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While reading a real estate magazine article about “the pros and cons of buying during the peak selling season,” I was fairly certain (as you probably would be) that, one way or another, the cons wouldn’t outweigh the pros. Philadelphia’s peak selling season is certainly prime time whenever there are homes for sale, but often […]

The debate continues about whether open houses are effective for marketing Philly homes. Yes, sales do still originate from them, but the percentages have been declining since social media and online listings changed the way local prospects look for their next home. Whether an open house is likely to garner qualified traffic is a decision […]

By now, long-time house flipping veterans have seen it all: raging real estate bubble, over-the-cliff market freefall, energetic bounce-back, and now, the current, more rational market’s steady appreciation. House flipping experts prosper when they succeed in improving an undervalued local property quickly and inexpensively, and then “flip” it expeditiously. The key is to add value […]

For home shoppers who anticipate taking advantage of today’s low mortgage interest rates, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a few words of interest. The CFPB thinks it has found a way for consumers to get the best home loan deals. The way they recommend is to shop around. Now, it may seem as if […]

As we enter the spring selling season, it’s only natural to look for clues about what to  expect for Philadelphia home sales. Normally, one of the principal barometers comes from the National  Association of Realtors®. Their Pending Home Sales Index is a national compendium of hard  data that can be useful for predicting home sales in town. It is both “forward-looking” (an  indicator of future activity) and part of a long-standing and continuous sample-gathering  procedure.  When you take a wide sample of the same data for the better part of a decade (the PHSI has  been recorded monthly for nine years now), you can chart the results, note when similar patterns  repeat or diverge, and infer meaningful results. Further, when an acknowledged authority like  NAR’s Chief Economist Dr. Lawrence Yun provides commentary in plain English that any local Philadelphia homeowner can easily understand, the monthly published reports comprise perhaps the best basis  there is to project how our own local market is likely to fare.  Last week’s release of the Pending Home Sales Index and commentary was every bit as  authoritative as we have come to expect—backed up by the same rigorously collected data from  across the country. As a tool for projecting how upcoming Philadelphia area home sales are likely to fare,  however, it’s fair to say its usefulness is…uh…less than usual.   It’s fair to say that because it is possible to read the entire 700-word document and emerge  without a clue as to what you just read. It is, in a word, confusing. But in case it’s just me who is  confused—and you are a typical area homeowner who would appreciate information about how  active our market is likely to be in the next few months—I think I should share a boiled-down  version of the report’s key takeaways.  The Report’s headline is “Pending Home Sales Cool Down in January” (January’s data  is the most recent). From this, we can gather that home sales activity is trending downward.  Then, from the first paragraph: “…pending home sales…remained slightly higher than a year  ago.” From this, we can gather that home sales activity is trending upward.  There follows an explanation about the first idea (home sales trending lower): it was partly  to blame because of bad weather in January. A little later, there is a buoyant observation about  the second idea (home sales trending higher): “Sales are now 11.0% higher than a year ago—the  largest year-over-year gain since July 2013!” (exclamation point added by me, which seems  appropriate, given that this is such good news).   More good news for local Philadelphia homeowners readying to sell their homes dealt with prices: “Last  month’s price increase was the largest since April and marks the 47th consecutive month of  year–over–year gains!!” (I added the two exclamation points). This, however, was also miserable  news: “Home prices ascending…aren’t healthy” because household incomes didn’t rise as fast.  But good news would make that much less of a factor, because fixed-rate mortgage rates were  really wonderful: “declining to 3.87%, the lowest since October 2015!!!” (exclamation  points—oh, you know).  Because sales cooled down in January for the highest year-over-year gain in years, I think  the report tells town homeowners that they might well expect a hot-cold/falling-rising market! Or  perhaps prudent homeowners should just forget about this report, get their homes ready to list,  and call me…I promise not to share what’s in next month’s report

Last week brought an announcement­­ that should get the attention of a large segment of would-be local home buyers­­—particularly those­­ who have been stymied by the difficulty of trying to build their credit scores by paying all the monthly bills on time while simultaneously saving up a pile of cash for a down payment. For […]

What goes up must come down. Every second-grader has heard and verified this. Second-graders also are reasonably confident that two plus two equals four, and a stitch in time saves nine. By the time second-graders hit high school, they all have developed their consumer common sense, too. They know that the best time to buy […]

Here’s an instant spot quiz— (see what comes to mind within a second or two): If you decide to sell your town home, if you had a crystal ball, what’s the most important detail about the sale result?  Quick! Answer! If you’re like seven out of ten people, you were curious about the bottom line: […]

Everyone who owns a rental property makes a continuing management decision concerning how much of the day-to-day operational responsibility to outsource. Some are inclined to tackle the nuts and bolts of tenant management, while others are content to leave it to one of the area’s professional property managers. If the main motive for acquiring the […]

Any way you cut it, real estate makes up a huge chunk of the overall economy. One consequence of that is that the health of the real estate industry is constantly being put under a microscope (if it were a human patient, it would probably grow alarmed by all the doctors and specialists constantly calling […]