real estate indicators

Morgan Stanley Puts Freeze on Thousands of HELOCs

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!The credit market continues to get tighter and tighter. Morgan Stanley has put a freeze on thousands of their clients home equity lines of credit. The company says that the customers had declining home prices and they needed to [...]

6Aug2008 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Want To Haggle, ReMax Agents Lowered Commission Most Often

First of all, if your sole criteria is a lower commission in this market you better have 2 things going for you. The perfect house and the perfect price. Otherwise, you are much better off finding the best real estate agent you can find.
Saying that, Consumer Reports is coming out with a report in [...]

5Aug2008 | Tom Royce | 2 comments | Continued

Cadwalader to Cut 96 Real Estate Attorneys

Cadwalader, Wickersham, and Taft, one of the larger law firms in the country, is cutting 96 lawyers from it’s payroll.
Why is that important for a real estate blog? Glad you asked.
The attorneys are coming out of their real estate finance and securitization departments. The firm will still retain 150 attorneys in that division in [...]

31Jul2008 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Federal Bill Will Provide Incentive To 2nd Lienholders To Allow Refinance

While I am still not thrilled with the 300 billion dollar housing bill working it’s way through Congress, they did insert some logic into the process. The bill is designed to help out the lenders and homeowners that are underwater on their loans.
But the reality is that most of these loans were financed 80–20, [...]

25Jul2008 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Technology Allows Success in Targeting Real Estate Niches

In the past, marketing was so unspecific that you really needed to take big swings to get customers. The concept of television advertising speaks to that. If a real estate agent ran an advertisement on the local television she would not want business that could be 100 miles from her.
But with the advent of [...]

22Jul2008 | Tom Royce | 3 comments | Continued

Top 10 Cities for Real Estate Investing, 2nd Quarter 2008

Homevestor, the We Buy Ugly Houses folks, have come out with their listing of best cities for real estate investing for the second quarter of 2008.
There was no criteria mentioned about how they came to create the list but my assumption is that it is based upon Homevestors franchise volume information. What interests me [...]

16Jul2008 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Face Market Turmoil

As IndyMac fights for their lives, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae face the daunting challenge of raising new capital and a steep drop in their share prices. The federally chartered lending institutions stock prices were hammered yesterday after fears resurfaced over the lending crisis.

One of the strongest warning signs came Monday, when shares of [...]

8Jul2008 | Tom Royce | 0 comments | Continued

Regional Retail Real Estate Vacancy Rate Rises To 13 Year High

After the housing slowdown in 2006 construction focused on the retail and commercial side of the equation. But now large shopping centers and malls are facing their own glut of space. The growth in asking rents for these properties is up only 0.8 percent in the second quarter over the previous year.
I would be watching [...]

7Jul2008 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Prudential Shuts Down Offices In Expensive Marin County

Do you think that the real estate slowdown is only impacting low end and far out housing? Think again.
Prudential is on the process of shutting down most of their offices in tony Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. The ultra high end market of Marin has seen a decrease [...]

2Jul2008 | Tom Royce | 1 comment | Continued

Top 9 Best Bargain Markets In 2008

If you are looking to get out of the rat race and find a community that offers both the aspects of a large metropolitan region and a more relaxed living style, this list is for you. To make this list the cities had to have a strong economy, reasonable home prices that were not in [...]

1Jul2008 | Tom Royce | 0 comments | Continued