by Steve Crossland, Austin REALTOR on August 29, 2010 · 5 comments
Last weekend we took a vacation to the Island House in Corpus Christi on North Padre Island for 4 days. While there, late one night, while checking email and logging into Facebook, I was presented with the following login message:
Your account was recently accessed from a location we’re not familiar with. For your protection, please review your recent activity to make sure no one is using your Facebook account without permission.
Reviewing your activity takes just a few moments. We’ll start by asking you a couple of questions to confirm that this is your account. (If we recognize your computer, you’ll be able to skip this step.)
I guess Facebook, in its infinite wisdom, thinks if I’m logging in from my laptop in another city (different IP address than usual), something might possibly be amiss, and I must therefore validate myself by passing a test. The “couple of questions” turned out to be a photo lineup of 7 “friends” whom I had to identify from photo arrays, selecting from 6 possible names for each individual, or choosing “I’m not sure”.
Only two selections of “I’m not sure” are allowed, and ZERO incorrect answers are allowed. Each “friend” has two photos to review, some which are indistinguishable, my favorite being when the square surrounds a tiny spec of a face within a picture hanging on a wall in the background.
But mainly, with most photos being of decent enough quality, the question remained, Who are these people?! (my “friends”). I don’t recognize any of them, let alone enough to go 5 for 5. Each failed effort requires a 1 hour waiting period before a new try. Meanwhile, my iPhone access still worked, as did the granted permissions from 3rd party tools such as Ping.fm, from which I make most of my status updates, so I wasn’t totally “gone” from the standpoint of status updates, but was unable to log in from a web browser and do anything on Facebook.
This morning I’d had enough. Somehow I would defeat this validation system and regain control of my Facebook account. I finally did. Here’s how.
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by Steve Crossland, Austin REALTOR on August 18, 2010 · 7 comments
The Austin real estate market is chugging through the summer and producing some interesting stats. By that I mean that the stats shown below look better than some of the actual outcomes we are seeing in the market. Some homes are selling fast, at or close to list price, and others are not moving. In years past, I could find segments of the market or trends to point to. We still have some of those – some general rules of thumb – but we see a lot of activity, or lack thereof, with no rhyme or reason.
Lets start with the Year to Date chart through July 2010. You’ll note that almost every row shows improvement over the same period a year ago.
| Austin Sales Market YTD July 2010 |
| Homes only (no condos, duplexes, etc) – Data from Austin MLS |
|
Jan-Jul 10 |
Jan-Jul 09 |
Yr % Change |
| # Sold |
11078 |
10538 |
5.12% |
| Avg List |
$264,453 |
$256,940 |
2.92% |
| Med List |
$199,900 |
$199,810 |
0.05% |
| Avg Sold |
$254,160 |
$245,549 |
3.51% |
| Med Sold |
$195,000 |
$193,021 |
1.03% |
| Sold/List % |
96.11% |
95.57% |
0.57% |
| Avg SQFT |
2198 |
2188 |
0.46% |
| Med SQFT |
2008 |
1986 |
1.11% |
| Avg $ SQFT |
$115.63 |
$112.23 |
3.04% |
| Avg DOM |
67 |
77 |
-12.99% |
| Median DOM |
40 |
50 |
-20.00% |
| # Expired |
2809 |
3035 |
-7.45% |
| # Withdrawn |
4955 |
4634 |
6.93% |
| Not Sold |
7764 |
7669 |
1.24% |
| Not Sold % |
41.21% |
42.12% |
-2.17% |
Volume (number sold) is up 5%, Avg Sold price is up 3.5%, Median is up 1%, Days on market (DOM) is way down, and the number of Not Solds is down slightly. In other words, it’s all good news.
But for a lot of sellers, and buyers too, it doesn’t feel like “all good news”.
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by Steve Crossland, Austin REALTOR on July 28, 2010 · 0 comments
A portion of our Texas Real Estate License dues goes toward funding the Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University. The Real Estate Center provides agents with press releases we are allowed to share. Below is the latest, which discusses the demographic shifts and population growth of Texas, both past future.
