It’s official – President Obama signed the Homebuyers Tax Credit extension and expansion on Friday.  REALTOR.org has a lot of excellent information to answer all the questions you may have.

Here is a one page breakdown from them talking about what this tax credit means to you and your clients. (Click on the picture to view the PDF)

(jpg credit: dpl)

We received emails yesterday from AAR and NAR with the latest information on the Home Buyer Tax Credit.  Here’s what they both had to say…

Subject: The latest on the Tax Credit

The Senate just voted 98-0 to pass the Tax Credit [within the Unemployment Bill].

It now goes to the House. Expect Democratic leadership to place the bill on a fast track for passage on Thursday.

It could get to the President on Friday.

We’ll keep you posted…

So I ran the numbers for October 2009 and was a little surprised by the results. Closings +8000. That’s 50% above 10/08. With 12,000 transactions still in Pending status, and the First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit scheduled to end this month, November should close a similar number. In fact we may total the most November closings ever, if we top 8071 from 11/04. With 78,000 YTD closings, 2009 is on track to rank as the 3rd highest year on record, which we should reach by Thanksgiving. We are already 30% above the total for 2008 and should end the year up about 50%.

Besides the YTD numbers, let’s look at the trends. The % of REO’s continues to drop both as Closed transactions (44%-3517) and in the Pending category (35%-4190). There currently is a 38-day supply (4417) of Active REO’s. Short Sales (SS) on the other hand continue to increase. SS Active Listings make up 25% (8200) of all Actives with another +6000 in the AWC statuses and October’s Closings were at 20% (1632) once again. With SS Pending’s totaling 31% (3713) the % will increase. A further look at SS shows that both the ADOM and CDOM is about double the ‘not’ SS DOM numbers. 131 vs. 57 for the agent and 140 vs. 78 for the cumulative. I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone, although it seems like SS are taking much longer than that to most in the field. The Good News is that the DOM for Closed SS is improving-by almost 3 weeks in the last quarter.

The price numbers are continuing to ‘bump around’ with no consistent trend line. October’s Average Sales price was down about $4000 to $171,000 and the Median Sales price was down $2000 to $128,000. Both of these numbers are considerably above the yearly lows of $159,000 and $115,000 respectively, but the Average has been up and down for the past 4 months, with the Median down for the first time since April.

The last number I track is the Vacant properties. October had 78% (6311) of the Closed properties Vacant. As recently as August 27th, the YTD % of all Closings that were Vacant-stood at 85%. This % should continue to decrease as Pending’s are at 72% (8630). This is another positive trend, since the more properties that are sold with people living in them, translates into a pool of buyers for New homes and other Owner occupant transactions.

I’m a fan of RSS feeds.  If you like time saving technology tools, you probably are too.  It’s ways nice to be able to visit one website to see if there is any new content on multiple websites – that you choose.  If you’re not sure how to take advantage of this powerful piece of technology, you should watch the video – RSS in Plain English.  If you’d like a little more instruction on how to set up RSS feeds with an igoogle page – check out this Cool Google Tools presentation.  The reason for all this talk about RSS feeds?

Michael Orr with the Cromford Report now has an RSS feed for the articles he and Tom Ruff publish on his website.  The feed shares the latest article’s title as a hyperlink so you can click-through (log in) and read the most recent content. Way better than having to login everyday to see if he’s created a new masterpiece.  As you probably know, all ARMLS subscribers have free access to the password protected information on his site.  (Go here if you still haven’t signed-up for your password.)

Thanks Mike – here’s to helping your fans save time!

This was the breakfast party the Phoenix Association held at Postino Central in downtown Phoenix to honor their outgoing 2009 Officers as well as introduce their incoming 2010 Officers.  Having never attended an Association’s Installation I was thinking this would be a vanilla room full of straight-faced clappers, frequently checking the time.  WAY OFF!

First of all it was at a wine bar!  Talk about a relaxed atmosphere (even at 8am).  Second of all Jim Sexton was the master of ceremonies.  I’m biased, but the guy is funny.  If you were there you know – and you probably heard the pigeons (?) rising.  The event was right around two hours and not only were the in/out Officers acknowledged, but John Hall & Associates’ friend Kerry Melcher was installed as PAR’s 2010 President!  They also handed out some pretty prestigious awards.

Congratulations to:
Marion McGuire: REALTOR® of the Year
Frank Fairbanks: Citizen of the Year
Jim Sexton: Dean B. Service Memorial – Continuing Achievement Award

I will say everyone at John Hall & Associates is proud of Jim.  He is the only person in the 20 something years this award has been given to receive it twice – 1993 & 2009. Nice work Jimbo!

I had some fun yesterday with a classroom of agents interested in using some of the free google tools.  The class went through the why’s and how’s of some of my favorite google tools.  The next time this class is offered is December 3rd at the Tempe office – check the intranet calendar for times and to RSVP.  Enjoy!  (Sorry slideshare strips the animation.)

