005.

These closings show prudent decissions in a declining housing market and validates Realogy listing in the 2008 Swanepoel Trends Report as one of the Top 10 Trendsetters of the Year 2007.

Las Vegas property management company Nights at Vegas is suing Trump, seeking $1 billion in compensatory damages and $3 billion in punitive damages for allegedly monopolizing the Las Vegas condo market – this is reportedly twice what he's worth. 

The event stems from Nights at Vegas allegedly been unfairly blocked from leasing out a number of the condominiums in the Trump International Hotel& Tower. Nights at Vegas is suing on the grounds of violation of anti-trust laws, declaratory relief for non-infringement of trademark, false promotion and unfair competition. 

Seems like you just can’t win in Vegas if you’re the outsider.

Homeowners’ debt on their houses exceeded their equity for the first time since the Federal Reserve Board began tracking it in 1945.  The housing bubble has caused house prices to decline down to 2003/4 levels wiping out much of the equity many people put into real estate during the last 3 years. But the real estate market will recover, it is merely a question of when – maybe 2009, probably 2010. Home buyers who can pursue hold strategy, retaining their homes for at least another 3-5 years should come out ahead.

AOL announced this morning that it’s buying Bebo.com, an online social network popular with millions of British teenagers, for $850 million. It is too become the social media community cornerstone for AOL. This follows on the recently investment of Microsoft into Facebook, valuing that social network at $15 billion.

Real Estate Wiki, announced this week the addition of over 70 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to help renters with handy information about the process of leasing a home instead of buying.  According to Real Estate Wiki, this new addition of leasing information is an example of the kind of industry focus a specialized wiki can provide. The FAQs included topics such as: 

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it had completed its acquisition of DoubleClick, a company that offers online ad serving and management technology to advertisers, web publishers and ad agencies. 

According to Wall Street analysts Yahoo now faces even greater pressure to find itself a buyout partner, and this plays well for Microsoft.

According to a release on INMAN News on Friday loans entered the foreclosure process at a record rate during the fourth quarter, and things are likely to get worse before they get better, the chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association said today. 

Although reductions in short-term interest rates have lessened the shock of interest-rate resets for many borrowers with adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) loans, falling home prices are leaving more homeowners with little or no equity in their homes -- and less incentive to keep up on their mortgage payments, said MBA Chief Economist Doug Duncan. 

In many parts of the world real estate has now followed the US Housing Market and real estate is rapidly cooling down across the globe, with the exception of a few sunny spots.

Read on...

The real estate market is still pretty much in the tank but something is changing, or something is wrong? Housing and Large Builder stocks, considered “dead” at end of last year have come alive and seem to be gaining incredible momentum. 

According to a USA Today article this week 3 of the best 5 gainers in the S&P 500 this year are home builders:

Pulte at #1 – up 51%

DR Horton at #3 – up 30%

KB Homes at #5 – up 25% 

Success in the real estate industry over the next decade is knowing where the Web is going, how it works and what the opportunities are it offers. The Internet has in less than one and a half decades evolved from a preferred method of connecting and finding information to sharing and being part of a community.  

Phase l - Browsing:  To surf the Web, users typed in the address of the destination they wanted to find, say Realtor.com, or they went to portals with links classified by a subject such as real estate.  Companies spent big money on banner ads and branding campaigns to lure people to their sites. 

Broker Agent News published an intersting article by Michael Parker today. Here is the first part (click here to read the full article).

Microsoft is determined not to lose the struggle against Google by submitting a bid $44.6 billion in cash and shares for Yahoo! The balance of power is again in play. Microsoft is the larger of the two, by market capitalization, (some $270 billion compared with Google's $160 billion), but the momentum has in recent years seemed to favor Google. To read about what is happening to the balance of power in real estate make sure to read the 2008 edition of my new Trends Report that was just published.

New real estate wiki for real estate industry is launched. 

History of wikis in real estate
BiggerPockets (launched in 2006) claims to be the first real estate wiki but it unfortunately closed down in May 2007 due to lack of sufficient content.  Introduced shortly therafter, and still going strong, is InmanWiki (part of InmanNews, InmanTV and InmanBlog).  

Similar to the birth of a new baby, the arrival every year is accompanied with anticipation on how it will look, how much it will weigh, will it be healthy, etc. – this year the Swanepoel Trends Report weighs in at 170 pages, is blue and orange cover and looks beautiful (don’t all babies) -  trepidation (for the first typo we find that slipped through) to excitement and discussions about the new set of top10 real estate trends that will shape industry. 

It is with humbleness and deep honor that I share with you my summary what happened in 2007 and what I think will happen in 2008. Those strategies, business models and innovations that are and will continue to impact our business and lives during the coming year.

UBS, the largest Swiss bank announced that it would write off a record fourth-quarter net loss of about $12.9 billion, due to the troubled US housing market positions related to the US subprime mortgage market.

The end is not in sight yet.

Also read Trends #2 in my new Swanepoel Trends Report titled: Pop Goes the Weasel.

The Federal Reserve cut the interest rate this afternoon by another 0.5% down to 3%, the lowest since June 2005. This was the 5^th time since August last year and follows last weeks emergence cut of 0.75% ahead of the world stock market nose dive.

Although this is positive news it will not prevent a prolonged list of bad news announcements from many financial institutions still too come. We are unfortunately still heading down.