Real Estate Directory

Retirement 2.0

The boomer generation  is redefining the "Golden Years" As millions of baby boomers begin the transition into their golden years, "retirement" is a word that is falling out of favor.

Today's sixty-year-olds, the active generation that brought us the mountain bike, jogging and the snowboard, are redefining retirement (think of it now as Retirement 2.0). As they downshift from corporate careers and downsize their homes, they are also redefining where people of this new retirement generation spend this next phase in their lives.

Home Values

A Wall Street Journal analysis of 1,000 recent home sales shows that Zillow's "Zestimates" often are very good, frequently within a few percentage points of the actual price paid. But when Zillow is bad, it can be terrible -- off the mark by more than 25 percent on one in 10 homes. In one case it was off by $2 million.

Fidelity has recently launched thier own estimator of home value. Arguably Fidelity/FNIS has a better database to work off of than Zillow.

Many people are saying Zillow is pretty right on the money. However, when I check in my neighborhood, it reminded me of the time when I was selling Apartments. I brought in an appraiser into what was up until then my biggest sale ever.

This guy was comping values off of units that had sold in "the hood", while the building was in a very exclusive area.

Blog Directories Community

I just posted my profile at Active Rain. This is one of those ideas I wish I would have come up with. This is avery active community of bloggers. http://activerain.com/timokeefe

Its worth signing up. Write me at

invite at SpiderJuiceTechnologies.com

and tell me you want an invite and I will send it to you.

Existing Home Sales Are Up?

What happened to the Bubble?

The National Association of Realtors reported Thursday that that sales of existing single-family homes and condominiums rose by 5.2 percent in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.91 million units. This despite the predicte 5 % drop compared to last year.

The prices of homes sold in February rose to $209,000 for the nationwide median.That was 10.6 percent above the median price in February 2006.   

Economists believe that both new and existing home sales will dip by around 5 percent this year as rising mortgage rates cuts into demand.

But mortgage rates seem to have perhaps stagnated because of a drop in inflation. But Lereah said all indications so far were pointing to a gradual slowdown in sales to a more sustainable pace.

By region of the country, sales rose by 19.2 percent in the Northeast and were up 11.1 percent in the Midwest and 5.1 percent in the West in February. Only the South showed weakness last month with sales there dropping by 2.5 percent from the January pace.

Lereah said sales activity at present was really a "tale of two cities" with some of the hottest markets showing declines while some medium priced markets still posting strong sales gains.

He said that sales were down by double-digit levels in such hot sales markets as Phoenix, Fort Lauderdale and San Diego. He said, by contrast, sales were up by double-digit amounts in aeas such as Indianapolis, Albuquerque and Houston.

Real Estate Blogs

Real Estate Blog

This online journal is a collection of real estate articles, daily real estate articles and news, offering tips for first time home buyers to the seasoned real estate investor. If you’re looking to buy a home, sell a home, or increase the value of your house, you’ll find all of this information very useful.

Ventura Real Estate

Ventura County real estate. Dave Wallace is offering the chance to access MLS listings in Ventura County along with plenty of information about Ventura area neighborhoods.

Real Estate Blogs

If you would like to trade web blogs, then let me know.

I will list you here with a description and a link in the directory.

The First one:

Texas Real Estate blog