I get so wrapped up in all the tech tools that are cool to me, I often times forget to share some of the basics.  It usually takes an agent asking the question for me to even realize others might be wondering the same thing.  When I arrived at work today, this photo editing question from one of our successful agents was waiting patiently in my inbox.

I don’t know how to crop or re-size [my pictures] to be able to use them properly where I need to. Do you possibly know how to do that, and would be willing and able to help me?

Sho nuff!  I’m happy to share with you and everyone the way I crop and resize pictures.  By the way, I happen to know this user is a PC – sorry Macs!

Dear Successful Agent,

I’m pretty sure you have Microsoft Office Picture Manager on your computer. That’s the program you want to open the pictures with to resize and crop them.

To open them w/ that program – right-click on the file – left-click “Open With” – left-click Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

Then once it opens you need to left-click the button that says Edit Pictures.

Once you click that button, new options will open…

Click Crop to crop or Resize to resize.  Once the image is the way you want it – click Save or Save As.  Save will replace the original picture with the newly cropped one.  “Save As” will save the newly cropped image as a separate file – leaving the original intact.

Good luck!

For the record, there are lots of ways to accomplish the same results – I just find using Microsoft Office Picture Manager to be the quickest way for me.  In the event you would like to add borders or do other fun photo edits – I recommend picnik.com a free online photo editing tool.

Happy Friday!

Today’s F-cubed is brought to you by your friends at FBS Data and the Arizona Regional MLS.  By “brought to you by”, I mean they did the work by creating the explanatory pdf’s.  You already know I don’t like to duplicate the effort of someone else.  If what I need to explain is already explained – I’ll just point you to it.

FBS Data Explanation of System Updates

ARMLS Explanation of System Updates

There are differences between the two – I recommend read-browsing them both, then going and playing with the system. Read. Use. Read. Use. Use. Use. Use.

The best improvement for greater Phoenix REALTORS® is probably the auto-save feature.  Every 2 minutes the system saves your work when inputting or editing a listing.  Although I do have to say I really like the design improvements.  It’s probably because I’ve helped REALTORS® use the Flex IDX product on their websites.  It’s really nice that the system is now easier for first-time users to understand how to use.

Which leads me to biggest difference between the FBS docs and the ARMLS docs – the size font used when mentioning the IDX product.  Of course FBS is going to use the largest font possible to bring attention to the IDX product they have available for agents and brokers to purchase.  They want to get the word out that they are another option for agents to use when building a website.  Personally I like their product.  It’s a good value and it integrates with flexmls.  You do have to build a site first though.  It’s not an out-of-the-box product like some of it’s competitors.  (Which is a good thing!)

Anyway, check out the helpful docs linked to above.

Happy flexmls feature friday!

I received this email from Leif Swanson yesterday.  I think his message adds to the truthfulness of the video.  Kind of a window into the day to day operations of a REALTOR® in the first time home buyer’s market.

Subject: Funny but sad but true animated video How To Buy a Bank-Owned Home

My Realtor friend Kris Berg in San Diego posted this 3:30 video today on her blog.   My cheeks hurt from laughing. It’s so true about all the hoops buyers must jump through to get an offer accepted from banks today. “I’m busy, busy, busy.”

I’m working with a first-time home buyer and we passed on a house with 40 (!!) offers. His number 3 choice had 15 offers; number 2 had 3 offers, and his number 1 had no offers until we submitted an offer and magically it had 3 offers; he didn’t get the house. Back to square one.

Enjoy the video. It has animated robots!

Video: How to Buy a Bank-Owned Home

Leif Swanson, CRS, GRI, ABR
REALTOR since 1999
John Hall & Associates
(602) 686-3852
www.LeifSwanson.com
search for homes at my website!

I have a feeling you have heard of Forbes magazine.  Didn’t they just come out with their richest people in the world list?  Anyway, like most printed publications they have an accompanying website – forbes.com.  Pretty big organization.  Highly popular around the world for credible business information.  And yes, in an article titled Must Read Real Estate Blogs published yesterday they linked to John Hall & Associates agent – Dru Bloomfield’s Scottsdale Real Estate Blog.

Way cool Dru, Congratulations!

The Phoenix Business Journal announced today that Dominic Scappaticci replaces John Foltz as the president and designated broker for Realty Executives.

Dominic is the former CEO and designated broker of Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty. According to the article, “John Foltz now becomes president emeritus of Realty Executives.”

As for Russ Lyon Sotheby’s, Glenn Niere is now the CEO and Deems Dickinson is the president and designated broker.

Friday morning I come into the office and get going with my routine.  Check email, run disk clean-up, check twitter via twhirl, fill up the water bottle, and the coffee cup.  Friday usually means a gathering of punk, hip-hop and classic rock (courtesy of Pandora) whispers from my speakers just loud enough so I can hear.  As I open the web to upload Jim’s September Phoenix Market Review I notice it’s been a week since we’ve posted an article here on our blog!  Man, so much has happened this week, I can’t believe it slipped by without any updates.  5 topics have stacked up.  For some reason my thought process decides it’s better to include all 5 topics in a “week in review” type post, rather than 5 individual articles.  (Let me know if you make all the way to the bottom ;)

Winners!

