Market Trends and Condition

What makes a high-end, ultra-expensive mansion in Florida not sell?

It turns out, the home was too luxurious!

A 29,000 square foot Jacobean style manor, once the largest in the Tampa Bay area, was on the docket for an online foreclosure auction on December 18th, with bids starting at $100, and a minimum accepted price of $6.9 million. The home, built in 2004 and modeled after a 17th-century palace was formerly owned by now-bankrupt gold dealer Mark Yaffe.

We’ve always talked about “first time home buyers,” “move-up buyers,” and other home buyer groups; but a new label is being used in a new way these days … “traditional buyers.” In this usage, that’s all of the above and more, just not “investors.” For several years now the markets have been overrun with investor cash buyers.
One estimate is that investors have purchased more than $1 trillion in real estate since 2011. They’re putting these properties into rental service, so they’re not turning over in the market. Inventory is shrinking day by day, and the “traditional” buyer simply has very little from which to choose. We all know about “supply and demand” and we’re seeing the effect of shrinking supply on prices.

Les Christie wrote an article for CNNMoney.com that highlights the advantage of working with foreign investors,more specifically Chinese buyers. I’ve worked with many foreign buyers and I’m always
encouraging other investors to tap into this market. Because the U.S. has so many cities with inexpensive properties and steady economies, foreign investors are flocking to the states

"As the Chinese economy continues to boom, Chinese are looking abroad to spend money on real estate.

New York and Los Angeles top the list of U.S. cities they are most interested in, according to Juwai.com, a website where Chinese buyers browse global real estate listings.

More surprisingly, Philadelphia and Detroit come in at No. 3 and No. 4.

In today’s market you need every advantage you can have in order to have success in real estate. One advantage is technology and Zillow.com has been at the forefront for investors.

Jeremy Wacksman wrote an article that chronicles the advancement of Zillow in an article entitled, “Home Shoppers Log 5 Billion Minutes on Zillow Mobile in 2013”

“There’s no doubt we’re a mobile society, and we’re certainly seeing that across Zillow. In fact, 2013 was another record year for mobile usage across Zillow’s suite of apps and mobile Web. In 2012, we tipped to mobile with more than half of all visits coming via a mobile device. Today, more than 60 percent of Zillow’s visits come from a mobile device, and on weekends it tops more than 70 percent.

At some point, everything stops falling. Sometimes things hit bottom with a bone-crunching thud and just lie there in a heap. Sometimes they bounce back up at least part of the way. The U.S. housing market is in the latter camp.

While it's unlikely that U.S. home prices will return at any time soon to the highs of the bubble years, some local markets are showing resiliency. Even more encouraging, the forecast in numerous regions across the country is for a healthy recovery by 2014.

STORY: Robert Shiller Is Smarter Than You Are

As the real estate market improves and overall foreclosure numbers are falling nationwide, there is one niche segment that isn’t experiencing the same luck. If you’re in the market for a multi-million dollar property, then you may be glad to hear that homes with a value of $5 million or more saw a massive 61% increase in total foreclosures, year over year, in October.

The number of these ultra-expensive homes in the foreclosure marketplace is still relatively small in comparison to the total number of foreclosed homes, accounting for less than 2% of the 1.2 million total properties, but it may represent an interesting opportunity for investors looking for high-end properties.

Multi-Million Dollar Homes Boast Huge Discount Rates

Despite more commercial real estate borrowing, it’s not clearly a positive market in the retail sector. The middle market is losing out to expansion of high-end retailers and discount stores. Shopping centers that cater to the middle-class shopper are still closing around the country. Though malls are doing better than shopping centers, they’re not doing a lot better and regional malls are hurting.

Looking to snap up some investment properties on the cheap? You may want to consider Durham, N.C., Indianapolis and Huntsville, Ala. They are among the best places to invest now, according to a new report that ranks the best and worst markets for conservative residential-real-estate investors. Hard-hit Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla., are among the riskiest.

Want to live in a healthy community with great home-price appreciation? West of the Mississippi is a good place to look.

That’s where the top markets in RealtyTrac’s 2013 Health & Wealth Special Report are located, with the exception of an area in Tennessee and one in North Carolina.

“A lot of those western markets, especially the Mountain West, seem to be known for healthy living,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac. “So we weren’t too surprised by that.”

Experts from the Urban Land Institute unveiled their view of how the rest of the recovery will play out in their Emerging Trends in Real Estate report, released this week at the land use and planning nonprofit's annual conference in Chicago.

The group highlighted a number of housing trends we can expect to see playing out over the next few years, based on surveys and interviews with real estate developers, investors, lenders, servicers and builders.

Millennials are moving the market, but not as homeowners