Open House will be taking a holiday hiatus for the next several days.

See you on the 7th.

Another sharp point of contrast between traditional real estate agents and those who work at discount brokerages comes down to who should be conducting open houses as a tool for marketing the property.

Some agents say the Internet now limits the utility of open houses and some even admit they work better as a device to find buyers they can represent than to sell a home. Some sellers, however, still want the open house and lots of agents still do them.

But companies such as Redfin and $500 Realty say it’s the seller, not an agent, who should be putting on the hours-long mini-events.

I asked most people I interviewed for my Sunday story on listing agents about whether the seller or the agent should be doing open houses.

Redfin supplies open house signs but not agents to do them. Loren Ellingson, an agent at Redfin who primarily deals with clients by phone and e-mail, said the seller is the perfect person to do the open house.

“No one knows the house better than the owner. Not every agent is going to know how old the refrigerator is,” he said. Ellingson’s advice to sellers: put out food and fliers and don’t follow buyers around.

Jonathan Watson, the managing broker at GMAC Gateway Real Estate in Puyallup, said clearly the seller knows the nuances of the home but putting on the open house can work against them.

“They can over promise. They want that sale so bad,” he said. “The agent has emotional detachment, presenting the property in the most neutral way they can.”

For some in the traditional real estate world, it comes down to personal preference. Jill Jacobi Wood, who oversees Windermere's 144 western Washington offices, said she had no interest in being involved in her own open house.

“I think it’s really awkward," she said. "When I listed my house, I was like, I've got to get out of here.”

Any thoughts?

One of the starkest contrasts between traditional agents I talked to for today's story on listing agents and those at the discount real estate companies centers around the level of in-person work needed -- or not -- to sell a home.

For instance, agents at Redfin don’t go to a house before pricing it and sellers using MLS4owners.com are on their own.

Rachelle King, an agent at Redfin in downtown Seattle, previously worked at John L. Scott and said most of what she needs she gets via the Internet.

“Of all the times I went to see houses, I came back to the computer to do the comparables anyway,” she said.

Sharon Benson, like many traditional agents, comes to pricing with a different take.

A home, she said, can’t be properly priced without seeing what sits behind it, the street it's on and any other number of factors that can influence market value.

“When you walk into a house, you can see the difference in quality between my granite kitchen and your granite kitchen, space and functionality,” said Benson, an agent at Coldwell Banker Bain.

Any thoughts?

Conventional wisdom up until the last few days seemed to be that mortgage interest rates would continue to drop, even if just a bit. But a quick look at Bankrate this morning shows a 30-year fixed rate loan at 5.84 percent, up from 5.75 percent last week.

And Bloomberg has this to report:

Mortgage applications in the U.S. fell last week by the most since 2004 as a jump in interest rates caused purchases and refinancing to decline, a private survey showed.

The Mortgage Bankers Association's index decreased 20 percent to 653.8 from 881.8 the prior week. The group's purchase index fell 11 percent and its refinancing gauge plunged 27 percent.

Loan restrictions and a glut of unsold homes on the market are prompting buyers to wait for even bigger price discounts, economists said. Higher borrowing costs and more foreclosures suggest the real-estate slump will continue to hurt economic growth well into 2008.

Any predictions on where rates will head the next few weeks and into early 2008?

I don't write a lot about foreclosures, because the numbers are far bigger in other parts of the country, such as Florida and Southern California.

This Wall St. Journal story, however, caught my eye at the LA Times real estate blog, because it touches on the new federal mortgage relief plan and the kind of people who might be eligible.

Here's an anecdotal window into how far some home owners over leveraged themselves and where they stand now:

The Oropezas arrived at Calle Canon Road in 2004. Corona appealed to them because of its quality of life and regional cachet. "It was labeled as the new Orange County," Mrs. Oropeza says. Public records show they paid $557,000 for a four-bedroom house and took out a $500,000 mortgage. Her husband is an area manager for an auto-parts retailer and she is a purchasing manager for a firm that sells dietary supplements.

As property values skyrocketed, they refinanced three times, most recently in late 2006, for $835,000, Mr. Oropeza says.

The couple say they used some of the money they pulled out of the house for home improvement, such as a backyard waterfall. But Mr. Oropeza says the bulk was used to pay off credit-card arrears. "We were in a vicious cycle of refinancing our home to get out of debt," he says. "We banked on selling the house, but that's where we failed."

Warren Buffett says "you can't turn a financial toad into a prince by securitizing it." He talks with Hillary Clinton about the growth of new investment products.

The couple listed the house several times, even before the final refinancing, which raised their monthly payments to about $6,300. Earlier this year, they were asking $839,000 for the house. But it just sat. Elsie Cambone, the Coldwell Banker agent who had the listing, says prospective buyers were put off by the vacant home next door.

