Move over realtor.com, Zillow and Trulia — and take your old-fashioned data search tools with you. Your days on top of the real estate search heap are numbered, as are your listings that focus on bedroom, bathroom and price.

Analytics that evaluate lifestyle, affordability and commute time are the new kids on the block that are about to make finding the right home for your buyers a whole lot easier.

How many hours have you spent in the past year showing buyers house after house, but nothing seems to be quite right? This is especially difficult in large metropolitan areas where relocating buyers want to see everything or have their hearts set on a particular school district they can’t afford.

Now imagine what it would be like if you could pinpoint the top four or five houses in your entire market area that are the best possible fit for your buyers? Data analytics search promises to let you do exactly that.

Data companies versus analytics companies

Krishna Mayala, the founder and CEO of TLCEngine.com, described data search (which includes brokerage, MLS, realtor.com, Trulia and Zillow) as being part of the dreaming stage of homeownership.

The buyer sets up their initial search by bedroom, bath, price and location. In large cities, the search can generate hundreds of options. The question is: which option is the right choice?

In the past, answering that question meant going to an agent and hoping that he or she could sort out the best choices. But even the most knowledgeable and talented agent cannot objectively sort out which combination of lifestyle, affordability and commute time will provide the buyer with the best possible lifestyle option.

Apps such as Inrix and Waze can help clients assess commute times as well as identifying the best possible routes based on current traffic conditions.

Housefax.com can help your buyers determine whether that charming 1930s Spanish-style bungalow is money pit in disguise by answering such questions as:

• Has the house had a fire, flood, earthquake or mold claim?
• Have there been any other insurance incidents on the property?
• What natural hazards exist in the area?
• Has the house (or neighboring house) ever been a meth lab?
• Approximately how much will the new owner pay in utilities?

Although these tools are helpful, they are only pieces of the puzzle. Data analytics seek to pull all these pieces together and then identify the four or five best possible choices for the buyer.

The goal is for the buyer’s search to be able to answer such questions as:

• Is it more affordable to buy that smaller but older in-town property, or is it better to commute and get a larger, newer home in the suburbs? What are the trade-offs?
• What’s the difference in cost for an all electric home versus one that has natural gas?
• Is there another equally good school district that has the same type of neighborhood and lifestyle, which I can also afford?

Price versus affordability

Most purchase decisions focus almost exclusively on price without factoring in other costs associated with homeownership.

For example, if you live in Los Angeles, you will pay much more for your home insurance if you live in a flood plain or in a hillside area that requires flood or California Fair Plan insurance.

In our case, when we built our last home we thought the subdivision had natural gas service, but it had piped in propane instead. Propane is three times as expensive as natural gas, this translated into a $750 heating bill rather than $250.

Commute time

Although Inrix.com and Waze are apps that share commute time, they lack the ability to determine which locations would be best if the husband wanted to commute no more than 30 minutes and the wife no more than 20 minutes, for example.

Data analytics search identifies which properties meet these criteria and assesses the needs of both parties together.

It also can consider the cost of having a single vehicle rather than two cars, if one of the options is close enough to walk or bike to work.

Consequently, a more centrally located, higher-priced home might be a more affordable choice than a more distant lower-priced home once the commuting data is factored in.

Lifestyle

Seven years ago, Onboard Informatics launched Spatial Match, a lifestyle search engine.

The tool was designed to help consumers search for neighborhoods or communities based on demographics, education, schools, the right coffee shop, places of worship, etc.

Today, HomeJunction.com has evolved into a robust application that provides this information for agents and brokers as well as enterprise solutions. It also provides home values, local content and hyperlocal lifestyle data.

As Mayala observes, “You dream at the data search sites, but you will make an actionable decision based upon the information you acquire from an analytics search engine like TLCEngine.com.”

The bells have rung, the ball has dropped, and our two weeks of pretty much ignoring the world have ended. It's 2016 and we are happily back to the grind.

It was actually fairly quiet during the hiatus. The usual data was released, the usual year-end predictions rolled out of the economic think tanks, but there wasn't much that was unusual or startling.

To recap: Interest rates ended the last week of the year by topping 4%–although barely–for the first time since July. They didn't stay there long, moving back to where we left them two weeks earlier. Many economists are still, despite the December Federal Reserve rate hike, predicting slow and steady increases through the year. We'll keep you posted.

