Memorial Day weekend is finally here, and numerous families will be taking advantage of the holiday to travel to different vacation spots. So, in the spirit of the holiday (and with some help from the folks at Trulia), we’ve put together an infographic that lists what vacation-themed towns are the most popular with American consumers, along with a separate chart specific to Chicagoans.

So what areas generate the most online interest? Take a look and find out:

The post What Vacation Destinations Do Houston Residents Like the Most? appeared first on Houston Agent Magazine.

U.S. immigration policy has always been among the more prominent issues on the American political scene, but the issue received a hefty boost in coverage  back in April with the release of the Senate’s immigration reform bill, a massive piece of legislation that the Washington Post dubbed ”the most ambitious overhaul of the nation’s immigration system in three decades.”

Since then, analysts have delved into the specifics of bill and argued for and against it, but rather than get into the wonky, head-splitting minutia of legislation, we figured it more prudent to address the issue from a housing-related perspective – and why, according to recent research, immigration is a good thing for the housing market.

Immigration and the U.S. Economy

Firstly, there are the positive effects that immigration has on the U.S. economy, particularly the entrepreneurial class.

• As housing guru Richard Florida recently wrote on Atlantic Cities, research contradicts the commonly held notion that immigrants depress wages and/or take jobs from Americans.
• For instance, on the high-end, immigrants started 52 percent of Silicon Valley’s technology companies, and have contributed to 25 percent of the U.S.’ global patents, and additional research found that for every 100 foreign-born workers who contributed to the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, more than 260 jobs were created for native U.S. workers; and furthermore, metropolitan areas with more foreign-born workers have higher concentrations of both high-tech industries and venture capital investment.
• On the low-end, though, the data was equally promising, with research showing that immigrants are more prone to sign up for “manual intensive tasks” that native Americans generally shy away from.
• “The big picture,” Florida concluded, “is that immigration is a good thing for the American economy, and, judging from our analysis, a good thing for metros in particular, being associated with higher wages, higher incomes, and more high-tech industry, among other things.”

Immigration and the U.S. Housing Market

And of course, such strong economic numbers, as we just reported this week, directly correlate to a strong housing market, and new research from the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP) uncovered some rather glorious numbers for the Senate’s reform bill.

Of the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, NAHREP found, six million will seek legalization, and three million will pursue homeownership. With a median household income of $40,000 and median home price of $173,600, such action would lead to $28 billion in real estate transaction, $25 billion in mortgage origination income and $180 billion in homeownership-related consumer spending.

Overall, NAHREP anticipates that immigrant demand for homeownership will lead to $500 billion in home purchases and mortgages over a five-year period.

The post Why Immigration Reform is a Good Thing for Housing appeared first on Houston Agent Magazine.

Home prices on the national scale have been doing quite well in recent months; in fact, they’ve been doing swimmingly, with year-over-year increases that match the 2005-2006 years. In CoreLogic’s Home Price Index, for example, yearly increases have jumped from 1.08 percent in March 2012 to 10.5 percent in March 2013, an increase of nearly ten-fold!

Such increases, inevitably, have spooked some analysts and journalists, and some have begun throwing the “bubble” word around to describe today’s increase in home prices. Is such a vocabulary accurate, though, especially given the havoc that the last housing bubble wreaked? Thankfully, Trulia’s Chief Economist, Jed Kolko, has looked at the data, and has found that regarding a housing bubble, we’re not even close to such a scenario.

Overvaluing Undervalued Home Prices

For his analysis, Kolko asked a simple question: where are home prices today, relative to their fundamental, historic price? Using that measure, here’s what he found:

• Even with the aforementioned increases, home prices today are still undervalued by 7 percent; after rising 39 percent above their fundamentals during the housing bubble of the last decade, prices fell to as low as 15 percent below fundamentals in the fourth quarter of 2011.
• So basically, home prices are still below their historical norms, and are still much lower than the peaks of the housing bubble.
• Even the metropolitan areas that have seen the strongest post-bubble price increases are not showing bubble-like symptoms. For instance, home prices in Orange County are 9 percent higher than market fundamentals, but during the bubble years, prices shot up 71 percent above fundamentals! The narrative is similar for Los Angeles, where the area’s 5 percent increase today pales in comparison to its bubble high of 78 percent.