Meanwhile, Mr. Oropeza expected to be transferred to Texas, so the couple began house hunting there in 2006. In June, they bought a 3,600-square-foot home for $283,000 in the Houston suburb of Katy, Mrs. Oropeza says. "It was easy. We had good credit. The deal was done in seven days."

=> Read more!

Seven tips for selling your home faster emerged from Redfin, the Seattle online brokerage, last week. Among them:

• Stay put: A study of 3,490 Stockton listings showed that vacant homes were 9.5 percent more likely than non-vacant homes to see a price reduction.
• List on Friday: Listings in seven Redfin markets got 7.7 percent more online visitors on Friday in the first seven days than ones listed on Thursday.

The company said the tips come from crunching numbers, including academic research and its own data, to help clients with questions they’ve had about selling strategy. Redfin also is working on a study about the impact of re-listing a home after its been abandoned by a buyer post-inspection.

And last Friday you might have seen CEO Glenn Kelman on “The Today Show,” where he talked about the selling tips. He later blogged about the experience.

Here’s an excerpt:
Heading up the stairs to the make-up room, I walked through a door and literally ran into Matt Lauer. “Hi guys!” he said. “Do I really need make-up?” I asked and the make-up people nodded with religious conviction. I asked them about their favorite stars to work on and they told me “the stars bring their own make-up people.”

The producer called to say I would do great. I think I sounded nervous, which made him sound very nervous. We ended up reassuring one another. I wanted to ask if I could use the word “kick-ass” on the air, for reasons I can no longer remember, but then told him “forget it,” and he said “what?” and I said, “no, forget it,” and then he said “Just don’t get nervous.”

Michael Russer, a real estate agent coach, preached niche marketing to more than 200 Coldwell Banker agents in SeaTac yesterday.

“People in marketing would never consider sending out a message without knowing their target audience,” he said.

Examples of real estate specialists he helped remake included agents who targeted military buyers, condo customers and nudists. One tip: “If you’re going to pick a sociological group, make sure you’re part of it.”

Russer also delivered a potentially counter-intuitive message to an industry group that long has been told the key to success is building a brand. He told the agents to make marketing about the customers, not themselves.

“When you’re ready to retire, what do you have to sell? If it’s about you, not much,” he said.

Look for a Q&A with Russer, who talks about how changing the way agents do business can benefit consumers, in the paper’s Business section on Dec. 31.

Even a price cut amounting to 8.4 percent and trumpeted with a yellow banner in the Proctor District of North Tacoma isn’t much of a draw in today’s market.

The sellers of a four-bedroom brick house at North Proctor and North 21st streets started with a price of $434,950 in August after redoing the kitchen, the wood floors and the master-bedroom bathroom. Two months later, they dropped it to $395,000. Just before Thanksgiving, they dropped the price again to $365,000 and listing agent Jonathan Phillips erected a sign in the living room window telling buyers the discount was good only until Dec. 15.

Offers tied to a deadline are more typically seen on incentives, such as closing costs paid, for new-construction homes. Phillips said he’s done banners before but not a price cut tied to a certain date.

So far, no offers. Even the usually-popular fliers aren’t moving.

“Normally at that location, I’d expect 400 to 500 go out of there. I haven’t had 50 fliers go out of the box.”

I pointed out that prospective buyers might not like the house’s location on a busy intersection. But he said there are occupied houses on two of the other corners, the Proctor District is a highly desirable part of town and the house has less road noise than others in the North End.

Phillips blames the lack of activity on hesitant buyers who are sitting back waiting for banking layoffs and other housing-related news to even out.

“There’s no lack of sellers in this market. We lack buyers,” he said.

What happens Dec. 16? Phillips plans to cancel the listing and help the owners, a Whidbey Island couple who bought the home three years ago as an investment, rent it for the next year or so.

Condominium sales activity and prices are all over the place around Pierce County. North Tacoma, for instance, has seen far fewer condos sold this year than last while Puyallup has sold 35.6 percent more through the first 11 months of the year compared to the same period in 2006.

Here’s a look at the median price through November, with the change in price compared to the first 11 months of 2006, in 10 areas within Pierce County that have had at least 50 condos sell through the end of November.

We've had several stories in the paper on plans to freeze mortgage rates, but I thought some more info and perspectives might be helpful. I'd also be interested in knowing what you think of plans to help home owners in trouble with their mortgage. Something to help home buyers perhaps taken advantage of, or who have been hurt by falling home prices? Or a bailout for people who should have known better?

BusinessWeek has a Q&A you can find here, with items such as the following.

Is the bailout going to be enough?

It depends on your definition of enough. The deal will add some stability to the housing market, but it won't stop all the problems in the troubled sector. The same day Bush unveiled his plan, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. said that foreclosures had reached a record high in the third quarter. The share of mortgages that have entered foreclosure hit 0.78% in the quarter, up from the previous high of 0.65% set in the previous quarter. At the same time, delinquencies for all mortgages rose to 5.59%, from 5.12%, in the second quarter. None of the people who are delinquent or facing foreclosure will be helped by the plan.

