The Kallhoff Team

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Home Buyers Face Higher Closing Costs

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | TUESDAY, AUGUST 06, 2013

Rising mortgage rates aren't the only problem house hunters are facing. Closing costs for loan origination and other fees have increased 6 percent in the past year, according to a survey by Bankrate.com.

Borrowers with stellar credit who are making a 20 percent down payment are still forking over an average of $2,402 in closing costs on a $200,000 loan.

The main catalyst for the increase in closing costs is origination fees, which have jumped 8 percent in the past year. Rising interest rates often cause origination fees to go up, too. Lenders are also having to do more work underwriting loans. Rising mortgage rates often mean lenders make less profit on their loans, so they try to make up for the loss with higher closing fees, Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, told USA Today.

Borrowers should shop around for mortgages because some lenders may offer loans with no origination fees, Cecala said.

Source: “Mortgage closing costs are on the way up,” USA Today (Aug. 5, 2013)

http://realtormag.realtor.org/daily-news/2013/08/06/home-buyers-face-higher-closing-costs

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Monday, August 5, 2013

How to Identify a Healthy Housing Market

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | MONDAY, AUGUST 05, 2013

Houston-based real estate consulting firm Metrostudy uses "drive-bys" to help it gauge the health of the residential market in different U.S. metro areas. Employees drive through newly built—or still under construction—housing developments from Texas to Florida and begin observing.

If there are toys on a house's front lawn, for example, that is a good sign that a family has moved in. Another positive sign is if a garden hose is attached to the side of the house. Not only is the home occupied, it also has an owner who cares about his or her property.

Among the bad signs are the absence of curtains in the windows, a high number of empty lots, and newly completed but clearly vacant houses. Metrostudy researchers say these are indicators that a developer may have badly overestimated demand and could soon be saddled with inventory.

Brad Hunter, chief economist of Metrostudy, is projecting double-digit increases in new-home prices for the remainder of 2013. He sees the speculative excess mostly gone from the market. In 2014, though, Hunter forecasts that new-home prices will increase only 6 percent as interest rates continue their upward climb. He concludes, "Mortgage rates could pose a challenge to affordability."

Source: "To Figure Out Where Real Estate Is Headed, Start Driving," Business Week (Aug. 5, 2013)

http://realtormag.realtor.org/daily-news/2013/08/05/how-identify-healthy-housing-market

Friday, August 2, 2013

Industry Cracks Down on Listing Scraping

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | FRIDAY, AUGUST 02, 2013

The real estate industry is taking steps to prevent scraping — or data piracy — of online real estate listings.

Realtor.com said earlier this year that it is making efforts to block automated bots from trying to scrape listing data from its more than 1 million pages per day.

“Scraping happens everyday, and it’s something that’s surprisingly inexpensive for cybercriminals to do,” Amit Kulkarni, Move’s creative director, said in a blog post detailing realtor.com’s efforts to curb scraping.

The latest company to step in and join anti-scraping efforts: Distil Networks, a technology company, that says it will be developing an “industrywide intelligence network” for the real estate industry to identify those who scrape real estate listing data without permission, Inman News reports.

To date, 12 MLSs have signed on with the Distil service on their public Web sites and 23 are reportedly considering using the company soon. The program helps to identify scrapers among the legitimate traffic to your site. According to Distil officials, every site that has used its program has discovered scraping of its data.

“I think that anyone that doesn’t feel they have a scraping problem — unless they have the best technology people on staff — is living in a fool’s paradise,” says Rosemary Scardina, CEO of East Bay Regional Data Inc., which became the first MLS to try Distil in beta testing in February. “It wasn’t a matter of if I had a scraping problem, it was a matter of how bad the scraping problem was.” By blocking scrapers from the site, Distill officials say the site was then able to load twice as fast and improved the visitors’ experience.

Clareity Consulting, a real estate consulting firm which approached Distill about creating anti-scraping software for the real estate industry, has also helped to create a new nonprofit organization dedicated to protect the intellectual property rights of multiple listing services and brokerages. One of the main missions of REDPLAN Inc. — Real Estate Data Protection Legal Association Network — is to inform those who scrape MLS data without permission that MLSs will enforce their intellectual property rights. It serves as a network of industry officials that alert one another about data thefts and serves as a legal clearinghouse to decide which cases to actively pursue.

Source: “Coordinated Effort to Target Real Estate Scrapers Underway,” Inman News (Aug.1, 2013)

Read More

What's Your Data Source?

REALTOR.com Cracks Down on Listing 'Scraping'

http://realtormag.realtor.org/daily-news/2013/08/02/industry-cracks-down-listing-scraping

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Survey: Rising Rates Getting Sellers Nervous

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | THURSDAY, AUGUST 01, 2013

Home sellers are becoming increasingly worried about rising interest rates and their impact on home-buying demand, according to a new Redfin survey of nearly 1,500 home owners across the country.

Forty-seven percent of survey respondents said they are concerned that rising rates could lower demand before they get their homes on the market. That's more than double the percentage from the previous quarter.

"Of course home sellers are worried about interest rates, but the reality is that many buyers believe that rates will continue to go up," said Eric Tan, a Redfin Los Angeles real estate professional. "They know if they don't move now, they might be kicking themselves all over again in three months."

Eighty-five percent of respondents said they believe home prices will rise in their areas within the next year. Seventeen percent said they expect the rise to be "a lot."

"Results from our seller survey point to growing confidence in the U.S. economy and recognition that broad economic gains could erode sellers' advantages in the housing market as mortgage rates rise," said Ellen Haberle, a Redfin economist.

Home owners identified a "life event" as their top reason for selling, followed by "rising prices," according to the survey.

Source: Redfin

http://realtormag.realtor.org/daily-news/2013/08/01/survey-rising-rates-getting-sellers-nervous

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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Crowdfunding: New Way to Fight Foreclosures?

DAILY REAL ESTATE NEWS | WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2013

If the bank or government can’t save a person from foreclosure, can a crowd? “Crowdfunding” sites are on the rise as desperate home owners turn to trying to raise money from friends, family, and strangers to try to stay current with their mortgage payments.

“Listings asking donors to ‘Help save my children's home’ and ‘Help avoid foreclosure’ are popping up across dozens of fundraising Web sites like GoFundMe, Indiegogo, FundRazr, and GiveForward,” CBS reports.

The sites were created as a way to help people fundraise for specific causes, such as medical bills, youth sports, education, or now saving a home. The sites will take a portion of the donations collected, about 4 to 10 percent.

Foreclosures are sometimes viewed as an “avoidable crisis,” so troubled home owners are having mixed luck on the sites so far, CBS reports. For example, CBS notes that in about 100 campaigns on GoFundMe, less than 1 percent have been able to raise enough to save the home. However, one couple has been able to raise on GoFundMe more than $7,500 of the $15,000 they need to save their home from foreclosure.

Source: “Home Owners Fight Foreclosure Through Crowdfunding,” CBS (July 30, 2013)

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