• The recent rally in home sales has slowed, down 2.7% for July to August, but up 3.4% over the year
• Home prices also fell down 2.1% month to month, down 12.5% for the year
• 30% of sales are from first time home buyers, 31% are distressed properties
• Inventory levels are falling down to 8.5 months, down from 9.3 in July 2009 and 10.6 from a year ago.

• Sales Volume: I don't think the month to month dip in sales is a significant negative for the market as a whole. As you can see from the above numbers, July was a surprisingly strong month, driven no doubt in part by the first time home buyer tax credit expiring at end of Nov. It feels like we're making slow, but steady progress towards recovery and these month to month variations are natural. I don't expect a big jump in the near term.
• Sales Prices: With so many challenges in the overall economy, it is tough to expect any significant positive changes in prices in the near term. The recent run up has stopped and I can see prices bouncing along the bottom for some time to come. I'm positively surprised that months inventory has fallen to 8.5 months, which means that excess inventory that has been pushing prices down is being taken off the market. We are not far from bottom, but with so many foreclosures to hit the market and large amounts of negative equity and unemployment, home prices will probably fall a little more before stabilizing.

 

Last week Trulia launched a price reduction search tool allowing users to filter by price reductions and view history. We got a good amount of coverage across the mainstream press.  Below are some of the quotes and articles and the press release at the bottom of the post.

We’re constantly adding new features to improve the search experience and site functionality. Watch this space for more useful tools and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any new ideas for us.

“As the housing bust finally bites the Big Apple, more sellers are slashing prices in the U.S. financial and cultural capital than in any other big city in the country, according to data from real estate website Trulia.com.”-Reuters

"The financial crisis has hit the New York real estate market late in the cycle, but extremely hard," said Trulia chief executive Pete Flint."There's been a dramatic increase in the number of price reductions over the last six months."-Reuters

“Today Trulia.com, a real estate search site, reports, “27 percent of homes currently on the market across the United States have experienced at least one price cut.” The cuts range from $30,000 to $295,000. Trulia is now offering the ability for users to search listings that have undergone price cuts. Again, buyers only want the bargains.”-CNBC

“Trulia has recently added a tool that allows potential buyers to see price reductions for each property listing on their site. Buyers can also narrow their search to include only homes that have seen price cuts.”-Wall Street Journal

MORE THAN ONE IN FOUR HOMES ON THE MARKET HAVE CUT THEIR PRICE

Trulia Announces New Price Reduction Tool to Help Consumers Find Best Value in their Home Search

SAN FRANCISCO, April 23, 2009 – Trulia, Inc. (www.trulia.com), the best place to start your real estate search, today announced the ability for users to search for listings that have undergone price cuts since first coming on the market. Trulia’s research has found that 27% of homes currently on the market across the United States have experienced at least one price cut. Across 15 major cities, including New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and Atlanta, the average price reduction for homes ranged from $20,000 to $295,000. Specific data for major markets is included below. 

“It doesn’t matter if your price point is $200,000 or $2 million, in these difficult times people are searching for the best deals they can find on homes,” said Pete Flint, Trulia CEO and co-founder. “Our new price reduction functionality makes it easier for people to find the home of their dreams without laboring through unwanted results.”

Trulia is the first and only real estate site to provide consumers with the ability to use price reductions as a search filter in their quest to find a deal in today’s market. The new Price Reduction feature can be accessed from the Trulia homepage and is deeply integrated into the existing search experience on the search results page and via the advanced search tab.  Detailed information regarding multiple price reductions and prior sold data is now available on each property listing page.

As the spring buying season approaches and the real estate market continues to be increasingly competitive, price reductions are becoming more prevalent.  Providing home buyers with access to price reduction data will help them be better informed as they decide which home to purchase and will help ensure consumers get the most home for their dollar.  It will also help home sellers price their homes competitively as more homes come onto the market.

 Users can access the price reduction search tool from multiple areas on Trulia.com: 

• Trulia.com Homepage – with one click, users can see how any homes have been price reduced in their cities from the Trulia Homepage Local Newsfeed. 
• Search Results Page – users can select Price Reductions as an option in Refine Search located on the left side of the page, to only see homes that have undergone price reductions.  Users can also sort their search results by the size, percentage or date of the home price reduction. 
• Home Details Page - detailed information regarding all price reductions and prior sold data for each home is available on the property listing page.
• Advanced Search – Price Reductions can be selected as an additional search filter.
  
