Ann Arbor Real Estate Talk

Today, is the first day of May, the weather is still chilly and the market is also chilly.

Last year from April 1st 2007 to April 30th, 2007, we had closed on 148 homes.

This April from April 1st to April 30th, 2008, we only closed on 29 homes. Now if that is not discouraging enough, of the 29 that sold, 9 were rentals and three were foreclosure’s.

This is discouraging for home sellers who have a home to sell in either Saline or Ann Arbor.

If you include the entire MLS for the Ann Arbor Board of Realtors, this would include all the way from Brooklyn in Lenawee County to Brighton, down through Western Wayne County, there were 373 closings in 2007 in the month of April and only 82 for April 2008.

This means that out of the 1000 Realtors in Ann Arbor Area Board of Realtors, only 82 got a paycheck of any kind in the month of April.

The Missy Caulk TEAM had 9 of those closings in April, making us with about 11% of the total closings. Of the nine closing we had in April, three of the clients were referred to us, and six were buyers from the internet.

My thoughts are, if you are a Realtor and not working the internet you are missing out. Since 77% of all buyers are going on line to look for houses, you must have a STRONG internet presence. When I say strong, I don’t mean a web site. Everyone has a web-site. Your web presence must include PPC ( pay per click) campaigns, and a good follow up system to nurture those initial leads and most important a home search site that is so good the buyers come back again and again.

Good photos are a must. ( did I say good? ) Virtual tours are extremely important. I do a virtual tour on ALL my listings, regardless of price and even on rentals. I saw a photo the other day in our MLS with I guess the seller sitting in his back yard, and another one of a child watching TV. Now that really helps sell houses.What were those Realtors thinking?

Having trouble selling your Ann Arbor or Saline house?

Give us a call or visit us at our home search site.

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Two new technology firms are coming to Ann Arbor. The Michigan Economy Development Counsel and Ann Arbor Spark have been instrumental in the planning.

MyBuys Inc from Redwood, CA which is a personalized product recommendation for online retailers is expected to create 606 jobs.

Sakti3 is a start-up company, that will develop batteries that can withstand the demands of automotive use.  Electic cars becoming more and more in demand it is so important to critical to have batteries that can withstand the use of use in our cars.

For more information you can read the entire story on new jobs coming to Ann Arbor.

All together it will bring about 836 jobs to the Ann Arbor Area.

Yea, great news and let’s absorb some of that housing inventory.

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Despite the cold and snow melting and then more snow and more cold, January started off being a good month for home sales in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County. Sellers always want to know, “Should we list now or wait until Spring?”

The answer is, “it depends”. There are more buyers in the Spring market, but the ones out looking in the snow and cold are serious. They are usually not out kicking tires, or shall we say taking boots off and on from house to house?

Closings were up in January by 10% compared to January 2007 and the good news is the listings were down by 13%. Now, those two facts alone should make sellers in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County happy, happy.

Now the not so good news, the average list price was down to $276.422 and that is 18% lower than last January. The average sale price for homes throughout Washtenaw County was $228,512. and that is down nearly 13% compared to last year.

If your home is not selling, there is one thing you can control and that is price and condition. You can’t change the floor plan, you can’t change the location but you can control the price and the condition. There is nothing less expensive to make a house shine than to take down wall-paper and add fresh paint. Buyers don’t want your wall paper. Ann Arbor buyers are looking for value in a home and those homes in the best condition, priced to sell and with the buyers perceived best value are selling.

If your home is not getting any showings, chances are it is 10% over-priced, and if it is getting showings and no offer then it is 5% over-priced.

January data compiled by Big House Data and gathered from the Ann Arbor Board of Realtors.

For more graphs to be emailed to you, leave a comment with your request or call my direct line at 734–821–0757.

You can search all listings at Search Ann Arbor Houses.

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Today I was helping a friend and FHA Mortgage Lender in New Jersey, Jeff Belonger,  learn how to read blogs in a RSS feed. Over the last year, I started subscribing to more and more blogs and my email was going crazy.

I would want to read what my favorite bloggers were saying, and not miss out; yet business clients would contact me and those emails would get all mixed together. A night-mare. So I decided to us a RSS feed. I personally like the Google feed reader but you can subscribe in the multitude that are available.

What is RSS?

According to Wikipedia, it stands for Really Simple Syndication. It in a nut shell,RSS makes it easier to keep up with your friends web-logs or blogs automatically without going out to their sites everyday or subscribing to their posts by email.

I’m sure you have seen this symbol.  It means subscribe in a RSS Feed.

I sent this video out to my office last year and a light bulb went off in the agents as they realized how really simple this would be. (no pun intended)

This video was created by Lee Lefever from the Common Craft Blog.  Now I subscribe to Lee’s blog so I don’t miss out on any of videos where he turns complex ideas into easy explanations.

Now if I just had a Really Simple way to get my boys to take the garbage out. (()sigh)))

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Today, I received an email from Jeff Turner, Jeff is the owner of Real Estate Shows, the company I use to create all my virtual tours for on every home I list in the Ann Arbor Real Estate market. Jeff is always on top of gadgets and cool technology tools to help promote your business.

Today, he sent us information on a new product called Eyejot. It is a very simple way to send out a video with your email messages. I’m sure we’ve all had short email messages mis-interpreted wrong, now the people you are emailing, whether family or friends can also see and hear your message.

PC Magazine said it is a “piece of cake” to use.

The good news, this is free. All you need is a web-cam and you are ready to go. Eyejot works on all the platforms and browsers.

I have several sellers who have moved from Ann Arbor, wouldn’t this be a great way to communicate with them? Wouldn’t this be a terrific way to send out the virtual tours I create to other Realtors? Wouldn’t this be a great way to notify people of an OPEN HOUSE?

The possibilities are endless.

Of course EyeJot doesn’t just have to be used for business, you can also send your families email videos. Now, how happy will that make grandmothers?

Here’s a couple of videos to check out for possible uses of Eyejot.

One other cool feature of EyeJot is the ability to add an bookmarklet to your browser and send a video of the web page you are looking at.

Any idea’s on how you will use this cool new technology feature?

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