At the bottom is a link to the full article. It’s interesting stuff. If you don’t have time to read the entire post and the accompanying article, the takeaway is this:
Higher net migration (more people moving to Texas than moving out of the state) and the younger average age of Texas’ population should prove positive for real estate professionals. Both mean that more and more people will be looking for housing. The metro areas should continue to grow, while agricultural counties may continue to lose population.
Here is the write-up from the Real Estate Center, reposted with permission.
The Changing Face of Texas
By David S. Jones, Senior Editor, Real Estate Center
Release No. 23-0710
COLLEGE STATION, Tex. (Real Estate Center) — One word will have a significant effect on the future of Texas real estate – population.
More people are moving to Texas than are moving out. These new adult Texans need housing the day they arrive. That is more good news for a real estate industry that has already fared better most states during the latest economic downturn.
“Forty years ago, the Texas population was largely rural and Anglo,” said Gary Maler, director of the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. “Forty years from now, Texas will be largely urban and Hispanic.
“The state’s demographics will shift dramatically during the next several decades, and with change comes opportunity.”
In times past, Texas depended on “natural” increases for most citizens. That is, most Texans were born here. In the 1950s, 94 percent of the state’s population growth was of the natural variety. By the 1990s, just half of new citizens entered the state that way.
“The real estate implications are significant,” said Dr. Harold Hunt, a Center research economist. “Population primarily from net inmigration means there are more adults and more would-be homebuyers.”
While newly arriving households require housing, that can quickly become a negative should the state economy worsen and jobs be lost. Adults that migrate to Texas can just as quickly depart.
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by Steve Crossland, Austin REALTOR on July 23, 2010 · 24 comments
The Crossland Family has Super-Down-Sized from our nice, big, 2-year old custom home in Oak Hill to a crappy old 1970s house in Westlake. Now Me, Sylvia and our two teenagers are “crammed in” to an 1859 sqft rancher compared to the former 3316 sqft home, and 3701 sqft in the home prior to that.
This new house has a bad sewer line (and slow flushing commodes), aluminum wiring, former slab repairs, cracked sidewalk leading to the front door, termites, small secondary bedrooms, a giant dead tree in back, leaking sprinkler system, old worn out carpet (layered on top, believe it or not, of an older worn out carpet underneath), and a punch list of needed repairs and fix-up things at least 20 items long and growing daily. I’ve had a parade of vendors in and out of the house since we moved in two weeks ago and more on the way. This place was a rental home for 20+ years. I couldn’t move a renter into a house like this without hearing an earful of complaints, but we did it ourselves. And we couldn’t be happier with our new home. We absolutely love it.
Why are we so elated about our move into this dump? Location, first and foremost. More on that in a minute. But, also, we’ve grown weary of maintaining nice big houses on acreage and the accompanying expenses of that lifestyle. I mowed my own lawn 2 days ago for the first time since 1999 after me and my new neighbor spent an hour working on the old mower, taking apart and cleaning the carburetor, and getting it running.
I don’t need lawn service once a week anymore. We don’t need maids to come keep everything clean and shiny every 2 weeks. We don’t need a professional window washer to clean gigantic picture windows twice a year. This new house has 1 A/C filter to keep changed, the old one had 5 filters and I needed a 10ft step ladder to get to them all because of the nice high ceilings we had. The old house had high-end fussy appliances that were expensive to repair. This house has Plain Jane appliances that work surprisingly well, especially the black dishwasher that doesn’t match our white gas range and stainless fridge, all tucked nicely underneath a fabulously 70s seven foot two inch kitchen ceiling with yellowing plastic covers over the fluorescent lights. The new house has 32 light bulbs, the old house had over 100 light bulbs. You get the point. To sum up the lifestyle change in one word, I’d have say I feel “unburdened“.
But our primary motivation in leaving our beloved Oak Hill was location, getting closer back in to the core of Austin and living in a home from which we can walk places and better enjoy the Austin lifestyle.
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