  

Charts are available for download at: http://www.trulia.com/info/pricereductions 

About Trulia, Inc.
Trulia, Inc., has revolutionized real estate search by offering a rich, intuitive user experience to help consumers find homes for sale, track local price trends, compare properties and neighborhood data all at the hyper-local level.  

Methodology:  All price change data is from live listings on Trulia.com, as of April 13, 2009 and tracks all price reductions from April 13, 2008 to April 13, 2009.  This data does not include foreclosure properties.  Trulia obtains its listing information from brokers, agents, third party aggregators and MLSs.  The percentage of listings with price reductions includes any non-foreclosure property on Trulia.com that has experienced at least one price reduction since it was first posted on the site.  The city level data is for listings within the city boundary, and not for metro areas

Pulte Homes Inc. (PHM) will acquire Centex Corp. (CTX) in a $1.3 billion stock deal that the companies say would form the largest U.S. home builder, as the sector looks to stay afloat amid the still-worsening housing market.

Home builders have been struggling to navigate the worst downturn in decades, made worse by rising unemployment and the financial crisis, which has weakened the availability of credit for would-be buyers and hurt consumer confidence.

New home sales unexpectedly climbed for the first time in seven months in February, the most recent month with data available, but prices continued to tumble. Sales were still 41% below a year earlier as rising layoffs push people from making big purchases and inventories remain high.

The combined company will be the largest U.S. home builder by market capitalization and volume. Pulte and Centex said Wednesday that the combined company would have a market capitalization of $4.1 billion, beating out D.R. Horton Inc. (DHI), the largest home builder by volume, with a market capitalization of $3.4 billion.

Consolidation is no surprise given the massive reduction of new home sales, see chart below:

New Home Sales Annual Sales Rate, Seasonal Adjusted

Chart via Census Department

As the Industry adjusts to a very different market, these changes are very natural.

• Total newspaper advertising revenue fell 16.6 percent in 2008 over the previous year to 37.8 billion dollars.
• Print advertising revenue fell 17.7 percent to 34.7 billion dollars while online advertising revenue dropped 1.8 percent to 3.1 billion dollars.
• Classified advertising revenue continued to plunge falling 29.7 percent to 9.97 billion dollars in 2008.
• Real estate classified spend fell 38% to 2.5 billion dollars.

1. Vaporizes, i.e. the advertiser stops spending the money — given the economic crisis, this seems likely for some advertisers
2. Shifts to Seattlepi.com — which is hiring its own sales force following the dissolution of the joint operating agreement with the Seattle Times
3. Shifts to another newspaper, i.e. Seattle Times — through the JOA, the same sales force sold ads for Seattle PI and Seattle Times, so it only makes sense that some advertisers will shift some or all of their spending to the Times
4. Shifts to competing local online media, e.g. The Stranger, West Seattle Blog
5. Shifts to non-local media that can target local audiences, e.g. Google, Craigslist (inc. Trulia.com)
   

• Given the low financing available for 30 year fixed mortgages, he is able to lock in a low rate, that was lower than paying rent in SoMa for similar places
• He went on a tour off the condos and loved the style, views and quality of the building.
• He felt he was able to negotiate a good deal and get a good price per square foot rate compared to overall San Francisco condo prices and also get a few extras thrown in
• As a first time home buyer, he was about to qualify for the $8000 home buyer tax credit and the $10,000 california home buyer tax credit and save a little more.

“Despite a stagnant retail housing market, real estate sales of foreclosed homes are booming. Shannon regularly fields calls from eager prospects, and recently sold 30 homes in one day to one buyer. A trio of U.K. investors has bought a half-dozen and plans many more.”

“Outside buyers are the latest in a long line of landlords taking over the deteriorating housing stock of a city that because of its once mighty auto industry boasted one of the highest owner-occupied housing rates in the U.S. And unlike many large cities, Detroit's single-family homes dominate its landscape, not high-rise apartment buildings.”