Thank you to the 750 members of the Phoenix Association of REALTORS® who voted in this years’ election.  Marge and Jim have been elected to the Board of Directors for the Arizona Association of REALTORS®!  They won the election by a landslide! (<– I made that up.)  Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to all who could vote!

ARMLS

It must have been an exciting week to be an ARMLS employee – two news worthy stories.  Clareity Security and WAVE were both introduced this week, but only one made it to Friday.  Based on the wait time for their help desk, it seems like Tuesday’s security update wasn’t as smooth as everyone had hoped (myself included).  I’d like to address the question about the security update I’ve been hearing the most and then we’ll talk WAVE.

Clareity Security is an mls security company (Scottsdale, Arizona roots) whose purpose is to help keep sensitive data secure.  On Tuesday ARMLS rolled out a new login page for flexmls – provided by Clareity Security.  According to a Clareity Security employee on twitter, the new page had issues with the web browser Internet Explorer 8 (IE8).  As of yesterday (followed by the official announcement today), ARMLS returned the login page to the familiar flexmls one.  If you were having login problems Tuesday or Wednesday, it should now be fixed.  However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Clareity login resurface once they get the bugs worked out.

Based on the email from ARMLS leading up to the change, it was clear this new system wasn’t going to allow users to store passwords in their browser.  And based on the questions I’ve been getting, many ARMLS subscribers think this was the only reason for this update.  Not true.  Clareity Security is much more powerful than just preventing you from storing a password.  Check out this paragraph from their website:

“The foundation of the product is an identity profiling engine for aggregating user access data, creating statistical profiles, and detecting anomalies. … The product is unique in its ability to accurately and transparently identify users. Keystroke dynamics makes it possible for the Server to detect account sharing, account takeover, and differences between individual users.”

“Keystoke dynamics makes it possible for the Server to detect account sharing.”  Wow.  Inman News mentions Clareity as they describe the fact everyone’s typing rhythm creates somewhat of a digital fingerprint.  So ARMLS’ new security tool can detect if it’s your rhythm accessing your account or someone else’s. That’s impressive.  No seriously – impressive.  Impressive like bad to the bone. Impressive like being able to find fingerprints on fingers I didn’t know I had.  Bottom line, abide by the rules – don’t share your password.

Amidst the logging in hoopla, ARMLS announced the winner of their “Name our Ezine Contest” appropriately in the first issue of the online magazine – WAVE.  Congratulations to Tony Pomykala FTW (for the win).  WAVE is ARMLS’ latest attempt at getting good, trustworthy, relevant information to their subscriber base.  I’m a fan.  I hope to … ride the WAVE to more understanding of what’s available at ARMLS.  I hope not to … WAVE goodbye to the magazine anytime soon.  It’s going to be hugely valuable as we continue on this …  technology WAVE that will take into the future.  Okay that’s all I got…

Twitter

I’ve set a new avatar over at the John Hall & Associates twitter handle.  If you use twitter, you know how impersonal it is when a company has a logo as their avatar.  Even though I was aware of this, I didn’t really want my picture to be the @johnhallassoc avatar.  Well, I got over it.  And I’m glad I did.  I feel liberated that my tweets now appear to come from a human rather than a John Hall & Associates open house sign.

John Hall & Associates’ Intranet

I got a phone call late last week from WebEx, the company behind our intranet – since the year 2000.  They were happy to let us know that they appreciate our business and that they were going to more than triple our monthly bill.  When I asked about the new features we would receive based on the 333% cost increase… nothing is changing but the cost. So what does that mean to you?

Assuming you are one of the successful agents that works with John Hall & Associates, that means you will be seeing a brand-new intranet towards the end of October.  Bill and I have spent all week evaluating possible solutions (hence the lack of blog updates).  We are confident we’ve found one that will work just fine.  More news on this as we get closer to rolling it out.

Blog Improvements

Blogs are dynamic.  If you have a blog, you know how it goes. If you don’t then you might not know that both the articles and the sidebar(s) are dynamic.  It’s mainly because of the simplicity of bringing new ideas to life.  Case in point, the two new additions to our sidebar.

As you are scrolling down from the top of our blog, the first addition you’ll come across is the button that links you to the download page of our toolbar.  We’ve been getting questions from our agents on how to get the Phoenix Real Estate Toolbar that is installed on our office machines.  My answer before this button was to google it.  That changed this week!

The second addition is to highlight our commenters, you know, the folks who leave comments on these articles.  The 5 most recent commenters will be displayed with their photo (courtesy of gravatar), a link to their website, and a link to the article they commented on.  The goal is to give a little more thanks to those who participate and hopefully attract some new ones!

There you have it, our week in review.
Have a good weekend,
Phil