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| 2006/2/8-10 [Reference/RealEstate] UID:41769 Activity:kinda low |
2/8 Satellite view of your neighborhood with price estimates for ALL
neighboring houses. By the founder of http://expedia.com:
(works on IE for me, doesn't work with FF + flashblock,
also, if you click on details for a property, you can get a graph
of its estimated value over the last 1/5/10 years - christ, what
happened in Jan '04?)
http://www.zillow.com
\_ Bush said he would try to make everyone a homeowner. Greenspan
acted by 1) lowering interest rate even further and 2) saying
in public to the effect that anyone who paid off his/her home
isn't investing wisely. But rather than getting everyone a home,
those who already had a few decided to get even more, and started
the arms race to own more homes.
http://www.zillow.com
\_ How are the prices estimated? It says my home in Fremont doubled
its value since Jan '04! Well, I don't think so.
\_ http://tinyurl.com/b6uf9 (latimes.com)
"Zillow would pore over county records and other government data
on 60 million homes nationwide. It then would use proprietary
computer analysis to determine current values ...
Providing a home's history, including all past sales
transactions, tax assessments and other details ..."
(yes, it does have current property tax and past sales dates, at
least through '96 for my previous home)
\_ Works fine in FF + Flashblock if you add http://www.zillow.com to the
Flashblock whitelist. --dbushong
\_ still having trouble with moz/ff with whitelist.
\_ Bush said he would try to make everyone a homeowner. Greenspan
acted by 1) lowering interest rate even further and 2) saying
in public to the effect that anyone who paid off his/her home
isn't investing wisely. But rather than getting everyone a home,
those who already had a few decided to get even more, and started
the arms race to own more homes.
\_ queueing lafe who may have something to say about the current
state of economy that seems to put those who have little
(lafe) at a much greater disadvantage for buying homes.
\_ url on Greenspan item 2?
I know real estate agents have lots of fun saying that:
http://csua.com/?entry=39331
\_ Sour grape.
\_ A country with a planned economy won't have this problem. |
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| www.zillow.com and you don't have to enter any personal info and no one will contact you) Site seems slow? Close your eyes and envision your perfect home By then maybe the server can handle our zillions of visitors. |
| tinyurl.com/b6uf9 -> www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-zillow8feb08,0,1329121.story Large Text Size Large Text Size Change text size Expedia Founder Applies His Know-How to Real Estate Richard Barton says his Internet venture will provide valuable data to buyers and sellers. com and helped transform the travel industry by handing consumers the same tools to book reservations that travel agents had long controlled. Now, Barton is applying the same approach to real estate -- and is banking on equally dramatic results. com, the latest website to offer property information that has until recently been beyond the reach of the average buyer or seller who didn't engage a real estate agent. As Barton sees it, Zillow can be the real estate equivalent of the auto world's Kelley Blue Book. By typing in an address, the user gets an instant valuation of one home or all homes on a street or neighborhood. To get that information, Zillow would pore over county records and other government data on 60 million homes nationwide. It then would use proprietary computer analysis to determine current values, which the company calls "zestimates." The Seattle-based company's objective is to create as complete a record as possible on individual properties. Providing a home's history, including all past sales transactions, tax assessments and other details, should help put buyers and sellers on better footing during a real estate transaction, Barton says. By cracking open the real estate process, "consumers will make better decisions and become smarter," Barton said during a brief demonstration of his website. "People want to be empowered with information so they can take control of what is scary and difficult and fraught with frustrations." Giving consumers more access to information could lead them "to negotiate more economically sound prices with real estate agents," he said. Many people don't know values even in their own neighborhoods, he said. Zillow could even lead to lower commissions -- much like Expedia did with travel fees, Barton said. Zillow is hardly the first real estate site to help consumers figure out a home's value. IAC/InterActiveCorp's Domania, HomeGain, HouseValues and other sites were established in the last few years as appetite for real estate information expanded along with home prices. But computer-based valuations can be as much as 30% off the mark, industry experts say, because the business of selling homes tends to be more an art than science. com, which boasts one of the most expansive collections of real estate data for the New York area and is a potential rival to Zillow. Barton said Zillow's national margin of error for home values was 72% because it assessed more data than most online real estate evaluators. Zillow touts an exclusive tool that allows users to factor in particulars about a house, such as whether it needs a new roof, to further refine a home's value. What's more, a home's value on Zillow can be tracked historically against the performance of local, state or national real estate markets, much like comparing a stock against the Standard & Poor's 500 index. "We think that a key component to a fundamentally healthy marketplace is price transparency," he said. Most buyers and sellers "are not seeing what the last 20 people paid" for a property. But in a Web world clogged with real estate offerings, will Zillow be able to stand out? Barton says that on a mere "snoop level," consumers will be attracted to his site, in part because it requires no registration and doesn't route users to real estate agents seeking customers, which is common among many sites. Zillow instead hopes to make its money by selling advertising space to brokerages and mortgage companies. At least initially, Zillow would not provide sales listing information and