Source; Nick Timiraos
In each of the last three years, home prices have increased in the spring and summer, when more people are buying homes, before giving back all of those gains and then some in the fall and winter, when activity cools.
But it is beginning to look like that might not happen this year, absent a major stumble for the economy.
Home prices in July were up by 3.8% from one year ago, the largest year-over-year jump in six years. Moreover, prices have shot up by 9.6% from February, when they registered their lowest levels of the housing downturn, according to CoreLogic data released Tuesday.
This adds evidence to the case that U.S. home prices may have hit bottom earlier this year. Even though prices will soften in the autumn, “we have a much better supply and demand dynamic” than in previous years, says Mark Fleming, chief economist at CoreLogic.
So when people say they believe home prices haven’t reached a bottom — that this year’s seasonal gains will be wiped away by January or February of next year — here’s the relevant question: Will home prices fall by 9.6% in the next six months?
Anything, of course, is possible. Home prices fell in the winter — what Mr. Fleming calls the “offseason” — in each of the last three years to record a new low. But they have not fallen by 9.6% in any six-month span since March 2009, which was when the U.S. economy was still in recession.
That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news: While the year-over-year comparisons look good right now, the economy — and workers’ wages — aren’t growing fast enough to justify this kind of increase on a sustained basis.
Instead, the snapback in home prices in the last six months is more an indication of how prices “over-shot” over the past year. Investors, sensing deals, began buying up Huntsville AL homes for sale . The most likely scenario for home prices over the next year is that they may rise, but not at the breakneck pace of the past few months (and they’ll fall on a relative basis in the coming months due to normal seasonal factors).
There are other serious headwinds. It’s still hard to get a mortgage, and many households have too much debt. Millions of homeowners owe more than their homes are worth. Millions more have enough equity to sell their house but not enough to make a down payment on their next house and pay a real-estate broker’s commission.
As we’ve written many times before, the strong rise in home prices this year owes as much to sharp declines in inventory as it does to demand-side improvement. Banks have been much slower to take back and list foreclosed properties, easing pressure on home prices but leaving a bloated “shadow inventory” of potential foreclosure Huntsville AL homes for sale .
Home Prices Have Hit Bottom These homes will weigh on markets for years, though there’s less evidence that they will be dumped on the market at once. While the shadow inventory may not lead to a big drop in prices that some have feared, it will probably keep a lid on future home-price gains.
Finally, lower mortgage rates have dramatically increased the purchasing power of today’s home buyers when compared to one year ago. Some real estate executives are nervous that demand isn’t stronger given today’s low mortgage rates, and they’re worried about what will happen if rates rise.
The bottom line: Don’t be surprised if the all-time low in home prices is in the rear-view mirror. But this doesn’t mean a full-on recovery is here, and there’s little evidence that the current pace of improvement can continue. For now, home prices appear to be bumping along a bottom.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Friday, December 28, 2012
huntsville al mls housing outlook
Source; Daily Real Estate News; The Wall Street Journal / Nick Timiraos; REALTOR® Magazine / Brian Summerfield
4 Housing Issues to Watch in 2013
What does 2013 have in store for the housing market? With marked gains this year, housing experts expect the housing market to continue to gain momentum in the new year.
The Wall Street Journal recently offered up some chief housing issues likely to be important in the New Year. These include:
Inventories rise: To meet the increased demand, home builders are increasing production and more sellers may be more willing to test the market as housing prices increase.
Home prices spur demand: Huntsville AL MLS More buyers have urgency with home purchases as rents rise, housing values gain momentum, and mortgage rates remain low.
Credit remains tight: “While rising prices could serve as a tailwind, new regulations may lock in some of the defensive underwriting posture while impeding capital rules may lead banks to pare their lending footprint,” The Wall Street Journal predicts.
Broader economy dictates how far recovery goes: If unemployment decreases and the economy improves, many of the biggest challenges facing the housing market would likely fade, such as tight credit, the large number of underwater home owners, and a high rate of foreclosures.
