rentBits Logo
aboutRental ToolsBlogContact us

Archive for the ‘Real Estate News’ Category

Making Many Marketing Channels Drive NOI

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

If you are ad executive or marketing professional in the multifamily space, you must attend the AIM conference that will be held in Huntington Beach April 28th - 30th.AIM 2010 features cutting- edge business education designed to help simplify using multiple marketing channels to achieve a targeted ROI occupancy level.“A decade ago Internet Listing ...

Real Estate Outlook 2010 (Jan ‘10)

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Borrell Associates just released their report on Real Estate for 2010.In the report they discuss:It will take another 3-5 years for the residential side of the market to rebound. One is seven mortgages are delinquent or in foreclosure and unemployment is likely to stat at 10% or higher.Total spending on real estate ...

Detroit Real Estate Continues to Decline

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Y-O-Y Detroit home values have dropped 15%.  Average rental rates have also decreased Y-O-Y by about 15% and last year was named one of the countries emptiest cities.Detroit Homes For SaleThe houses for rent in Detroit are also sitting on the market longer and many are going into foreclosure. The unemployment rate is around 15.4% and ...

Views from the World’s Tallest Building

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

This is pretty incredible. View from the The Burj Dubai. It reminds me of my days (day) of sky diving.

NeighborhoodScout - 15 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods for Property Crime

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

My Friend, Dr Andrew Schiller, put together a list of the top 15 most dangerous neighborhoods for property crime."Using exclusive neighborhood crime data developed by Dr. Andrew Schiller at NeighborhoodScout.com, and based on FBI data, these are the neighborhoods in America that have the highest rates of property crime.These are not ...

A Fresh Angle For Selling Homes – Sustainability

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

By Denise ZocchiDuring my daily browse of the real estate news on NYTimes.com, an interesting article popped up which ties in well to yesterday’s posting about making your home a little greener. The article speaks about Michael Namer, a NY resident and condo developer, who chose to design his condos with ...

The Top Strangest Celebrity Homes

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Every week we come across some of the strangest real estate news out there. This week, we’ve decided to highlight some of the craziest celebrity homes we’ve encountered.Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch - Los Olivos, CAStrange homes can’t be discussed without first mentioning Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. Since he first ...

Top 10 Safest Cities to Live

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

The ideal city is one that provides the thriving culture of like New York City, with the safety of suburban neighborhoods like  Greenich, CT.  Cities that meet these qualities do exist and according to a ranking published last week by Forbes.Com, they aren’t that far off the map.Forbes.com safest cities in America ...

Google Mortgage - LendingTree Lawsuit

Friday, August 28th, 2009

According to the Wallstreet Journal, LendingTree is suing Mortech, which provides a loan technology service that LendingTree uses, for breaching their confidentiality agreement. A few months back, Google began testing a Merchant search service in the UK that compares lenders and LendingTree is concerned that trade secrets may have been exposed.Here arethe FAqs for the ...

Apartments.com Study - 90% of Renters Search Across Multiple Sites

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Earlier this year, Apartments.com conducted a national survey to more than 1,600 renters on their 2009 moving plans. One of the findings of this survey showed that about 90% of renters surveyed said they will search multiple apartment websites for their next apartment.The online rental industry will continue to become more fragmented. ...

The Real Estate Bubble - The TV Commercial that Says it all

Friday, November 28th, 2008

From PickRent.com: [youtube]7Pzim8O7Fd0[/youtube]

RedFin Lays off 20% of its Workforce

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

"A Very Tough Day" says Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin who yesterday had to lay off 20% of his staff. "Unlike other startups, our industry's recession started a year ago, when home prices first plunged." says Kelman.Kelman's final words in his post "Redfin's whole business will struggle and fight and ...

Newspaper Print and Online Revenues Down Year over Year

Tuesday, September 9th, 2008

Pete Flint at Trulia analyzed the revenue numbers from naa.org this week and this is what he found. Here’s the summary: Total print ads in Q2 were down 16% year-over-year   Online ads came to only $777M in Q2, down 2.4% from the year before Real Estate Classified ads were down 36% over the prior year   

Regional Rental Site RentBlurb Looking to Sell

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

Aaron Hassen, the owner of RentBlurb contacted me this morning letting me know he is looking to sell his 4 year old company RentBlurb.com. RentBlurb is a local rental site that has strong search engine rankings in the Florida market. From Compete.com, the top keywords that drive traffic to this site ...

Can the Newspapers Be Saved?

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

I recently read that The LA Times has cut a section of their newspaper that is over 100 years old. The section, you guessed it, Real Estate! Why? Because the print classifieds model is broken. If things continue as they are, we will see other sections being axed as well. John Keister ...