From AP

So, I wondered if there was truth in the story?

Absolutely! Just check out these recent questions from Trulia Voices:

Adrian in Ireland asks:

Hello, I'm from Ireland&I'm looking to purchase 5 or 6 properties to refurbish & rent out in Detroit.

I will be looking for 3/4/5 beds that will provide a good rental yield when refurbed. Where should I be looking and what areas should I avoid? Are the taxes based on the property value or set by the county / state?

Ian from the UK asks:

Hi all im from uk an looking at property investment in detroit. Spent alot of time working for investers

fixing there houses up!

Could anyone provide a list of current houses in detroit for sale please?

Mikem asks:

Investing in Detroit Property

i am looking to buy an invesment property of two in detroit. can anyone give me an idea of some the nicesuburbs to buy into and worth looking at?

John Gitre responds with:

Mick, we have a lot of homes priced from as low as $1,000 or less up to $50,000 and above. Detroit is not the only place with very well priced homes for investors. How familiar are you with the Detroit area? When do you plan on coming here? With so many properties in such a large area you would be best served by looking at them yourself. If you could send me your criteria for the type of property you are interested in, I would be glad to provide you with some assistance. You may contact me through my Trulia profile. Thank you and good luck.

So while there are tough times in the Detroit economy overall, it looks like prices are so low that investors are coming in, do you think this signals the bottom for Detroit house prices?

Obama Housing Plan

On February the 18th President Obama announced his plan to help resurrect the housing market. The plan consists of three main elements:

-          Home refinance program for responsible homeowners suffering from falling home prices:

• If your property value is greater than 80% of your mortgage (but less than 105%) you can now refinance and take advantage of historically low rates
• Estimated to provide new options for 4-5m “responsible” home owners with loans owned or guaranteed by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae.

• The idea is that the only way to stabilize house prices is to slow foreclosure rates. Loan delinquency is very high due to the combined impact of falling house prices and rising unemployment. Government estimates are that neighboring foreclosures reduce home values by $6,000
• This will be a shared effort by home owners, lenders and government institutions with incentives for lenders to help loan modification and home owners to keep up with payments. The government is funding this with a $75 Billion program and estimated to impact 3-4m homeowners
• The borrower reduces the loan to 38% of the owner’s income level and then government will further reduce it to 31% of the owner’s income.

-          Provide stability to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to help ensure lower mortgage rates

• Increased funds committed to ensure strength and security of mortgage market.

The reaction was mixed. While some saw it as a bold step, many home owners were angry that irresponsible home owners who were living beyond their means were getting a “bailout”.

Personally, from an economic perspective it seems that these measures are unlikely to have a significant impact on the housing economy, the economic onslaught is so big. There might be isolated areas of recovery, but I suspect the impact to be limited and there are a lot of bad loans and leverage to be worked through the system. Also, from reading many of the comments from consumers on Trulia Voices, a few hundred or thousand dollars a month is immaterial compared to the prospect of unemployment or a mortgage that is tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars less than the value of the home owner’s property.

January Sales Data from the NAR

The January sales data released by the NAR showed some dismal numbers with new lows.

Existing-home sales fell 5.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.49m units in January from a level of 4.74m units in December. This is down 8.6% compared to the 4.91m unit pace in Jan 2008.

The median existing home price for all housing types was $170,300 in January down a staggering 14.8% from a year earlier where it was just under $200,000.

The belief by some was that consumer were delaying purchases due to potential stimulus packages due in February. I believe this a little and expect that we’ll see a slight rise in the coming months, although it won’t quite signal a recovery, just delayed purchases. Clearly there will come a point where asset prices reach a point where buyers and investors will move back into the market, but the velocity of the declines suggests that we are not close to bottom.

Other news observations are that the West is really a unique market with significant growth in transactions +29% year on year and down 25.5% in sales price from Jan 2008, this is driven by a huge number of distressed sales in that region. Also month’s supply is running at 9.6 month, still significantly higher than the 4-5 months we’d see in a normal market. It looks like the only way that we’re going to see any return to normality is to have the short sales and foreclosures taken off the market faster than they are being added, which is slowly starting to happen in some parts of the US.