“Any renewed weakness in job growth could put housing back into the stall that it found itself in between 2010 and 2011,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “The housing market is still fragile. ... If lawmakers can’t agree on a series of spending cuts and tax hikes to avert the ‘fiscal cliff,’ that could crimp demand or damage confidence.”
Home prices finally hit a bottom in 2012. So will 2013 be the year of recovery or relapse? Each day this week, we offered an area of focus for 2013. Here’s a recap of our earlier predictions, and the final installment:
1. The shadow inventory is shrinking. Banks could begin to increase the pace of foreclosed-property sales in markets with large backlogs, but they’re unlikely to deluge the market.
2. Rising prices could boost demand. Buyers now have something they haven’t had in the past few years—urgency. Rent and price gains are beginning to change consumer attitudes about home purchases.
3. Housing inventory should hit a bottom. Builders are ramping up new construction, and price gains could lead more would-be sellers to test the market.
4. Credit standards should stay tight. While rising prices could serve as a tailwind, new regulations may lock in some of the defensive underwriting posture while impeding capital rules may lead banks to pare their lending footprint.
Interactive: Hntsville AL MLS Housing inventory drops in November 5. Home prices should stay in positive territory next year, but everything ultimately depends on what happens in the economy. Job growth hasn’t been great, yet it has been strong enough to nudge the housing market forward. If it continues, the experience of the past year shows that the sector’s many challenges—tight credit, high levels of underwater borrowers, and elevated foreclosures—can be overcome.
To be sure, annual price gains of some phenomenal magnitude (see Phoenix, where prices are up 17%) aren’t sustainable unless incomes pick up. Instead, prices that have been rising in these hard-hit cities are more likely rebounding from extremely low levels—the result of housing having fallen far below its replacement costs—and recent gains should eventually level off at a more measured pace.
Any renewed weakness in job growth could put housing back into the stall that it found itself in between 2010 and 2011. The housing market is still fragile. Millions of homeowners owe more than their homes are worth, and millions more don’t have enough equity to make a down payment on another home.
If lawmakers can’t agree on a series of spending cuts and tax hikes to avert the “fiscal cliff,” that could crimp demand or damage confidence. There’s also still the potential for a renewed recession from the euro-zone crisis, or the prospect that short sales slide because Congress doesn’t extend a tax provision that allows borrowers to avoid paying taxes on forgiven mortgage debt.
The fiscal cliff talks will bring renewed scrutiny to the mortgage-interest deduction. Few expect a wholesale repeal of the deduction. More likely are compromises that cap overall deductions, that reduce the deduction for top earners, or that limit the deduction to interest on $500,000 in debt.
But absent a renewed recession or other unforeseen shocks, housing in 2013 looks poised to consolidate the gains of 2012. Huntsville AL MLS The Federal Reserve has made clear it will do what it can to be rates low. Homes are still at their most affordable levels in at least 15 years, based on traditional price-to-income and price-to-rent measures. And housing is expected to begin contributing more meaningfully to the economy
When we look back on 2012 a long time from now, it may be viewed as the first year of the recovery, the year in which real estate reversed its course and moved in a more positive direction.
With that in mind, here are 13 reasons — courtesy of Huntsville AL MLS REALTOR® Magazine’s online news — why real estate pros can look forward to next year:
1. There’s greater optimism about increasing home values.
2. More new households are forming.
3. Home shoppers are feeling a greater sense of urgency.
4. Home ownership remains a goal of members of the Millennial generation.
5. Foreclosure starts are falling to pre-housing-bust levels.
6. Interest rates should remain low through next year’s selling season.
7. Loan demand for home purchases is climbing.
8. More Americans say it’s a good time to sell.
9. The number of improving housing markets is going up.
10. Job creation is expected to provide a much-needed boost to the commercial sector.
11. Housing starts are picking up as builder confidence increases.
12. As housing values rise and equity returns, fewer home owners are underwater.
13. Real estate is contributing to an overall economic recovery.
That’s not to say there aren’t challenges. Huntsville AL MLS Lending remains tight, there’s a large foreclosure backlog, and regulatory challenges and the fiscal cliff loom ahead. But on balance, real estate appears to have a bright future in 2013.
