Posts Tagged ‘realtytrac’

For home buyers and real estate investors, foreclosure site RealtyTrac now has expanded property valuation tools that any consumer-facing real estate vertical provider might do well to emulate.  Each new feature listed is displayed by number in the screenshot below.

They are: Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent survey of U.S. homeowners, real estate site Trulia and foreclosure site RealtyTrac found that only one percent of homeowners with a mortgage would consider walking away their first choice if their home were underwater. A total of 69 percent would plan first to modify their loan; 59 percent would never walk away no matter how underwater the property.

The online survey, conducted by Harris Interactive May 10-12, also found a significant decrease in interest in the purchase of foreclosed properties, although renters are considering foreclosure purchase more than they did last year.  Compared to the 55 percent of U.S. adults that were at least somewhat likely to consider buying a foreclosure this time last year, only 45 percent are thinking about it now. In contrast, however, fewer consumers think that a foreclosure carries stigma. In May 2009 85 percent noted downsides to foreclosure purchase, while this year’s figure is only 78 percent. Concerns include hidden costs, risky process, and loss of home value.

“For every borrower who avoided foreclosure through HAMP last year, another 10 families lost their homes,” said Trulia CEO and co-founder Pete Flint, in the announcement. “It now seems clear that government programs will not reach the overwhelming majority of homeowners in trouble. Combined with decreased consumer interest around purchasing a foreclosure it may take even longer than anticipated to see true health return to the real estate market.”

The survey also pointed out consumer expectations of foreclosure discounts, with 95 percent expecting to pay less for a foreclosed home that for a similar property not in foreclosure. 18 percent of adults in the U.S. expect a discount of 25 percent for foreclosures, while 36 percent expect to save at least 50 percent.

Of current U.S. renters, 57 percent are likely or somewhat likely to purchase a distressed property, and the younger they are the more interested they are. In the 18-34 age group, 65 percent are giving foreclosures some thought, as are 63 percent of those 35-44, and 54 percent of 45-54 year old renters. Of those 55 year plus renters, only 31 percent would consider buying a foreclosed property.

Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services, Inc., part of Prudential Financial, Inc, and online foreclosure marketplace RealtyTrac just announced an expansion of their business relationship to more powerfully integrate RealtyTrac’s national foreclosure data into Prudential’s national property listing Web site.
Consumers will be able to easily search more than 2 million U.S. default, auction and REO properties in the RealtyTrac database from the Prudential site’s Foreclosure tab.

“Distressed properties represent a sizable portion of the current market and will continue to do so for some time,” said Earl Lee, president, Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services, in the announcement. “We want to be sure our customers have the latest foreclosure information and, while working with Prudential Real Estate sales professionals, make the best property decisions.”

This expanded relationship makes the RealtyTrac Professional program avaiable to Prudential Real Estate Network brokers and agents.  We talked to Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac SVP, about the program.

“What we have is 2 levels of subscription and a la carte lead programs; in order to qualify for lead programs you have to be a member of some standing,” he told us. “You can subscribe to the site and use it for your own market research and farming and posting properties for $59.95 a month.”

For partners such as Prudential Real Estate, however, RealtyTrac has introduced a discounted $19.95 rate for the partners’ agents and brokers. 

“This gives them full access that our other subscribers have and then they’re eligible if they want to get involved in our a la carte lead programs, like live phone transfers if someone in the local area phones us looking for help from an agent,” said Sharga. The leads are prescreened, to assure the buyer is actively house hunting and not already working with another agent. 

The second level of subscription is a territory agent, who is given exclusive rights to promote her or himself on a chosen ZIP on the RealtyTrac Web site. That price depends on how large and how active the ZIP code is.
 
Founded in 1996, RealtyTrac publishes a national database of pre-foreclosure, foreclosure, For Sale By Owner, resale and new construction properties, with more than 1 million properties across the country, property reports, productivity tools and extensive professional resources. RealtyTrac hosts nearly 3 million unique visitors monthly and has been chosen to supply foreclosure data to MSN Real Estate, Yahoo! Real Estate and The Wall Street Journal’s Real Estate Journal.

Prudential Real Estate is one of the largest real estate brokerage franchise networks in North America, with nearly 1,700 franchise offices and approximately 60,000 sales professionals in the franchise Network as of Dec. 31, 2009.

Primedia will begin using RealtyTrac’s foreclosure content.

Primedia is most widely known for its widely distributed apartment guides across the U.S. and runs ApartmentGuide.com, RentalHouses.com and Rentals.com, the latter of which has a foreclosures section. It also prints a new-home guide in many markets and runs companion Web site NewHomeGuide.com, as well as AmericanHomeGuides.com, which besides new construction has a searchable list of foreclosure properties.

