Trulia adds 3-D map view in upgraded Android apps

Crime, school and other information now available

BY INMAN NEWS, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2012.

Inman News®

Crime heat map view in Trulia's updated Android apps

Real estate marketplace Trulia's free Android phone and tablet apps now offer 3-D Google Maps display and integrate neighborhood information like crime data, school information and nearby amenities in map view.
With the update, Trulia Android app users will be able to see crime data via heat maps, school attendance boundary zones, and other information like nearby restaurants for the first time, said Steven Yarger, director of mobile at Trulia.
The upgrade, which utilizes, and coincides with, a Google Maps software platform update, will allow users to toggle between standard, angled and "satellite" map views in the apps and between 2-D and 3-D.
The 3-D map views, Yarger said, are similar to those seen in Google Earth (a 3-D map system from Google), and can be rotated by users using their fingers. The update also allows users to access indoor maps of locations like shopping malls, where they exist, he said.

Angled map view showing homes for sale in Trulia's updated mobile apps.
Users of Trulia's iPad app, Yarger noted, already had access to some of these features like neighborhood data, but the 3-D feature is new to all Trulia apps and exclusively for Android as of now.

The new Android apps also integrate tools from Trulia's mortgage center, which allow users to see mortgage rates from a variety of lenders via a link directly from a property view in the apps. IPad and iPhone users can access the tools, too, but they're in stand-alone apps, not integrated into the main Trulia app, Yarger said.
In May, Trulia debuted a mobile ads program that allows five agents per ZIP code to advertise on the map views of the company's mobile apps.
Trulia currently has 12 mobile apps that cover general real estate (6), rentals (4), agent needs (2), and consumer mortgage tools (2).

Real estate should embrace 'the visual Web'

Websites should be responsive, but not at the expense of design

BY TOM FLANAGAN, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2012.

Inman News®

Screen shot of ERA.com home page.

Responsive design and the visual Web are two trends gaining traction on the Web. They are vastly different approaches, but both of these styles are having an effect on our desktop and mobile strategies.

The visual Web is characterized by big, beautiful imagery that features a contemporary layout. Platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram have been a catalyst for the movement. "Images and video are becoming an increasingly important part of what we consume online," says Richard MacManus, founder and editor in chief of ReadWriteWeb, writing about "The Rise of Beautiful Apps."

Although not always executed properly, photography has always been a staple of real estate marketing. The visual Web is a trend that the industry can leverage. Photography -- or better yet, amazing photography -- is a wonderful way to showcase communities, neighborhoods and homes.

FHA rehab loans ideal for distressed homes | Rolling purchase price, fix-up costs into 1 loan is next best thing to new construction

BY STEVE BERGSMAN, FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 2012 Inman News®

Handyman special image via Shutterstock.

Foreclosures and short sales always look so enticing, but these kinds of deals are not for the faint-hearted or those on slim resources.

Buying a residence that is not newly built usually requires immediate rehabilitation and remodeling to be followed by regular maintenance. Taking on a foreclosure or short-sale property only ratchets up the process with more intensive rehabbing and certainly a lot more maintenance.

Agents: Are you an IRS audit target?

Real Estate Tax Talk

BY STEPHEN FISHMAN, FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2012.

Inman News®

Every year, the Internal Revenue Service releases detailed statistics about who got audited the previous year.

The stats for 2011, covering 2010 returns — have recently come out and they paint an unpleasant picture for many real estate professionals — particularly the successful ones.

The percentage of business and nonbusiness returns that got audited in 2011 is shown in the following chart:

IRS Audit Rates (2010)

	Audit Rate
Sole proprietors
Income under $25,000	1.3%
$25,000 to $100,000	2.9%
$100,000 to $200,000	4.3%
$200,000 and more	3.8%
Partnerships	0.4%
S corporations	0.4%
C corporations
Assets under $250,000	0.9%
$250,000 to $1 million	1.6%
$1 million to $5 million	1.9%
$5 million to $10 million	2.6%
Nonbusiness Returns
Under $25,000	1.2%
$25,000 to $50,000	0.7%
$50,000 to $75,000	0.8%
$75,000 to $100,000	0.8%
$100,000 to $200,000	1.0%
$200,000 to $500,000	2.7%
$500,000 to $1 million	5.4%

This chart shows that in 2010, 4.3 percent of sole proprietors earning $100,000 to $200,000 were audited. Not even corporations with assets worth between $5 million and $10 million were audited as often.

Moreover, only 1 percent of taxpayers who did not file a Schedule C form, but earned $100,000 to $200,000, were audited. Thus, self-employed taxpayers were four times as likely to be audited as employees earning the same amount.

In fact, employees earning as much as $500,000 were less likely to be audited than self-employed taxpayers earning as little as $100,000.

These statistics undoubtedly reflect the IRS’s belief that sole proprietors habitually underreport their income, take deductions to which they are not entitled, or otherwise cheat on their taxes.

Employees have less opportunity to cheat because their income tax is withheld by their employers and income reported directly to the IRS by them.

Unfortunately, most real estate professionals fall into the high-audit category: They are self-employed businesspeople who file Schedule C. The lesson these numbers teach is that you need to take the IRS seriously.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take all the deductions you’re legally entitled to take, but you should understand the rules and be able to back up the deductions you do take with proper records.