4 Housing Issues to Watch in 2013
What does 2013 have in store for the housing market? With marked gains this year, housing experts expect the housing market to continue to gain momentum in the new year.
The Wall Street Journal recently offered up some chief housing issues likely to be important in the New Year. These include:
Inventories rise: To meet the increased demand, home builders are increasing production and more sellers may be more willing to test the market as housing prices increase.
Home prices spur demand: Huntsville AL MLS More buyers have urgency with home purchases as rents rise, housing values gain momentum, and mortgage rates remain low.
Credit remains tight: “While rising prices could serve as a tailwind, new regulations may lock in some of the defensive underwriting posture while impeding capital rules may lead banks to pare their lending footprint,” The Wall Street Journal predicts.
Broader economy dictates how far recovery goes: If unemployment decreases and the economy improves, many of the biggest challenges facing the housing market would likely fade, such as tight credit, the large number of underwater home owners, and a high rate of foreclosures.
“Any renewed weakness in job growth could put housing back into the stall that it found itself in between 2010 and 2011,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “The housing market is still fragile. ... If lawmakers can’t agree on a series of spending cuts and tax hikes to avert the ‘fiscal cliff,’ that could crimp demand or damage confidence.”
Home prices finally hit a bottom in 2012. So will 2013 be the year of recovery or relapse? Each day this week, we offered an area of focus for 2013. Here’s a recap of our earlier predictions, and the final installment:
1. The shadow inventory is shrinking. Banks could begin to increase the pace of foreclosed-property sales in markets with large backlogs, but they’re unlikely to deluge the market.
2. Rising prices could boost demand. Buyers now have something they haven’t had in the past few years—urgency. Rent and price gains are beginning to change consumer attitudes about home purchases.
3. Housing inventory should hit a bottom. Builders are ramping up new construction, and price gains could lead more would-be sellers to test the market.
4. Credit standards should stay tight. While rising prices could serve as a tailwind, new regulations may lock in some of the defensive underwriting posture while impeding capital rules may lead banks to pare their lending footprint.
Interactive: Hntsville AL MLS Housing inventory drops in November 5. Home prices should stay in positive territory next year, but everything ultimately depends on what happens in the economy. Job growth hasn’t been great, yet it has been strong enough to nudge the housing market forward. If it continues, the experience of the past year shows that the sector’s many challenges—tight credit, high levels of underwater borrowers, and elevated foreclosures—can be overcome.
To be sure, annual price gains of some phenomenal magnitude (see Phoenix, where prices are up 17%) aren’t sustainable unless incomes pick up. Instead, prices that have been rising in these hard-hit cities are more likely rebounding from extremely low levels—the result of housing having fallen far below its replacement costs—and recent gains should eventually level off at a more measured pace.
Any renewed weakness in job growth could put housing back into the stall that it found itself in between 2010 and 2011. The housing market is still fragile. Millions of homeowners owe more than their homes are worth, and millions more don’t have enough equity to make a down payment on another home.
If lawmakers can’t agree on a series of spending cuts and tax hikes to avert the “fiscal cliff,” that could crimp demand or damage confidence. There’s also still the potential for a renewed recession from the euro-zone crisis, or the prospect that short sales slide because Congress doesn’t extend a tax provision that allows borrowers to avoid paying taxes on forgiven mortgage debt.
The fiscal cliff talks will bring renewed scrutiny to the mortgage-interest deduction. Few expect a wholesale repeal of the deduction. More likely are compromises that cap overall deductions, that reduce the deduction for top earners, or that limit the deduction to interest on $500,000 in debt.
But absent a renewed recession or other unforeseen shocks, housing in 2013 looks poised to consolidate the gains of 2012. Huntsville AL MLS The Federal Reserve has made clear it will do what it can to be rates low. Homes are still at their most affordable levels in at least 15 years, based on traditional price-to-income and price-to-rent measures. And housing is expected to begin contributing more meaningfully to the economy
When we look back on 2012 a long time from now, it may be viewed as the first year of the recovery, the year in which real estate reversed its course and moved in a more positive direction.
