My favorite blog posts are ones that are inspired by reader questions, and today we respond to a doozy from "DC" who asks about investing and student housing. We get all kinds of questions from our readers, but this one is very insightful in that I believe he suspects there could be a problem brewing for some of the investors in the Tallahassee real estate market. And I believe he is correct. Student Housing As A Real Estate Investment Anybody who has taken a drive near Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee has seen firsthand the boom of student housing that is being added to the market. Thus, it comes as no surprise that savvy investors are concerned about the impact of all this new supply in the rental market. Recently, I received the following question: What do you think the effect of... 10/02/2013

Watch For Trend Changes If you want to know the beginning of the next phase of the housing market recovery, just keep an eye on the relative home supply. You can always track supply levels at The Market Bulletin. The next phase you say….? Absolutely. I believe that the transition from a buyers’ market to a sellers’ market will follow this pattern: Inventory changes from growth to reduction. Home Values Fall At Accelerating Rate Year over year sales increase? Inventory levels reach 6 months of supply (balanced market). Home Values Stop Falling/Start Rising. Glut Of Homes In Tallahassee When we look at the supply and demand of homes in Tallahassee, it becomes readily apparent that the supply side is awash with too much inventory. In the chart below, we see that there is still more than a ... 08/20/2011

Tallahassee Home Values have declined by roughly 33% across the entire market coverage area, but we are seeing the rate of decline slow over the past six months. While I am not certain that this is anything more than a seasonal fluctuation, I’ll take it as some moderately positive news for a housing market that has shown very little positive news in the past few years. Normally, we graph the one-year trend in order to remove all seasonality, but the six month trend often provides insight on the “here and now” view of the market, which is critical information for somebody who is thinking about selling a home. The first real estate graph below shows the six month trend in home values for each quadrant of Tallahassee (Leon County). One trend that is immediately obvious is that east side ho... 07/04/2011

Holy cow, I have to agree with Lawrence Yun on quite a few points that he made during the release of the monthly  Existing Home Sales Report last week. Dr. Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of REALTORS® explained that existing home sales in March were down compared to March of last year, and there exists more than 8 months of supply of homes for sale at a national level.As we know from our own Tallahassee housing reports, 5 to 6 months of supply are considered a balanced market and anything higher than that produces a buyer’s market and home values do not appreciate due to the intense competition among home sellers. Dr. Yun made a case for the need to have the mortgage market return to traditional lending standards, noting “sales would be notably stronger if mortgage... 04/28/2011

Black hat techniques are short cuts designed to make the search engines believe that your site is far more relevant to a topic than visitors will find. These techniques are often tantalizing to internet marketing professionals because they promise to bring immediate traffic (and immediate results), but unfortunately they most likely will guarantee the eventual destruction of your website. Key-word stuffing is an old, classic example of this type of activity. Rather than create an article or page on your site that contains valuable information for the reader, many pages are created with a gross overuse of key words designed to fool the search engines to believe that the site has a focus on a specific subject. I am sure that you have stumbled across pages on the internet where you just wo... 04/10/2011

Pending home sales appear to be testing a new market bottom, as the rate of decline in homes under contract has crawled to a stop. This is very good news, as we cannot expect future home sales to rise if new sales contracts are on the decline. We measure these new sales contracts, which the industry calls “pending home sales,” in order to get a picture of the future of closed home sales (typically 2 months into the future. By tracking contracts, these future closings are follow a consistent pattern. In the real estate graph above, we observe that the past two weeks has seen some stabilization in what was a plummeting pending home sales report. We hope that this continues and that we can start see this trend rise from what we hope to be the “final” market bottom. Read more: http://www.m... 11/30/2010

Home sales are falling, just as we predicted each time we tracked the pending home sales information from the Tallahassee Board of REALTORS Multiple Listing Service. We knew if pending sales were falling, then closed home sales had to follow suit. Closed Home Sales Decline In Tallahassee Closed home sales, tracked on a daily basis in the Tallahassee MLS, have declined steadily since the end of the Homebuyer Tax Credit (where closed home sales were pretty much completed by June 30, 2010. The “market bottom” that we observed in August 2009 is still holding, but we have every indication to believe that a new one will present after the turn of the year. With pending home sales having reached a new market bottom, it is very likely that closed home sales will follow suit. Read more: http://w... 11/30/2010

