US home buyers, sellers, and real estate agents are feeling optimistic about the trajectory of the housing market in 2026.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Zillow shares have plummeted by over 9% on Monday over fears of what the future of online real estate might look like. Specifically, Google and its parent company Alphabet are running tests on adding real estate listings and sales into their search results.
Real estate tech strategist Mike DelPrete published screenshots that showed Google Search results with real estate listings powered by real estate data company HouseCanary. The listings allow users to view the full details on a property’s page, request a tour, and contact an agent. This model is very similar to how Zillow functions.
The Google real estate results, however, are just being tested and are only available in select markets and on mobile devices.
Investors and experts in the field are already projecting Google’s success with this new search algorithm, leading to the decline in Zillow stocks. During Monday’s session, the stock was down by at least 11%, according to reports from CNBC.
Analysts from Wall Street stated that Zillow, however, is not very exposed to organic searching like Google’s new tool seems to be trying to capitalize on, so this drop in stock could be temporary.
Alec Brondolo, a Wells Fargo analyst said that he would not “expect a meaningful financial impact from listings on Google shifting from organic to paid,” especially since Zillow is not overly dependent on organic search results for traffic.
“The listings product appears similar to Google Hotel Metasearch results; introduction could increase traffic cost to Zillow, but disintermediation unlikely,” CNBC reports Brondolo said in a Monday note to clients.
“In the hotel category, Google merchandises hotel rooms in search results as a metasearch ad product for OTAs. We would expect a similar approach in real estate, with Zillow, Homes.com, Realtor.com, etc. bidding for home listing ad units rather than Google attempting to monetize directly with an ad product sold to agents.”
Some analysts, however, can see the longer term implications of Google’s new search tool and how it could compete with Zillow and other popular online real estate portals.
Michael NG of Goldman Sachs wrote in a note to clients that he believes Google’s real estate listings show to be in an advertising format for buy-side agents, so it directly competes with Zillow’s Premier Agent program by “facilitating lead generation” for both agents and prospective buyers.
“While we don’t expect a direct near-term impact on Zillow’s business, given that most of Zillow’s traffic is direct (e.g., Zillow.com, StreetEasy.com, mobile apps) and Google’s new product is currently limited to select markets and mobile browsers, we view this development as a long-term risk for real estate portals like Zillow,” Ng wrote.
Oppenheimer’s Jason Helfstein stated that Google’s expansion into real estate will likely impact the number of Zillow’s consumers; which hit up to 228 million in the third quarter. This could cause their ability to monetize to decrease.
“The impact would likely take years to play out and would need to be rolled out across the US to meaningfully impact real estate portal traffic,” Helfstein said.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Homebuyers and sellers throughout the US have been grappling with increasing home prices and mortgage rates, and now are taking issue with increasing real estate agent and brokers fees that are increasing in parallel with seemingly everything else in the real estate industry.
According to NPR, especially after the lawsuit that the National Association of Realtors settled last summer that implemented new policies regarding agent compensation, buyers and sellers began to pay closer attention to every fee included in their transactions.
With this new commission structure and policy, agents have to inform buyers and sellers that their fees are negotiable.
Buyers must also sign an agreement with their agent to establish how that agent will be paid. This will also involve the buyer agreeing to pay the agent if the seller’s agent refuses to do so.
Agent compensation offers are also no longer prohibited to appear on multiple listing services, MLS, which are online databases used to list homes.
These new rules in the industry have opened up a lot of conversations among buyers and sellers and the ways in which they proceed with their transactions. They also have opened the door for brokerages to begin charging flat fees.
“Home buyers and sellers almost feel like they’re trapped into using agents, rather than they’re hiring agents at a reasonable fee,” says Rob Luecke, CEO of ShopProp Realty, a flat-fee brokerage that operates in nine states.
Luecke says his “goal is to eliminate commissions — or at least get them a lot lower, and put the power back into the home buyer and sellers’ spot where it really needs to be.”
Traditional commission-based real estate agents are making the “you get what you pay for” argument that their higher fee will always be worth it. These agencies pride themselves in a higher level of service that flat-fee brokerages can’t offer.
Leanne Liang, an agent with Redfin in the East Bay area outside San Francisco, says: “If you move half a mile away, it’s a totally different market. So I think buyers can really benefit from agents who are experienced in that location.”
Liang suggests that buyers and sellers should do diligent research and interview different agents and brokerages to make the best decision for themselves and their goals.
“It’s not just putting a house on the MLS and then just waiting for the offers to come in. In a challenging market, I think we as agents really work for our paychecks.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
According to reports, Australians pay the most expensive advertising fees in the world in order to sell their homes online. In Australia, the housing market for sellers is dominated by two major companies: Real Estate Australia Group (REA Group) and Domain. Costs for listing a property can reach up to $4,000 for a listing in the inner-city.
Sarah Martin, a senior correspondent for Guardian Australia, reported that the REA Group is a $27 billion company and earned a net annual profit of $460.5 million in August. These profits are also due to average price increases reaching 13% within the past year.