With that in mind, here are 13 reasons — courtesy of Huntsville AL MLS REALTOR® Magazine’s online news — why real estate pros can look forward to next year:
1. There’s greater optimism about increasing home values.
2. More new households are forming.
3. Home shoppers are feeling a greater sense of urgency.
4. Home ownership remains a goal of members of the Millennial generation.
5. Foreclosure starts are falling to pre-housing-bust levels.
6. Interest rates should remain low through next year’s selling season.
7. Loan demand for home purchases is climbing.
8. More Americans say it’s a good time to sell.
9. The number of improving housing markets is going up.
10. Job creation is expected to provide a much-needed boost to the commercial sector.
11. Housing starts are picking up as builder confidence increases.
12. As housing values rise and equity returns, fewer home owners are underwater.
13. Real estate is contributing to an overall economic recovery.
That’s not to say there aren’t challenges. Huntsville AL MLS Lending remains tight, there’s a large foreclosure backlog, and regulatory challenges and the fiscal cliff loom ahead. But on balance, real estate appears to have a bright future in 2013.
Huntsville AL MLS; Huntsville Alabama real estate;
Huntsville AL MLS; Huntsville AL homes for sale
We work with a number of out of state investors and hope that we can develop a working relationship with you as well. One of our functions for our clients is educating them on the local market. As I mentioned it is difficult to find multifamily property in decent areas that is fairly priced.
We work with a number of out of state investors and hope that we can develop a working relationship with you as well. One of our functions for our clients is educating them on the local market. As I mentioned it is difficult to find multifamily property in decent areas that is fairly priced.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
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Huntsville AL real estate . I wanted to say hello and thank you again for helping us find our dream home!
Everything is falling into place and most rooms are complete with the exception of the office. We put the chandelier you gave us in the dining room and it gives just the right touch! You're gonna have to stop by and see how the house is shaping up. I hope everything is well on your end. Take care!
Everything is falling into place and most rooms are complete with the exception of the office. We put the chandelier you gave us in the dining room and it gives just the right touch! You're gonna have to stop by and see how the house is shaping up. I hope everything is well on your end. Take care!
HUNTSVILLE-INVESTMENT-PROPERTY-REAL-ESTATE Huntsville MLS
HUNTSVILLE-INVESTMENT-PROPERTY-REAL-ESTATE Huntsville MLS
" Phil is the best realtor in Huntsville. I have nothing but good to say about him and his company"
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" Phil is the best realtor in Huntsville. I have nothing but good to say about him and his company"
Tsung Wen Chen
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Huntsville Al homes for sale, You might find it hard to use Huntsville's public acess MLS, especially if you dont know where to get started. We can help without any cost or obligation to you by setting up automated Huntsville homes for sale searches . Just let us know what you are looking for. When a new listing hits the market, you will be among the first to see it.
Skewed Huntsville homes for sale search results
Source; Real Geeks
How You're Helping Zillow and Trulia to Outrank You
Making it to the first page of Google is no easy feat. You can optimize your site, make sure your content is of the highest quality, and adhere to Google's standards, and still never make it for one reason or another. Usually, it's a matter of other sites simply doing something better than you. Maybe they've built more backlinks. Maybe they're better at marketing. That's the nature of any business—fair competition. But what if you were unknowingly helping another site to outrank you?
Sadly, this is the case for many independent real estate agents out there. You think you're doing everything right, and even going above and beyond, but you're still getting beaten by larger brands. It may be that you're contributing to their success, and your lack of visibility. How? Through a simple device called a widget, which uses your website to drive traffic and boost the rankings of two major names in the real estate space, Zillow and Trulia.