If you’re really worried about getting audited, think about forming a business entity to operate your real estate business. This could be a pass-through entity, such as a limited liability company taxed as a partnership or an S corporation.

Such entities don’t pay taxes themselves, but do file returns with the IRS. Both have extremely low audit rates: only 0.4 percent of such entities were audited in 2011. Regular C corporations also have relatively low audit rates.

Real estate professionals optimistic about home values

From AOL Real Estate

BY INMAN NEWS, MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012.

Editor's note: The following item is republished with permission of AOL Real Estate. See the original article: Home Value Survey Sees Sharp Rise in Realtor Optimism. By Teke Wiggan

With signs that a real estate recovery may be kicking into gear, a new survey shows a sharp increase in optimism among real estate professionals about the direction of home values.

A survey conducted by home valuation website HomeGain found that the number of real estate professionals who expect home values to increase has more than doubled over just one quarter. Thirty-seven percent of respondents surveyed so far in 2012 said they anticipate that home values will rise in the next six months, up from 15 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011.

"The trend has been staying the same or decreasing. And here it flipped for the first time," HomeGain General Manager Louis Cammarosano told AOL Real Estate.

He added that since HomeGain began administering the survey in the second quarter of 2009, the percentage of respondents who have expressed a bullish outlook on the market has never risen above 25 percent, and, for much of the time, has sputtered around 15 percent.

The spike in optimism about home values follows recent reports that corroborate the view that the housing market is stabilizing. Home sales are trending upward and homebuilders are reportedly more optimistic than they've been in many years. Home prices continue to fall, but a number of industry observers say that price direction isn't necessarily the most important bellwether of a recovery.

Budge Huskey, president and chief operating officer of Coldwell Banker Real Estate, says he sees confidence among real estate agents that he hasn't observed since the housing meltdown. "What is consistently being represented out there today is that there is a sense of optimism in the real estate business that has not been seen in the last five to six years," he told AOL Real Estate.

While cautioning that real estate agents "tend to always be optimists," Huskey stressed that "this time it's based on what we believe to be some clear trends."

Prominent among the hopeful signs, Huskey says, is the state of the housing inventory, which had fallen to 2.3 million homes, or approximately a six-month supply of for-sale homes, as of January. That's the lowest level of inventory since March 2005, according to the National Association of Realtors, which released the statistic.

Meanwhile, total home sales have risen by 13 percent in the last six months, according to Capital Economics. And while construction of new homes dropped marginally in February, they still were at the second-highest level since October 2008, the National Association of Homebuilders says.

A last sign, much ballyhooed by industry optimists, is the state of homebuilders' confidence: The National Association of Home Builders sentiment indexreached 28 in February and remained at that level in March. Not since 2007 have homebuilders expressed such confidence in the housing industry.

Despite sprouting green shoots in the market, home prices continue to slide, and even when they do eventually trend upward, many economists say, the increase will be gradual.

That fact has led some industry observers to call for a rethinking of what actually constitutes a housing recovery, and to avoid treating price movement as the all-important indicator of a recover.

Capital Economics, for instance, recently revealed that even though prices declined last year (around 4 percent according to various estimates) and mortgage rates are finally ticking up, the economic analysis firm still believes that the real estate market is making inroads.

But CoreLogic senior economist Sam Khater advises against buying too much into the hype. "I would be cautious about folks getting too optimistic," he says.

The 1.6 million homes that are in a state of foreclosure are about to hit the market at a faster pace in the wake of an agreement reached between the government and major mortgage servicers over acceptable foreclosure practices, Khater says. That'll drive down prices, he says, as banks begin to push through foreclosures that they previously halted during negotiations of the $25 billion settlement reached last month.

"There's going to be a really long tail to this," he cautions. Still, Khater says that rising sales and the fact that fewer homes are flowing into the "shadow inventory" -- homes in a state of foreclosure -- are positive signs for the real estate market.

Huskey says the next healthy housing era will be a more "traditional market" that will stand in stark contrast to what he calls the "steroid years," when prices rose at an unsustainable pace.

As CNNMoney recently put it, "If you're waiting for home prices to go up, then you're missing signs the troubled housing market has finally turned around."

Real estate professionals also stress that a housing recovery should not be judged from a bird's-eye view, since market conditions vary dramatically from state to state and city to city. In states walloped by the real estate market collapse, real estate agents are significantly more optimistic that home prices will rise in the next six months.

Eighty percent of Arizona real estate agents and homeowners, 75 percent of Nevada agents and homeowners and 51 percent of Florida agents and homeowners told HomeGain that they believe home values will rise in the next six months. The optimism in Florida dovetails with dramatic price gains recently reported by Realtor.com.

The online marketplace reports that out of the 10 metropolitan areas that saw the highest price increases in their database in February of 2012, seven were in Florida. Miami median home prices increased by 26.19 percent, the listing service says.

Meanwhile, in states that weathered the housing crisis relatively well, a much higher percentage of real estate agents and homeowners believe that prices will drop. In Connecticut, 60 percent of agents surveyed said that they thought prices would continue to fall.