Reports on annual home price indices, most for October, were all over the place. While Case-Shiller's National Index called it a gain of 5.2% and CoreLogic topped everyone, reporting a 6.3% gain in both October and November, it is clear that price gains continue at their established levels. All four sets of data released over the last two weeks show month-over-month increases remaining well under 1%. 

The results from the three major home sale metrics were mixed. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) reported that November's sales of existing homes were at the slowest rate since April 2014 at an annual rate of 4.75 million units, a decrease of 10.5%. October's numbers were revised down from already negative earlier numbers. The two consecutive months of declines dragged the year-over-year number lower by 3.8 percent, the first annual loss since September 2014.

NAR's Pending Home Sale Index fared a little better, rising 0.9% from October to 106.9, a 2.7% increase from November 2014. The Index, based on contracts for home purchases signed during the month, has increased year-over-year for 15 consecutive months but NAR said this was the smallest gain in 13 months.

Newly constructed homes sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 490,000 in November, a 4.3% increase for the month but that increase was over a sharply downgraded October estimate which chopped an identical 4.3 percentage points off of Octobers previously reported 10.7% gain.

The first few weeks of the year always brings to mind the roadrunner–his legs spinning frantically as he tries to pick up speed. This first week had little news other than a reeling stock market and interest rates seeking direction. Next week appears slow as well. Enjoy the respite–and Happy New Year.

Average Interest Rate

30-Year Freddie Mac Fixed-Rate Mortgages

According to realtor.com, mortgage rates on fixed interest products are as low as we have seen them in 7 months. Here, an article by Rachel Stults on the statistics, and what's trending in the housing marke at realtor.com:

A GREAT article from our friends over at Inman News on recent statistics coming out of housing market first quarter, according to the NAR:  www.inman.com/2014/05/22/nar-sales-of-existing-homes-post-first-increase-this-year/. 

Miriam Cross of Kipinger.com reviews value-or lack thereof-of an online travel review..

"Before dropping a few hundred dollars on a fancy hotel room with rave online reviews, be sure that what you're reading is legitimate, and not the work of a hired writer or the business itself. As online review platforms such as Yelp and TripAdvisor become more popular, businesses have a greater incentive to game the system–drumming up buzz with planted accolades or tarnishing competitors with unfair criticism. Last year the New York state attorney general's office cracked down on 19 companies that solicited fake reviews to prop up local services.

The problem has not gone unnoticed by review sites. Yelp filters out 25% of submissions. Some sites require the reviewer to have made a reservation for a hotel room or restaurant through the site before detailing his or her experiences; other sites highlight contributors with authenticated profiles or alert consumers to suspicious content.

But no site has a foolproof system, so it's important to cross-reference write-ups for the same establishment on different sites. The breadth of reviews on free sites should provide enough accurate information. If you're looking for a specialized service, scrutinize the reviewer, not just the review. A full profile, a history of contributing to the site and a "verified user" tag are good signs. And don't neglect word of mouth. "Asking people you know and trust is the first thing you should do before trusting strangers online," says Boston University professor Georgios Zervas, who studied fraudulent Yelp reviews.

If you're the one penning a negative assessment, avoid becoming the target of legal threats by sticking to indisputable facts, toning down hyperbole and emphasizing that this is your experience."

Reprinted with permission. All Contents ©2014 The Kiplinger Washington Editors.
                            Kiplinger.com.

A great article published this week by our friends over at C.A.R.:

Mortgage Delinquency Rate Continues to Drop
The mortgage delinquency rate (the rate of borrowers 60 days or more delinquent on their mortgages) declined for the ninth consecutive quarter to 3.61 percent at the end of Q1 2014, according to TransUnion's latest mortgage report. The mortgage delinquency rate has declined more than 24 percent in the last year (down from 4.76 percent in Q1 2013), and it is now at the exact same level as it stood in Q2 2008.

Arizona, down 37.8 percent; California, down 36.9 percent; and Nevada, down 34 percent. Both Arizona (2.81 percent) and California (2.80 percent), which just five years earlier had delinquency rates nearly double the national average, are now significantly lower than the rest of the nation.

TransUnion recorded 53.47 million mortgage accounts as of Q1 2014, up from 53.06 million in Q1 2013. However, there are more than 9.91 million fewer accounts as compared to the same period in 2008 (63.38 million).

For more information on the above statistics or to discuss your mortgage needs, call Greg direct at 858.774.3049 or email him at gtimms1@gmail.com.