Sweetly Dig Into Redfin’s Local Stats

Case-Shiller: Spring Slow to Arrive in Boston as Home Prices Slip

It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). The Case-Shiller data is generally considered to be the most reliable measure of overall home price changes for a region, since they only consider repeat sales of homes when calculating their index, instead of looking at all the homes that sold in a given month.

For the full source data behind this post, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website. For a more detailed explanation of how the Case-Shiller Home Price Index is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. – April data is released in June).

Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Boston area* as of April:

Only seven of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw a decrease in their HPI between March and April (down from eighteen the previous month). The biggest increase was in Washington DC again with a solid 3.0% gain. Other markets that saw increases above 1% were San Francisco (+1.7%), Atlanta (+1.6%), Seattle (+1.6%), Denver (+1.5%), and Cleveland (+1.2%).

Here’s a look at the latest local tiered data, back through 2000:

And here’s a closer look at the recent changes, with the vertical and horizontal axes zoomed in to show just the last year:

Although the middle tiers gained a bit of ground this month, Boston’s low tier and high tier continued to slip. Month to month, the low tier was down 4.1%, the middle tier rose 1.6%, and the high tier decreased 0.3%.

Read the rest of this entry »

Redfin Boston Gets Personal

Big news! Redfin Boston is upgrading our service. Now, whenever you sign up to tour a home or meet an agent, the lead agent who negotiates your deal will also be the one who meets you on the first tour, sees the home and comes to the closing table. The commission refund we offer buyers will, as a result, decrease slightly from 50% of the commission to 33% of the commission.

Customers Love the Personal Service
We think this is really going to take off in Boston. We tried it out in one small part of Los Angeles January through March and our customers loved it: you still get an agent on your side, paid to put customers not commissions first, using tools that keep you in the loop at every step. But now that agent can really get to know you and your needs along the way.

A 33% Commission Refund
Our fee for selling a home is unchanged at 1.5% of the home price. But the commission refund for home-buyers changed so that it’s usually one-third of whatever the seller pays us, paid within a few days of closing. For a $500,000 home in Boston, the typical refund would be $4,167. Our main website has all the details on the new commission refund.

Existing Customers, Relax: We’ll Honor the Old Refund Through October 1
Customers who have already contacted us to tour a home, talk to an agent or write an offer will still get the larger refund, usually worth one half of whatever commission we get, on any purchase closed by October 1, 2011.

We’re limiting this new level of service to Boston, but we hope it fits better with what most people want in a real estate agent: the personal service offered by the best agents in brokerages of all types, combined with what really what makes Redfin different, our advocacy, transparency and technology.

If you’d like meet a Redfin agent to see how the whole process works or to learn how the double dip is hitting your local neighborhood, browse the reviews of our Boston-area agents and find an agent you like.

Fannie Mae Covers Closing Costs on HomePath Properties

As part of their neighborhood stabilization program, Fannie Mae is offering buyers’ assistance through a couple of different programs, HomePath and First Look.

HomePath

HomePath helps buyers buy covering their closing costs, up to 3.5% of the home’s purchase price.

To qualify, buyers must be purchasing a HomePath property; this is a home that is owned by Fannie Mae, usually as the result of a foreclosure or owner forfeiture.  Buyers need to make the initial offer on the home on or after June 14, 2011, and the purchase must close by October 31, 2011; initial offers made prior to June 14 are not eligible.

• View full details on qualifying for this program.
• Search for HomePath properties.
• Read an FAQ on the HomePath program.

First Look

In addition to HomePath program, Fannie Mae also offers an edge to buyers hoping to purchase a primary residence (as opposed to investors, or buyers looking for a second home). Under the First Look program, only offers from primary-residence buyers will be considered during the first 15 days that a Fannie-owned REO property is on the market.

Redfin agents and partner agents are always available to help you make a purchase on a Fannie Mae-owned property.

Waving as I Run By

Hey everyone!

I wanted to say a big fat wet sloppy thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s reader poll. There were nearly 800 of you, and almost everyone had something useful, informative, or enlightening to contribute.

(There was, of course, a small but vocal minority who did nothing but make dirty jokes and request that we start posting illicit photos, but that’s life on the intertubes.)

We got so many responses with so many good suggestions, in fact, that I’m basically drowning over here. I promise I’ll give y’all a nice, thorough run-down of the results, but as for today, I’m going to give you the Xtreme Reader’s Digest version.

Big Winners:

Updates on the local market, market statistics, and profiles of local neighborhoods were the top three requests, in that order. Message received. You want more hard data, more often, and more tightly focused on the neighborhood level.

Interesting Thing I Noticed:

We had a lot of requests for things that are already on Redfin, which tells me that we’re not doing a great job making that stuff easy to find. That’s pretty much my fault.

For instance, tips about home buying was a very popular request, and we have an entire free online guide for home buyers right here. It has a ton of information on the entire home-buying process, much of it tailored to each individual Redfin market.

