The sky is a little brighter this week.

The sun has been shining more in Perrysburg.

And there are lots more accepted offers and buyer offer writing action in play.

Even though things could change.

And even though national indices are split – with sales down and values up.

It’s a confusing market.

But . . . “all real estate is local”.

So here is my take on the recent spate of action in the 43551:

Affordability

• Affordability is at its highest level in the past several decades.
• Many Perrysburg homes now cost 30-40% less than they did 6 or 7 years ago.

Pent-Up Demand

• Many of today’s buyers need to buy because their families have grown, they just moved here, they got a promotion or a raise, and other valid reasons.
• Sellers who hung on during our real estate decline have paid down debt (including mortgage debt), saved their money, and are now ready to move up.

Low Interest Rates

• Interest rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages remain below 4% and rates for 15-year mortgages are even less.
• Buyers are realizing that these rates are certain to rise if our national economy regains it footing.

Buyers Believe There’s Little Downside

• Buyers who were previously afraid they would lose money if they bought a home are now realizing that the risk is reduced and that they have waited long enough.
• Prices in the Perrysburg real estate market have stabilized in most segments of the market.
• The grim bloodletting in the suburbs is almost over – with values rationalized and the flight to safety of steadier values in the periphery of Toledo increasing values.

Cheaper To Own Than Rent

• It used to be cheaper to rent than own a home, but that has changed.
• Rents are soaring and now exceed the cost of home ownership in many instances.
• Given a choice, most renters would rather own their own home than pay off their landlord’s mortgage with their rent payments.

I was in Chicago last week at a technology mastermind meeting . . . . for one of the tech products that I provide and use.

It was a great meeting.   I learned a lot.  I will be making some changes based on what I learned.

One upshot:  Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and other real estate technology companies are relentlessly improving.

If you use one of these applications on your iPad . . . they seem to average an app update about every 2 weeks.

When our local Board of Realtors looks at a platform change – that’s a 3 year process.

Even a software update to our current MLS is a 6 month to 12 month action item . . .

Relentless change by vendors with millions of users vs a local board with 1200 users simply cannot be competed with.

So I expect that the search tools consumers use will continue to outpace the tools used by Realtors behind closed walls.

There is also a blizzard of new and diverse applications that hit the market for smartphones every day.

There are too many to keep up with.

So when I meet up with some agents from other areas, and we talk at length while breaking bread, it invariably happens now that one will pull out an iPhone, show me an app that solved a problem or provides a better solution . . . and then in 30 seconds it is up and running on my iPhone.

In the past?  That was a trip back home.   A phone call to arrange a demo.  A CD arriving to install.  Time to test and evaluate.  Then a purchase decision with training or data conversion to follow.

Now?

Done in one minute.  I might risk $1.99 to $3.99.

The pace of change is faster.   The cost of evaluation and a mistake is miniscule.

What’s next?  My guesses:

Agents ability to predict what buyers are looking for and what they need to look at – driven by smart programming and algorithms is coming.

Total elimination of paper in the transaction is on the horizon – and I look forward to that.

Tools to help buyers predict the value of what they are looking at.

Tools and apps to help sellers rank agents or rate agents.

Tools and apps to allow better mortgage decisions, better title decisions, and better house buying decisions.

All coming soon – in a disruptive, chaotic manner.

Think back, if you can, to how you web tools changed travel, stock buying, mutual funds, and shopping for a car.

That’s the kind of technology change awaiting real estate.

One of my rare – and shameless – listing posts.

New on the market – and redone inside by the corporate owner with new paint, carpet, and appliances.

Rossford Schools in Perrysburg Township.

4 beds and 2.5 baths.   An interesting and 60% finished hidden room off of the master closet . . . retreat?  Office?  Safe house?  You decide.

$140,900 is all – and there is a “HomePath” option for any buyer:  no appraisal.  No PMI.  All closing costs can be financed also.

The one in which I tell you all the terrible ways that your loan/loan application/deal can implode?

Well it was true.

And it is accurate.

But it was not very, how can I put this?   It was not very “PROACTIVE”.

Helpful would be a better word.

So I want to be helpful.