Predatory Linking Practices
Those two sites need no introduction. You know who they are. You may also know that try as you might, you can't overtake them in the SERPs. In fact, the longer they're around, the further your site seems to fall in the results. Maybe you even thought you'd try to take advantage of their name recognition, and add one, two, or a few of their widgets to your site. Little did you know that by doing so, you were giving Zillow and Trulia even more firepower to outrank your site.
It's a brilliant scheme, really. Both sites provide a full range of widgets for agents to use on their independent real estate sites. These widgets offer a wide range of features including mortgage calculators, maps, photo slideshows, home value estimators, and even a contact form. What site can't benefit from a widget, right? And by offering tools like maps and mortgage calculators, you're just helping your customers find even more information than might normally be available via IDX.
The problem is, the minute you put one of those widgets on your site, you are agreeing to help a competitor rank better than you, and to drive traffic to their site. Let's take a closer look at one of the widgets provided by Zillow—the home value estimator.
To get the widget, you first fill out a simple form with a default address. You'll naturally want to fill this out before placing the form on your site so that the code generated is for your city and not the default, Whittier neighborhood in Minneapolis, Minn.—unless, of course, you're located in Minneapolis. For the purposes of this example, we'll use San Antonio, TX:
Just copy the generated code and paste it into your site and voilà! You can offer your customers a home value estimator tool. Now let's examine that code. Most of it is pretty standard, all meant to create the field a potential customer would fill out in order to find out how much their home, or a home they want to buy, is worth. But at the very end is where it gets interesting. The last portion of the code reads as follows:
Homes for Sale in San Antonio
This tiny bit of code contains three areas of concern:
The Backlink
The home value estmator form widget, like every other widget Zillow offers, contains a link back to Zillow.com. It's right at the beginning: http://www.zillow.com/san-antonio-tx/, and you’ll see that link appears at the bottom of the widget you install on your site, just under where users are prompted to enter an address. Well, you think, that's only right considering they're providing me with this free widget. One little link won't hurt anything.
But there's something you must understand. A link coming into a site—more commonly called a backlink—gives that site a boost in authority and rank. The more backlinks a site has, the better it looks to Google and the other search engines.
The logic behind it is that few people, if anyone, will link to a poor quality site. So the more people linking to a site, the higher quality it must be, and Google moves it up in the SERPs. Unfortunately, it's flawed logic, because some companies, like Zillow, have found ways to create their own backlinks by including them in little widgets like this.
Multiply that one backlink in your one widget by the thousands of other real estate agents who are using these widgets on thousands of sites. Every backlink is a boost to Zillow's rank, and an anchor on independent agents' sites competing to be found.
The Inclusion of the City
As an independent real estate agent, you most likely work in a relatively small area, whether it's the little town you live in, or the San Antonio metro area, which is small relative to the country. But sites like Zillow and Trulia are accessible to anyone anywhere in the country, including those people who may be moving to your local area.
By including a backlink to its own listings in your city, Zillow is basically horning in on your local search action. And it's not just the link itself, but the text that is linked, which is called anchor text. When this text is optimized, it helps to target specific searches. In this backlink, the optimized anchor text is: "Homes for sale in San Antonio," meaning it's meant to target people searching for that specific item with those specific words. Per Google's own Keyword Research tool, approximately 880 people search for the exact phrase "Homes for sale in San Antonio" every month:
So first, you've helped boost Zillow's position in the SERPs so that it's ranking well above your local San Antonio website. Then you gave them optimized anchor text to help their site pop up when someone searches for "Homes for sale in San Antonio," which has a decent search volume, especially for such a localized area. But there's one more thing that should concern you, if not just outright make you angry.
Microformat Data Markup
Take another look at that code, and pay special attention to this one little bit: San Antonio The first part of it tells a search engine like Google that a certain parameter is being identified as a region—in this case, San Antonio. Google loves microformats.
When Google finds a microformat attached to a link like this, it may respond by displaying a bit more information in the snippet, which is the descriptive bit of information that follows each link in a SERP. Using this particular microformat may prompt Google to display a map alongside the search result, thereby drawing the searcher's eye, and further encouraging them to click the link.
