January 2008

Sylvia’s Notes from Central Texas Growth Summit

January 31, 2008

Sylvia attended the Central Texas Growth Summit yesterday at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Austin. She typed up some pretty good notes that she emailed out to others, and I’m posting them below. Here are some highlights with Kirk Watson (former Austin Mayor, current State Senator) as the moderator: 1. Change in Hunting patterns – [...]

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How to set up a KW Agent Real Estate Blog

January 30, 2008

Today at our Keller Williams office in Austin we had a “Blogging 101″ class that I put together to help agents better understand everything involved with having a real estate blog. According to a National Association of Realtors agent survey, less than 2% of Realtors publish a real estate blog. I was joined in the [...]

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Redfin CEO Says He’s Being Picked On

January 29, 2008

Below is an article about the Discount Realtor Redfin’s CEO Glenn Kelman, who, having failed to achieve more than niche success in the real estate industry (despite a couple of years of gushing media adoration and favorable stories on shows such as 60 minutes), claims now that he’s being picked on. Dude, you were thumping [...]

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Austin Real Estate Market Update – Dec 2007

January 29, 2008

Austin real estate market stats for single family homes in Dec 2007 saw a 20% drop in number sales of over Dec 2006. Average sold prices were up 5.9% and Median sold prices were up 7.8% in December. Average sold price per square foot is up 4.4% over a year ago, and Days on Market [...]

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Really Cool Interactive Map on Statesman.com

January 28, 2008

The Austin Statesman has an interactive map up on their website that shows median price changes and sales volume activity for Austin Travis County in 2007 compared to 2006. Jeez, I wish I knew how to create such a nice map for the blog, but I guess they have a bigger budget than me. I’ll [...]

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Austin Sold vs Not Sold December 2007

January 27, 2008

I predicted a few months ago that November 2007 might see an inverted Sold/Not Sold ratio in the Austin real estate market, that being a situation where more of the listings in the Austin MLS fail to sell than do sell. I was wrong about November but it did happen in December. For December 2007 [...]

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Google Coming to Downtown Austin

January 24, 2008

Google is opening shop in a Downtown Austin historical building. This is great news for Downtown Austin in many ways, not the least of which is the positive buzz created by Google’s move. Google brings with it a certain degree of “brand” buzz that will surely attract even more tech companies to downtown Austin. There [...]

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Showing Feedback Directly to Seller a Bad Idea

January 23, 2008

I’ve been showing and previewing a lot of property lately – probably more than a hundred homes in the past week. After showing a home and syncing the MLS key each night, the lockbox owners (listing agents) are notified electronically that the lockbox was opened by my key. This normally results in what we call [...]

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Make Sure your Buyer Agent Provides a CMA before making an Offer

January 22, 2008

The news snippet below briefly outlines a case in which a buyer is suing her buyer’s agent. The buyer feels like the agent allowed her to pay too much for the home she bought. I of course don’t know who is right or wrong in this particular case, ro all of the facts, and it [...]

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East Austin Real Estate

January 12, 2008

The story below is from tomorrow’s Sunday Austin Statesman. It’s a pretty good overview of the optimism many hold for East Austin’s continued boom. I’ve stayed out of East Austin not because it doesn’t hold promise, but because rehabbing and flipping properties is a specialized and riskier form of investing, and we tend to take [...]

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