The monthly Case-Schiller residential sales report that spans 20 major metropolitan areas showed that home prices had risen at the fastest pace in over 7 years at 12.4%. Their data reports on May-July 2013. For a good summary and a worthwhile article see, Wall Street Journal My web site provides even more current analysis of August 2013 just for Montgomery County, see My Monthly Market Snapshot Continue Reading
Automated Alerts on Ciment.com
We are in the process of automating listing alerts so that any Registered User of ciment.com can Save a Search and associate an Alert for that Saved Search. We apologize for some transition traffic that may have sent you extra alerts for listings that were actually unchanged. This happened because it was hard to transfer log-ins along with their history. From this point on you should only see Continue Reading
Silver Spring Market Improving for Sellers
A new Long & Foster Report confirms that the Silver Spring Market (Zip 20901,02,03,04,05,06,10) is improving for sellers. Data for May 2013 show that Units Sold at 279 is Up 6%. The # Active Listings at 509 is Down -34%, while Median Price at $360K is Up 7%. Another positive indicator for Sellers is that Days On Market at 39 is Down from 53 days (-26%). The Months of Supply is now 1.8 and is Continue Reading
How We Represent Buyers and Sellers in Changing Markets.
I just want to take a minute to report to you how proud we are of our Best MD Buyer Agent, Emily Lurie. Yesterday, Emily wrote a contract on a Silver Spring Property that had a total of 8 Contracts. Although Emily's buyer had not offered the highest price, nonetheless, Emily's contract won out over the others. The feedback was that Emily's contract was clean and professional. That is what makes Continue Reading
Top 1% Realty Alliance Award Presented to Barbara Ciment
Paul Foster presented Barbara Ciment with a Realty Alliance Sales Award in recognition of her achievements in 2012, ranking her in the Top 1% of all residential sales professionals in North America. The Ciment Team was also recognized as Top Office Producer. In 2012, the Team settled $27 Million in Sales: 100 Closed Sale/Rental Transaction Sides! Continue Reading
Team News: Eventful and Productive Week
This was a very eventful week with 5 Team closings , adding up to a Team total of 10 settled properties in 2013! Along with 10 active listings and 6 other properties under contract, requiring constant attention, and another listing (#7) going under contract, we were very busy this week. The market is really heating up. With all this going it was somewhat amusing to run into an agent that did a Continue Reading
Renting Now Costs More than Buying
The graph above depicts Monthly Rent Costs versus Monthly Mortgage Payments over recent years.We see the beginnings of recovery for the housing market. The demand for rentals has exploded so that renting is still more expensive than buying a home. See "The After Math Of the Housing Bubble" by David Kelly, J.P. Morgan. Fallen home prices in Silver Spring coupled with historically low interest Continue Reading
Ciment Team Newsletter February 2013
This is a Good Time to List for Sale! You have not seen the above headline from me for over 5 Years! But, I am finally really experiencing an improved market in Silver Spring. I know you have heard that real estate is doing well inside the District and in some of the upper-scale areas like Bethesda and Chevy Chase. But, it has finally started to be felt in my marketing areas of Silver Spring and Continue Reading
Reliable Neighborhood/Subdivision Searches
When you decide to either buy or sell your home, like most people, you most probably enjoy doing your own "due diligence" by browsing through some listings. Now, when you finally get serious about moving to an area, do you search by City or Zip Code? The answer usually is, yes, because that is the way you get accurate geo-info. But, in reality you don't want all that extra data, you want some Continue Reading
Sales Volume Surging for Season
November real estate data are almost all settled down in Montgomery County (it usually takes until the 9th of each month) but, some things are already clear. The volume of units sold for November 2012 was up a healthy 20.45% over Nov 2011! As more data come in, that can only raise that volume of sales percentage. While sales prices were up 4.84% and only minor changes are likely in that number Continue Reading
