Real Estate Ramblings

News of broad-based home price increases is starting to trickle in, with this report from Integrated Asset Services showing a 1.6% monthly increase in nationwide single family detached home prices for the month of May. The same survey also showed a small gain in April giving some hope that the in...

This article from Realtor Magazine gives a good example of why many sellers are slowly coming around and selling for less in today's market - and it's not just because they're sick of chasing squirrels out of the attic (although that is funny). The old adage "a penny saved is a penny earned" come...

According to this article from CoStar (scroll down to the headline United Western Sells Option Arm MBS for Less than a Penny on the Dollar) a Denver bank recently sold a large mortgage backed securities (MBS) portfolio ($47.3MM original principal balance) for only $378,000 or around $0.008 per do...

In a follow up to a recent article about the Murano condo auction that proved a large pool of buyers are still actively looking for luxury living options in Center City, this Inquirer article points out that while those buyers are out there they aren't paying the inflated prices developers have b...

One of my clients introduced me to a great website that allows both tenants and landlords to get extremely localized data on the going rental rates in their area. The site is http://www.rentometer.com. It collects data directly from real landlords and tenants and plots the results on a map allowi...

The results are in from this weekend's auction of 42 condo units at Center City's Murano building. And the results speak for themselves, all forty units put up for auction sold, plus two others (not sure about the circumstances behind the sale of the additional two units) at prices averaging only...

According to the Philadelphia Business Journal Pennsylvania's unemployment rate climbed from 7.8% in April to 8.2% in May - an uncomfortably high number to be sure, but significantly below the national average unemployment rate of 9.4%. Another way to look at it is in the year from May 2008 to Ma...

For those of you who need a break from reading about real estate: a good friend of mine just started writing for a sports blog so if you like reading rants from the wide world of sports you should check it out at http://thesportsgeeks.com/  

This article from the NYTimes discusses the phenomenon of distressed triple-decker properties in New England (see below for photo) - a form of architecture that I've always found very charming on my trips to Boston and Providence. In Boston they make up 21% of foreclosures even though they're onl...

I came across a website today that seems to offer a lot of good information for prospective home-buyers and sellers. The site is www.cyberhomes.com and it pools together information on all aspects of the home-ownership process from shopping for a first home to getting your money's worth when remo...