joemanausa

The herd mentality in real estate is often funny at times. Experts pop up and spout their sage truths, and everybody seems to follow suit until a new prophet (or profit) arrives. So, in order to help our readers know just which direction the market is heading, I have created the Manausa Housing Herd Barometer which can be employed in any market, at any time, to determine what is going to be happening next . Avoid The Housing Herd In Real Estate As we observe in the graphic above, an... Read Full Story

I received an thought provoking email yesterday from Tallahassee Realtor Jay Novak . The message made me wonder if there was a current real estate relativity index, which might reflect long-term values of common assets when compared to real estate . For example, how has a 2000 Rolls-Royce Corniche Convertible fared financially when compared to a home in the Tallahassee real estate market? When the 2000 Rolls-Royce Corniche Convertible hit the market, only 374 were built and they sold for... Read Full Story

I have found that there are many home selling lessons that can be learned on the golf course . This weekend my good friend, Ron Rice, was in town to participate with me in a golf tournament at Golden Eagle Country Club. He and I like to compete in tournaments, and through the years we have discovered that though we are not necessarily that good of players, we seldom make mental errors in tournaments. Our favorite quote that we use to remind ourselves about the importance of the “mental... Read Full Story

The past two blog posts have been dedicated to thinking outside of the box and using creative real estate solutions for home sellers who are having a tough go at selling their homes in the Tallahassee real estate market. Yesterday, we posted two riddles and asked readers to respond with the correct solution, and “Bill” was the first to respond with both correct answers. The correct answers for our creative real estate riddles were: He was a lighthouse keeper. The other three were... Read Full Story

Yesterday I posted some riddles and asked if our readers could solve them ( click here to visit yesterday’s real estate blog ). I was pointing out the parallel between these tricky riddles and the daily problems that home sellers in our struggling real estate market  face every day. Both require creative thinking (outside of the box thinking) to effectively solve. Yesterday’s sleuth was David Freni , who was the first to post the correct answers in the comments section at the Tallahassee... Read Full Story

I received a great newsletter from a friend, David Rich, who included a few “ thinking outside of the box ” riddles that made me see a parallel between what we are doing now to help people sell their homes and solving these riddles. When the housing market is balanced (supply and demand are at equilibrium), it does not take a whole lot of skill to sell a home. In fact, during the boom years when everybody acted as if they wanted to own several homes, real estate agents only had to get “out... Read Full Story

Home sellers are competing for an increasingly smaller pool of homebuyers, and our recent housing market reports are providing proof that the market is going to be tough going for home sellers for some time to come. In case you missed yesterday’s blog on the rapid growth of foreclosure sales , it is worth a review. The bittersweet news is that banks are finally starting to really take action on their bad loans, but this is going to flood the market over the next 6 to 18 months with bank... Read Full Story

After conducting a preliminary study on foreclosures and lis pendens in Leon County last week, we knew that something exciting was happening and it needed to be analyzed with much more scrutiny. In case you missed the blog, it was titled Tallahassee Foreclosure Report Posts Postive News and it contained evidence that the banks were both slowing down on new lis pendens filings, as well as speeding up on pushing through foreclosure sales. For those of you new to the Tallahassee Real Estate... Read Full Story

A lot of homeowners who are upside down in their homes are wondering how to handle a short sale . They are plagued by rumors, incorrect assumptions, and hearsay that often times leads them away from making the best decisions . Long time reader “Sarah” read yesterday’s blog regarding Parents of FSU Students who are looking at real estate to offset (reduce) the cost of college and wondered how this could help her decide how to handle her short sale situation. She asked: What of home... Read Full Story

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... Read Full Story