The Super Bowl is less than a week away and fans are abuzz in anticipation for the “HarBowl” or the “SuperBaugh,” as the matchup between San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens pits sibling coaches against one another.
But football in general is a family affair — especially among viewers. According to Century 21’s Big Game Survey conducted in December, 84 percent of Americans watch the game from the comfort of their own home, a friend’s home, or a family member’s home.
“It gives us an unprecedented opportunity to tell our story in front of the largest TV viewing audience of the year,” said Century 21 Chief Marketing Officer Bev Thorne. “What’s great is it’s set in the home, which is the heart and soul of the services we offer.”
Drawing a record 111.3 million viewers last year, Super Bowl game day has evolved into a celebrated multimedia phenomenon, infiltrating YouTube channels, Facebook statuses, and Twitter feeds. It’s also a big game day for advertisers — and Century 21 is in the huddle again this year.
Last year, they became the first real estate company to advertise during the Super Bowl in 21 years. The commercial featured Donald Trump, Deion Sanders, and Apolo Anton Ohno working with a Century 21 agent who does it “Smarter. Bolder. Faster.”
“Because [the Super Bowl] brings together friends and family in a very familial environment, it’s a great opportunity for lots of conversation, so we’re putting our Century 21 agents in the middle of those conversations,” Thorne said.
Super Bowl advertisers paying between $3.7 million and $3.8 million per 30-second ad spot. For Century 21, that investment paid off in 2012. Continue reading »
By Wendy Cole, Senior Editor, REALTOR Magazine®
Sustained job growth and improved access to capital are the two roadblocks to gettting the economy back on track, Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay, Jr. (D–Mo.) told the Equal Opportunity-Cultural Diversity Forum Tuesday at NAR’s 2011 Midyear Legislative Meetings. Since 2007, 8.4 million jobs have been lost, he said. “While 244,000 jobs were created last month, this country requires a good deal of momentun for the economy to prosper,” Clay said.
He implored attendees to “mobilize, organize and, in the words of social reformer Frederick Douglass agitate, agitate, agitate” to further the interests of the real estate industry. He concedes that proposed legislation to require home buyers to make 20 percent downpayments could be an “overreach” in an effort to counter lax standards that contributed to the housing downturn. Clay encouraged real estate pros to reach out to members of Congress to raise their concerns about issues that could adversely affect home ownership, including challenges to the MID, GSE reform, and the impact of short sales on credit scores.
By Stacey Moncrieff, Editor in Chief, REALTOR® Magazine
I was just reviewing proofs of our April/May issue — in which forecasters have predicted a steady rise in home appreciation through 2015 — when our publisher e-mailed me a link to “Real estate: It’s time to buy again” by veteran Fortune magazine writer Shawn Tully. Tully makes a convincing case that the moribund new-construction market, combined with rising rents and an improving job market, will result in increased demand for homes and begin to drive prices up. Even in many high-foreclosure areas, he says, the outlook is getting better.
All good news comes with caveats. Tully says consumer confidence and job growth still need to gain ground — and he allows that some markets won’t rebound quickly. But he provides a solidly positive report for real estate pros dealing with nervous and discouraged sellers and buyers. He writes:
“During the last decade’s historic run-up in prices, Fortune repeatedly warned that things were moving too fast. In a cover story titled “Is the Housing Boom Over?” [published in 2004], this writer’s analysis found that the basic forces that govern the market — the cost of owning vs. renting and the level of new construction — were in bubble territory. Eventually reality set in, and prices plummeted. Our current view focuses on those same fundamentals — only now they’re pointing in the opposite direction.
“So let’s state it simply and forcibly: Housing is back.”
By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine
What’s impeding your market? In the Atlanta area, the big drag is distressed sales. Paul Brower, ABR, GRI, of Harry Norman, REALTORS®, in Marrietta, says the market is improved over last year and is expected to improve even more in 2011, but the metro area is trying to absorb the addition of 1,500 foreclosed properties each month. Until that overhang starts to ease, he says, the market can’t decisively turn around.