  Historically, parents of FSU students have looked at real estate ownership as a method of reducing or eliminating the cost of sending their child to college for five (or so) years. As investment properties skyrocketed during the boom of the housing market though, we saw less and less investment as the opportunity for safety was diminished. Now that it is six years later, I am starting to see more and more parents want to talk about how buying a home for an FSU student actually helps them defer the cost of sending their child to school. I figured it would make for a good blog post for all of those potential investors, but also an educational piece for parents who are trying to figure out how to pay for college for their children. Sending A Child To College It is estimated that the aver... 07/22/2010

  It’s not everyday that you come across a video on the internet and see a college classmate from over 20 years ago. But that is exactly what happened to me this past week. Dave McCormick (my West Point classmate from 1987) is the Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs and he was featured on CNBC to discuss what the government plans to do to restore stability in the global markets.   Responding to Today’s Market Turmoil Under Secretary David H. McCormick made the following remarks about the current economic turmoil while speaking at Wharton’s Eleventh Annual Investment Management Conference. He identified how the chaos basically got started and acknowledged that we are now paying the price. If you would like to read Dave’s comments in their entirety, please go to the Press R... 10/19/2008

Tallahassee Real Estate Market "Stable" Last week, we saw an interesting article in the Tallahassee Democrat by Steve Liner which sported the exciting headline "Leon a bright spot in economy," concluding the Leon County's real estate market is "thoroughly stable." His article was based upon a report by noted economist Hank Fishkind and it appears that for all the State of Florida, the Tallahassee real estate market seems to be faring the best. Steve's article enticed me to hunt down the entire report, which I have done. If you'd like to see it, go to http://www.myrealestatestory.com/ and you can get it. If you'd rather focus more on just the Leon County segment, the best place to go is [HERE].I will be reading this today and commenting on it in the future. Joe Manausa is the Broker and ... 01/16/2008

BEWARE OF THE MEDIA!Are you confused about where the market is heading? Well, if you are confused, then you can be sure that your customer is confused. It is logical to expect that your customer's opinion of the housing market is greatly influenced by what the media is declaring (either locally OR nationally). As I was doing market research this week end, I decided to look on CNN.com to see what they were saying about the National Real Estate Forecast. This is CNN.com's front page of their Real Estate sections.As I read through the articles, something curious jumped out at me (besides the obvious abundance of negative headlines). The lead story claims "Mortgage Delinquency Risk Rising", while a sub-headline claims "September Foreclosures Fall".  So, despite the fact that foreclosures fe... 10/21/2007

The Federal Reserve lowered its federal funds rate, so many of our customers are asking us if we think now is the time to refinance their homes. The answer to this will be dependent on internal factors to the home owner. The homeowner must consider: What loan is currently in place (and how much time is left on its term and adjustment period, if any) What is the home owner's current credit score Is there equity in the home (mortgage programs are a bit tougher for high loan-to-values) How long does the home owner plan to continue living in the home Taking a look at the current mortgage market, we can see recent trends have interest rates at very desirable levels. The three-month trend of mortgage rates show that rates have moved around, but are nearly the same as three months ago, as we c... 10/09/2007

 This is the final post to the blog series regarding the Internal Revenue Code section 1031 tax deferred exchanges. I hope this series has answered some common questions about the process, as well as shed some light regarding the importance of dealing with qualified professionals during the entire exchange.During the course of these blogs, every exchange we reviewed was fairly straightforward, meaning the original property was sold, and then the replacement property was acquired. This is the most common way of working a 1031, but did you know that you can actually acquire the replacement property first?When an investor wishes to acquire the replacement property prior to selling the original property, we refer to this as a "reverse exchange." This is not as simple as a normal exchange, s... 10/05/2007