Other Interesting Thing I Noticed:

Readers seem to fall into two camps: people who want more “fluff” (like cool homes, tips on design, stories from agents, etc.) and people who want no fluff at all and think fluff is stupid and would punch me in the face right now if I would just stop saying “fluff.”

I don’t think there’s a way to make every post appeal to everybody, but it does seem like more variety will keep everyone intermittently not-unhappy. And what more could you ask, really?

By Popular Request:

Finally, a lot of people asked in the free-form comments why we don’t just go back to the old days, when we had lots of different bloggers writing content for every city’s version of Sweet Digs. This was all before my time, but basically it was just too big an operation for us to handle at that point, and we needed to focus more on the core business (which is, of course, panda-cloning.)

We also had the loose-cannon issue crop up a couple times; bloggers saying things in the Redfin name that were completely ridiculous, like that we were cloning pandas.

But moving forward, we do want to distribute the writing work on our blogs out a bit more, both among our agents and (possibly, don’t quote me on this) among non-employees.

How will we approach that? No idea. I’m making this up as I go.

More soon on the survey results, including a downloadable spreadsheet of the results (stripped of any identifying reader info, naturally).

Until then, thanks again, and keep the good ideas coming.

Stuck in the Spring Mud (May 2011 Insider Report)

Redfin’s monthly Boston real estate insider report draws from our proprietary database of information on homes for sale and that just sold, along with insight from our agents to get a sense of what’s going on in the market right now. If you’d like to receive the report via email, just sign up.

Greetings Boston Redfinnians!

The Boston housing market is still spinning its wheels, stuck in a quagmire of flat demand and a huge inventory of homes that nobody seems to want. If things don’t change soon, we could be wading through the muck all summer.

But the bad economic news keeps flowing downhill. The stock market is just a wee bit on the unsteady side, employment numbers are weak, gas prices are high, and home prices around the country are already in the clutches of the dreaded double-dip.

Let’s take a closer look at our inventory, sales, and prices for May.

Water, Water Everywhere…

As you can see in the chart below, inventory is up. We’re practically swimming in it. It seems like there should be plenty of homes to go around, especially since buyers aren’t exactly flooding the market.

Change in # of Houses for Sale on May 31st 2011

But it’s the same old story we’ve been crowing about for months: there are lots of homes on the market, but few good ones. In a sea of unwanted inventory, buyers are fighting bidding wars over the islands of quality: good homes that are priced well.

For instance, look at the numbers for Cambridge and Somerville condos in the inventory chart above. Inventory is much higher than it was a year ago. But those units aren’t moving.

“Our clients have a lot more to choose from right now,” observes Redfin Cambridge agent Shawn Flynn. “We’re showing more properties more frequently, and buyers are starting to get comfortable with the market. There are a lot of great places for sale, but prices will need to come down before buyers will bite.”

Sales: Slightly Better than Horrible

The sales numbers back up Shawn’s observations; despite the growth of inventory, sales are down sharply from this time last year. Granted, May’s numbers are generally better than April, but that’s a bit like saying you can outrun Rodin’s The Thinker; April’s numbers were just bad.

Change in # of Houses That Sold in May 2011

Then again, even comparing to last year’s sales numbers is a tricky business, because last year’s demand was artificially inflated by the government tax credit for home buyers.

In fact, it’s hard to say we’ve had a “typical” housing market in years; it’s been a parade of bubbles, crashes and stimulus packages for some time now. Potential buyers seem happy to ride out the uncertainty by renting, but that might not last; rents are going up and mortgage interest rates are very low, making buying a (potentially) more attractive option. But without a broader sense of economic stability, will buyers take the plunge?

As usual, it all comes down to prices.

Prices Between a Rock and a Hard Place

So, buyers aren’t willing to budge unless they find a good deal on a good house. Will sellers respond by dropping prices?

Maybe the question should be, can sellers respond by dropping prices? Sellers who bought their homes during the bubble years probably can’t afford to sell for today’s more depressed prices. So far, sellers are generally holding their ground on prices, or just sitting on the sidelines and hoping for better days.

Change in Median Price of Houses That Sold in May 2011

At some point the cheap cost of money and rising rents will probably push at least a few more buyers off the fence, but summer is traditionally the strongest season for home sales. If sales don’t recover before fall, we might just go right back into hibernation.

Want to know what’s happening in your neighborhood? Download our comprehensive spreadsheet and dig into the data for yourself! Inside you’ll find county, city, and neighborhood information galore. To learn more about how we calculate these numbers, check out our methodology page. You can also liven up the place by posting a comment below.

Best,

Alex Coon
Boston Market Manager

What Do You People WANT?

I’m just going to level with y’all.

