The Year of Mobile

Giving Consumers and Agents the Inside Scoop On the Go

As we near the end of 2012, it’s time to reflect on what happened this year: our accomplishments and the things we hope to achieve in the year ahead. It’s been a big year for mobile at Trulia–with new app launches, upgrades, and amazing growth–both on the user and agent side. We’ve created strong relationships with our partners and have been featured by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon for major product announcements this year.

We kicked off 2012 with 7 mobile apps complimenting our mobile website. In the last 12 months, we’ve doubled that, ending the year with 14 apps across several platforms including iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, and Windows 8 for desktop and tablets. To keep up with mobile growth, we expanded our mobile team by 50%. We saw a 129% YoY increase in mobile visitors in Q3, and on weekends, more than a third of our usage is via mobile. As a result of our dedication to mobile products, our users spent 307,154,216 minutes on Trulia mobile in Q3 of this year—the equivalent of 584 years*!

Here’s the inside scoop on what happened this year for Trulia mobile:

Launched First Dedicated National Rentals App on iPhone

-        Organizes listings by recency

-        Sends push notifications when new listings hit the market

Launched Trulia Mobile Ads

-        Helps real estate agents connect with transaction-ready mobile consumers via first dedicated mobile advertising platform for real estate professionals

-        Allows agents to purchase display advertising and generate phone leads from consumers

Launched Trulia for Agents Android App

-        Includes immediate lead notifications and listing check-ins

-        Helps agents manage client lists and respond to leads from anywhere

Crime Maps and Trulia Estimates Integrated into Trulia’s iPad App

-        Allows consumers to incorporate crime heatmap layers into their search

-        Displays Trulia Estimates on more than 50 million off-market homes, townhomes, and condos in nearly 500 counties across the country

Launched Trulia Mortgage Center and Free Dedicated Mortgage iPhone and iPad Apps

-        Empowers consumers by providing personalized mortgage quotes directly from real lenders, in real time

-        Comes complete with online educational guides

Enhanced Portfolio of Kindle Fire HD Apps

-        Takes advantage of the Kindle Fire HD’s mapping and location-based features

-        Includes the Trulia Real Estate App and the Trulia Rentals App

Launched Windows 8 Tablet and Desktop Application

–       Allows consumers to scroll through beautiful HD photo galleries of places to live

–       Notifies consumers when new listings hit the market or when property prices drop

Published Data on Trulia Agent Mobile Check-Ins

-        Sunday is the busiest day for check-ins, as agents are touring open homes. Tuesday is the second busiest day, as agents are visiting brokers’ tours to see the new properties on the market

-        The highest volume of mobile check-ins happens in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago

Upgraded Our Google Maps Experience on Android

–       Integrated more interactive maps into Trulia’s free Android app for mobile and tablets

–       Leveraged the new Google Maps Android API which allows Trulia users to easily navigate 2D or 3D views of crime, school attendance zones, and nearby amenities like restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores

As we continue to innovate and work closely with our partners, we’re able to stay on the mobile forefront, giving our consumers the best possible experience across all of our mobile products. Many of our mobile users found their dream home on the go, and needed to contact their real estate agent right away. Thanks to Trulia Mobile Ads, agents are able to connect with buyers as they search on their mobile devices.

Cheers to a successful 2012, and here’s to an even better 2013!

* According to Trulia internal Omniture data

Author information not available.

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Bits Bucket for January 2, 2013

Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here. And check out Chomp, Chomp, Chomp by a regular poster!

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How The Bear Popped The Bubble!

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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Mortgage Recovery Still Rocky

BofA CEO on Future of Home Ownership "We changed our position to be direct to consumers," said Brian Moynihan, Bank of America president & CEO, discussing changes in his company's mortgage business, with CNBC's Diana Olick.

The trouble is, the banks are close to finishing their obligations under the settlement, and the largest, Bank of America, will not continue to offer principal reduction afterward.

"The programs then going forward will provide for similar relief, but I think we have offered principal reduction to all our borrowers — all the people we own, the asset that we can actually offer to that's been done," said Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan in an interview last week.

Another report Friday from Lender Processing Services showed a monthly increase in the U.S. loan delinquency rate in November. As it stands now, 7.12 percent of loans are 30-plus days past due, but not yet in foreclosure, and 3.51 percent are in the foreclosure process. Add it up and 5.35 million loans are still in some kind of trouble, according to LPS, as big banks finish their obligations under the settlement.

—By CNBC's Diana Olick; Follow her on Twitter @Diana_Olick or on Facebook at facebook.com/DianaOlickCNBC

Questions? Comments? RealtyCheck@cnbc.com

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New Home Sales: October 2012

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Weekend Topic Suggestions

That’s California. Let’s check our old standby:

Phoenix Real Estate Market 2012 Review:

[sorry, this is from a realtor, but it's MLS data]

“Overall Home Supply – For the entire Phoenix MLS at the first of November, the total number of active real estate listings was 22,826 while the number of sold listings for October was 7,724. One year ago, total active listings were 25,879 properties. So, the active inventory is lower at the end of this year than last.