New home sales for January 2009

The US Census Bureau also released their data for January New Home Sales, which was grim reading.

There data showed there is a 13 month supply of new homes on the market and sales are down

48.2% compared with a year earlier. Builders have cut their median sales prices by a record 9.9% in January compared with December in a bid to move unsold homes with median sales prices are down 13.5% in the past year, the largest year-over-year decline in 38 years. The average sales price has fallen a record 17.6% in the past year and inventories of unsold homes fell by 3.1% to 342,000, the 13th consecutive decline.

With so much inventory on the market and the sector so out of favor it is difficult to see how significant growth in the mid term.

Pending home sales for January 2009

Pending home sales for January 2009 fell to a record low with the number of signed contracts falling 7.7% to an index score of 80.4, the lowest level since tracking began in 2001. All regions fell other than the West, which actually rose 2%. Again, the West is a unique market driven by the large number of distressed sales.

Lastly, but not least the Dow hit a 12 year low, falling below 7000 for the first time since 1997. I started my professional career that year at an Internet company funded by a newspaper. Wow, how things have changed.

In the month of December, the Case-Shiller 20-city index plunged 18.5 percent from December 2007 levels, while the 10-city index dropped 19.2 percent.

Prices in the 20-city index have plummeted 27 percent from their peak in the summer of 2006, and the 10-city index has fallen more than 28 percent."

Pretty dismal news. Dallas and Denver seem relative bright spots.

Full table here:

S&P CASE-SHILLER HOME PRICE INDEX

Percentage change in home prices in December 2008 compared to year earlier in each market.

SOURCE: Standard&Poor's and Fiserv
NOTE: Data through December 2008

Removing a limit on refinancing for "responsible homeowners"

4 million to 5 million households.

The bill will remove the current restriction on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that prohibits them from guaranteeing refinancing on mortgages valued at more than 80% of the home's value. This will allow many more homeowners to refinance at lower rates.

        Who may qualify

• Example
• Today A family's home value drops to $400,000 from $475,000. The loan balance at $337,460 is now more than 80 percent of the home's value, making it difficult to refinance under current rules.
• Under the proposal The family can refinance to a rate of 5.16% from 6.50%, which would save $331 a month and $3,968 a year.

        Who doesn't qualify

• Those holding loans not owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
• Mortgages above a certain threshold -- $417,000 for single-family homes in most areas and $729,000 in higher-priced regions.
• Those whose outstanding mortgage debt exceeds 105% of their current home value.

Helping renegotiate loan terms for "at-risk homeowners"

3 million to 4 million households.

The bill creates incentives for lenders to modify the terms of subprime and other loans. Participating lenders will reduce payments to no more than 38% of borrower's income, with the government matching further reductions down to 31%.

        Who may qualify

• Example
• Today A family's home value has fallen to $189,000 from $230,000 and its loan balance is $214,016. Job loss has reduced household income and loan payments can't be made.
• Under the proposal The family could modify the mortgage for five years, so that payments are manageable. This would save $406 a month or $4,870 a year.

        Who doesn't qualify

• Mortgages above a certain threshold -- $417,000 for single-family homes in most areas and $729,000 in higher-priced regions.
• Homes that are not owner-occupied.
• Those who apply more than three years after program's start.

Home ownership is an essential pillar in the overall strength of the economy, and I am particularly encouraged by his focus on responsible home owners whose mortgages are underwater because of a sinking housing market.  According to Moody’s, 27% of mortgages are higher than the current value of their homes, and keeping those homeowners from “throwing in the keys” should be a top priority and focus.  Ultimately, this crisis started with foreclosures, and will end with foreclosures.

I also am encouraged by two other aspects of his proposal.  The holy trinity of the lender, home owner and government shouldering the massive burden of responsibility.  And second, that President Obama is focused on absolutely not giving speculators and irresponsible investors an easy way out.

There are two programs. One to help 4-5m struggling home owners with loans owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac to help them refinance.

The other is a loan modification plan with government subsidies to lenders to reduce their monthly interest payments.