So even if your site appeared directly below Zillow on the SERP for "Homes for sale in San Antonio," (and incidentally, as of this writing, Zillow ranks #3 in Google for that search phrase after homes.com and trulia.com), it's more likely that the person searching will click on Zillow's result because there's a colorful map attached to it, drowning out your small, text-only link.
By now, you should be suitably upset that you have been helping your competitors boost their rankings above yours. In fact, you may be angry enough that you think, Forget them! I'll just use the widget, but I'm going to remove that bit of code that will include the backlink! Not so fast.
Take another look at that screenshot of the widget code generation form. You'll notice just below the code is a line that says, "By using this widget, you agree to the Terms of Use." On the Terms of Use page are the rules for using Zillow's widget:
Pay close attention to numbers 2, 6, and 7. Number 2 says you may not modify the widget, which includes removing that last bit of code that creates a backlink to Zillow.com. More importantly, it says you can't prevent the search engines from "scoring the link," which basically means counting it toward Zillow's authority and ranking. Essentially, by using this widget and accepting these terms of service, you are agreeing to boost Zillow in the SERPs.
Number 6 says Zillow can, at any time, change the content returned by the widget you place on your site, so at some point, your customers may not get the information they're looking for. And by agreeing to number 7, you're allowing Zillow to monitor your site to make sure you're in compliance with these terms, so if you thought you'd go ahead and adjust that code anyway, they basically tell you they're watching for that.
Think about this for a moment—how often do you really read the terms of service for anything? Be honest. Before you download software, make a purchase from iTunes, or install a widget on your site, do you take the time to read the rules? If you're like most people, the answer is no. You're in a hurry. You don't have time. You just want to install the widget and get on with your business. Zillow is counting on that.
Trulia also offers widgets, and also requires you to agree to terms of service. All their widgets also include backlinks, so by using them, you're helping Trulia to outrank you in the search engine results.
The next question in your mind is most likely, How can they do this? Isn't it against Google guidelines or something?
The short answer is no, but as with many things related to the Internet and Google, the full answer isn't quite that simple.
Widget Spam
Way back in 2008, Matt Cutts, who heads up Google's webspam team, gave an interview, and wrote a post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, in which he discussed widget spam.
In the interview, Cutts explained Google's stance on widget spam. If a link in the widget is hidden, it's spam. If the link goes to a third-party site that is completely irrelevant to the widget's purpose, or to the site that provided the widget, it's spam. Zillow does neither of these things. Their widget links are clearly visible, they go back to Zillow, and they're relevant to the widget's purpose.
Here's where it gets tricky. In the Webmaster Central post, Cutts said:
...I discourage people from putting keyword-rich anchortext [sic] into their widgets...
By including phrases like "Homes for sale in San Antonio," Zillow is most definitely using keyword-rich anchor text in their widgets. Granted, it's relevant, but by not including any reference to "Zillow," the possibility exists that visitors to your site may assume that link will take them to more local listings from your site. Instead, they'll be sent to Zillow. The anchor text is potentially misleading.
Is that a lot of assumption? Sure. But the best way to prevent incorrect assumptions is to be transparent in what you're doing, and Zillow's widgets, while not completely in the spam camp, are still toeing that line, and leaving room for interpretation by not being totally transparent.
Your Options
The first and best action you can take is to immediately and completely remove any Zillow and Trulia widgets from your independent real estate website.
Need a widget? You can find tons of free ones that don't link to your competitors. Want to offer a mortgage calculator to your customers? Talk to a developer about creating a custom, branded one for you.
You may incur some expense, but how much money do you think you're losing by sending your customers to the two 800-pound gorillas in the real estate space rather than offering your customers your own tools and information?
As for Zillow and Trulia, and their predatory linking practices, it will be up to Google to decide whether the two sites have violated the search engine's rules. In the meantime, they'll do just fine without your help.
Homes For Sale In Huntsville Alabama
Search the huntsville al mls for homes for sale in huntsville al at www. Homesforsalehuntsville. Net. No registration required. Request automated real estate search. Get the market value of your property. Rental homes and property management service.