A top 10 list from finance blog Calculated Risk. A sampling:

10) This is not a bailout. There is no federal money involved.

9) The Paulson mortgage plan does not violate any contracts.

You can find the remainder of the list here.

From the Washington Post:
President Bush's high-profile effort to give relief to homeowners facing foreclosure involves a careful political calculation -- that the American dream of owning a home is more powerful than the anger investors and average homeowners will feel over not getting a bailout of their own.

The new program, announced at the White House this week with great fanfare, opens the way for hundreds of thousands of homeowners to have their subprime loan rates frozen as long as they are not behind in their mortgage payments and continue to live in their homes.
The president unveiled the plan amid indications that the mortgage lending crisis is deepening: The number of foreclosures in the third quarter hit a record, and the percentage of mortgage loans behind on payments reached the highest level in more than two decades.

Even so, Bush quickly came under attack. A few investment firms and activists argued that the program would hand a benefit to people who should not get a reprieve for their poor financial decisions. Most complaints, however, went the other way: The president was right to act, but he should have protected more homeowners from losing their homes.

Any thoughts?

The latest Northwest Multiple Listing Service numbers show a third straight month of home price declines year-over-year for Pierce County, down 4.4 percent to $262,950. But that number doesn’t tell you what’s happening in distinct markets within our large, diverse county.

So here’s a look at the median price in the 17 Pierce County areas as broken down by the MLS. I’ve had feedback that some of these areas are still too big to get a good read on micro-markets in Pierce. (The Gig Harbor numbers, for instance, include Fox Island and the Key Peninsula.) I have asked the MLS for more detailed breakdowns and I’ve been told this is as detailed as I can get.

The median price for a home in Pierce County declined year-over-year for a third month in November to $262,950, according to figures released this morning by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

It's the steepest drop yet, at 4.4 percent following October's decline of 1.4 percent and a 2.4 percent decrease in September.

Price drops for November compared to the same month in 2006 hit other counties, too. Here's a look:

King: -2.9%
Kitsap: -6.2%
Snohomish: -0.9%
Thurston: +0.9%
Statewide: -1.4%

I'll have a full story on the numbers, including thoughts from agents and a prospective buyer who's decided to rent, in tomorrow's News Tribune.

Real estate agents have been pushing the same message for months: Buy now. Interest rates have stayed relatively low and dipped even lower in recent days; inventory levels are up. Sellers are motivated.

But they say buyers, instead, are indecisive and hesitant. An e-mail I got yesterday from Don Dutton, a Windermere broker in Puyallup, said, “The thing I can’t get over is current buyer’s preference to wait out this slow market … It seems buyers want to feel the unbridled enthusiasm of a seller’s market before getting interested in making a home purchase.”

While rates are down, real estate agents and mortgage brokers say it is harder today with tightened guidelines to get a loan than it was this time last year, which could have something to do with buyer hesitation. (My Sunday story highlighted the impact such difficulties are presenting for homes priced under $250,000.) But I think, too, that buyers might be trying to time the market – wait for the low point, so they don’t buy now and find out three months later that prices have since dropped. (The median home price in Pierce County fell year-over-year in September and October; November numbers come out Thursday.) Agents say playing such a waiting game is risky and causing buyers to miss some good buys.

So, buyers, any thoughts? Agents?

Some Tacoma Re/Max agents have ditched the ubiquitous flier box in place of a new kind of yard sign. They are laminated versions of the traditional flier with pictures of the home for sale and its price.

Shari Crumbaker and Angie Sherman decided last month to put up laminated versions of the traditional flier. The advantages, they said: less litter, less expense, no more empty flier boxes.

Plus, their signs emphasize the house rather than the agents. Most agents put their pictures on the fliers.

“Instead of a big picture of us on the board, there are great interior shots of the house. We want them to come inside and see themselves living there,” Crumbaker said.

Said Sherman: “It’s not about us. It’s selling the house, not selling Shari and Angie.”

Here's a look at one of the new signs:

Sherman and Crumbaker said the idea came from George Pilant, another Re/Max agent, who said he made the switch from fliers to signs over the summer. A typical listing, he said, goes through 400 to 500 fliers at 40 cents to 50 cents per piece of paper.

“It’s expensive to produce color fliers, and it’s wasteful. Most people are just looking for a price and a phone number,” he said.

I asked him if he knew of other local agents with other companies who had given up on fliers.

“Not yet,” he said. “They will.”

I wonder, though, if buyers will miss the hands-on flier and how many buyers found homes they subsequently bought with a flier they were able to take with them and show friends, family and co-workers. Any thoughts?