Huiting Zhuang,Sell your business overseas

(Rhode Island) According to a report released yesterday (Apr 17) by RealtyTrac.com, RI foreclosures increased 59% over March 2008 and 54% over Feb 2009.

Nationwide, 341,180 were reported, a 17% increase than Feb 2009.

According to the report, demand is gradually picking up but the increasing demand is not enough to offset the increase of foreclosures.

To get a personal opinion of this report or how it affects your decision to either buy or sell, please contact us.

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By Huiting zhuang

(Rhode Island) According to our research, Houses are on average sold below assessment statewide in the first quarter of 2009.

This research studied all 39 towns of the state of Rhode Island. 1973 houses are sold in the first quarter of Rhode Island. On average, houses were sold at 75% of town assessment. Of the 39 towns, we only observed Jamestown as an exception.

On average, houses are sold at 92% of listing price

In the period, 97 listings were expired in Rhode Island and they were on average 120% of assessment.

For more information, please contact Huiting at

(401) 484-7322
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Appendix: RI Sold Listings from Jan to March 2009.

Current Real Estate Trend--A study of RI market (Jan~Mar, 2009)

Disclaimer: This research is released as is. While all information is deemed accurate, no strict academic validation has been done due to my time constraint. Readers are encouraged to duplicate this research if you need to make serious decisions based on this research.
I spent about 4 hours on researching the current Real Estate market in Rhode Island yesterday and today as a preparation for our next move in the real estate market.
I mainly want to address three questions.

1. What is the current overall market condition in Rhode Island.
2. What kinds of properties are sell-able?
3. whether marketing helps sell a property. I use Virtual Tour as an example.

The data were pulled from RI-MLS system in Apr 14.

1. Sold listings from Jan to Mar, 2009: single family homes, condo, multi-family homes.
2. Expired listings from Jan to Mar, 2009: single family homes, condo, multi-family homes.
3. Current active listings in Rhode Island (exclude timeshare, mobile homes and modular homes).

Below are partially what I found (the full report is available upon request).

1. from Jan 1, to Mar 31, 2009, 1973 listings were sold state-wide, with a total transaction of $375 Million.  1288 listings were closed in Providence county. 336 in Kent. 198 in Washington, 97 in Newport and 54 in Bristol.
2. On3 interesting result is that on overage, sale prices are 3 quarters of assessment. This is true statewide. Town wise only Jamestown is slightly over assessment.
3. Of all the closed listings, listing prices were also below assessment statewide. Of all the 39 towns, only Portsmouth, Newport and Jamestown were exceptions.
4. Among the 1973 closed listings, 248 had Virtual Tour (VT). I studied the effect of VT on sold price/listing price(SL). I divided the data into two groups: with and without VT.  The mean of SL are 82% and 85%. So VT did seem to help in getting a higher price but the difference is not significant--a mere 3%.

   

   I then studied how VT affects the DOM--days on market. The result is astounding: A mean of 98 days vs 158 days. The T-test is 0 (less than 1 billionth).

   For those who understand statistics, that means the two data set definitely got different means. In plain English: VT definitely help sell a listing faster!!

   See the right picture for more details.

5. I then studied the EXPIRED listings from Jan~March. There are 97 of them.

   • On average, the listing prices are 20% above assessment.
   • None of them had Virtual Tour.
6. Finally, I looked at the current market. There are 7418 listings that meet my data standard (I didnot include timeshare, mobile home, etc) and 2684 of them are priced over assessment.

So here are the major conclusions from this brief study:

1. Marketing is very important in helping selling a house faster, if not more in price.
2. To sell a house in a timely manner, you need to price it close or below assessment.

(401) 484-7322
Now offering residential real estate services for RI residents.
Powered by video marketing, research & transparency.

Many Realtors advertise "it is the best time to buy". I would tell a story to clarify what this means.

When a store closes its door, people understand the owner will just sell everything at even lower than clearance price. So in consumers mind:

Going out of business=incredible low price + once in a life time deals.

But to make this equation really work, we need to make two assumptions:

1. The store should be really in out-of-business condition.
2. The store really wants to sell everything it owns.

Unfortunately, many people would just use the equation and forget the two assumptions. And unfortunately some people would take advantage of this. See my post: want to take advantage of circuit City liquidation? Be careful. In reality, it has been reported that many store owners would bring outside stock and sell over-priced stuff.

Now the current housing market, especially the housing market, it is exactly the same thing. The "it is the best time to buy" statement makes it as if you can go out in the market and grab a house hoping it will be a deal.

Wrong.

I have to admit it is a good time to buy but buyers have to use their thinking to do their homework (due diligence). The good deals are to be found with effort, not to be grabbed randomly.

If you cannot do your own homework, find a local smart, loyal, knowledgeable and experienced Realtor probably is your best option.

Most Rhode Islanders know by now that RI Cigarette tax rises $1.

I am an economist and always try to link policies and events to potential economic result.

Now for this $1 increase, together with the high unemployment rate, I wonder if that might give some smokers a reason to move out of Rhode Island.

I do not have any data to do research on so this is just a thought. Anybody got any data or theorectic predictions? It would be a fun research.