I can think of a few excuses why I stopped writing posts over the last couple months (too busy, holidays, & not enough topics) but the real reason is lack of commitment to blogging.  I don't think I am the only one who has done this.  I have noticed a few other people, including some real estate agents, who have started a blog only to stop writing posts a few weeks into it.  From what I can tell, blogging, like exercising & dieting, requires dedication and discipline to be successful at … [Read more...]

Sounds a lot like my post on September 23rd of this year.  The real scoop is getting out on Zillow.NCRC charges Zillow with falsely representing to the public that its on-line valuations are within ten percent of the home selling price when the company really has "less than a 30 percent accuracy rate when offering the valuations for public consumption." Click here to see the article. … [Read more...]

I just reviewed an article by the National Association of Realtors that summarizes a recent survey that looked at the Baby Boomer generation and their housing needs.  Given that Big Bear Lake is a four season resort town located in the San Bernardino National Forest, just 2 hours from Los Angeles, our real estate market is directly effected by the purchasing trends of this generation. Click here to review the article. The article points out that the Boomers are typically working longer and waiting longer to … [Read more...]

Forecasting is difficult to get right.  Whether you are talking about forecasting the weather report or the real estate market, it is never 100% accurate.  It does, however, give one a good idea based on the reasonable probabilities. I just got back from the October meetings for the California Association of Realtors which was located at the Long Beach Convention Center this year.  We have meetings three times a year but it is always at this time of year that we get the economic update and forecast … [Read more...]

In today's real estate market, there is no urgency to move quickly. During the last 5 years, buyers had a sense of urgency to buy the property they were interested in.  If they did not move quickly, they risked the chance of someone else coming and buying the property or getting into a bidding war.  If they missed out, then they would have to wait and hope that a similar property came on the market for sale that was not drastically higher in price.  Now that the active inventory levels have risen … [Read more...]

Zillow.com has received a lot of attention lately in the real estate industry.  In essence, this site allows users to pull up the value on any property in the U.S., ideally their own.  The site uses public data to get among other things the property square footage, age, year built, and most important, sales data.  It then crunches all this information and comes up with its current valuation, which typically is a wide range.  It allows the user to add information to their property that may change the value or that … [Read more...]

Just received the most recent sales numbers for August, 2006 (Download first_american_aug. 06.xls  {Excel file, 1.61 MB}, compliments of First American Title).  It looks like much of the same as the number of sales in August were down 20% compared to last year and 40% versus August of 2004.  Year to date, the number of sales this year are down 23% as compared to the last ten years average.  Compared to 2005 & 2004 year to date numbers, sales are down 23% & 43% respectively. It is very … [Read more...]

Given the amount of press coverage nationwide regarding the real estate market, I thought it would be informative to discuss the current real estate market conditions in Big Bear. Big Bear has not been immune to the national sales statistics this year either.  People see that homes are still selling and that prices are still high, and think that things still must be okay.  The fact is that prices are still much higher than they were in 2000, but they are starting to level off and in some cases, … [Read more...]

Sometimes it takes reading or seeing something numerous times, in this case blogging, before I feel the need to embrace it. Working in the real estate business for the last 8 years, there have been numerous changes in our industry, almost all dealing with the internet and technology. Blogging appears to be the next "thing" as much as I can tell. So, this is my attempt. I have some ideas in mind, we'll see how it goes. … [Read more...]