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Real estate-related searches on Google.com have up 253% over the past four years
Real estate-related searches on Google.com have grown 253 percent over the past four years, according to a joint study from the National Association of REALTORS® and Google.
“Increasingly, online technologies are driving offline behaviors, and home buying is no exception,” said Google Head of Real Estate Patrick Grandinetti. “With 90 percent of home buyers searching online during their home buying process, the real estate industry is smart to target these people where they look for and consume information—for example through paid search, relevant websites, video environments, and mobile applications.”
Two high-profile depart Trulia after short stay
According to Inman News two real estate vets hired by Trulia to fortify relationships with the real estate industry have departed after less than a year with the company.
Matt Dollinger, formerly Trulia’s head of industry relations, announced his departure Monday to his Twitter followers.
 Matt Dollinger |
in May to oversee Trulia’s sales and business development team, said he would continue to serve as an advisory board member and consultant on broker products. Before coming to Trulia, Dollinger was vice president of strategic development with @properties, an innovative Chicago brokerage.
California’s Foreclosure Drop – But May Be Hungover
Original Article Here – As an epicenter of the nation’s worst housing bust in recent history, California remains an important bellwether for the housing market recovery. So when news that foreclosure starts in the beleaguered state plummeted to an 87-month low in January, industry watchers took notice.
Notices of default in the state dropped 62 percent from December 2012, and 75 percent from January 2012, according to RealtyTrac’s January U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, the biggest single-month drop in California NODs since RealtyTrac began issuing its foreclosure report in 2005.
Could California’s battered housing market finally be pulling out of its long and painful decline? As with all news that seems “almost too good to be true,” it probably is.
Former Seattle Sonic Robert Swift Goes Into Foreclosure
SEATTLE — Former Seattle Sonic Robert Swift made a reported $20 million during his NBA career, but things haven’t gone as well for the first-round draft pick in recent years.
Swift lost his home to foreclosure, but apparently refuses to leave.
“And it seems like a very sad story and I definitely feel for him,” said the new owner, who wanted to hide her identity.
High Stakes Game of Billiards Being Played Between MERS and Government Officials
In the high stakes game of billiards being played between the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) and government officials, the automated mortgage registry continues to run the table against its opponents in court as more judges deny plaintiffs’ causes of action for a litany of reasons.
At the end of the day, the common relief sought by state and county governments going after MERS is one thing …MONEY! Money they feel has been more or less stolen from their coffers through MERS circumventing the prescribed system for recording the transfer of real property. And the courts, more often than not, are simply not buying into those arguments.
Long Beachers Get Help From a Wantagh Real Estate Broker
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Long Beachers Get Help From a Wantagh Real Estate Broker |
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| Image from WIKIPedia |
Bryan Murphy, a real estate broker from Wantagh is well aware about the power social media has during crisis. He also put this knowledge into good use after Hurrican Sandy left Long Beach devastated.
Mruphy, who is a resident in Long Beach but also has an associate brokers license in Wantagh with RE/MAX Innovation, created a community page on Facebook called “Sandy Help LB”. Through the page that was created on November 1, he is looking for volunteers to help homeowners and victims of the storm in the Long Beach area to clean up. He has already managed to gather dozens and dozens of volunteers to lend their hand for gutting and cleaning homes.
Murphy said that Facebooks has literally saved lives of Long Beachers.
Will Home Price’s Every Recover From Hurricane Sandy?
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| image from WikiMedia.org |
It’s hard to believe that real estate market in places that were devastated by hurricane Sandy could ever come back as strong as it was before.
For example, Seaside Heights in New Jersey is located on a barrier island and was directly hit by Sandy.
Over 80 percent of all the properties there were severely damaged and according to the city council, it will take about 6-8 months to restore all the natural gas pipelines in the area.
Holli Peele, who is a real estate broker who lives on another similar barrier island that is just over 400 miles away from Seaside Heights, knows how the residents here feel.
Hurricane Isabel hit her home town on North Carolina’s Outer Banks in 2003, destroying over 30 homes and cutting Cape Hatteras off for two months because the storm destroyed the highway that led to the city.
Since then, Cape Hatteras has been rebuilt and even real estate prices went back up again. According to Peele, two years after being hit by Isabel, prices in Cape Hatteras were higher than ever before. New research has found that it is the same with most areas that were damaged or destroyed by major storms – real estate bounces back after a few years has passed and prices will be higher than before.
Housing help for wounded veterans
Realty Q&A is a weekly column in which Lew Sichelman, a 40 year veteran of Real Estate, and columnist who has been covering nationally the housing market. He answers real questions, from real readers about real estate. WASHINGTON (MarketWatch.com)—Question: I’ve just come back from Afghanistan. I’m one of the wounded vets you don’t hear […]