• Lenders responsible for bringing down interest rates so the monthly mortgage payment is no more than 38% of pre-tax income
• After that the government would match the amount reduced by the lender to bring the payments down to 31% of their pre-tax income.
• $1,000 incentive for loan services for each successful loan modification and additional funding for each month the borrower stays current on its loan
• Homeowners also receive $1000 a year for five years, as long as they stay current on their loan payments.
• Additional incentives to lenders who modify at risk loans before the borrower falls behind

As part of the larger housing plan, it is expected that there will be an announcement that lets bankruptcy judges alter mortgages and lower interest rates for troubled homeowners

In a smaller separate program there is expected to be funding of $1.5 billion to help renters relocate who have been displaced by foreclosure and $2 billion to stabilize neighborhoods hit by high levels of foreclosure.

For potential home buyers the important news is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which increases the $7,500 limit on an existing tax credit for first-time homebuyers to $8,000. A first-time buyer is defined as someone who hasn't owned a principal residence in the last three years.

We’re expecting more news on the government’s foreclosure plan, but I noticed this news from Inman, which was interesting to me.

“HR 1 also spells out a previous commitment by the Obama administration to spend at least $50 billion from the second round of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) on foreclosure prevention.

The bill mandates that the money be spent on a loan-modification plan that may involve loan guarantees or credit enhancements, reduced loan principal amounts and interest rates, an extension of loan terms, or any combination of similar methods.

The section of HR 1 addressing foreclosure prevention, dubbed the "Help Families Keep Their Homes Act of 2009," also calls for incentive payments to loan servicers of up to $2,000 for each foreclosure they are able to prevent through a short sale, loan modification, workout, or other loss mitigation plan.

Congressional Democrats are also pushing legislation that would give bankruptcy judges the power to modify the terms of troubled borrowers' loans -- including "cram downs" of principal. The Obama administration supports the change, but reportedly did not want to tackle the issue in the already controversial stimulus bill (see story).

The mortgage lending industry opposes giving bankruptcy judges cram-down powers, saying such involuntary, after-the-fact changes to loan terms will raise the cost of borrowing for all consumers.

The New York Times reported today that Democrats plan to include language modifying the bankruptcy code to permit cram-downs in a spending bill that Congress must pass to keep the government funded.

Obama's foreclosure-prevention plan is expected to include government subsidies to reduce the interest rates of troubled borrowers' loans, the Times said, with lenders providing matching contributions.”

What do people think of the bill and plan?

I’m also looking for more information on the $2,000 incentive payment to loan servicers. Can anyone point me to any sources? I'm also hearing that the number of $1,000 is actually the proposed number. Any more details?

Eliminating an increase in the number of foreclosures has got to be at the top of the President’s agenda, it’s almost impossible to see a stabilization of housing prices until we stabilize foreclosures. To me the housing and economic crisis started with foreclosures and will end with foreclosures. Obama has clearly got his work cut out. With rising unemployment and falling GDP, keeping people in their homes which are worth less than they paid for them is an uphill battle, but we won’t see a recovery until the issues are worked through the system.

It will be interesting to see what Obama comes up with in Phoenix this week. I wonder if he'll take on board any of the housing policy suggestions from the Trulia Voices community. The $8000 Tax Credit will help to give prospective home buyers the incentive they may need while home prices get increasingly affordable and rates steadily improve. But I’m disappointed it was reduced from the anticipated $15,000 that we heard at the beginning of last week. However, the big money is the $50Bn earmarked for the foreclosure plan, this looks far too little too late. It’s a mere 5% of the $1+Trillion being proposed for the TARP and stimulus plan, while we’re used to seeing telephone sized packages thrown at the problem, it’s hard for me to see how it could make a significant dent in the foreclosure problem.

When we started Trulia back in 2005, we had two big ideas that we thought could make Trulia into a successful business:

• The online real estate experience sucked and someone needed to fix it.
• Real estate advertisers wasted billions advertising offline that would be much better spent online.

For Trulia watchers, you know that we spend a lot of time and energy working to improve the online real estate experience and empower people with information and transparency. Over the last few years, the website experience has improved dramatically. However, we think that we’re  just at the very early stages of where we want the site to be and we will be adding in lots of improvements over the coming months and years. More great things to come.