How You're Helping Zillow and Trulia to Outrank You
Making it to the first page of Google is no easy feat. You can optimize your site, make sure your content is of the highest quality, and adhere to Google's standards, and still never make it for one reason or another. Usually, it's a matter of other sites simply doing something better than you. Maybe they've built more backlinks. Maybe they're better at marketing. That's the nature of any business—fair competition. But what if you were unknowingly helping another site to outrank you?
Sadly, this is the case for many independent real estate agents out there. You think you're doing everything right, and even going above and beyond, but you're still getting beaten by larger brands. It may be that you're contributing to their success, and your lack of visibility. How? Through a simple device called a widget, which uses your website to drive traffic and boost the rankings of two major names in the real estate space, Zillow and Trulia.
Predatory Linking Practices
Those two sites need no introduction. You know who they are. You may also know that try as you might, you can't overtake them in the SERPs. In fact, the longer they're around, the further your site seems to fall in the results. Maybe you even thought you'd try to take advantage of their name recognition, and add one, two, or a few of their widgets to your site. Little did you know that by doing so, you were giving Zillow and Trulia even more firepower to outrank your site.
It's a brilliant scheme, really. Both sites provide a full range of widgets for agents to use on their independent real estate sites. These widgets offer a wide range of features including mortgage calculators, maps, photo slideshows, home value estimators, and even a contact form. What site can't benefit from a widget, right? And by offering tools like maps and mortgage calculators, you're just helping your customers find even more information than might normally be available via IDX.
The problem is, the minute you put one of those widgets on your site, you are agreeing to help a competitor rank better than you, and to drive traffic to their site. Let's take a closer look at one of the widgets provided by Zillow—the home value estimator.
To get the widget, you first fill out a simple form with a default address. You'll naturally want to fill this out before placing the form on your site so that the code generated is for your city and not the default, Whittier neighborhood in Minneapolis, Minn.—unless, of course, you're located in Minneapolis. For the purposes of this example, we'll use San Antonio, TX:
Just copy the generated code and paste it into your site and voilà! You can offer your customers a home value estimator tool. Now let's examine that code. Most of it is pretty standard, all meant to create the field a potential customer would fill out in order to find out how much their home, or a home they want to buy, is worth. But at the very end is where it gets interesting. The last portion of the code reads as follows:
Homes for Sale in San Antonio
This tiny bit of code contains three areas of concern:
The Backlink
The home value estmator form widget, like every other widget Zillow offers, contains a link back to Zillow.com. It's right at the beginning: http://www.zillow.com/san-antonio-tx/, and you’ll see that link appears at the bottom of the widget you install on your site, just under where users are prompted to enter an address. Well, you think, that's only right considering they're providing me with this free widget. One little link won't hurt anything.
But there's something you must understand. A link coming into a site—more commonly called a backlink—gives that site a boost in authority and rank. The more backlinks a site has, the better it looks to Google and the other search engines.
The logic behind it is that few people, if anyone, will link to a poor quality site. So the more people linking to a site, the higher quality it must be, and Google moves it up in the SERPs. Unfortunately, it's flawed logic, because some companies, like Zillow, have found ways to create their own backlinks by including them in little widgets like this.
Multiply that one backlink in your one widget by the thousands of other real estate agents who are using these widgets on thousands of sites. Every backlink is a boost to Zillow's rank, and an anchor on independent agents' sites competing to be found.
The Inclusion of the City
As an independent real estate agent, you most likely work in a relatively small area, whether it's the little town you live in, or the San Antonio metro area, which is small relative to the country. But sites like Zillow and Trulia are accessible to anyone anywhere in the country, including those people who may be moving to your local area.
