By James Wedgeworth on October 12th, 2010
Welcome to the most current Housing Trends eNewsletter. This eNewsletter is specially designed for you, with national and local housing information that you may find useful whether you’re in the market for a home, thinking about selling your home, or just interested in homeowner issues in general.
The Housing Trends eNewsletter contains the latest information from the National Association of REALTORS®, the U.S. Census Bureau and Realtor.org reports, videos, key market indicators and real estate sales statistics, a video message by a nationally recognized economist, maps, mortgage rates and calculators, consumer articles, plus local neighborhood information and more.
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SEPTEMBER – 2010 Newsletter Housing Trends eNewsletter
By James Wedgeworth on February 3rd, 2010
I had a prospect call to tell me they were coming to Hilton Head Island to look at property. I had worked with them before and I knew they were excited about purchasing a piece of property on Hilton Head.
They spent many hours on the computer and lined up what their options were. I kept telling them that there were other options available, but it was interesting that out of everything we saw, the home they picked out on the computer was the one they ended up buying because they were interested in that specific location, that price range and they were aware of what a good value it was.
Many things have changed, but this has been one of the biggest changes I have seen in how it affects the overall real estate market.
By James Wedgeworth on January 28th, 2010
When I started in the real estate business back in 1981, one of the highlights of our week was the MLS house tour when all the new homes were open to the Realtors.
At that time, there were about 120 Realtors and on any given Wednesday you could see as many as 80 agents looking at the new listings. It was the only way we had to stay current with the market.
We had thick MLS books that had one grainy picture of the house and no other details to speak of. The only way you could really see the house was to personally visit the home.
I recently had a house on Realtor tour and the owner was very upset because we only had 20 agents (out of 1,400) show up during the Realtor tour. I tried to explain that because of the Internet, great photography, google maps and virtual tours, Realtors can look at a home online and get all the information they could possibly need.
Many Boards throughout America don’t have weekly house tours. I was speaking to a friend in Chicago and she said they would have a greyhound bus every Wednesday for tour and now they don’t have a tour at all.
One thing we can be sure of is that things will continue to change over and over again.
