Lauren Consolazio

Reports suggest Mass. home buyers overcoming qualms – The Boston Globe

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WASHINGTON—New home sales rose last month at the fastest clip in more than eight years as buyers eagerly took advantage of bargain prices — a clear sign, economists said, that the real estate market may finally be bouncing back. Discuss COMMENTS (33) Historically low interest rates and a federal tax credit for first-time homeowners also helped push home sales to their highest level since November, the Commerce Department reported Monday. While home prices are still falling around the country, sales have now risen for three months in a row. Construction of new homes is at the busiest level since last fall. And home resales rose in June for the third straight month. “The worst of the housing recession,” said David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities, “is now behind us.” And as with the overall economy, the “recovery” is likely to be slow and arduous, he said. To read the rest of this article on Boston.com click here.

Published on June 17, 2009 | Media Buyer Planner

Home buyers in the U.S. are twice as likely to use online sources than print sources to find information about open houses they are interested in, according to a survey commissioned by Trulia and conducted by Harris Interactive.

The study found that 62% of U.S. home buyers use or plan to use online sites to find open houses, compared with 53% who use/plan to use information from real estate agents, 36% who use/plan to use neighborhood signs and less than one-third (31%), who use/plan to use print sources, including newspapers, writes Marketing Charts.

Though many home buyers rely upon a range of different sources to gather information about open houses, 41% say online sources are their primary resource, while 14% cite print sources, the survey found.

“The real estate section of the weekend newspaper is no longer the go-to resource for open houses,” said Sami Inkinen, co-founder and COO of Trulia. “Home buyers are increasingly going online to not only search for the most up to date listings but also to obtain rich information about the neighborhood, schools, and local shops.”

Inkinen added that online sites – such as Trulia – and related iPhone applications have experienced dramatic growth in recent years because they enable home buyers to search for open houses in neighborhoods that interest them, sign up for email alerts and learn more about the local areas in which they’re looking.

“We used to see home buyers walk into open houses with a newspaper in their hands,” said Aman Daro, vp of integrated marketing at McGuire Real Estate in San Francisco. “But now they walk in with print-outs of their search on the web. What’s more, consumers are walking in very educated from their online research – they know details about the property and the neighborhood, and are more highly engaged in the process than the causal lookers of years past.”

About the survey: This April 2009 survey was commissioned by Trulia and conducted online within the US by Harris Interactive via its QuickQuery(SM) online omnibus between April 23-27, 2009 among 2,715 U.S. adults ages 18+. For purposes of the survey, “home buyers,” have been defined as the 192 respondents in this sample who purchased a home in the past 12 months or plan to purchase a home in the next 12 months. Results were weighted to be representative of the total US adult population on the basis of region, age within gender, education, household income, race/ethnicity, and propensity to be online.

 Remember a couple months ago when I sent out a newsletter saying the market was REALLY busy? Well, the latest report from the National Association of Realtors says that pending sales of existing homes, or contracts signed but not closed, rose 6.7% in April. April’s pending sales were up 3.2 percent from a year ago, the NAR said.

     The biggest increase in April was in the Northeast, where pending sales jumped 32.6 percent from the previous month. The NAR’s pending home sales index is a forward-looking gauge, and the group cautions that it is more volatile than actual closed sales. “The relationship between contracts on pending home sales and closings on existing home sales is taking longer than in the past for several reasons,” NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said. “Mortgage processing time has increased, it is taking many months to close on those homes requiring short sales with lender approval, and some sales are falling through at the last moment.” Still, Yun says he believes the housing market has already bottomed out in some areas.