Market Trends and Condition

During the last several years, we have seen real estate markets dramatically fall but then take an about-face with exceptional speed. Other markets have returned to pre-2008 levels while some are still in recovery mode.

After their first month in this New Year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 5.2 percent while the S&P 500 declined 3.6 percent in January. This follows a 2013 with double-digit gains for both.

Especially notable is the market’s declines in the last week of January, which may have led some investors to scratch their heads as they think about 2014 investments. There could be a lot of confusion about where to invest their money.

Should they stay away from stocks? What about bonds? Where should they invest?

Rising home prices and interest rates made housing less affordable last year than at any time in the last five years, according to data released Tuesday by the National Association of Realtors.

So is it time to sound the siren over a housing bubble? Not really. Nationally, the Realtors’ housing affordability index shows that, excluding the last five years, homes for the U.S. as a whole are still more affordable than at any time since at least 1981. djPitocco

With Bloomberg breaking news Tuesday night that American Homes 4 Rent, the nation’s second-largest single-family landlord, has tapped Goldman Sachs (GS) to arrange a bond backed by house rental payments, it looks like REO-to-rental as an asset class is here to stay a while.

The deal announcement comes just a few months after Blackstone Group (BX) spent the past two years building an expansive portfolio of single-family rental homes via subsidiary, Invitation Homes, spending $7.5 billion to acquire 40,000 houses. Blackstone then packaged rental income from single-family homes into a pass-through security, which is functionally not unlike a mortgaged-backed security.

I just finished reading, Code Red: How to Protect Your Savings from the Coming Crisis by John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper. This book explains in layman’s terms what’s really going on in the economy. It’s very readable. I would highly encourage you to take the time to read the book.

The authors discuss, among other things, “Why hasn't the massive expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve caused runaway inflation?” Under normal circumstances that’s exactly what should happen but it hasn't, at least not yet. Based on the latest CPI, inflation for 2013 was 1.5 percent. Not what you can describe as runaway inflation is it?

Luckily, in the age of smartphones, specialized apps put market information at your fingertips. Plus, they give you the ability to win over clients and streamline the paperwork with a few taps.

While some companies such as Zillow and Trulia have built online empires by providing always-up-to-date listings, there are lots of useful smartphone tools that can help agents work faster and more efficiently in the field.

Whether you’re searching for a home in Mission Hills or selling a four-bedroom in East Village, here are nine apps that will help you close the deal fast.

Find the house

More than 5 million existing homes were sold in 2013, the best year since the boom times of 2006, when 6.5 million were sold.
That's according to the National Association of Realtors, which reported that single-family homes, town homes, condominiums and co-ops sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.87 million in December, up 1 percent from November.
Last year's total of 5.09 million sales was 9.1 percent higher than 2012's total.
Job growth, low mortgage interest rates and pent-up demand had been driving the market since 2011, said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.
"We lost some momentum toward the end of 2013 from disappointing job growth and limited inventory, but we ended with a year that was close to normal given the size of our population," he said.

Sales of new homes fell by 7 percent in December, a larger than expected decline.
But before you get too worried about the state of the housing market, consider this: Despite last month's drop, new home sales jumped 16.4 percent for 2013 as a whole, according to the Census Bureau. The 428,000 new homes sold last year were the highest total since 2008. Last year also was the best year for existing home sales in five years.
December's seasonally adjusted rate of 414,000 was down partly because of the weather. December always is a tough month for home sales in the North, and frigid temperatures last month kept more buyers away than usual. In the Northeast, new home sales fell by more than 36 percent compared with November.
Home builders still think 2014 will be a good year.

Millionaires across the U.S. say commercial and residential real estate is the best alternative-asset investment option for 2014.

One-third of millionaires surveyed in a new Morgan Stanley study plan to purchase real estate this year, Bloomberg reports. And 23 percent say they'll invest in real estate investment trusts.

Some of this is attributed to balancing a portfolio but if we remember last year Warren Buffet said this is where Americans need to invest...maybe somebody listen to him...rbailiff

10. Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif.
> Avg. gross profit: $92,538
> Flipped price: $304,346 (14th highest)
> Number of flips: 75
> Change in flips Q2 to Q3: -34%

People who flipped homes in Vallejo in the third quarter of 2013 bought their property for just under $218,000 on average. This was roughly in line with the national average for these purchases. But those sellers received more than $304,000, one of the highest average flip prices in the nation. A flip in Vallejo returned more than $92,000 last quarter, higher than in most markets. Despite their profitability, home flips in Vallejo during the third quarter actually fell by 34% from the previous quarter and by more than 50% from the same quarter of the previous year.

ALSO READ: America’s Hottest Housing Markets

Global real estate investors are flocking to the U.S.

A new survey shows that while London was the number one city among foreign real estate investors, the rest of the top five cities were all in the U.S.: New York (#2), San Francisco (#3), Houston (#4), Los Angeles (#5).

The survey of members of the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate said the U.S. is the "stable and secure" country for real-estate investment "by a wide margin." The U.S. is also the top market when it comes to capital appreciation and for future real-estate purchases.

(Read more: Air ball: Jordan's mansion troubles)

Houston's high ranking shows that investors are starting to look beyond New York and San Francisco for deals.
Scott E. Barbour | Photodisc | Getty Images
London, England.