Real Estate Blog

WHY YOU SHOULDN'T TRUST ONLINE REAL ESTATE PRICE ESTIMATES
By Tom
July 13, 2016
     WHY YOU SHOULDN’ T TRUST ONLINE REAL ESTATE PRICE E STIMATES  It’s fun to enter an address on a website and instantly receive an estimate of what that property is worth. But the data that powers many of those automated valuation models is inaccurate and unreliable.  Who says? The websites themselves. Look below to see how popular sites that offer online price estimates describe limitations with their own data.  zillow.com  “The Zestimate is not an appraisal and you won’t be able to use it in place ...
HOUSTON’S MEDIAN HOME PRICE HITS A RECORD HIGH IN JUNE
By Tom
July 13, 2016
MLS Report for June 2016 Mid-range housing sees positive activity again while inventory gets another boost HOUSTON — (July 13, 2016) — June provided a continued boost to Houston’s housing inventory as new listings entered the market. Home sales volume was unchanged year-over-year, but as the local real estate market has seen for the past several months, most of the homes consumers purchased were priced in the $150,000 to $500,000 range. According to the latest monthly report prepared by the Houston Association of Realtors (HAR), a total of 7,696 homes sold in June compared to 7,710 a year earlier— statistically ...
Home-shoppers, the jobs report didn’t raise mortgage rates
By Tom
July 12, 2016
By Holden Lewis · Bankrate.com Friday, July 8, 2016 Posted: 11 am ET David Sucsy/Getty Images Home-shoppers, be cheerful: Job growth in June was surprisingly high, but the news hasn't had much effect on mortgage rates. They're staying near record lows. Read this week's mortgage analysis, in which the 30-year-fixed fell to just shy of its all-time low at 3.52%. RATE SEARCH: 
A Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing
By Tom
July 8, 2016
  Despite the grim economic outlook for some industries, one sector is gaining viability -- real estate. According to the 2016 Emerging Trends in Real Estate, which was released by the Urban Land Institute earlier this year, trends such as “18-hour cities” and millennial parents increasing moving from urban areas out into the suburbs signal that real estate as an industry is gaining strength every passing day in 2016. One lending officer at a large financial institution even went to far as to say that “the next 24 ...