Australia is one of less than five global markets where the seller of the home has to pay for advertising costs for the listings.
“REA is the best in the world at this, REA is the most profitable real estate portal in the world … and organizations in every country around the world look to them for best practice – they are masters at this,” Mike DelPrete, a US-based industry expert, said.
“They are just printing money.”
In other global markets, the cost to advertise a property listing is typically covered by the real estate agent’s selling fee.
“In Australia, many agents sign up to ‘premiere all’ advertising packages, which bind home vendors into buying the most expensive listing – close to $4,000 a property in inner-city Melbourne and Sydney,” Martin wrote.
She also reported that compared to 15 years ago the prices are more than 50 times higher than what they used to be for a major listing.
“They [REA Group] are getting deeper into the transaction rather than sticking with just advertising, and working hard to increase agents’ reliance on their services,” the Real Estate Institute of Australia’s president, Leanne Pilkington, said.
A REA Group spokesperson said “real estate agents could choose from a range of differently priced advertising packages, with a standard advertisement as low as $200. REA’s per listing costs are priced to reflect the additional value delivered to vendors and agents in digital prime experiences.”
“Our pricing structure reflects our focus on investment in new products, services, and features which support the consumer experience and drive consumer engagement.”
“Generally speaking, restrictions on access to platforms such as realestate.com.au will only raise concerns under the Competition and Consumer Act where those restrictions lead to a substantial lessening of competition,” the spokesperson said.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
According to a recent survey, approximately 12% of people are planning to buy a home this year, which when compared to other averages, is low. The same survey concluded that the remaining 27.19% of typical potential buyers are holding back due to an inability to find a home in their price range. This, however, could change with the utilization of Artificial Intelligence.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Catherine Pennell is a real estate agent representing Kauai for KW Kauai Keller Williams in Hawaii, who claims that the housing industry in Hawaii has been booming since April. Pennell says she’s fielding two to three phone calls everyday from people living in the United States looking to move to Hawaii.
“I think people are saying, ‘Life is short.’ It’s a lot of talk because they’re not here yet and they can’t get here yet, but I’ve done more sight-unseen sales than I’ve ever done during the pandemic, three in the last three months.”
Julie Peters is another real estate agent working for Island Boutique Realty on the island of Hawaii, who recently spoke with the press about how when wildfire season began in August she was fielding at least one call each day from residents of California looking for places on the island away from all the smoke and fire danger.
Peters recalled how “one person wanted to come over immediately and rent in the meantime because she was so done with smoke. The last five closings I did were sight-unseen. I had rarely done that before.” This seems to be a major new pattern for Hawaii real estate, but also the industry in general. Buyers are more willing to invest in properties before seeing them either because they want an immediate escape from their current reality, or due to the Covid-19 pandemic making in-person viewings difficult in many areas of the country.
She claims that a majority of her buyers this year have been from the Bay Area. According to Title Guaranty, which owns the largest real estate database in Hawaii, from January to June 2020, California residents bought $587.6 million worth property in Hawaii, making up 41% of total sales during that period coming from the U.S..
“Demand for Hawaii is always there, but it’s just grown exponentially this year. A lot of people that were already looking toward retirement here sped it up, or people found out they could work from home. We got a rush of that and then the West Coast fires happened.”
Hawaii is also currently enduring a massive wave of new condos and other properties being placed on the market. In August 2020 new listings for condominiums went up by 97% when compared with the previous year. Single-family homes, on the other hand, are being bought at a much quicker rate.
Cash offers have also been the most common form of payment, as those offers are more likely to go over the initial asking price. This influx in purchasing, however, doesn’t mean that the industry in Hawaii isn’t struggling like the rest of the world. Active listings were down by nearly 20% between April – August 2020 versus 2019. Honolulu County specifically saw an 18% decline while Maui County saw a 9% dip.
West Coast buyers have increased exponentially as well as the concept of virtual listings/house tours. The pandemic, wildfires, and lack of active travel make it nearly impossible for buyers in the US to look at spaces in real life in Hawaii to move to. This new wave of blind buying is likely just the beginning of a new era of real estate in a post-pandemic world.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
According to a recent analysis by real estate market data firm UrbanDigs, the Manhattan real estate market is currently in much better shape than it was during the Great Recession. Like most industrys adjusting to pandemic life, however, the future is still very unclear and fearsome.
The report claimed that there were much more sellers than buyers during the Great Recession but now, during the Covid-19 pandemic, that gap is much smaller. Noah Rosenblatt and John Walkup are the cofounders of UrbanDigs, and recently claimed that they believe this gap has lessened because the Great Recession was a strictly economic crisis in America while the coronavirus has halted every single aspect of life for everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status.
“The lack of sharp spikes in supply and a corresponding drop in demand suggests the market is not as one-sided as the Great Recession, although lingering virus fears will keep a lid on demand for the time being.”