When it comes to changes in advertising spend, there have been a couple of recent events that make me feel that we just passed the tipping point in moving a large portion of the advertising spend to more effective online media. Firstly, we’ve tracked dramatic changes in the real estate advertising shifts from offline classified ad spend to online. We all knew this was happening, as consumers went to sites like Trulia, but it is happening at a faster rate due to the recession. This past summer, the LA Times canceled its Sunday Real Estate section and now the prospect of the elimination of the offline edition of a major print newspaper like the Seattle PI announced two weeks ago, will accelerate and permanently change how real estate is marketed. There will certainly be less physical newspapers in a few years time to advertise in!

The second big event announced that was announced last week was that Century 21 was stopping their TV ads in favor of online ads. Beverly Thorne, senior VP-marketing, Century 21, said in years past the company has spent up to half of its advertising budget on creative for TV, but a majority of that money will be redirected to its online efforts in 2009. She said the ability to target a consumer interested in making a purchase in the near term using an assortment of tactics has a lot of appeal. While others (including Century 21) have moved budgets to online channels steadily over the last few years, the public change announcement of their shift in strategy surely marks a fundamental change in our Industry. During 2008 we have quickly scaled to more than 100 large corporate advertising clients, mostly prominent broker and franchisor organizations, many of whom were just learning the basics of listing syndication in 2007. More than 80% of consumers searching the web for real estate information and millions and millions of visitors to sites like Trulia.com every month. With a range of cost effective real estate marketing solutions we think that one of our big ideas is very quickly becoming true.

While there are not that many bright spots in the economy right now these fundamental changes in how the real estate industry manages and markets their services, will serve its franchisors, brokers, agents and their customers extremely well as the market starts to recover.

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Foreign Cinema - Mediterranean

Le Colonial - Vietnamese

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Salt House Restaurant - American

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Town Hall - American

Universal Cafe - American

The Waterfront Restaurant - Seafood

·          Keep home owners in their homes -- While we have rising foreclosure rates, we’ll see falling house prices. Further government assistance is required. Asset prices need to normalize, but without stabilizing them it could be a lot worse.  

·          Increase liquidity in the marketplace --  The government provided billions to bail out the financial sector, and it’s time for banks to start lending again. Credit markets are easing, but slowly and rates are falling.

·          Take advantage of deals – Home buyers need to leverage first time home buyer programs. Low rates and historically low prices are a combination that we may never see again.

Even if the government gets it right, and that is a big IF, I still think we are in for a rough year in 2009.  Here are my predictions:

·          Median Sales Price is currently $183k and will drop to $160k.  Which is down 12.5% from October 2008 NAR data.

·          I expect 5 million transactions, which is the same run rate as this year.  On the west coast and Miami we’re seeing an uptick in transactions while prices are falling. I’d expect this trend to continue.

·          We will reach the bottom of the market in Q1 2010

·          Rates: 30 year fixed rate at 4.5% is probable and lower is possible.

·          The world of online real estate will start to mature and come into its own. There will be more tools to help homebuyers and sellers.

What are some of your predictions?

Despite the attempt to keep the home an undisclosed location, the likely address has already been reported by the Dallas media. A real-estate blog run by D Magazine reported on Wednesday that Robert A. McCleskey, the Bushes' longtime friend and accountant from Midland, Tex., bought an 8,501-square-foot house at 10141 Daria Place in Preston Hollow on Oct. 1 as a trustee. The property is valued at nearly $2.1 million in county records, and includes servants' quarters, a cabana, a detached garage and a storage building. (Alas, no pool.) The one-story house was built in 1959 and has been extensively refurbished, according to records.

Then last week, a smaller house next door at 10151 Daria Place went under contract to an unknown buyer, with a scheduled closing date of Dec. 10, the magazine reported. The second house was listed at $1.6 million, and could be intended for use as accommodations for Secret Service agents. The magazine describes Daria Place as "a leafy cul-de-sac" near an elementary school.

Want to live next to the Bushes? Sign-up for email alerts on this page or here and Trulia will tell you when similar homes come on the market.

I stumbled across a great story about how a group of fan's have saved the creator's of Superman's house.

"Superman's home planet Krypton was destroyed, but his house on Earth will live on thanks to loyal fans and an online auction that raised $100,000 to restore the rotting home where the Man of Steel was created.

