Friday, March 26, 2010

REALTOR® Magazine - Foreclosure Prevention Plan Announced

President Obama is announcing an expansion of foreclosure-prevent tactics, including a plan to reduce principal balances and special aid for unemployed borrowers.The bulk of the responsibility for carrying out the new program will be assigned to the Federal Housing Administration, which will insure lenders against part of the losses.The plan asks banks to write down loan balances to less than the value of the home. If there is both a first and second mortgage, the combined total would have to be no more than 115 percent of the home’s value.

For the complete article, please click the following link

REALTOR® Magazine-Daily News-New Foreclosure Prevention Plan Announced

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Real Estate One Wins Most Innovative Brokerage Award

From our President, Dan Elsea

We won a really great award last week, a tribute to all of your collective efforts. As you know we are a member of The Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, the largest broker network in the country (larger than any franchise system - Re/Max's numbers only compare to the larger franchises). It is a prestigious national and international network of the largest brokers in the country representing about 1/3 of all real estate transactions. Last week at their annual convention, we received the first ever Most Innovative Brokerage award for our efforts in providing the strongest current market education and the most creative property marketing!

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

February 2010 Ann Arbor Home Sales Market Report

Good Bye 2009, Hello Spring and an early Spring market boost for Ann Arbor, Michigan Home sales. Our positive sales trends continued in February.

FIRST: In February 2010, sales in units, of single family homes were up by 23% over February 2009. This marks four consecutive months of year over year sales growth:

November 2009: Sales up by 32%
December 2009: Sales up by 6%
January 2010: Sales up by 7.8%
February 2010: Sales up by 23%

SECOND: The average sales price for Single Family Homes continues to rise over the same time period last year. In February 2010, ASP was up by 1.7% over February 2009. If my calculations are correct, since October 2009, when the average sales price for the year was a -15.5%, there has been an improvement of +25.3% in the average sales price of homes.

Here are the latest statistics from the Ann Arbor Board of Realtors. These numbers are for Single Family Homes (SFH) Residential, and do not include condominiums:

SFH Listings in February 2009: 514
SFH Listings in Febrary 2010: 514

SFH Sales February 2009: 135
SFH Sales February 2010: 166
Increase: 22.9%

SFH Sales Y.T.D. 2009: 288
SFH Sales Y.T.D. 2010: 331
Increase: 14.9%

SFH Avg. Sales Price February 2009: $164,106
SFH Avg. Sales Price February 2010: $167,049
Increase: 1.7%

SFH Avg. Sales Price Y.T.D. 2009: $157,673
SFH Avg. Sales Price Y.T.D. 2010: $166,418
Increase: 5.5%