The Un-Reality of a Housing Bubble

Okay, so a housing bubble is not happening right now – could one, though, come about in the near future?

That is unlikely, Kolko wrote, and for three reasons: first, today’s low housing inventory has put upward pressure on home prices, but as inventory inevitably expands (via more sellers and more new construction), price increases will ease; second, mortgage rates are at historic lows, and though the extra buying power for consumers has give home prices an additional jolt, mortgage rates will rise, and likely slow price growth as a result; and third, arguably the most essential ingredient in today’s recent home-price increases has been aggressive investors, who have purchased boatloads of distressed homes for bargain prices – with prices rising, though, investor interest will likely fade, and they will stop driving up price.

In short, there is much to be said about today’s housing market, but “bubble,” thankfully, isn’t one of them.

The post Don’t Worry – Housing Bubble Rumors Are Bogus appeared first on Houston Agent Magazine.

Existing-home sales in April may have increased 0.6 percent from March and 9.7 percent from April 2012 to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.97 million, but it was more a month of missed opportunities than anything else, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

In what has become a mantra for the association, the  stressed that low housing inventory and tight lending standards continue to constrain existing-home sales.

Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, has been the chief cheerleader for that message.

“The robust housing market recovery is occurring in spite of tight access to credit and limited inventory. Without these frictions, existing-home sales easily would be well above the five-million unit pace,” Yun said. “Buyer traffic is 31 percent stronger than a year ago, but sales are running only about 10 percent higher.”

Existing-Home Sales Unchained

Was April really that underwhelming of a month, though? Even with April’s slow growth, existing-home sales are still at their highest pace since November 2009, and have now increased by yearly standards for 22 straight months. Other notable stats:

• Housing inventory actually rose in April by 11.9 percent, climbing from a 4.7-months supply in March to 5.2 months in April; though still below historic norms, the 13.6 percent yearly decline is the smallest since 2011; and as Bill McBride just wrote on Calculated Risk, housing inventory is now up 17.7 percent year-to-date through May,  so we could finally be seeing the bottoming of housing inventory.
• Low housing inventory, though, has been good for home prices; median existing-home sale price was up 11.0 percent year-over-year in April, the 14th straight month of such increases.
• Also, distressed home sales accounted for just 18 percent of all April sales, down from 21 percent in March and 28 percent in April 2012.
• And finally, median time on market fell 25 percent, dropping from 62 days in March to 46 days in April  (that’s down 45 percent from the 83 days of April 2012).

And here in Miami, the news has been quite positive, though there are some glimmers of concern in the market. Tom Plant, a broker associate with Greenwood King Properties in Houston, said April was a “barnburner” for sales in the Bayou City, with single-family home sales rising 27.2 percent year-over-year and setting a new record for sales in April.

Plant said, though, that inventory remains tight in Houston, and could pose future problems.

“At the end of April, there were 18,532 single-family homes actively on the market,” Plan said. “This level is 29 percent lower than one year ago. Houston has had a steadily decreasing inventory for the past two years. It is difficult to see how the sales trend can continue without an increase in inventory.”

The post Existing-Home Sales Underwhelm in April? appeared first on Houston Agent Magazine.

We’ve reported previously that mobile marketing means big business. 79.4 million people will be using mobile devices to shop in 2013. That’s over 50 percent of the digital marketplace. You can’t afford not to invest in mobile marketing technologies. Here is Mashable’s list of five tools you can use for improving your mobile marketing game.

1. Mail Chimp – Email marketing is one of the most popular ways to use technology for keeping in touch with your costumers, and there are many mobile tools for managing email.

MailChimp, for example, is an online tool for email campaigns. They’ve recently added mobile tools that let you view your email stats, check Twitter to see who is tweeting about you and manage your mailing and subscriber lists.

You can also build mobile friendly newsletters, for users who read your emails on their mobile devices. They can also use Chimpadeedoo to sign up for your newsletter via iPad. One company, Monkey Joe’s, used this app to grow its subcriber list from 250 to 10,000.

MailChimp has a free plan in addition to their pay plan. The free plan allows you to have 2,000 subscribers and sent up to 12,000 monthly emails. It includes all of their mobile-friendly features.

2. Red Stamp – For those of you seeking to add flare to your digital messages, Red Stamp enables small businesses to create and send personalized emails with letterheads, business cards, notes, invitations and announcements using your mobile device.

