Buying Single-Family Homes in Bulk

Warning: What follows is a long, dry, stat-heavy summary without much original commentary or insight. It’s here because putting this together helped me think through the subject better. Proceed at your own risk. Hopefully at least one other person will find it interesting… I came across an article a while back that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. It’s a wide-ranging piece on the Bloomberg site called Private Equity Has Too Much Money

Unsafe Neighborhoods

Yesterday Amy noticed a story come across the wire about a new Microsoft patent. One of the main benefits, which appears in the abstract of the actual filing, is that it will allow walking directions to be provided that take into account “unsafe” neighborhoods. The story caught our attention because as real estate agents we are not allowed to talk about neighborhoods as “safe” or “unsafe.” An area’s level of safety is a personal perception

2011 Average Prices and Sales Mix

Warning: What follows is quite dorktacular. You have been warned. Last week we looked at the really big picture transactions data for Hartford County in 2011. The main concern we had with how the numbers turned out was that the average single-family home price appeared to rise slightly from 2010 to 2011, which was not what we saw in the market on a house by house basis. There is no easy way to track the

2011 Closed Stats From 50,000 Feet

Last year we gathered up all the Hartford County residential transactions since the beginning of the CTMLS in 2000 and showed how the very high level trends had changed over 10 years. Today we update those charts with the data from 2011. As always, the CTMLS is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Observations The total number of single-family home transactions fell again in 2011, decreasing about 8% from the 2010 total. With the latest data

Incandescent Light Bulbs

The incandescent light bulb. Once a symbol of American ingenuity, it is now under attack as a wasteful. Just about everyone I know has strong feelings about the incandescent. Most prefer the light they provide. Most would also agree that they are inefficient compared to compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) and light emitting diode (LED) technologies. Some argue that the newer technologies are inferior due to their color spectrum and their turn on time, though both