The report heavily focused on comparing the supply and pending sales of the past six months with the first six months of the recession as well. They also focused on what’s known as the “market pulse,” which essentially is the ratio of pending sales to actual supply. A lower ratio number would reflect that there are more sellers than buyers.
In September 2007, supply increased by 10% every quarter and pending sales were dropping at a rate of 30%, according to past analysis’. The 15 quarters that followed showed a steady increase in supply, and a major drop in pending sales; 50%, dropping the market pulse from 1 to .16. When the pandemic initially shut everything down in March, there was a major drop in pending sales, which boosted supply, however, it was nowhere nearly as quickly as it dropped in 2007.
The market pulse is currently at a .22, which has been expected due to a general pulse decline within the past five years in Manhattan; in late 2019 the pulse was at .3. Rosenblatt and Walkup noted that sellers today in the metropolitan are still facing the heaviest competition in nearly a decade due to the increase in properties available, and willingness from sellers to negotiate their pricing. “Clearly, the economic impact of the pandemic has yet to be fully tallied, but in the meantime, it appears that the market for Manhattan real estate is functional, just fearful.”
Overall, however, the two believe that comparing the state of the market now to what it was during the Great Recession is like comparing “apples to oranges.” While there may be many general similarities the differences fully outweigh them. There have been spikes in the unemployment rates during both events, however it’s broken major records within the past six months because the job losses are more sudden and frequent. The two do believe, however, that whenever this pandemic does come to an end unemployment will hopefully bounce back quickly, and the supply and demand of the market will follow.
“NYC real estate and the economy, in general, are weighing other exogenous forces so with that in mind, certainly, there is more room for real estate to go down, but in the long run, the city will renew itself, even if the process might be bumpy.”
Industry workers believe now would be a great time to invest and negotiate in real estate if you are lucky enough to have that ability right now. They also believe that Manhattan hasn’t seen the absolute worst that the pandemic can do in regards to negatively impacting the market and sales, so like the rest of the country and its many industries, they’re taking every precaution currently imaginable to stay afloat.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
It’s always a happy holiday for retail businesses. Whether it’s a local boutique, or a major corporate chain, stores seem to flood with eager customers trying to cross off everyone on their shopping list. Businesses seem to thrive the most when it comes to holiday deals. As we grow older, the lists of gifts we need to buy seem to get longer and more expensive. So what can your business do in order to make your life, and your customers’ lives, the easiest during this holiday shopping season?
Holiday marketing is extremely important for the success of any business regardless of the size of it, and in an age when technology is constantly advancing, a majority of that marketing is done online. Social media presence and an easy-to-navigate website are key in ensuring that your business remains successful, and also that people are able to find out about you. Especially if your business is at a local level, social media is the best way you can spread the word about your sales and deals to your customers and beyond. Additionally, if you have a website that allows for users to create an account or attach an email they’ll be able to stay more informed on everything going on within your business.
When it comes to the holidays, however, you should be going above and beyond with your online presence. An amazing way to generate online traffic and customer engagement is by adding a wish list feature to your website. A wish list will not only give your customers the flashback of what it was like to write letters to Santa, but also makes the shopping experience so much easier for both of you.
Wish lists in general allow customers to curate all of the products that they want for themselves, or need to buy for others, and have it be in one place for when they’re ready to buy. They allow the buyer to take their time and not feel the pressure of a growing online cart looming over them while they shop. Wish lists typically stay saved for a customer regardless of if they leave the website or not; normally this feature means that customers need to create some sort of user account that will save the list for them, however, accounts in general are also another amazing way to ensure that your customers are staying informed and updated with your store.
If you do decide to add a wish list feature to your website, a crucial feature will be a “share” button that allows the customer to send their wish list to any of their friends or family. This feature will easily allow people to tell their loved ones what they’re looking to receive, or buy, making the entire shopping experience fairly simple.
Wish lists are also extremely beneficial to the business itself. As the website’s admin, you’ll have access to every user’s wish list. This means you’ll be able to see the trends of what products customers are gravitating towards. Additionally, keeping the wish list feature active year round will give you an indication of seasonal shopping patterns and allow you to have a greater insight into what products are more in demand depending on the time of year. This information can be crucial for a business owner, as it indicates what supplies/products you may need to stock up on, depending on the time of year.
Finally, another great feature that can be added to the wish list section of your website is a “recommendations” section. Depending on your website’s algorithm, this section can either show customers other products that your business carries that relates to what they put on their wish list that they might be interested in, or it could show users what products other customers are adding to their wish lists this holiday season. When shoppers see products that are popular, they’re more inclined to add them to their list, whether it be for themselves or as a gift. When it comes to gift giving this feature can be especially useful as it tells customers what products people are really loving that your loved ones may also enjoy.
Making your online presence known is, in general, an amazing way to generate business. Adding on a special section for holiday wish lists not only makes the shopping experience that much easier all around, but also helps Santa know what everyone wants this year.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.