…Chandler: 1.5 months inventory
…Mesa: 1.8 months inventory
…Gilbert: 1.6 months inventory”

http://www.thompsongroupaz.com/phoenix-real-estate-market-2012-review/

————–

Even adjusting for realtor propaganda, that sounds like pretty tight inventory.

Now, foreclosure activity:

Shrinking inventory for big investors

By Catherine Reagor
The Republic
Fri Dec 7, 2012 3:02 PM

As foreclosures continue to fall in metro Phoenix, the dominant buyers and sellers in the region are changing. Fewer sales of lender-owned inexpensive foreclosure homes means a rapidly shrinking pool of houses for investors to purchase.

As a result, more homeowners will be able to sell to buyers for higher prices because they aren’t competing with lenders.

In November, lenders foreclosed on 1,549 houses in Maricopa County. That’s the lowest level since December 2007, right before the foreclosure crisis hit metro Phoenix, according to the Information Market. During 2011, a typical number of foreclosures was 4,000 to 5,000 a month.

Foreclosure starts, the early indicator of foreclosures, fell to 2,094 last month. By comparison, in March 2009, lenders started the process to foreclose on more than 10,000 metro Phoenix houses, a monthly record for the area. These declines in foreclosure activity are key to telling what will happen to the housing market in coming months.

But there’s another piece of foreclosure data that is even more important now: The total number of foreclosures in lenders’ pipelines across metro Phoenix was 10,606 at the end of November. A year ago, there were double that many foreclosures under way in the region. Two years ago, there were more than 40,000.

Homes on which lenders are in the process of foreclosing are the ones investors hope to buy for low prices and turn into rental houses that bring them high returns on their cash.

Big investors including Blackstone, American Residential and Colony Capital have dominated metro Phoenix foreclosure auctions and its lender-owned home sales market this year. Those firms and other want to package their thousands of rental homes and resell them to investors through real-estate investment trusts, or REITs.

http://www.azcentral.com/business/realestate/free/20121205shrinking-inventory-big-investors.html

——————

So this is the pattern in both Arizona and California:

+ Foreclosure activity at a low (forclosures happened in 2007-2012?)
+ inventory at a low (for both public and investors)
+ big investors snapping up for cash or in bulk (for rental or later sale)
————-
= Bidding wars for screwed-over regular Joe.

Is it just me, or are the big investors trading the shadow inventory among themselves, in the shadows? The general public can’t buy this inventory. Either they can’t see it, or they can’t work and save wages as fast as banks can borrow from the discount window (at 1% interest rates). Meanwhile, LL’s see the low inventory and high prices and raise rents accordingly.

And if all the foreclosures already happened in ~2007-2010, then where did all the original mortgages go? Is this what the Fed is ultimately buying from Fannie+Freddie at $40 billion/month?

HBB (especially alpha) predicted this years ago: rake in juicy fees on origination, when it goes kablooey shovel the toxic mortgages off on the taxpayer, snap up the actual “distressed” assets for pennies, and then then sell in bulk for rentals.

The rich are fighting over what little blood we have left.

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Housing Recovery Is Leaving Behind First-Time Buyers

Unfortunately, first-time home buyers are seeing just the opposite, largely left out of this surge in sales and prices. Their share of the market, usually up in the 40 percent range historically, fell to 34.7 percent in October, the lowest in the Campbell/IMF survey's three-year history.

The National Association of Realtors put their share even lower, at 31 percent.

Either way, they are the only group of buyers that have not seen their share of non-distressed home purchases rise over the past five months. The mortgage of choice for these buyers, FHA-insured loans, are increasingly tough to obtain. (Read More: Yes, Housing Starts Surge, but Rentals Are the Drivers)

"Financing of first-time homebuyers with low down payments threatens to become a significant problem in the U.S. housing market," wrote Thomas Popik, research director for Campbell Surveys. "Fifty percent of first-time homebuyers use FHA financing, but FHA insurance premiums are increasing and underwriting is becoming more strict. Private mortgage insurance has started to fill the gap, but the long-term status of private mortgage insurance is in question pending the publication of the Qualified Residential Mortgage regulation resulting from Dodd-Frank." (Read More: Builders Bump Up Thanks to Drop in Existing Home Supply)

Real estate agents answering this latest survey also noted that the recent hike in FHA mortgage insurance premiums is hitting first-time buyers harder because some sellers are refusing to accept offers that include FHA financing. Adding insult to injury, the FHA, after reporting a major shortfall in its insurance reserve funds, announced it would raise premiums yet again, another 10 basis points early next year. (Read More: To Stem Losses, FHA Mortgages Get More Expensive)

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