If you’re looking to make an impression with your digital correspondence, check out Red Stamp –- the company just launched Create Your Own Collection that enables small businesses to create and send custom, branded letterhead, business cards, notes, invitations and announcements from mobile and desktop devices.

To use Red Stamp, you must pay a one-time fee of $29.99 for custom design and set-up, and a 4.99 monthly fee for unlimited sharing. You can also order paper postcards for 99 cents, including postage, and Red Stamp will ship the cards for you.

3. Swipely – Swipely makes it easy for customers to join mobile loyalty programs by sending a text message, working seamlessly with the payment cards customers already use, rather than requiring paper cards, punch cards or key chain cards.

One restaraunt in the San Francisco Bay Area uses Swipely for its mobile loyalty program. In only one month they found that 60 percent of customers that who accessed the mobile signup page also joined the loyalty program. Hundreds of customers signed up, allowing the restaurant to market to those customers with email.

Swipely’s loyalty program is free, but you must be an existing Swipely customer.

4. TextUs.Biz – According to Time magazine 32 percent of people would rather text than talk on the phone. TextUs.Biz facilitates texting between businesses and customers via computer or iPad. Agents can use the service to keep in touch with customers by sending appointment reminders or promotional offers, and customers and text agents to request appointments or reservations.

You can send up to 100 messages for free with TextUs.Biz, but after that, the basic cost is $24/month for 1,500 messages, $44/month for 5,000 messages, and $74/month for 10,000 messages.

5. Facebook – According to research reported by Mashable, mobile users check Facebook approximately 14 times a day. You probably already have a Facebook page, but here are some new products you might not be familiar with.

Facebook Offers are virtual coupons. They are available on mobile computers as well as desktop options. Promoted Posts allow you to promote certain posts so they appear higher in your customers news feeds. Facebooks Pages Manager App allows you to manage these features on your mobile device.

The post Five Mobile Marketing Tools for Tech-Savvy Agents appeared first on Houston Agent Magazine.

One of the more persistent questions among housing analysts is how Generation Y, the generation of Americans born between 1979 and 1995 that currently totals roughly 80 million people, will change the makeup of the U.S. housing market, and whether those changes will, in turn, affect how real estate operations are conducted.

Numerous studies and hypotheses on the subject have trickled out in recent months, but the Urban Land Institute (ULI) may have released the most authoritative survey on the subject. Bearing the rather grandiose title of “America in 2013,” the ULI surveyed more than 1,200 adults in early 2013 about their housing and lifestyle preferences, and the results suggest a pronounced change for housing in the coming years.

Housing Preferences in the Gen Y

Perhaps the most radical change that Generation Y homebuyers will likely bring to housing will be a return to walkable, dense urban environments. Though sprawl and large lots have defined housing in the U.S. for the last 60-odd years, ULI’s survey finds a much different outlook among Gen Yers:

• For instance, regarding the density and walkability of an area, 62 percent of Gen Yers prefer mixed-use developments, and 76 percent place a high value on the walkability of a community.
• Meanwhile, 40 percent of Gen Yers prefer city living, while 54 percent are renters.
• Perhaps most importantly of all, 18 percent of Gen Yers used public transit for their commute to either work or school (compared to just 6 percent of all respondents). Furthermore, more than half place a high priority on their proximity to public transit, and 23 percent report walking to their destinations, the highest percentage among all generations.
• Even when incorporating other generations, the aforementioned trends were largely unchanged: 61 percent of respondents prefer a smaller home that allows for a shorter commute to work; 53 percent want to live close to shopping; 52 percent prefer mixed-income housing; and 51 percent prefer access to public transportation.

A Return to Urbanism in the U.S.?

So, what does all this mean? Though ULI’s survey does not necessarily suggest an about-face for American housing – that homebuyers will immediately sell their suburban dwellings and frolic to densely packed urban environments – it does show, rather clearly, a definite shift in residential preferences among American homebuyers, one away from car-dependent developments and towards closer-knit, walkable environments, and likely a shifting perception among Americans of what a “neighborhood” looks like.

J.J. Molaison, the manager of Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate Gary Greene’s Inner Loop office, said her area is seeing a huge influx of younger professionals attracted to the area’s restaurants, shopping and parks, all of which are within walking distance. And with such a shifting demographic of buyers, she added, her agents have tweaked their own communication methods.

