By Stephanie Sims If you know your target market, your message will be well-received. Even though real estate is about selling, knowing stats about your clients, and homebuyers in general, can only help you and your

By Peter Ricci RealtyTrac, the oft-quoted real estate research firm based in Irvine, California, generated considerable buzz a couple weeks back when it published a stinging study arguing that nearly every available housing metric had worsened under President Obama’s watch. With

By Peter Ricci The latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which looked at the U.S. economy in the third quarter, was good but unspectacular – a 2 percent annual rate of growth, up from 1.3 percent in

By Peter Ricci Zillow has completed its fourth major acquisition in just 18 months, purchasing the real estate shopping website Buyfolio for an undisclosed sum. A fun, streamlined approach to online home shopping, Buyfolio is a New York City-based

By Anne Hartnett I am in real estate media. I eat, sleep and live the topic. It’s what people corner me about at dinner parties, the gym and the dog park. Because of my work, I track several high-tech

By Peter Ricci Residential construction spending increased modestly in September, rising 2.8 percent from August’s revised totals to an annual rate of $285.9 billion, according to the latest numbers from the Census Bureau. After four years of precipitous declines,

By Peter Ricci Housing construction has been posting some of its best numbers in years the last couple months, but some analysts are worrying that mounting building costs could threaten the industry’s momentum. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported,

By Peter Ricci This is Halloween, the day when pumpkins scream in the dead of night, children trick or treat until the neighbors die of fright and real estate agents sell property with all their might! Alright, that may

By Natalie Terchek The real estate market place Zillow introduced pre-market inventory to its home search experience. Shoppers are now able to search for and find information on 1.2 million pre-foreclosures and foreclosed properties, for free. These homes are not yet

By Peter Ricci Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has announced that it has purchased both the Real Living and Prudential real estate networks from Brookfield Asset Management in an aggressive expansion in the real estate markets. The deal, of which the

By Peter Ricci One of the more interesting real estate surveys out there is the HousingPulse Tracking Survey from Campbell Surveys and Inside Mortgage Finance, a broad look at the real estate markets and the preeminent issues and trends on agents

By Peter Ricci Home prices in Texas continued their strong 2012 performance in August, with Dallas home prices increasing 3.6 percent year-over-year in the latest Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the economic measure from Standard & Poor’s (S&P) that is considered the authority on

By Peter Ricci The mortgage markets have been bracing themselves for new regulations ever since the passing of the Dodd-Frank regulatory bill in 2010, and a new study from the American Action Forum on the qualified mortgage rule, Basel

By Peter Ricci “Boomerang buyers” are just like any other prospective homebuyer, except with one key difference – as the clever name would suggest, they are returning to the homeownership market after going through a foreclosure during the housing

By Peter Ricci According to a new survey jointly conducted by the Department of Psychology at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and technology firm Merge, 64 percent of agents said they update clients weekly or several times weekly. But this communications

Fifth Third Mortgage Company, a subsidiary of Fifth Third Bank, and the 13th largest originator in the country (Inside Mortgage Finance, Second Quarter 2012) continues to outpace the industry in permanent modifications in the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program