Insights for Rental Search

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

Google just released Google Insights for Search and it allows users to compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames. I compared Apartments for Rent and Houses for rent and here is what I found: There is a cyclical nature to rental search. Florida has the highest concentration of renters ...

Mortgage Crisis - Higher Risk - Higher Rates - Broken Model?

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008



Virgin Home Loan Financing - Be the Bank

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

The Virgin Group, a conglomerate of separately owned companies that use the Virgin brand, is getting into the Peer 2 Peer lending market. They recently released a loan program that can help your loved one buy a  home. Nothing like the awkward silence at Dinner. "Um, Jimmy, you are 6 months ...

Landmark Communications to Sell Weather Channel to NBC

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

In January we wrote that Landmark Communications was looking to sell their assets. Landmark owns The Weather Channel and runs Dominion Enterprises which owns sites like ForRent.com, Homes.com, CorporateHousing.com and many other sites. Landmark announced on Sunday that they will sell The Weather Channel Cos. to a consortium of NBC Universal ...

Iggys House Down for the Count

Saturday, June 28th, 2008

It appears Iggys House is no longer online. The site has been down for many days. Their sister companies BuySideRealty and BuySideMortgage also seem to be down. Iggys House provided sellers with a free MSL listing service and the ability to post the property on their site for free. These free ...

An Overview of the Phoenix Rental Market

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

I recently ran across Trulia Market Trends and wanted to take a look at the Phoenix real estate market and compare it to the Phoenix rental market. According to Trulia, the average sales price for homes in Phoenix has seen a 22.2% decrease in the price of a home from Nov ...

10 Fastest Growing Real Estate Markets

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

CNNMoney just released their report of the 10 fastest growing real estate markets. And here they are: McAllen, Texas 12-month forecast: 4% Median home price: $109,000 One year price change: 2.1% Five year price change: 23.3% Change in foreclosure rate: 23%   Rochester, N.Y.   12-month forecast: 2.7% Median home price: $121,000 One year price change: 3.4% Five year price change: 20.1% Change in foreclosure ...

Googol and Google - Zillo and Zillow

Thursday, March 6th, 2008

When Larry and Sergey of Google were trying to come up with a name for the company, they thought they were spelling Googol ( 1 googol = 1.0 × 10 to the power of 100) correctly when they spelled it Google. This misspelling was a good thing for the company since ...

“Flip This House” TV Star Armando Montelongo and Jail Time?

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

I have never seen the show "Flip this House" on A&E but one of the stars, Armando Montelongo faces up to 2 years in jail if he is convicted of not paying the appraiser. On you tube you can learn how to make money the "montelongo" way. One advice though. Pay ...

Foreclosure’s Hurting and Helping Property Management

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008

There are about 2 million homeowners that hold $600 billion of subprime adjustable-rate mortgage loans, known as ARMs, that are due to reset at much higher amounts during the next eight months We are constantly speaking with property managers throughout the United States and we asked them how the foreclosure situation ...

Dominion Enterprises Looking to Sell

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

Dominion Enterprises, the owner of sites like ForRent.com, Homes.com, CorporateHousing.com and many other sites, announced that they may be looking to sell. They have hired J.P Morgan and Lehman to help in the process if they decide to sell. In September 2006, Dominion Enterprises was established following a division of assets ...

Yahoo / Microsoft Deal and Real Estate Search

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

I have had some time to chew on the Yahoo / Microsoft deal a little bit. Google has their own concerns but I wanted to break this down more from a consumer and business decision at the real estate vertical level. From a real estate vertical, would the Yahoo / ...

What will save the Newspaper Industry?

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

Answer. Fire your entire board and replace them with individuals who are internet experts. Marc Andreessen's post on the New York Times says it all. Well, given that the Internet is the central force dismantling the company's [The New York Times] business, I'm sure that by now they've stocked their board with ...

Power of the “Long Tail” - Real Estate Sites, Music, Keywords, and Leads

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

Did you know that if you were to post your real estate property on the top 10 real estate sites you would only be reaching 24.1% of the market?* According to Hitwise.com, the top 10 real estate sites combined reach 24.1% of the market. These are sites like Realtor.com, Move.com, Zillow.com, ...

Markets with the Lowest and Highest Vacancy Rates

Monday, December 31st, 2007

Every year, Marcus and Millichap releases a report on how they think the rental market will be for that year. In the beginning of 2007 they released a report on the status of the Apartment and Rental industry for 2007. They predicted many things and one was the lowest and highest ...