Continue Reading May 15th, 2009
Home prices in the Cumberland, Md. metro area, which have been rising steadily for years, shot up a startling 21% in the first quarter compared to the same period a year ago, according to the latest National Association of Realtor report. The price increase in the Cumberland metro, which includes Allegany County, Md. and part of Mineral County, W.Va., was the biggest in the nation.
Turns out that this section of Appalachia, which has seen its manufacturing industry fade in recent decades, is actually holding up relatively well. The area is home to Frostburg State University, which has more than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students, and three large prisons. In this recession, prison jobs have been among the most recession resistant. The Utica area, another hub for prisons in upstate New York, also has had usually stable home prices.
Home prices in Allegany County increased 28% in the first four months of this year compared to the same period in 2008, according to Marty O’Toole, broker at Century 21 Potomac West in Cumberland. From January through April,141 homes sold compared to 145 homes last year. In Mineral County, which is also part of the metro area, home prices jumped 17%.
O’Toole said the median price likely increased, in part, because more homes above $400,000 sold this year.
“People cringe when you first say ‘prison,” O’Toole said. “But when they come in, they help a community. Prison jobs pay well, especially in for a rural area like the one we’re in. And it’s also the materials prisons purchase. They buy bread, milk and other food locally.”
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Continue Reading May 15th, 2009
Right up there with Twittering and people seeking info about the swine flu at the Centers for Disease Control, online real estate sites are seeing a boom in traffic.
Web tracker commScore reports the Real Estate category saw a 10 percent increase to 48.4 million visitors in April. Move Network, parent of Realtor.com, led as the most visited real estate site attracting 13.2 million visitors (up 88 percent vs. March), followed by Yahoo! Real Estate with 6.8 million visitors (up
11 percent) and AOL Real Estate with 3.6 million visitors (up 15 percent).
The start of spring led many Americans to consider home repairs and remodeling, driving traffic to sites that are home imrpovement related. About.com Home & Garden led the category with nearly 4 million visitors (up 16 percent), followed by AOL Home with 3.8 million visitors (up 29 percent) and Better Homes & Gardens Network with 3.8 million visitors (up 13 percent).
You wouldn’t know the company was doing so well from looking at Move’s financial results. Last week the company reported revenue for the first quarter was $54.9 million, compared to $61.9 million in the first quarter of 2008. Loss from continuing operations for the first quarter was $8.9 million, compared to a loss of $0.8 million for the first quarter of 2008. The first quarter 2009 results reflected non-recurring charges due to the departure of two senior executives, which included $1.9 million in severance pay and $8.7 million in stock-based compensation charges associated with those departures and the hiring of a new chief executive officer.
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Continue Reading May 15th, 2009
When all else fails, the Treasury Department is now willing to cough up cash to get homeowners to move on and to get loan servicers to forgive mortgage debt.
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Continue Reading May 15th, 2009
Banking on an advantageous location to attract tenants in a shaky economy, The Hampshire Cos. purchased a 98,400-square-foot, four-story office building on a little more than 19 acres in Iselin, N.J. Hampshire Global Partners, an entity controlled by The Hampshire Cos., plans to re-develop and upgrade the office building and develop the rest of the site.
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