The housing market in Houston is seeing a peculiar trend becoming more popular with Houston-area landlords. An increasing number of Houston landlords are using price optimization systems, which can change the price of an apartment on a daily basis based on supply, demand and historical data. It works similar to that of future markets. Here [...]
Paul Chaney gave a great keynote speech at Real Estate BarCamp in Houston, Texas. He covered how powerful a tool the internet is for marketers and how most are using it inproperly. He made some great points on how until now most advertising has been interuption advertising and that most consumers are getting sick of this form of advertising. He goes on to explain how, thanks to the internet, consumers are taking more control over how marketing evolves. To see the video of his keynote speech click the title link above.
Property sales across the greater Houston area declined further in September, due largely to the widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Ike and the resulting interruption to business that included many real estate transactions. According to statistics released by the Houston Association of REALTORS® (HAR), sales of single-family homes dropped 30.2 percent for the month of September when compared to September 2007, marking the thirteenth consecutive monthly decline. Although the decline was at the low end of 30-40% decline I was predicting due to Hurricane Ike. Click the title link above to read the full report.
Lately I have become increasingly more frustrated with all of the misinformation regarding the real estate market in this country. I frequent several forums, where I often find agents as well as the public misquoting market data. To add to this, we are constantly bombarded by media coverage of how horrible the market is, and alarming statistics claiming that prices have fallen more than 30%. While this may be true for some of the biggest bubble markets as well as automobile-dependent economies in the Midwest, from what I see in my neck of the woods, and what I hear from other very knowledgeable agents, this it is not true for the majority of the country. Click the title link above to find out more about the National housing market.
Despite the efforts of Ike, the Houston housing market in September continued trends set in August of Houston housing inventory reduction. Housing inventory declined from 6.8 months in August to 6.6 months in September, leaving the Houston housing market with 33,246 single family detached homes active on the market, which is a reduction of over 2,000 homes for the period. Along with these numbers, we saw a slight uptick in the average home sale price for the year. Although once again we have a mixed bag, home sales are down substantially for the period. However, it should be noted that a large part of the reduction in home sales can be attributed to many businesses and people throughout the Houston metro being without power.