thus would not indicate if a home is on the market. That could be a problem in the short term, said Greg Sterling, a local media analyst at the Kelsey Group. Listings are among the top reasons consumers and advertisers seek out real estate sites. "They will need to build that in as part of the package to make it useful to advertisers and consumers," said Sterling, who was among a few industry experts given a preview of the site. Still, he thinks that Zillow can be "one of the couple" of successful national real estate sites, mostly because of Barton. Expedia is the leading online travel reservation site and operates as a separate company. Thanks in part to Expedia, 80% of travel is booked online, and the number of travel agents has fallen nearly 40% since 1996. For much of last year, Barton teased the media about Zillow without revealing any details, generating articles in mainstream and industry press. The hype helped persuade investors, including Benchmark Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures, to pony up $32 million in venture capital. With such funding in hand, Zillow may become a big kahuna of real estate data sites, and one that could go public. of Realtors and doesn't offer any data beyond property listings, but the company has hinted that that could change. If that were to happen, PropertyShark Chief Executive Ryan Slack said, "it could be hard for Zillow to lure people away." Yet, Slack acknowledged that Zillow could challenge sites like his, which don't necessarily have the same financial heft or tech superstar at their helms. "In the face of this $32-million dollar gorilla, we do have some fears of them treading on our space," Slack said. PropertyShark on Tuesday added a home sale-price interactive map for Los Angeles County and other US markets in response to Zillow's debut. If anything, arming consumers with information from the Internet has made the real estate process more efficient. A Realtors association study found that buyers who peruse the Web for listings before spending time with an agent take about two weeks to make an offer, compared with seven weeks for the offline buyer. The issue now is whether the wider availability of data online makes the process less costly. Despite the proliferation of real estate information sites, broker fees have been largely unchanged for decades. The average commission remains 5% to 6% of the sales price. of Realtors, isn't worried about Zillow or other sites wreaking havoc on the traditional real estate industry. He views Zillow as aiding consumers in becoming more familiar with their local real estate market. But Zillow won't replace the local real estate agent, he said -- Barton agrees. "It's another tool that buyers and sellers can use," Malta said. "Every piece of real estate is unique and Realtors provide experience and skill in being able to analyze the information." Barton sees consumers' need for real estate information as ever-growing in an up or down housing market. |
| csua.com/?entry=39331 org/u/d6q (LA Times) \_ Indeed, I suppose it's better to pay interest and have the possibility of losing your home if you ever lost your job by being unable to pay off the debt than the alternative. Unless you plan to utilize the debt in some sort of constructive method, taking out a loan for a loan's sake (especially with the rather wonky instruments utilized today) isn't necessarily smart. Also, carrying a mortgage has tax benefits, and someone noted investments below too. Like an investment, you can spend a small portion of what you earn toward the mortgage, paying off principles. The tax advantage you get by paying mortgage cancels out the tax you pay on investments, so paying off your 30 year 6% mortgage is like making a guaranteed 6% investment (for 30 years). If you are sure your money will earn more than that, then by all means put it to good use. If it's just sitting at your band account earning 1% or doing nothing useful (ie, you already have enough emergency reserves), then you are wasting your money. Unfortunately the majority of people waste their money this way. If the economy gets totally fucked at least you'll still have your house to live in ... If your goal in life is maximum consumption with no safety net, then the advice in that article is very good. Without it you might not have a house to live in even if it's paid for. Mortgage interest after tax savings for a 30 year fixed is like 4%. I've been getting like 35% return per year the last 3 years. Mortgage interest is ridiculously low, and you get the rate for 30 years, then add a big tax break .. Of course, paying off your mortgage is a safe (guaranteed) return, so if you are 35% return per year the last 3 years. Of course, paying off your mortgage is a safe and guaranteed return, so if you are close to retirement ... I only made the required mortgage payment for the first year or two, thinking that I would invest the extra money somewhere and get better returns. After a while I changed my mind and started making extra payments towards the principal instead. Granted your earnings will be taxed, but your mortgage interest rate stays the same for 30 years, and it won't surprise me at all if one year down the road, you'll be getting say 55% from two years down the road, you'll be getting say 6% from I bonds, and pocketing the spread. The bigger question, however, is why you are so risk averse. At 34, I presume you are far from retirement and your kid far from college. I know a woman with millions in cash who still has an $800,000 mortgage on her $2M house. Why drop $800K more for something that is costing only $4K/month? On the other hand, I am paying extra on my mortgage because I want it paid in 15-20 years instead of 30. Not only would retirement be better, but those 15 years before then could be great (eg travel) without that big monthly expense. My mortgage (principal) is one investment I make, but not close to my only one. However, by cutting years off of my mortgage and saving lots of money in interest I am doing myself a favor. People putting every available extra dollar towards their house are misguided, I think. I knew a girl who was a performance artist/exotic dancer. When she retired (at a young age by necessity) she had saved $500K cash. I personally would have taken a small mortgage out on the place and kept some cash for