Everything from original artwork to a role on the hit television show "Heroes" was sold in the month-long auction, which ended on Tuesday, to save the dilapidated Cleveland, Ohio, house where Superman was dreamed up by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster more than 70 years ago"

You can explore the house here and have a tour around the neighborhood.

"Existing-home sales resumed falling in August and prices took a record drop, but inventories decreased sharply.

Home resales dropped to a 4.91 million annual rate, a 2.2% decrease from July's revised 5.02 million annual pace, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday. July originally was seen rising 3.1% to 5.00 million.

The median home price was $203,100 in August, down 9.5% from $224,400 in August 2007. The median price in July this year was $210,300. The 9.5% drop was a record, the NAR said."

I've copied in the trends below for:
Existing Home Sales Figures



Median Sales Price



On the positive side, record high inventories are coming down:

"Inventories of previously owned homes fell 7.0% at the end of August to 4.26 million available for sale, which represented an 10.4-month supply at the current sales pace. There was a 10.9-month supply at the end of July. July inventories totaled 4.58 million, which was a record high."

What was surprising to me was the huge drop in sales prices in the west and a corresponding increase in the number of sales relative to the rest of the US. These changes no doubt driven by the number of foreclosures in the West compared to other regions in the US.

What are you seeing in this data? What is going on in your local market?

2007 top metro areas with the highest percentage of homeowners paying 30 and 50 percent of their income on monthly owner costs

From Chicago Tribune:
"Spending 35 percent of monthly gross income on housing is commonly used as a threshold by financial and real estate experts to judge if homeowners will encounter difficulties paying for their residences."


From USA Today:
More Americans strain to meet housing costs

Among the largest 100 metropolitan areas, half or more of homeowners with mortgages in these metros were in the "cost burdened" category of spending at least 30% of their gross income on housing in 2007.

Metro area	Share of mortgaged owners "cost burdened"
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach	58%
Stockton, Calif.	57%
Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, Calif.	55%
Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla.	55%
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, Calif.	54%
Modesto, Calif.	54%
San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, Calif.	53%
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif.	53%
Sarasota-Bradenton-Venice, Fla.	52%
Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, Calif.	52%
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.	51%
Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev.	51%
Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Roseville, Calif.	50%

Note: Because the percentages are estimates, precise ranking is not possible.

Source: Analysis of Census data by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies

(spend for automotive and recruitment is in thousands, format is different than in real estate above, ie around $600m spend per qtr for all three categories)

1 2 3

• US Takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and what it means to you by Candace Evans
• Government Takeover of Freddie & Fannie....what does it mean? by Cindi Hagley 

Mainstream media (very small selection as there so many articles right now...):

• A delicate balance in the Freddie and Fannie action  FT
• U.S. Outlines Fan-Fred Takeover  WSJ
• After The Bailout  Forbes  
  
• U.S. Unveils Takeover of Two Mortgage Giants  NYT
• Fannie, Freddie: The biggest losers  Fortune
• S&P slashes Fannie, Freddie preferred stock to junk Reuters
• Fannie, Freddie: Feds Step In BW 
• Winners & Losers of the Fannie & Freddie Bailout WSJ Blogs
  

1:51pm PST: Rudy received a direct message from a fellow twitter user about wanting to sign up for Trulia Pro with her AmEx card (which we don't accept on the website)

2:01pm PST: Rudy forwarded the message to Cust Ops

2:20pm PST: Neil gave the agent a call, took her cc info over the phone, and enabled her account

~3:00pm PST: the agent posted a twitter message saying: '@trulia thank you for your quick attention to my problem with trulia pro. I did get a phone call. Hopefully I will be a pro on trulia soon!'

~4:00pm PST: the agent posted another twitter message saying: '@trulia super thank fastest customer service on the planet amazing how connected people solve problems and how unconnected ones create them'

Well done team Trulia on turning a request from a user into a new customer and public supporter! Trulia's small and dedicated customer operations team does a really phenomenal job. They are our front line working with our users and are a critical part of delighting our Industry partners, community members and consumers. I know there are dozens of examples like this all the time with super quick turn around times and delighted customers. We can't always solve every single request or problem as quickly as this one, but you can be confident that we're all working hard to do so.