It’s one of my performance goals to write one of these blog posts every week, and every week, I approach the goal with a healthy heapin’ spoonful of a little something I like to call dread, or as they call it in German, dredenscheiningruvenshtocken.*

Now at first I thought that this dread was just some sort of performance anxiety, but I had an epiphany yesterday. Okay, maybe epiphany is a little strong. Maybe “duh-moment” would be more accurate.

I have no idea what you guys and gals want to read about. None at all.

But I’m not supposed to admit that, right? I’m supposed to just keep trying different articles and then track your pageviews like I’m some sort of criminal mastermind, then slowly and gradually hit on a winning formula of pure crowd-pleasingness; drawing you in, addicting you to content without you ever even knowing it. Mwa ha ha.

Frankly, that sounds like a lot of work, and really, I’m not the mastermind type. So I thought I’d just ask. Nicely.

So, could I please ask you to take a minute to fill out a little survey I came up with? Please? Pleeeeeease? (It helps if you picture me staring up at you with big puppy-dog eyes. It works especially well if you picture me as an actual puppy.**)

Take the Sweet Digs survey!

I can’t really promise you any toys or treats or anything, but I can promise that I’ll do my best to give you something worthwhile to read. And then everybody wins.

Thanks all!

*Not real German. Sorry Germany!
**Seriously, can you imagine that? Some cute puppy sitting at a keyboard, typing away with his little paws? That would be adorable!

One Seriously Jacked-Up Roof

Imagine you’d bought a home, and one day you went into the attic while chasing after a raccoon and–

What? No. I don’t know why you’re chasing a raccoon. Maybe it stole your sandwich.*

Anyway, you climb into the attic, wrestle the raccoon into submission, reclaim your sandwich, and then look over and see a tire jack holding your roof up. Wouldn’t you be a little upset? Even more so than you were about the sandwich?

This is why we have home inspectors. To inspect homes. For things like tire jacks and raccoon colonies.

You might think that you don’t need an inspector. You might say to yourself: “Self, I know how to tell if there’s something wrong with a house.”

But you’re probably wrong, because:

A: A good home inspector has the training and experience needed to identify hundreds of problems with a home’s structure, foundation, wiring, plumbing, ventilation, roofing, and other key components. Many of these problems are not obvious to the casual (or even business-casual) eye.

-and-

B: Home inspectors go into places like crawlspaces and attics, and spiders live in those places. Spiders.

We talked to over a dozen home inspectors, collected more than 200 images of common home inspection issues, and put that info into a neat little interactive home. It won’t make you a home inspection expert, but it will give you an idea of what to look for when touring a home. And hopefully it’ll help you realize how important a good inspection can be before you buy that home.

Don’t wait for a sandwich-stealing raccoon to show you the value of a home inspector. Check out our Interactive Home Inspection right now.

*It’s a roast beef sandwich. Unless you’re a vegan. Then it’s kelp or hay or something.

(Photo courtesy Gary Cornia & Cornia Consulting, LLC.)

Case-Shiller: Boston Home Prices Inch Toward New Post-Peak Low

It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). The Case-Shiller data is generally considered to be the most reliable measure of overall home price changes for a region, since they only consider repeat sales of homes when calculating their index, instead of looking at all the homes that sold in a given month.

For the full source data behind this post, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website. For a more detailed explanation of how the Case-Shiller Home Price Index is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. – March data is released in May).

Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Boston area* as of March:

Eighteen of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw a decrease in their HPI between February and March (one less than the previous month). Washington DC saw a 0.9% increase while Seattle eeked out a 0.1% bump.

Here’s a look at the latest local tiered data, back through 2000:

And here’s a closer look at the recent changes, with the vertical and horizontal axes zoomed in to show just the last year:

All three of Boston’s price tiers took a hit in March, but the middle tier took the biggest hit. Month to month, the low tier was down 2.0%, the middle tier fell 2.7%, and the high tier decreased 0.9%.

Read the rest of this entry »

Help Us Write a Home Selling Guide, Get a T-Shirt

Today, we’re officially launching the remaining sections of our Home Buying Guide. This is something we’ve been working on for a long, long time, and it feels good to get it out the door.

That’s not to say we won’t continue trying to make the guide an even better resource for home buyers; we’ll be tweaking, polishing, adding to, and editing this thing until the next ice age. If you have suggestions, comments, or questions about any of our HBG content, please leave a comment here, or on any page of the guide itself.

But we are starting to gear up for our next big guide project — the Redfin Home Seller’s Guide. We’ll be packing it full of useful information, with a heavier emphasis on interactive features, quizzes, graphics, illustrations, and other goodies.

Here’s where you come in: if you’re selling a home, what’s the stuff that keeps you up at night? What can’t you find good information about? What’s confusing? What’s frustrating? What do you wish you’d known three months ago?

Finally, if you’d like to be involved in providing customer feedback on preview versions of the guide as it’s developed, just drop a comment here and let us know. We’d love your input, and if we choose you to be in our customer feedback group, we’ll send you a free Redfin T-shirt.