And you can therefore download a free copy of my newest, latest, greatest Special Report right HERE. 

And it will proactively, and helpfully tell you what you can do to AVOID having your deal/loan/closing implode.

Because I always try to be helpful!

There really is too much news and too much going on to make the requisite 3 or 5 or 8 blog posts to cover it all.

Hence a summary:

1. FHA refi costs going down.   At least announced.  

2. Property values in Ohio going down.  At least that’s what the numbers say. 

3. Temperatures going up.   That’s what my Mark 1 eyeball is telling me.  Didn’t it snow at some point this Winter?  I don’t remember.

4. Mr. Freeze opened up in February.  See 3, above.   At least that’s what my kids tell me. 

5. Short sales . . . . I am holding in my hand a short sale approval letter.   It has only only taken 3 years – 1000+ days – to get.   So, don’t walk away from your house.  Short sell it.

6. Foreclosure delays.   A house that was foreclosed on in 2009 and I released my listing on as the seller was told “no” vis a vis a short sale was discovered to be empty this morning.  With a buyer standing in it.  On the phone to me since my sign was in the house or the garage . . . so I checked the auditor and low and behold it’s not sold, not foreclosed, just ignored.   2012-2009 = a huge amount of time for a house to be empty and ignored and the underlying loan to be in default.   Amazing.

7. 18 offers on one house – which shall remain nameless at this point.  A record in my real estate career.   Oh, and that’s not offers dribbling in over a couple of months.   No.  That’s offers in at one time.

8. Out in the field – ordering paint, carpet, kitchens, doors, etc. for a bunch of foreclosed houses in Perrysburg and the Township today.   My staff said that we are creating our own recovery with the spending.   That may be true – but at least we can show you some really nice REO listings.

9. Client Movie Day this Saturday at the Maumee Indoor Theater.  Totally sold out.

10. I only had a 4 or 5 minute break to watch some iPad 3 stuff this AM.   Love mine.  Use it on every appointment.   Someone is going to marry the new iPad 3 with real time paperwork and money-work processing and it will change my business again.   I cannot wait.

Well, it’s not really a big mystery.

Three Meadows is “newer” than Colonial Acres.

In the 1800′s and 1900′s?  It was a farm – with lots of apple trees and apple orchards and mature trees and woods.

It was a huge – in fact at the time in the 1970′s – the largest master planned community in Northwest Ohio ever developed.

Mixed use.  Recreation. Commercial.  Residential.

Oh . . . and I grew up in Three Meadows.  So it’s near and dear to my heart.

But there’s another subdivision there – and it was there first:  Colonial Acres.

The houses are pretty much the same.  The layout is the same.  The location is adjacent.

What’s the difference?

The mailbox!   If the mailbox is the fancy, painted wood, brown and gold trim colored style?  You are in Three Meadows.

Regular mailbox – the house is in Colonial Acres.

I will dovetail this arcane Perrysburg real estate tip with my newest Perrysburg listing -

904 Bexton in Colonial Acres.

3 beds, den, Florida room, newer David Hahn kitchen, fireplace, all appliances.

And most importantly to me . . .  it overlooks the backyard of my best friend in Middle School and Perrysburg High School – Carlos Weeber.  We used to play with his dog Saddie adjacent to this house.  And then head out . . . . in his Porsche 914 to cause trouble and mayhem all around Perrysburg.  But those stories and the resulting arrest records/damage claims/insurance settlements must all remain sealed at this time . . .

The house in question?  Updated.  Mint condition. Impeccable.

The neighborhood?  Well, now you know about the history and design of Three Meadows/Colonial Acres.

And since the local miscreants have all gone on and moved on to professional positions in sales/management/medicine/and public service . . . the quality of the area has only gone up.

This is the back yard view – from Carlos’s old yard to help bring back my memories.

$149,900 buys it.   And the estates’ “tag sale” is in a couple of weeks if you want to pick up some great furniture.

I usually have a slew of real estate meetings that all fall in January.  This year was no exception.   Cyberstars – an industry mastermind group that I am part of was in Fort Worth, Inman Connect a brokerage/industry conference was in Manhattan earlier last month.  Add in a REO conference and a CRS conference (which I could not make this year . . . but usually go to) and it’s a lot of travel compressed in a brief time.