Sheila Pierce, CCIM, a broker who just sold her residential brokerage in Jacksonville, N.C., and now does mostly commercial work and consults for the area economic development agency, says her market was cushioned from the downturn by Camp Lejeune, the big Marines base there. First-time and new-home buyers have remained steady, but traffic of upper-income buyers is weak—and probably will stay weak until other parts of the country improve. Because right now, she says, relocating buyers that can’t sell their exuisting homes are having to rent.
Practitioners in resort areas say they’ve been seeing an increase in buyers with the means to pay in cash, which has helped sustain their markets in the last two years. That’s been evident in the affluent Lake Tahoe area, says Debra Howard, RSPS, CRS, of D. Howard & Co., in So. Lake Tahoe, Calif. But now her market is getting another boost. Thanks to lower prices (they’re down about 35 percent from their peak), the market is seeing an influx of lower-income buyers, including among those who work in the area.
In the short video above, practitioners talk about where things stand in their market areas.
By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine
The Federal Reserve’s move to boost the economy with $600 billion in U.S. Treasury bond purchases earlier this week helped ignite the stock market and could also help real estate in the short term if businesses follow suit by adding jobs.
NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun told REALTORS® at the 2010 Conference & Expo today that job growth is key to getting home sales back up to where they should be based on historic norms. Although housing markets are steadily improving and prices are stabilizing, home sales remain at levels last seen in 2000, when the U.S. had 30 million fewer people.
Yun says weak consunmer confidence, which is a function of continuing high unemployment (about 9.6 percent currently), is behind the lag, so anything that can boost job growth could help home sales.
But the latest Fed stimulus could come with a cost, says Federal Reserve Governor Thomas Koening. Joining Yun at the REALTORS® conference to talk about the residential housing market, Koening said continued efforts to stimulate the economy could spark inflation, particularly with the federal budget deficit already at historically high levels. Koening was the only Fed governor to vote against the new stimulus. Continue reading »
By Stacey Moncrieff, Editor in Chief, REALTOR® Magazine
Nearly 800 people attended REALTOR® Magazine’s October 28 webinar regarding recent foreclosure freezes by several national lenders. Since that session, media attention on the freeze has waned a bit. However, delays and buyer concerns continue. We didn’t have time— or answers—for all the questions posed during the 60-minute webinar. So senior editor Rob Freedman and I followed up with our speakers:
· NAR Associate General Counsel Ralph Holmen
· American Land Title Association Counsel Steve Gottheim
· NAR Managing Director of Regulatory Policy Jeff Lischer
They provided critical answers on liability, title insurance, disclosure to buyers, and more. When an answer was provided by a single speaker, we noted it.
By Robert Freedman, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine
Analysts and practitioners are trying to sort out the impact on markets from bank-imposed foreclosure reviews after their discovery in September of improperly processed foreclosures. NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun says inventories could be eased in the short-term as distressed properties are held off the market, which could help prices temporarily, but eventually the properties will return, dragging out the recovery.
On the plus side, Yun says buyers have shown an appetite for deeply discounted homes, so homes whose mortgages are undergoing review won’t necessarily linger once they come back onto the market. “What we’ve seen recently is that buyers are comfortable buying foreclosed properties, so if houses trickle in because of the moratorium, there will be buyers for them but at a later stage,” he says.
Yet, conditions are changing quickly, so it’s too soon to know what the impact on households’ ability to buy these properties will be. It will be hard to quantify, for example, what impact the foreclosure reviews will have on household confidence.
In a positive sign, some households don’t appear to be too discouraged by the reviews, although that could change if the reviews take a long time to complete.
Joe Kendall, associate broker of Sandals Realty in Fort Myers, Fla., where distressed sales are a large part of the market, says he’s aware of buyers’ concerns about buying foreclosed homes now. But at least as of last week, he personally hadn’t had a deal hit a snag because of that reason. “Price is driving everything today,” he says. “Regardless of what they’re hearing in the media about the problem, people who’ve been waiting on the sidelines for prices to come down are willing to risk a delayed closing to pay $60,000 for a house that a few years ago went for $225,000.” Even so, he says things can change quickly, and the foreclosure issues could hurt despite households’ appetite for deeply discounted properties.
