End-of-year Chicago Market data Bodes well for 2012

Though we’ve been a bit absent lately, we wanted to make sure we stopped by and dropped off some end-of-year data insights to the blog. We’ve been focusing our attention in other areas and have found it increasingly hard to make time to crunch numbers like we used to.

That said, here’s some nice food for thought on the Chicago market over the past year. The good news off the bat is that absorption rates are almost universally better as 2011 winds down than they were in 2010. Kudos to the savvy agents and hungry buyers out there.

Seems appropriate here to call out that every county saw an increase in 2011 for single family homes, except Cook. Kane county saw a close to 8% increase in single family closings:

Cook = -1.44%
Dupage = 5.61%
Kane =  7.94%
Lake = 5.07%
McHenry = 7.38%
Will =  0.82%

Whats more interesting though, is that transaction volume is on par with last year’s numbers, despite there being an decrease in the amount of listings practically across the board. This could be a positive sign that sellers are not willing to sell at the current price and more sellers are staying on the sideline waiting for pricing rebounds. This signals a potential shift the pricing momentum, and bodes well for 2012 upcoming.  The role of shadow inventory remains to be seen, but only time will tell.

Click the link for our full aggregation of closed and active listings by county and property type.

A Picture is Worth…

Our most recent data pull continues to look at ways agents market properties. You may remember we’ve pulled data on how listings are entered into the MLS prior, notably with our post on the use of “green” terms in property descriptions.

Rather than terminology, this time we take a look at the number of photo’s a real estate agent includes in their MLS listing. The percentage breakdown is in the graph below.

While Chicago Agent Magazine focused on the startling statistic that the largest percentage of realtors (38%) have only 1 photo included, we find it interesting that the next greatest amount of pictures agents include is 16. It seems agents choose to do either the bare minimum or the absolute maximum, more often than not.

Why do you think that may be? And is either number an effective amount of photos?

Judging by a few comments at the Chicago Agent Magazine post, neither one nor sixteen is the best amount. One picture doesn’t convey a sense of the home at all; while sixteen is just too many to click through. As a best practice, a photo set should be based on the number of photos to needed to showcase a property not the arbitrary maximum or the lazy minimum.  If a floor plan is included, users will get a much better idea of the property. Homes with floor plans and high quality digital photos achieve both a sense of the space and its arrangement, as well as convey its condition and/or  noteworthy amenities.

Next time you’re adding listing photos, consider how much effort it takes to give a buyer a good, truthful impression of the listing, and what is overkill. Better yet, go the progressive route and have high quality photos shot for you. We’re willing to bet buyers will appreciate it.

Moving Recently Built Inventory, Per Chicago Neighborhood

Here’s new data we pulled for this week’s Chicago Agent Magazine issue, published on Monday. The issue includes various articles discussing new builds and construction in the city. We took a look at new properties built in the past few years and how fast their inventory was moving by neighborhood. Only neighborhoods with at least 10 recorded closings during the previous twelve-month period and 10 active listings were rated.

You can see that Edgewater, West Town, and North Center all top the list, indicating the hottest and most frequent acquisitions of recently built homes. The bottom part of the list particularly suffered in the numbers due to the inclusion of 2007 statistics. 2007 of course was the last year the market saw upswings in new construction, and the Near South Side was one neighborhood in which numerous properties were created but went unsold in the subsequent market crash.

Average Showings per week – August 2011

Showing Volume for Chicagoland during the month of August: Market showing activity is following in line with historical trends over the past few years. Late summer showings were up throughout August, and typically showings drag downward toward the end of the year.

Remember that this information is available daily in the Leap Scheduling System but is posted to the blog monthly.

The 80/20 Rule – Agents vs Business Percentage in Chicagoland

Are you familiar with the Pareto principle?

Before you say ‘no’, allow us to explain. In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth. More commonly this is known as the 80/20 rule and is summarized that 20% of actions/causes /inputs, etc. will lead to 80% of consequences/effects/outputs. Sound familiar now? We thought so.

Recently, we had heard many theories circulating that this was the case in the Chicago agent community. Whether it was a 5/95, 40/60, or 80/20 we weren’t sure, but we decided to take a look.

For this pull we took total transaction volume per active agent (one with a transaction in the period)- both buyer and seller side – and compared that to overall transaction volume in market. We also compared their percentage as one agent out of the total in Chicagoland, and ran those numbers comparatively. What we found ran directly inline with the Pareto Principle – a substantial amount of business is being done by a relatively small number of agents.

Take market leader Mario Greco, for instance. While Mr. Greco makes up just .005 percent of the total active agents out there, he accounts for a .35 percent of business transactions. Continuing down the list until we get to the 1000th agent, we see that Michael Zapart and the 999 agents before him make up only 5.02 percent of all agents, yet a staggering 39.6 percent of business volume. Keying in on original principle more accurately, we have to look at the 80 percentile of business volume. Sure enough, we find that 80 percent of business transactions are completed by just 27.74 percent of total agent.

While the disparity can feel a bit frustrating, the principle does not mean that agents do not move into smaller percentiles/greater transaction volumes. Instead, it reiterates the fact that many agents that are doing the “same old thing” and failing to use new marketing techniques and technologies will likely stay in the same 80% percent group with their peers. Those who use progressive tactics are likely to stand out from the pack, and therefore increase transactions and their percentage of the market.

Leap Software Going Mobile

Leap Real Estate Systems is proud to announce the debut of a new version of Leap Software- completely optimized for your mobile phone. Leap Software is already the advanced solution for streamlining your appointment scheduling and organizing your your busy real estate business. Agents can benefit from decreased back-end processes and spend less time writing down appointments or notifying appropriate parties. While the Scheduling site worked very well on smartphones before, the development team went extra steps to make our mobile version easier than ever, and perfect for scheduling showings on-the-go.

The log in page, pictured above, is available at http://m.leapre.com. After logging in you have a scheduling screen which allows you quick access to the popular functions of the Scheduling system. The mobile site is straight forward and ready to use right now, so if you’re a current user go ahead and give it a try. If you still have yet to join the hundreds of agents using Leap solutions, learn more here.

After the click are instructions on bookmarking the mobile site as an icon for your iPhone.

Free Webinar: Learn to Leverage Market Data

Due to the great response from last month’s webinar, we’ll be holding another this Wednesday, August 24th from 1pm – 2pm. Click the link above to register and we hope to see you there!