.Who is using Social Media?

Are High Net Worth individuals using Social Media?

According to the American Affluence Center, only half of affluent individuals (average net income $333,000) are active on Social Media. Not surprisingly, participation declines with age. Surprisingly, it also declines with income.

Owners of smart phones and tablets are more likely to participate. Womern or more likely to be engaged than are men.

Where do you reach the affluent? LinkedIn is their social media destination of choice.

How real is the real estate recovery?

 

When Will Real Estate Recover? 

Yet another voice on the topic of recovery in the real estate market...

According to market research firm Harris Interactive...

• Most people (54%) do not expect the US housing market to recover before 2014. 

• That represents a negative change of attitude: 66% of November 2010 respondents believed that real estate would recover before 2014.

• Almost 40% of renters believe they never will buy a home

But remember, all real estate is local. In some markets, the recovery is happening now!

 

How much is your home worth?

Build Your Own Housing Price Graph

 
Wanna figure out what your home is worth today?  

Follow this link for a 'quick and dirty' estimate:

 http://www.fhfa.gov/default.aspx?Page=86&Area=MSA&AreaID=35644&PurchaseQtr=2004Q1&ValuationQtr=2010Q4&Price=$500,000

  I put in a house purchased for $500,000 in the first quarter of 2004, and asked for valuation today.  It shows the house would have gone up to about $640,000, and regressed to about $572,000.  If this were my house, I'd be up about $72,000, but down about $68,000 from the peak.

Troubles in ARM land?

Mountain of Mortgage Resets

This graph from Casey Research shows the Case-Shiller 20-City index alongside the total unsecuritized ARMs that are resetting in that particular month.

You can see how the ARM Resets are phasing out to almost 0 by 2014, but you can also see we are about to spike again around May through the summer of this year.  It will be interesting to see if the resets are at a low enough rate to allow home owners to continue to handle payments, or if they do in fact put more stress on house prices.

The real challenge is that most who qualified for these products originally can't qualify today, so they are 'stuck' with the resets.  Fortunately today the rates are so low that the resets might not be painful, but if they reset to an amortizing payment they'll feel that transition from interest only.  Also, if they reset to an adjustable payment, which most of these will, then if rates go up, and they will, we could see the ARM Reset impact felt in the future, as opposed to now:

Suzy and Jim got an 5 Year ARM Interest Only fixed at 5%, with an adjustment to Libor + 200, they adjust now and their rate is lower than than before, so they are excited.  Their payment doesn't go down because they convert from an interest only to an amortizing, so in essence their payment is about the same BUT they are now paying principal.  That's great.  If 3 years from now the loan adjusts to 8%, and they can't refinance to a fixed now, they'll be stuck with an annually increasing payment and that might make the hangover from ARMs a few years down the road.