“Agents have changed how they communicate,” Molaison said. “They are texting instead of emailing, using social media and asking clients how they want to be communicated with.”

The post This is How Gen Y Will Revolutionize Housing appeared first on Houston Agent Magazine.

U.S. consumers may not be quite as smart regarding the residential mortgage process as many agents would like, according to a new survey from Zillow.

According to the website’s latest Mortgage IQ survey, consumers are incorrect about major aspects of the lending process a third of the time, though that may not be an entirely bad thing as far as agents are concerned.

What’s YOUR Mortgage IQ?

Some of the more notable results from Zillow’s survey included:

• Thirty-four percent of first-time homebuyers are unaware of the fact that there are home loans available that require down payments of 5 percent or less. Whether that means those homebuyers have never heard of the FHA or not, we’re not sure, but Zillow’s own Mortgage Marketplace reported that in the last two years, there has been a stunning 570 percent increase in loan requests with down payments between 3.5 and 5 percent, and the Obama administration’s Housing Scorecard continues to report a disproportionate market share for FHA mortgages.
• Consumers are also unaware of the fact that they can shop for mortgages: 26 percent of those surveyed said they thought they were obligated to close their loan with the lender that pre-approved them, and 24 percent thought the best available rates and fees would always be through the bank they do business with.
• Finally, 34 percent of respondents thought that all lenders are required, by law, to charge the same fees for their credit reports and appraisals.

Is There an Agent in the House?

On first blush, those results may seem horribly demoralizing, considering that so many consumers are so off on some of the mortgage processes’ most important qualities; however, there is one encouraging nugget that emerges from such information: it reinforces the need that so many have for an experienced real estate professional!

Therefore, you’ll want to make sure that you are abreast of the latest developments in the mortgage markets, so that you can provide reliable information about the lending process to your clients. Along with reading high-quality news sites, such as the excellent Calculated Risk and, of course, Houston Agent magazine, you’ll also want to maintain close relations with a preferred lender. As we constantly highlight in our Ask a Lender series, a preferred lender can be invaluable in educating clients on current mortgage trends, and having such connections will undoubtedly reflect well on you as an agent.

The post How Smart are Your Clients on the Mortgage Process? appeared first on Houston Agent Magazine.

Nearly every media outlet imaginable has jumped on the housing-recovery bandwagon, reporting on the numerous signs that housing has awoken from its long, painful slumber. Heck, even the Wall Street Journal, that most notoriously fickle of observers, has declared housing to be in recovery!

Yet, there remain outliers to housing’s success story that add smidgens of nuance to the recovery narrative; of course, we do not intend on being the Negative Nancy and raining on everybody’s housing parade, but we think it only fair to point out the four areas of the greater economy that could pose hurdles for the housing market in the coming months.

1. Rising Interest Rates – Interest rates are at historic lows, and they’ve fallen so dramatically that owning is now cheaper than renting in nearly every major metropolitan marketplace. Yet, it’s a certainty that rates will increase, and it would be foolish for any of us to become too comfortable with such low rates, because they are, you know, historic! And though rising rates will not necessarily derail the housing recovery, it’s worth factoring in what impact they could have.

2. Slow Employment Growth – Though the economy has been doing much better in recent months (it’s 165,000 new jobs in April was a particularly good sign), it’s still a far way off from a full recovery, and economists expect it will take five years of similar job growth for the economy to return to pre-recession levels of unemployment – and without a solid base of jobs, fewer Americans will be able to make home purchases.

3. The Changing Mortgage Landscape – According to recent readings, the U.S. government backs roughly 97 percent(!) of new mortgages via the FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but that overwhelming percentage will almost certainly change early next year when the FHFA, the entity that regulates Fannie and Freddie, adopts the qualified mortgage standards from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a move that is expected to raise mortgage standards substantially. It remains to be seen whether private lenders will step up and fill that void, or whether lending will fall as a result of the regulations.

4. The Burden of Student Debt – Finally, there is the escalating burden of student debt. Totaling $1 trillion and now surpassing housing debt, student debt has become such a problem that, for the first time in years, consumers without student debt obligations are receiving mortgages at a greater rate than consumers with student debt. Typically, borrowers with student debt were considered a safer bet for banks, given that their academic degrees granted them higher-paying jobs, but the situation today – where the delinquency rate for student borrowers exceeds 30 percent – has reversed that scenario.