Primedia SVP Arlene Mayfield said that consumer interest in foreclosures was “on the rise as consumers continue to consider and evaluate them as potential investment opportunities.”

She said that visits to AmericanHomeGuide’s foreclosure section nearly tripled in Q1, while foreclosures on Rentals.com jumped 72 percent in the same quarter.

RealtyTrac Inc. has about 1.5 million foreclosure listings U.S.-wide, roughly half what the company estimates to be actual number of foreclosures.

Consumers’ attitudes about buying foreclosed homes are “rapidly evolving” in a positive direction, according to Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia. “Consumers are more interested than ever in buying foreclosures (and) the purchase of these properties is key to the recovery,” Flint said in a media conference call.

Trulia and RealtyTrac conducted a survey this month that said that 55 percent of U.S. adults would be at least somewhat likely to consider purchasing a foreclosed home, up from 47 percent of adults polled in a similar survey last November.

Those numbers are not without caveats. 85 percent of consumers polled said they were concerned about the negative aspects of purchasing foreclosed properties, up from 80 percent in the last survey. Of those voicing concerns, 71 percent said they were most worried about hidden costs.

Clients using Gabriels Technology’s real estate platform can now allow users to search foreclosure listings. The new functionality will be co-branded with RealtyTrac, which is providing the listings.

Gabriels, which counts as clients The New York Times and Hearst Newspapers, says the new product will help publishers cement their position as the go-to real estate destination for their local market.

RealtyTrac has been aggressively promoting its listings through partnerships. A foreclosure widget was launched in February through a partnership with custom Web applications developer Caspio Inc. In April RealtyTrac began distributing listings on global property search website Enormo.com.

Global property search website Enormo.com has added one million listings to its index through a partnership with U.S. foreclosure marketplace RealtyTrac. The partnership will give Enormo users access to foreclosure listings across 2,200 U.S. counties. The partnership will also allow RealtyTrac to accept international subscriptions through Enormo’s translation of RealtyTrac marketing messages into its 31 interface languages.

Enormo.com CEO Yannick Laclau said that the timing was perfect. “The strength of other currencies against the dollar combined with the great value of U.S. housing stock is driving interest from new investors who want a piece of the foreclosure action,” he said.

Enormo.com now lists approximately 8.5 million properties across 76 separate domains.

Here’s a sliver of good news: RealtyTrac is reporting that foreclosures actually declined 7 percent in November from the previous month. OK, that’s still up 28 percent from November 2007, but we’ll take our blessings where we get them.

The numbers: 259,085 properties received a foreclosure filing during November. That’s one in every 488 U.S. housing units.

The reasons for the November drop, according James Saccacio, CEO of RealtyTrac: “Recently enacted laws that have extended the foreclosure process in some states, along with more aggressive loan modification programs and self-imposed holiday foreclosure moratoriums introduced by some lenders.

Unfortunately, Saccacio predicts this is just a “temporary lull before another foreclosure storm hits in the coming months.”

Who topped the foreclosure list? Nevada, Florida and Arizona. In Nevada, one in every 76 housing units received a foreclosure filing during the month, up a whopping 109 percent from last year. In Florida, one in every 173 housing units received a foreclosure filing, nearly three times the national average. Arizona had a foreclosure filing rate of one in every 198 housing units.

Other states with foreclosure rates ranking among the top 10 were California, Michigan, Georgia, Ohio, Colorado, Utah and Idaho.

On a city by city level, the worst hit were Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fort Lauderdale, and Port Lucie-Fort Pierce all in Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; and in California: Merced, Modesto, Stockton, Riverside-San Bernardino, Bakersfield and Vallejo-Fairfield.

U.S. foreclosures have hit another high. According to RealtyTrac, foreclosures increased in the third quarter by 71 percent from the same period in 2007. The fall in the housing market is the biggest in 17 years.

That’s not all. The price of property fell by 5.9 percent from the previous year – the biggest fall since 1991 – according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency which started collecting data from that year. The National Association of Realtors put the price drop average at 9.5 percent in August..

A potential silver lining: foreclosure filing actually dropped by 12 percent in September compared to August. But this was largely because a number of states enacted laws to contain the flood. For example, in North Carolina, a law was passed making it mandatory for lenders to give 45 days notice before proceeding with foreclosures. A similar law in California makes it compulsory for lenders to meet borrowers before resorting to foreclosure.