I really love the comment about "how connected people solve problems and how unconnected people create then". How very true in so many ways. I'll write a follow up post on how customer services for Internet businesses has changed over the last few years. Now I'm heading off to work out how we can avoid the need to make the initial request to Rudy in the first place...!

If you have a problem with Trulia, here are the best steps to go through:
1) Check out our help pages to see if the answer is there.
2) Ask us a question to our customer operations team
3) Ask the community, be sure to tag the question under 'Using Trulia'

If that doesn't work, try Twitter or comment here, but you'll almost certainly get a faster response with the above. Also we love feedback, so please get in touch in the comments or here to pass on your requests for missing or additional features or tools to add.

I hope that many of you all had relaxing and beautiful weekends, what did you do this labor day weekend?

I was also pretty staggered at all the cool web tools out there for tracking storms that I came across. Seems like these online companies like http://www.stormpulse.com/ are giving traditional media companies like CNN a run for their money.

I'd be interested in any of your thoughts on this data and the news release. Was there anything surprising in here? Also, what are you seeing in your local market?

Links and data from NAR:

• Existing-Home Sales Overview Chart for Printing (PDF:17KB)
• Existing-Home Sales Overview Chart for Database Work (MS Excel: 30KB)

I'm very excited to write my first blog post on Trulia's new blogging platform. I've been thinking about starting a personal blog of my own for a while, but with all the hectic day to day of life at Trulia, I have not had the chance to get around to it. When I've wanted to blog I would often jump over to post on Trulia's Company Blog, but with the launch of Trulia's new free blogging platform I've decided to take the plunge and start (somewhat) regularly blogging...

I'm going to be writing mostly about real estate, Trulia, technology, start-ups and places that I've lived or visited. Building Trulia over the last 3+ years has been quite an adventure and I'm looking forward to sharing my experiences with you and also getting some direct feedback from everyone on what we are doing at Trulia and how we can improve. Leave any thoughts, suggestions, ideas in the comments section and I'll try and get to them.

One thing that has really surprised me and I often hear this from reporters and analysts that cover many Industries is that I am really amazed at both the quality and quantity of the real estate blogs out there. To me it is unlike any other traditional industry in the US, where you have so many active and knowledgeable bloggers writing on and about real estate. Think about it, with the exception of the technology industry itself (and possibly sport), no other Industry comes close! I'm delighted to join this group and help even more people talk about real estate with Trulia Blogs.

So you may be wondering why on earth does the world need another blog platform. He's my thoughts on why we're launching Trulia Blogs:

• It's uniquely useful. Other than the Q and A service, Trulia Voices, there is no good national real estate where you can have useful and interesting discussions about all things real estate between consumers and industry professionals. Sure, I'm biased and there are some great local services, but Trulia Voices and Trulia Blogs are really a unique way to interact with a large and interested group of people. We see Trulia Blogs and Trulia Voices are complementary services.
• It's free and really easy. We have deliberately tried to make blogging as simple and accessible as possible. It shouldn't be daunting. We know there are many options out there if you want to build your own blog, but Trulia Blogs is a simple service for you to get up and running as quickly possible and learn the basics. We don't have every possible feature you can find on other paid services, but we have the basic important tools and constantly adding new features.
• It's local. When it comes to real estate everyone knows that location is critical. We all love (or hate) our communities we live in and have an opinion about what goes on there. We are interested when new shops open up, roads are built, schools re-zoned, licenses granted and thousands of other things, Trulia Blogs is a way to share this information and begin the conversation with others in your vicinity. I'm truly fascinated to see what people use Trulia Blogs for and what conversations start here.

With this launch, I'd like to say a huge thank you to the team at Trulia that designed and built the blogging service. They are also responsible for Trulia Voices and like all the Trulians they are a truly wonderful group of talented and smart people that I have the privilege to work with.

Also, a huge huge thank you to the users of the community here on Trulia. It's you that make Trulia's community services great and thank you for showing up and participating. Don't hesitate to get in touch with product ideas, bugs and suggestions. We're constantly releasing new updates so will work on including them.

Looking forward to the conversation!