Sign of the times: I was talking to one of the city’s largest movers yesterday, who tells me things are slower this spring than in years past. Not surprising, given this report from the U.S. Census Bureau that says moving is the lowest it’s been since the bureau started tracking the rate in 1948. If we are seeing fewer moving vans in Dallas, think how stark the streets must be elsewhere. The other thing I heard yesterday: fewer moving jobs in the Dallas Design District has some of those to-the-trade-only movers looking under the cushions for quarters.
Dallas realtor Martin Weber scooted this my way today, and you need to read it. Affects everyone who owns property. In a nutshell, a confidential computer registry company that saved the banking industry more than ONE BILLION over the last few years may now be holding your mortgage along with about 59,999,999 others.
“From an office in the Washington suburbs, it played an integral, if unsung, role in the proliferation of mortgage-backed securities that fueled the housing boom. But with the collapse of the housing market, the name of MERS has been popping up on foreclosure notices and on court dockets across the country, raising many questions about the way this controversial but legal process obscures the tortuous paths of mortgage ownership.”
In this market, would you buy a home at auction? Dallas real estate market research guru Residential Strategies has it’s eye on a newbie called Radius Management, thinking folks might warm up to the idea: in 1999, $49.5 billion worth of real estate was sold by auction in the United States, and the National Association of Realtors projects that 30% of all U.S. real estate will be sold through auctions within eight years. NAR even provides links to more than 100 auction companies, which may sound surprising but there’s a protective caveat — auctioneers must either have a real estate license themselves or hire a real estate licensee to handle sales in all 50 states.
Live auctions are a $270.7 billion dollar industry with positive growth. The fastest-growing segments are real estate – land, agricultural, commercial and industrial. And with the continued dismal news about our market, sellers and agents love the quick turnaround potential: one man’s poison could be a buyer’s bargain in five minutes – that’s how long the average auction takes. Live auction real estate revenue has grown 5.3% since 2006.
Jean-Paul Puryear, Warren Barreto and Butler Nooner are banking on that. Their Dallas auction company, Radius Management, aims to change the way real estate is sold in Texas.
My husband just called and told me to copy and laminate Steve Brown’s Real Estate Report in today’s DMN. (Our neighborhood values, he says, have declined almost 30%.) Why laminate? Because next Friday, the Dallas County Appraisal District will be mailing out thousands of notices of valuation on all our properties. My sources tell me they are going to have to enlarge the parking down at DCAD offices: it’s going to be a bloodbath. As for Browns’ reporting, he’s right on: what’s moving, if anything, are first time home buyers in starter homes — less than $100,000 to $300,000, spurred by the $8000 first time home buyer credit. (Stay tuned.) Homes above $500,000 to $2.5 million are sitting. Cannot move. Cannot get loans unless you have near perfect credit (”Nothing less than 620,” says Barbara Meager at Granite Mortgage) and big time equity. (Credit scores are the new SAT.) But what Steve didn’t tell you is that over the $2.5 to $3 million dollar mark, the mega homes are moving under the radar, off MLS, as I’ve told you on this blog and elsewhere.