In another positive sign, he says, banks have gotten much more efficient at processing short sales and now he’s seeing owners of homes that might have gone into foreclosure two years ago getting the green light from the lender to sell their house as a short sale. “I now have banks e-mailing me to see if I’ve got a contract yet on these short-sale listings,” he says. “A year ago you wouldn’t have seen anything like that.” Continue reading »
By Robert Freedman, senior editor, REALTOR® Magazine
A piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday took issue with a recent Time cover story calling into question some of our most cherished beliefs about homeownership. Much of what the Journal talks about isn’t new. In fact, it recites benefits of homeownership that you already know better than anyone. But in pulling them together in the way it does, it makes you realize just how compelling homeownership is from just about every standpoint. If you haven’t seen the piece, by Brett Arends, here’s a thumbnail sketch of its 10 points:
Why is now a great time to buy?
1. You can get a good deal. Prices are down 30 percent on average. They’re at a level that makes sense for people’s income.
2. Mortgages are cheap. At 4.3 percent on average for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, your costs to own are down by a fifth from two years ago.
3. You can save on taxes. When you add up the deductions for mortgage interest and others, the cost of owning can drop below renting for a comparable place.
4. It’ll be yours. The one benefit to owning that never changes is that you can paint your walls orange if you want (generally speaking; there might be some community restrictions). How many landlords will let you do that?
5. You can get a better home. In some markets, it’s simply the case that the nicest places are for-sale homes and condos.
6. It offers some inflation protection. Historically, appreciation over time outpaces inflation.
7. It’s risk capital. If the economy picks up, you stand to benefit from that, even if you’re goal is just to have a nice place to live.
8. It’s forced savings. A part of your payment each month goes to equity.
9. There is a lot to choose from. There are some 4 million homes available today, about a year’s supply. Now’s the time to find something you like and get it.
10. Sooner or later the market will clear. The U.S. is expected to grow by another 100 million people in 40 years. They have to live somewhere. Demand will eventually outpace supply.
[Editor's note: To learn about the issues being raised in the media about homeownership, buying today and what the facts are, REALTOR® Magazine is hosting a webinar Tuesday, Sept. 28, at 3 p.m. Eastern Time, with NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun and housing policy analyst Howard Glaser of the Glaser Group. Registration link.]
By Robert Freedman, senior editor, REALTOR® Magazine
Karl Case of Wellesley hit the nail on the head yesterday in his balanced look at today’s housing market when he says the American Dream is alive and well because homewnership is first and foremost about the place we call home. As he puts it in A Dream House After All, “For some people, [the American Dream] means having a solid and fairly safe long-term investment that is coupled with the satisfaction of owning the house they live in. That dream is still alive.”
Case characterizes today’s housing market as taking a well-deserved rest. Consumers’ expectations had gotten out of hand during the boom and now the market needs time to get realigned. And, as he says, it seemed to be doing that nicely, with steady gains, until recently, when the turnaround seemed to start fizzling.
But Case says a good part of the recent fizzle has a lot to do with the negative coverage in the media. “The steady drip of bad news about the economy has sapped the confidence of buyers, sellers and lenders,” he says. “And there is no understating the importance of expectations and confidence in this industry.” Continue reading »
By Robert Freedman, senior editor, REALTOR® Magazine
One of the remarkable things about home sales today is the strength we’re seeing in the national median price. For July it was $182,600, up almost a percentage point from a year ago. That’s about what inflation is right now, according to the Consumer Price Index. When you consider the slowdown in sales volume now that the home buyer tax credit is ended, the resiliency in pricing is a bright spot.
NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun at his monthly press conference in Washington yesterday attributed that resiliency to the equilibrium of prices to household income (including mortgage-payment to income) and the drop in new-home construction.
In his analysis, homes are priced at a level that matches closely with households’ ability to pay. Thats’ a reasonable place for prices to be right now, all things considered, and he thinks any big swings up or down are unlikely in the next few months, even if home sales continue to struggle and inventories stay high.
Of course, if inventories stay high well into the fourth quarter, then home prices could once again come under pressure.
So, prices are aligned with the economy and interest rates remain historically low (4.42 percent on average). What’s missing is consumer confidence, and that appears to be dependant in part on evidence that jobs are growing.
Watch Yun’s press conference in the player above.
Recent Comments