Agents, are you concerned? Will these hurdles play out in time? Comment below!

The post 4 Hurdles for the Housing Recovery appeared first on Houston Agent Magazine.

Homes sales are up, inventory has stabilized, and by many accounts, new construction it putting up its best numbers in the post-boom housing market. And now, the latest study by Lender Processing Services (LPS) has shown that slowly and gradually, we can add another notch to the housing recovery belt: a healthy mortgage market.

Most notably, LPS found that only 0.84 percent of new loans are considered “problem loans,” meaning, seriously delinquent loans that were current six months ago. That’s the lowest level for problem loans since 2007, and the problem-loan rate is now nearing the pre-boom levels of 0.55 percent.

True, the mortgage markets are not fully recovered, what with a 6.59 percent delinquency rate (the historical average is more around 3 percent); however, there was much to like in LPS’ Mortgage Monitor, which studied more than 40 million residential mortgage loans through the month of March. Herb Blecher, LPS’ Applied Analytics senior vice president, said equity has shown particular improvement.

“The overall equity trend has been a very positive one,” Blecher said. “LPS’ latest data shows that the share of loans with LTVs greater than 100 percent has fallen 41 percent from a year ago.”

But of course, LPS’ Mortgage Monitor contained many other stats, the most important of which are collected in our infographic below:

The post Less Than 1 Percent of Today’s Mortgages are Bad appeared first on Houston Agent Magazine.

Jennifer Stence is a Realtor at Veronica Mullenix Real Estate Group in Katy.

Every week, we ask a Houston real estate professional for their thoughts on the top three stories from the week before. 

This week, we talked with Realtor Jennifer Stence of Veronica Mullenix Real Estate Group in Katy. Stence, a Katy resident, began her real estate career in the 1980s and left to spend time with her kids and teach in the Katy school district for 10 years. She returned to the business five years ago and specializes in Harris County, Ft. Bend County, Waller County, Austin County, and the Katy/West Houston real estate market. 

Houston Agent (HA): Studies show that home prices, home sales and inventory are as competitive as ever. Do you see this occurring in Katy? And how long do you see this continuing?

Jennifer Stence (JS): Yes. Katy is a desirable area because of the school district, primarily, and there is lots of building going on and lots of people moving into the area. I think as long as the economy in Texas, and Houston in particular, is strong, the people will keep wanting to move here.

There are a lot of great things about Houston. We have a good climate, we don’t have to shovel snow. The manufacturing is picking up in Houston, oil and gas is doing well, medicine is here. I don’t see any reason for this to end anytime soon.

HA: The nation’s foreclosure market has been improving, and Houston’s marketplace is ahead of the nation. Have you been seeing many foreclosures on the market lately?

JS: You know, I think there are fewer foreclosures and fewer, fewer short sales. Most of the areas that I’ve worked in, I have not worked with a whole lot of foreclosures or short sales. But from what I’ve noticed, there are still areas where there still are some bank owned properties, but for the most part, I see them going down.

I think for one thing, there are more buyers. I think that properties are selling quicker so that they’re not sitting on the market for a long time. Typically, if you have a distressed property, you can’t make your payments, you have to sell. You put it on the market and it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell and it goes into foreclosure. Now the market is active, busy and when you put a house on the market, it sells. It doesn’t go to foreclosure.

I hope this continues for a while. As long as there’s an increase in buyers in the area, people with distressed properties should have an easier time selling them. Hopefully, they won’t end up going back to the bank.

HA: What kind of business strategies are helpful to you and your business?

JS: I use social media – particularly Facebook and websites. I post a lot of things that I think would be of interest to the community on my Facebook page. I also utilize my company website and my presence with the Houston Association of Realtors (HAR). For new agents who are starting out, patience and hard work is the key to succeeding!

I like referrals – they’re very important. I try to send out “sold postcards,” when I’ve sold a house in a neighborhood that I’m interested in doing business with in the future. I stay in touch with my clients – I send them emails from time to time or articles that I think they would find relevant to their situation about the current state of the market and things happening within the Houston area.

The post Viewpoints: Jennifer Stence, Realtor, Veronica Mullenix Real Estate Group, Katy appeared first on Houston Agent Magazine.