About Bexar County, TX

Good news for San Antonio real estate

The San Antonio Board of Realtors has announced that home sales rose by 25% in October compared with the same month in 2008, possibly due to the $8000 first-time home buyer tax credit.

More than 1,712 existing homes were sold last month and most of them sold at less than $200,000. In October, only about 9% of the sales were lender-owned properties.

The tax credit has now been extended through the spring and now includes a $6,500 tax credit for people selling a home they've owned for at least three years and purchasing another one.

SABOR says that October's home sales also got a boost because they're being compared with the gloomy economic environment in 2008. Negative events with banks and the stock market caused many people to delay buying a home during October of last year.

One of the strengths of the San Antonio housing market is that it isn't dominated by lender-owned properties.

This week was a good week. I am listing a condo and a short sale home. But that is not the great part. The best part of this week is that I got a hold of a list of foreclosures from my one of my title companies. This is great news because this is a list of what will be on the court house steps the first Tuesday of December. I have time to selectively go and see if any of these folks need any help to save their credit or home...

Going to be a busy weekend!

http://www.tmartsellshomes.com

San Antonio's jobless rate fell in October to 7%. The previous month registered 7.1%. San Antonio and the surrounding counties added about 1000 jobs last month. San Antonio according to Keith Phillips, a senior economist in San Antonio for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, thinks that Texas in general will start to flatten out and cities like San Antonio should start to see that change soon.

Government jobs showed an increase the last couple of months. Texas gained 41,700 jobs in October.

Looks like we are starting to see signs the light is around the corner. I for one have been using the extended tax credit to educate excising home owners the benefit for listing now.

Call or visit my web site for more info.

http://www.tmartsellshomes.com

Better Homes And Gardens Real Estate builds an app for everyone.

I'm a RE/MAX agent, so it might seem surprising to hear me extol the virtues of another real estate franchise, but this is one I can't ignore. The Better Homes And Gardens Real Estate App for iPhone is simply one of the best real estate apps out there. Sure, there are plenty of useful ones, but nothing that personalizes the experience quite like this.

So, you're out looking at homes and you want to remember the details of each one? As they say, "There's an app for that."

Just whip out your iPhone and click on this app and you'll be prepared to make great use of your time. You can take snapshots of the home you're viewing, make an album out of it, rate it, take notes, categorize it, and even share the photos as you take them (to Facebook or send them as email). So far it just sounds like a fancy photo organizer, right?

Location, location, location services.

By utilizing the iPhone's GPS-based location services, this app tags the photos based on your location and then allows you to view neighborhood data in reference to this particular home. Check out home values (sales activity and price trends), community information (demographics, crime, housing stability, housing inventory, and work force data), school information (broken down by elementary, middle, high, adult, private, and Catholic), and find points of interest (eating and drinking, shopping, recreation, and banks). I toyed around with my zip code and found most of the information to be excellent (sometimes sources of data for apps seem shaky at best, but not with this app).

Consumer education and resources.

The two buttons at the bottom probably weren't going to be too exciting I thought. Just some bland basic info about remodeling and a few brief bits about some real estate education topics. I actually found them to be a well written resource of information that consumers want to know.

Excellent.

Well done Better Homes And Gardens Real Estate. Best part of it all, the app is absolutely free and available to anyone with an iPhone. I'll be recommending it to all my clients to use. Anything that helps make sense of all the data you're bombarded with while searching for a home is an excellent idea and I applaud them for creating this app. My assumption is that the other brokers are scrambling to get similar branded apps out to the market place. Until then, thanks Better Homes And Gardens Real Estate.

Every year end at Homes & Land we pre-sell the front covers of our magazine for the following year, usually in early December. Last year, my first year to offer our front cover, we asked any interested customers to let us know which month's cover they would be interested in. Needless to say, everyone wanted June, July and August. However one REALTOR, one of the areas top producers, first choices were November and December.

This was the top choice from a top agent because so many agents take time off for the holidays. Assuming there is less opportunity during the holiday months, many agents look for this time of year to take a break. You can't blame them but it creates an opportunity for the aggressive. Increasing your marketing during these "slower" months increases your visibility in a less competitive environment and can help you win more listings going into the new year. This is critical because it helps your inventory as we get closer to Spring

The numbers below show the commission opportunity over the last two holiday seasons based on the transactions reported from the San Antonio real estates statistics of those seasons. As you can see there is plenty of commission opportunities "up for grabs". What will be your share this year?