Austin Real Estate Blog

If you’re an agent you should do some research on the proposed RPR or Realtors Property Resource.

You can read about it here.

http://www.inman.com/news/2009/11/12/mls-buy-in-key-nar-database?page=0%2C4
and here
http://www.inman.com/news/2009/11/14/rpr-execs-under-fire-nar

Below is a snippet from the 1000watt blog posted on Inman. If you’d rather a more concise description skip down past the quote.

The NAR has taken over certain technology assets of Cyberhomes from LPS (formerly known as FNRES) in order to bring its RPR (Realtors Property Resource) project, as well as its consumer-facing play, HouseLogic, to market. To do this, they have created Realtors Property Resource LLC — a wholly owned subsidiary of the NAR.

Certain LPS executives, including Cyberhomes GM Marty Frame, will be making the transition over to NAR/RPR (see Inman News article). Frame will serve as the president of the new entity. Dale Ross, who was co-founder of MRIS, the nation’s largest MLS, will be CEO. LPS will also provide call center support and other services as part of the deal.

The RPR database will contain parcel information on nearly 150 million properties through a data license from LPS, which (along with First American) is one of the two major sources of public property data.

This is interesting news, but let’s back up a minute for those of you who have more well-rounded lives than I (my fellow online RE junkies can skip down to my take on what this deal means).

The RPR is the national property database initiative that the NAR has been quietly working on for some time. It has gone by a number of names over the past couple years, including “Gateway,” “The Real Estate Channel,” and the “Library/Archive.” It will aggregate tons of property data, including public records, in one place. This will be a Realtor-only database. The idea is to keep agents and brokers competitive amidst widespread data diffusion and other challenges.

HouseLogic.com is a NAR-owned public destination site that will be unveiled next week at the NAR EXPO. The site is part of the NAR’s long-term strategy to engage consumers on behalf of its members.

RIN is the “Realtors Information Network,” a for-profit arm of the NAR from which the RPR sprung. It was conceived for the purpose of creating an ill-fated online real estate service nearly 15 years ago. It was proprietary, something like a Prodigy or early AOL-type service. It blew up, costing the NAR millions. It was from that failure that the present-day Realtor.com was born, in 1996.

Thanks to Brian Boero and Inman for the above snippet.

If you don’t subscribe to Inman here’s the gist…

Sometimes it feels like this is my relationship with NAR...

REALTORs Property Resource in a Nutshell

Basically, NAR would love to create another cash cow like Realtor.com by taking our MLS data and building a system around it, then selling it to the likes of ANYONE WHO WILL PAY FOR IT including government agencies. Can you say appraisal districts? Hope everyone is ready for their taxes to go up once we expose our complete MLS data (even in aggregate).

A Better Idea

And you folks are Realtors like me…. Why doesn’t our MLS ever agree to give any of us all the data for free so I can sell it to other people? IDX feeds for members are $200 per year now (or thereabouts).

I’ve got an idea. Why don’t all the MLS systems around the country give me the data. Then, you know, I’ll build a website with your images, your listing data, and publicly available records and then I’ll sell the services to you and other entities for a profit? Of course your dues may go up a bit since you’ll have to hire someone at ABOR to handle all this data exchange, help NAR with any issues they have, etc, etc.

Sounds like a good deal, right? Who’s on board?

I’m not a data entry robot working to make NAR and their partners money while paying Realtor.com $50 a listing to “showcase” my data on their website, not to mention a website that is worthless without said data.

Who Wants Higher Property Taxes?

In Texas, we are a non-disclosure state and they want to sell the info to government agencies. Um.. I’m pretty sure that all the appraisal districts will love that. Personally, I think this is the dumbest thing NAR members could do to themselves. If NAR wants said data for their system our MLS should charge them accordingly. I think $100 per listing sounds about right. Then we could automatically get a featured listing in Realtor.com and have $50 profit that could go to reduce or eliminate our MLS fees.

Sounds more fair to me. NAR can go and partner and sell the data, but they need to BUY IT FIRST.

Aside from all this… Why do I, as an agent in central Texas need, or care about accurate valuation or data about property in Montana? I’m not licensed there. I don’t sell there. And NAR Code of Ethics Article 11 says I can’t because I’m not competent in the workings of real estate in Montana.

Why should my dollars go to fund a NAR company that makes profits for LPS Real Estate (an RPR partner) and allows the data that is our lifeblood to go out to whomever?

I’ve only been thinking about this for a few days so I could be wrong. I would love to hear what other folks at our board or at any board across the nation think. If you are for or against the RPR and have an interest in real estate other than being a salesperson please disclose it so we can get a read on where each stakeholder stands.

Joe Cline – REMAX Capital City

OK. so last week all of the Austin Board of Realtor members had to change in their dKeys for the new, the wonderful, the unnecessary ActiveKey.

Why? I don’t know.

I loved my dKey. It was simple, small, had a great battery life, and worked. Yes, it did have to be placed in a charger to synch with the server and allow you to access lock boxes, but since everyone had a cradle and became accustomed to using the cradle to charge/synch, routine set in very quickly. Come home from a day of work, plop your keys down, cradle your dKey, take off shoes, relax. No big deal.

