E-News – June 10, 2013
June 18, 2013 Leave a comment
| 2014 CVAR Election | |||||
| CVAR’s online voting is still open! A President-Elect
and four Directors will be elected. Online voting will remain open until 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 20th. Remember, your vote counts! Instructions for voting:
CLICK HERE to cast your vote until June 20th at 4:00pm. |
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| Video Boot Camp – June 17, 2013 @ Central Park Community Center in Rancho Cucamonga | |||
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| Summer Kick-Off – June 13, 2013 | |||
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| CAR: One Cool Thing | |
| Tech Blog: Agents Now Fighting Their Real Estate Wars Online | |
| Back in 2010, the web was a much different place. The majority of people surfed the web from their laptops or desktops; those who did access the Internet from a smartphone or feature phone were limited by their 3G networks; social media and user-targeted ads were the future of digital marketing; geolocation and local search were still in their infancy; and less than 20 percent of the top 500,000 websites were mobile friendly?
Three years later, all of this has changed thanks to advances in device technology and the ensuing explosion of the mobile web. Today, more than 40 percent of Zillow’s weekend traffic comes from mobile devices. That number is even higher for Realtor.com, with 45 percent of its weekend traffic coming from mobile. |
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| CVAR Government Affairs: CAR Action Item Regarding Tax Relief | |
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Senate Pulls Dirty Trick! Tries to Punish C.A.R. for Opposing Recording Tax by Holding C.A.R.’s Tax Relief Bill Hostage! Call your Senator NOW! Urge a NO vote on the Recording Tax and a YES vote on Tax Relief! In a surprise move this week, the Senate Appropriations Committee linked C.A.R. SPONSORED bill, SB 30, which provides tax relief to those who are selling a home in a short sale, to SB 391, a C.A.R. opposed bill that creates a recording tax, using a shameful political maneuver to force C.A.R. to support the recording tax. As now linked, SB 30 can only become law if SB 391 becomes law. Once SB 391 is defeated, the link in SB 30 can be removed. REALTORS® and the public should be OUTRAGED that distressed homeowners are being held hostage by Senate Leadership. |
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| NAR YPN Lounge Blog: Quick Facts You Need to Know About the Mortgage Interest Deduction | |
| When talking to associates and the public about real estate topics, it’s important to be educated on the issues that we value most as REALTORS®. Government fiscal and tax policy can be confusing issues that many REALTORS® don’t feel they have time for. Still, anyone working in the industry is bound to strike up a conversation that leads to the current budget shortfall and potential ways to fix it. Reducing or eliminating the Mortgage Interest Deduction is often suggested.
REALTOR® advocates need to know a few quick facts to show our clients and our communities why this deduction is so important to homeowners, families, and the country as a whole. This infographic makes the major points that every REALTOR® should be able to recount, without getting mired in the muck of too much tax policy: |
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| Inman News: Rentals Are Hot and So Are the Tools to Manage Them | |
| As those 27-year-olds start rolling out of bed in mom’s basement and begin setting out on their own, the rental market is where they’re headed first and tech companies (and agents) are beginning to cater to them.
More agent REALTORS® are specializing in rentals in 2013 than they have in the last 15 years according to the National Association of REALTORS® 2013 member survey. In the 2013 survey, 6 percent of the agent REALTORS® surveyed noted that their primary business specialty was property management, a higher percentage in any year since 2007. In 2012 it was 5 percent, in 2011 it was 4 percent.
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| The Wall Street Journal: Corporate Buyers Boosting Prices in House-Sales Boom | |
| Double-digit home-price gains from San Francisco to Detroit to Miami have some aspiring home buyers racing back into the market.
But buyers, beware. The housing market may not be as strong as you think.
Sure it’s tempting to want to lock in a low interest rate and take advantage of lower home prices before they rise further.
But it may make sense to take a breather before you buy a home and wait for prices to drop, as institutional investors might be inflating home prices.
Namely, Wall Street investors are scooping up homes in bulk, and there’s considerable concern this is inflating prices in certain areas of the country-and pricing individuals out of the market in general.
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| CNN Money: From Gatsby to Mad Men: Home Decor Through the Decades | |
| From the tin ceilings of the 1910’s to the millennial “snail showers,” these designs elements and amenities were certainly signs of their times. And, according to Trulia, they can often be big selling points for homeowners.
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| Slate Magazine: The Shine Is Off | |
| The run-up in gold prices in recent years-from $800 an ounce in early 2009 to above $1,900 in the fall of 2011-had all the features of a bubble. And now, like all asset-price surges that are divorced from the fundamentals of supply and demand, the gold bubble is deflating.
At the peak, gold bugs-a combination of paranoid investors and others with a fear-based political agenda-were happily predicting gold prices going to $2,000, $3,000, and even to $5,000 in a matter of years. But prices have moved mostly downward since then. In April, gold was selling for close to $1,300 per ounce-and the price is still hovering below $1,400, an almost 30 percent drop from the 2011 high.
There are many reasons why the bubble has burst, and why gold prices are likely to move much lower, toward $1,000 by 2015.
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