Most Properties Still Sell Below List Price

Even though the housing market appears to be on fire, 63% of properties actually sold for below list price, this according to the May 2015 Realtors Confidence Index Survey.

This may seem rather surprising, given how hot real estate has been over the past few years.

Ask anyone who has purchased a home (or attempted to) and they’ll probably tell you they got into a bidding war, or were forced to include a cover letter with their offer.

Despite that common tale, most properties don’t actually sell above list. In fact, nearly two-thirds do not.



However, this number has trended down lately. A year ago, around 70% of properties sold at a discount. So clearly properties are selling more easily at higher prices.

The Realtors said properties that remain on the market for a longer period of time are more likely to sell at a discount.

Some 84% of properties that sold between 2012 and May 2015 after 12 months were sold at a discount, per the Realtors’ monthly survey.

Meanwhile, less than half of the properties that sold within a month went for below list price. And nearly a quarter (24%) sold for a premium.

Properties that sold after 12 months only sold at a premium a measly six percent of the time.

In other words, price your home right the first time to avoid a price cut and losing money on the sale. Price it really right and you might sell for a premium.

As you can see from the chart below, the longer a listing stagnates, the lower the chance of it selling for list price or at a premium.

 

Surprisingly, 48% of properties listed for less than a month still went for below their asking price. So there’s always room to negotiate, even if the property was just listed.

And don’t worry about offending anyone – if you don’t offend them with your offer you offered too much, that according to a wise man…

In May 2015, it was most common for a property to sell for between 4-11% off list price.

A discount between 0-3% was the second most common outcome, followed by no discount or premium.

Very few properties sold at 20% or more off, and even fewer sold for 11% or more than list.

The Realtors noted that staging a property could help it sell for one to five percent more.

Zestimates Can Help with Pricing 

 

In a related article, the Zillow Research team threw out some pointers to help home sellers list their properties at the right price.

They said despite an improving housing market, it’s wise not to “overheat your listing price.”
Zillow found that properties priced more than 12% above their Zestimate are nearly half as likely to sell within 60 days.

And apparently the “sweet spot,” where homes sell the fastest, is between the Zestimate and six percent above it.

The company also discovered that smaller homes sell the fastest (those under 1,100 square feet) and that the optimal number of photos per listing is 16 to 21.

Your home may take longer to sell if you don’t provide enough photos. And as we know, that could result in a price cut. So take good photos and plenty of them.

source: thetruthaboutmortgage.com

The new 'Horsemen of the Nasdaq' - how long will they ride?

NEW YORK - Will the tech leaders of today be the has-beens of tomorrow?

Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon hold dominant positions in the tech sector and have been among the biggest engines driving the Nasdaq above the 5,000 mark this week for the first time since 2000. But analysts are far from confident that they will maintain their perch in the tech stratosphere.

Such an upheaval would fit with previous tech eras, which saw companies drop out of the top tier, like Microsoft or become shadows of their former selves, as with the now-private Dell.

The tech world moves so quickly that in 2000 Google wasn't yet public and Facebook didn't exist. Apple had yet to introduce the iPod, let alone the iPhone.

Of roughly 20 investors, strategists and analysts polled by Reuters, all expected at least one of the current leaders - dubbed by some the "Four Horsemen of the Mobile Age" - to continue setting trends, but opinions differed on which might wane in importance, and which companies could replace them.

"In other sectors there's a greater sense of permanence in the leadership, but tech is always changing," said Scott Kessler, head of technology sector equity research at S&P Capital IQ in New York.

Looking 10 years down the road, the "sharing economy" could come to define tech, said several experts, including Walter Price, managing director of the AllianzGI Global Technology funds in San Francisco; David James, of James Investment Research; and Kessler.

Names like Uber and AirBNB - which provide marketplaces for buyers and sellers of services - have been already valued at tens of billions of dollars, though they are not publicly traded.

"These new companies have already become valuable because they've invented a new way of doing things, and tech is all about creating cheaper or more efficient ways of doing things," said Price.

Other potential horsemen of the future mentioned at least once include real estate firm Zillow Group Inc, the privately held messaging service Snapchat, and Paypal, which will be spun off by eBay later this year.

"Any company that has a 50 percent share of the mobile payments market seems like a worthy contender regardless of any development of a sharing economy," said Daniel Kurnos, an analyst covering internet stocks at Benchmark Co in Boca Raton, Florida.

Even so, some of today's top players could maintain their top positions.

Apple, whose iPhone provides customer access to services like Uber, could be among the companies to benefit from a rise in "sharing" activity.

Apple, Google and Facebook all have the dexterity to stay where the action is and hold their own over the next decade, said Skip Aylesworth, portfolio manager of the Hennessy Technology Fund. He sees Facebook - which recently spent $2 billion to buy virtual software company Occulus Rift - also staying at the top of the heap of social network firms, some of which could disappear into mergers and acquisitions.

But in Aylesworth's view, the fourth horseman won't be Amazon. It will be "a name we haven't heard of or is insignificant today," he said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com