something else. People who have paid off their houses are their objects of scorn. The concept is that these people should risk some small percentage of their home equity for a chance to make more than the rate of a home equity loan. Since you do not actually own your house or are close to paying it off, you can and should ignore their taunts. They are aiming to get those people with a high amount of equity, not those who are just 5-10 years into their 30 year mortgage. I'd guess they are looking at older, lower risk homeowners as their target audience. tmpl=story&u=/latimests/20050828/ts_latimes/equity isalteringspendinghabitsandviewofdebt Los Angeles Times Equity Is Altering Spending Habits and View of Debt By David Streitfeld Times Staff Writer Sun Aug 28, 7:55 AM ET As they happily watch their houses swell in value, Americans are changing their attitudes toward mortgage debt. Increasingly, a home is no longer a nest egg whose equity should never be touched, but a seemingly magica l ATM enabling the owner to live it up or just live. Click Here Homeowners took $59 billion in cash out of their houses in the second qua rter, double the amount in the 2004 quarter and 16 times the average rat e of the mid-1990s, according to data released this month by mortgage gi ant Freddie Mac People are cashing out so quickly that the term "homeowner" may soon be i naccurate. Fifty years ago, Americans owned, on average, three-quarters of their house and the lender owned the rest. This spend-now-rather-than-save-for-later phenomenon has produced undenia ble benefits. Experts attribute much of the nation's economic growth to cash-out refinancings, home equity loans and other methods of tapping ri sing home values. And additional real estate investments financed by hom e equity have contributed to the rising home prices that bring owners su ch pleasure. With the savings rate at zero, consum ers' eagerness to tap home equity is only worsening their retirement out look, financial advisors say. If mortgage rates rise sharply or home prices fall, many homeowners could be in financial turmoil. They may be unable to service their loans, or could even find that their homes are worth less than their mortgages. Such a prospect seems unimaginably distant to Doug Levy, a university adm inistrator in San Francisco. When his two-bedroom condominium rose in value by 10% which took nine m onths in the hot Bay Area real estate market Levy refinanced. That inc reased the size of his mortgage but gave him $25,000 to pay bills and ta ke a modest skiing vacation in British Columbia. He's considering tappin g his equity again if his condo continues to appreciate. "It's like I'm sleeping in my piggy bank," said Levy, 44. Bill and Barbara Brockmann have a different view of their house. The reti red Huntington Beach couple is sitting on half a million dollars of equi ty, but they're ignoring it. They aren't drawing on it to buy a new car or invest in a condo in Miami. What was once considered undesi rable taking on large debt is now seen as smart. And what used to be smart becoming debt-free is described as imprudent. "If you paid your mortgage off, it means you probably did not manage your funds efficiently over the years," said David Lereah, chief economist o f the National Association of Realtors and author of "Are You Missing th e Real Estate Boom?" "It's as if you had 500,000 dollar bills stuffed in your mattress." Anthony Hsieh, chief executive of LendingTree Loans, an Internet-based mo rtgage company, used a more disparaging term. "If you own your own home free and clear, people will often refer to you as a fool. The financial services industry is doing all it can to avoid letting cons umers be foolish. com touts home loans as a way to pay off credit cards, and Morgan Stanley says they're a good way to fund education exp enses. Wells Fargo suggests taking a chunk out of your house to finance "a dream wedding." One obvious reason for the 69% rise in mortgage debt over the last five y ears is the exploding cost of homes, which has far outstripped wage grow th. That's led many buyers to interest-only loans and skimpy down paymen ts, both of which minimize their equity. In California, housing prices have increased so much relative to incomes that buyers must stretch all they can. Federal guidelines recommend homeowners devote less than $30 of every $10 0 in pretax income to housing. But 40% of Californians exceed that, acco rding to a new report by the Public Policy Institute of California. That's higher than in 1990, when the previous real estate boom was cresti ng after several years in which housing-price rises outpaced salary gain s The figure then was 36%. Some Californians devote much more than a third of their incomes to housi ng. The report estimates that about one... |
| expedia.com -> www.expedia.com/pub/agent.dll?qscr=home Please activate scripting Scripting must be enabled before you can continue. To enable scripting, you need to make a simple adjustment to your browser settings. |
| latimes.com -> www.latimes.com/ Private Rocket Nears Space By Peter Pae Craft designed by Burt Rutan goes where no private craft has gone before in bid for prize. US Military Lawyers Felt 'Shut Out' of Prison Policy By Ken Silverstein They said civilian political lawyers were deciding how prisoners could be questioned. Governor Opts to Put Off the Pain By Peter Nicholas ANALYSIS: Schwarzenegger's revised plan avoids deep cuts in spending and includes no new taxes. An Editor's Hollywood Ties Pay Off By Claudia Eller, Michael Cieply and Josh Getlin Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter strikes business deals with some people his magazine covers. Tough Outing for Nomo By Ben Bolch He gives up six runs and walks three in shortest outing of the season as Dodgers fall to Cubs, 7-3. US Military Lawyers Felt 'Shut Out' of Prison Policy By Ken Silverstein They said civilian political lawyers were deciding how prisoners could be questioned. Awed, one and all, deep below ground By Vani Rangachar A family visits Carlsbad Caverns National Park to witness what millions of years and sulfuric acid can do. Setting a Modern standard By Cara Mullio and Jennifer M Volland An architect of Case Study Houses, Edward Killingsworth used many of the same principles in his own home -- light, glass, an emphasis on indoor-outdoor living. |