Michael Crist

The REALTORS® Confidence Index (RCI) survey[1]  gathers monthly information from REALTORS® about local real estate market conditions, characteristics of buyers and sellers, and issues affecting homeownership and real estate transactions.[2] This report presents key results about market transactions from September 2017. View and download the full report here. Market Conditions and Expectations • The REALTORS®… Continue Reading REALTORS® Confidence Index Survey: September 2017 Highlights

By Glenn Griffin, guest contributor One of the most commonly asked questions people have when restoring their hardwood floors is: “Should I stain my floor?” That question is closely followed by: “What color stain should I choose?” Photo by Delaware Valley Hardwoods Staining your floors is a major decision for three reasons: 1) Your choice will… Continue Reading How to Choose the Right Stain for Hardwood Floors

Office haunts, security, natural disasters, family, environment, heating, germs, nuisance, and Halloween. It would be a little difficult to get those TPS reports done with restless spirits about! Better make sure there aren’t any images of your keys out there! Can people avoid the path of destruction? Unfortunately, unlikely. Has it really come to this?… Continue Reading What We’re Reading: October 16-20

What does it cost to make old hardwood floors look new again? Let’s say it costs $3,000. That’s a lot of money, especially for owners who just want to get their house on the market and be done with it. But of all the remodeling projects homeowners can do to increase the resale value of… Continue Reading To Get Higher Sale Price, Client Could Refinish the Floor

The executive order President Trump signed on Oct. 12 to expand association health plans (AHPs) is of interest to REALTORS® because NAR has a longstanding interest in these types of health plans. But it’s important for real estate professionals to know what the executive order does and doesn’t do. First, it doesn’t itself expand association… Continue Reading What Does President Trump’s Association Health Plan Executive Order Do?

On Wednesday, the National Association of Realtors® released a new research report, Choosing a Career in Real Estate: A Perspective on Gender, Race and Ethnicity.  The report was developed to discover how and why Realtors® chose real estate as a career and to examine gender, race and ethnicity in real estate. According to the report,… Continue Reading NAR Explores Top Reasons for Choosing a Career in Real Estate

Existing-home sales dropped 1.7 percent in August from one month prior while new home sales declined 3.5 percent.  These headline figures are seasonally adjusted figures and are reported in the news.  However, for everyday practitioners, simple raw counts of home sales are often more meaningful than the seasonally adjusted figures.  The raw count determines income… Continue Reading Raw Count of Home Sales (August 2017)

Manhattan traffic. Four-season weather. Tests of self-driving cars are about to get really real. If you’re the kind of phone owner who cares about the camera on your phone more than any of its other features, you’ll like reading this Battle of the iPhone 8 vs. Pixel 2 cameras. Got some smart home tech and… Continue Reading Self-Driving Cars Take On Manhattan; iPhone8 and Pixel 2 Cameras Battle It Out, and More

The following is NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun’s reaction to this morning’s U.S. Commerce Department release on September housing starts: “The one month fall in new home construction, especially in the South region in light of Hurricane recovery, is understandable. What is frustrating and hard to comprehend is the drop in total permits in the… Continue Reading Instant Reaction: September Housing Starts

At the national level, housing affordability is up from last month but down from a year ago. Mortgage rates increased to 4.19 percent this August, up compared to 3.74 percent a year ago. Housing affordability declined from a year ago in August moving the index down 8.4 percent from 163.7 to 149.9. The median sales… Continue Reading August 2017 Housing Affordability Index