My first reaction to seeing the new and wonderful ActiveKey, was why the hell is it so big? Then I picked t up. Uh oh. It’s flimsy.  Basically, we now have a Jitterbug ActiveKey. You know the Jitterbug. The phone for the elderly who can’t figure out new fangled feature rich cell phones.

Check out the side by side..

Ok. Maybe I’m being too harsh. So I thought I’d give it a try.

The battery lasts about a day and a half if not plugged in, so doing away with the cradle is pretty much moot now since you have to plug the thing in every day anyway.

I went to show a house this morning and when I tried to turn on the key…. nothing. It had been plugged in all night. So I plugged it into the car charger and tried to turn it on. I was greeted with a descending tone, but no lights. Grr.. So I called the supra folks and I need to find a paperclip or needle (both of which I regularly carry on me) to reset the key. Dug through my glove box and found a piece of wire that would do. Reset and tried to turn it on. It came on, but with a low battery warning. Apparently, it didn’t charge, hold a charge, or the charger is broken.

Basically, I’d rather have my dkey back.

I did find it funny that GE advertises that the key is design by agents.  I’m not sure that’s a great selling feature, but whatever.

Hey GE… what can you do to make this Activekey thing better? I’ve got a few suggestions.

• higher capacity battery
• reduce the size, technology gets smaller, not larger
• back light the keypad for 30 seconds when a key is pressed, if it’s dark I can’t see the back light key to turn the back light on
• remove the on/off key, GE meatball button, and the backlight key to reduce the size of the unit
• how about a toggle switch for on/off if you need one, seems like any key pressed could turn the unit on and a timeout could turn it off
• keys that press, click, or something to let you know that you clicked them
• reset that doesn’t need a needle or paperclip to work, think hold keys 1,4,7 or something like that
• how about a color? if a real estate professional designed this it would be more pleasing to the eye :)

April brought some of the biggest gains in the US home buyer market. The number of home buyers who have agreed to purchase a previously owned home took the biggest gains by leaps and bounds in the month of April. Historically, it is the largest jump in previously owned homes since 2001.

Even as the market is moving forward, home buyers can expect prices to continue to fall in different areas around the country. One benefit of shopping for a home in the Austin market is that it has not been a part of the huge pricing swings. Prices in this market are not expected to swing in one direction or the other.

According to the Austin Board of Realtors there were 1,919 pending sales anticipated to close in May, bring the April total up 3%, the highest number since July 2008.

Home prices will increase once foreclosures stabilize again. Currently on the national level, there is still a plethora more homes in the sales inventory base, than home buyers. This is changing, as seen in the evidence from April, and forecasters only expect this trend to continue until the end of the year.

With the growing expectations and the increase in pending home sales, the market is ripe for new home buyers. For 2009 there is available an 8,000 dollar new home buyer tax incentive. This is an increase from the previous 5,000 and in addition to any incentives being offered at the state level. This means that the buyer’s market is reaching its pinnacle in 2009.

This is a little late in coming, but this week has been crazy.  What I take away from these two statistics is that while there are more properties on the market only the good ones are selling.  The homes that do sell are taking a little longer to sell than in the previous year, but since the best homes are selling and likely there is still competition from buyers for the best homes, we see increasing prices.

Sellers in this market need to price their homes aggressively or be the best house out there and capitalize on the demand for best in class homes.

The below release comes from the Austin Board of Realtors.

January 23, 2008 – According to the latest Multiple Listing Service (MLS) report, single-family home sales in December were lower than during the same period in 2006. The median sales price for homes in Central Texas grew 8 percent.

“Austin area home sales and prices experienced steady and stable growth over the past few years, contributing to the overall economic health in Central Texas,” said ABoR Chairman Socar Chatmon-Thomas. “All indicators show that making a long-term investment in Central Texas property continues to be a solid financial strategy.”

December 2007 single-family home sales were down 16 percent from last year, totaling 1,655. These sales brought the year-end total of homes sold to 25,151, an 8 percent decrease from 2006. The median price of single-family properties in December rose 8 percent to $191,250, while the 2007 year-end median price rose 6 percent to $185,000.

Altogether, single-family property sales contributed $6,301,644,094 to the local economy in 2007, down only 2 percent from the previous year. These properties sat on the market for an average of 62 days, the lowest time span in five years. Active listings increased by 10 percent to 8,628.

December 2007 – Single Family Homes
• 1,655 was the number of single-family homes sold, a 16 percent decrease from one year ago
• $191,250 was the median price for single-family homes, an 8 percent increase from one year ago
• $416,465,855 was the total dollar volume of properties sold, an 11 percent decrease from one year ago

2007 (Year-End Totals) – Single-Family Homes
• 25,151 homes sold, an 8 percent decrease from 2006
• $185,000 was the median price, a 6 percent increase from 2006
• $6,301,644,094 was the total dollar volume of properties sold, a 2 percent decrease from 2006

The Austin Board of REALTORS® is a non-profit, voluntary organization representing more than 8,000 licensed REALTORS® in Central Texas. For further information, please contact Angela Brutsché at 512/454-7636 ext. 1300.

Contact:
Angela Brutsché
Austin Board of REALTORS®
512/454-7636
abrutsche@abor.com

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