My take-aways and how they will impact the real estate industry and Perrysburg market:

1. Mobile – whether it’s mobile advertising, mobile video taking, mobile presentation of offers/contracts is accelerating.  I now assume buyers and sellers have internet enabled mobile devices.  How mobile are things going?  I am now taking earnest money and rent payments on my iPhone.  This tool is how . . .  

2. Perrysburg is a great place to call home and to travel from – DTW is so close and yet we don’t have to deal with Detroit congestion.  We have it good.

3. We have multiple offers on great listings.   Many markets have multiple offers on EVERY listing.

4. Video.  Google’s full integration of social media into search is intersecting with the multiplicity of video cameras extant (they are on just about every phone now) and driving video/YouTube stats into the upper atmosphere.

5. No one at any of my meetings/conferences/confabs talked about interest rates, overcoming buyer interest rate problems, finding creative financing solutions.  I guess that when interest rates are about 3% no one has any interest rate ideas.

6. Unoccupied homes are the poison in the market . . . in any market.  1.5% empty is supposed equilibrium.  We “should” hit that in 2 years nationally.  Perrysburg?  Less than 1% by my guess.

7. Facebook is getting more and more business savvy – and they will need to leverage a lot of advertising dollars to support their IPO valuation.   Look for more FB products, ads, services, and tie-ins.  Especially in my industry – real estate as Farmville gets old after a while.

8. Did I mention that it’s great to live in Perrysburg?  It is.  Travel is nice – for a while.  But what a blessing to have a great home town in the great state of Ohio in the greatest country in the world.

Why? What?

“REO” is of course banked owned foreclosed property.

And it’s strange how things sometimes run in streaks.

Today – I wrote an offer on very sharp 43551 REO listing.

Showed one.

Listed one.

That’s all normal . . . here is what is interesting:

1. A new RIVER ROAD REO property (30571 East River Rd.)  On the water.  That does not happen every day – in fact it’s incredibly rare.  $175k.  2500 sq. feet.  Township with Rossford Schools.  Last sold for $100k more . . .

2. A “builder’s own home” type REO listing.  We are putting new carpeting in it as I write this – with a 3 car garage, finished basement, and all the bling/bling you would expect.  $180s’ with close to 3000 sq. feet – and I think it’s worth LOTS more . . .it’s open this Sunday from 1 to 3.  507 Harrison Dr. in Shawnee Trace.  It just might be underpriced by $30k . . . at least!

“Clean it up”

“Pick up your mess”

Well . . . if you have children you know the lingo.  But you have to keep your house neat in order to do a great job and keep every visitor happy.

So . . . while I am at a real estate technology mastermind group it seems like a good time to tell you that the blog you are reading is now fully enabled and cleaned up for your use on your mobile device.

Real estate web stats are growing almost exponentially for mobile devices vs. old fashioned desktop devices.

And the odds are that you are/will be viewing my site on a mobile device – so it now looks different and works better on your iPad or iPhone or Android device.

13.

That’s how many new build houses are on the MLS as I write this.

13.

In a city/township of almost 50,ooo people.

That’s. Not. Many.

13.

The new construction market has imploded.  Died.  The builders are gone.  Busted.  The developers are gone.  Broke.   The few homes on the market are by very specialized and savvy niche builders.

And they tend more towards building for contract rather than speculation.

Want a new home?  You are going to have to sign a contract and have your financing in place.  That’s how it works in 2012.

(By way of the old memory bank . . . it worked this way in 2005 – we would get in a car and show you 25 houses in various stages of completion in Perrysburg and if you didn’t like any of them we would have one build just for you . . . )

How bad was it nationwide?  National TOTAL new construction sales fell 2.2% from last month to a rate of 307,000 annualized.  The total in 2010 was 323,000, the lowest amount since record keeping began in 1963.

That’s the dead cat thud.

There is now nowhere to go but up . . . right?

Builders have to be very careful . . . but there is no competition if you have a spec or can build on a contract.

Buyers?  Better be ready to rent while you build!