By including a backlink to its own listings in your city, Zillow is basically horning in on your local search action. And it's not just the link itself, but the text that is linked, which is called anchor text. When this text is optimized, it helps to target specific searches. In this backlink, the optimized anchor text is: "Homes for sale in San Antonio," meaning it's meant to target people searching for that specific item with those specific words. Per Google's own Keyword Research tool, approximately 880 people search for the exact phrase "Homes for sale in San Antonio" every month:
So first, you've helped boost Zillow's position in the SERPs so that it's ranking well above your local San Antonio website. Then you gave them optimized anchor text to help their site pop up when someone searches for "Homes for sale in San Antonio," which has a decent search volume, especially for such a localized area. But there's one more thing that should concern you, if not just outright make you angry.
Microformat Data Markup
Take another look at that code, and pay special attention to this one little bit: San Antonio The first part of it tells a search engine like Google that a certain parameter is being identified as a region—in this case, San Antonio. Google loves microformats.
When Google finds a microformat attached to a link like this, it may respond by displaying a bit more information in the snippet, which is the descriptive bit of information that follows each link in a SERP. Using this particular microformat may prompt Google to display a map alongside the search result, thereby drawing the searcher's eye, and further encouraging them to click the link.
So even if your site appeared directly below Zillow on the SERP for "Homes for sale in San Antonio," (and incidentally, as of this writing, Zillow ranks #3 in Google for that search phrase after homes.com and trulia.com), it's more likely that the person searching will click on Zillow's result because there's a colorful map attached to it, drowning out your small, text-only link.
By now, you should be suitably upset that you have been helping your competitors boost their rankings above yours. In fact, you may be angry enough that you think, Forget them! I'll just use the widget, but I'm going to remove that bit of code that will include the backlink! Not so fast.
Take another look at that screenshot of the widget code generation form. You'll notice just below the code is a line that says, "By using this widget, you agree to the Terms of Use." On the Terms of Use page are the rules for using Zillow's widget:
Pay close attention to numbers 2, 6, and 7. Number 2 says you may not modify the widget, which includes removing that last bit of code that creates a backlink to Zillow.com. More importantly, it says you can't prevent the search engines from "scoring the link," which basically means counting it toward Zillow's authority and ranking. Essentially, by using this widget and accepting these terms of service, you are agreeing to boost Zillow in the SERPs.
Number 6 says Zillow can, at any time, change the content returned by the widget you place on your site, so at some point, your customers may not get the information they're looking for. And by agreeing to number 7, you're allowing Zillow to monitor your site to make sure you're in compliance with these terms, so if you thought you'd go ahead and adjust that code anyway, they basically tell you they're watching for that.
Think about this for a moment—how often do you really read the terms of service for anything? Be honest. Before you download software, make a purchase from iTunes, or install a widget on your site, do you take the time to read the rules? If you're like most people, the answer is no. You're in a hurry. You don't have time. You just want to install the widget and get on with your business. Zillow is counting on that.
Trulia also offers widgets, and also requires you to agree to terms of service. All their widgets also include backlinks, so by using them, you're helping Trulia to outrank you in the search engine results.
The next question in your mind is most likely, How can they do this? Isn't it against Google guidelines or something?
The short answer is no, but as with many things related to the Internet and Google, the full answer isn't quite that simple.
Widget Spam
Way back in 2008, Matt Cutts, who heads up Google's webspam team, gave an interview, and wrote a post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, in which he discussed widget spam.
In the interview, Cutts explained Google's stance on widget spam. If a link in the widget is hidden, it's spam. If the link goes to a third-party site that is completely irrelevant to the widget's purpose, or to the site that provided the widget, it's spam. Zillow does neither of these things. Their widget links are clearly visible, they go back to Zillow, and they're relevant to the widget's purpose.
Here's where it gets tricky. In the Webmaster Central post, Cutts said:
...I discourage people from putting keyword-rich anchortext [sic] into their widgets...
By including phrases like "Homes for sale in San Antonio," Zillow is most definitely using keyword-rich anchor text in their widgets. Granted, it's relevant, but by not including any reference to "Zillow," the possibility exists that visitors to your site may assume that link will take them to more local listings from your site. Instead, they'll be sent to Zillow. The anchor text is potentially misleading.
Is that a lot of assumption? Sure. But the best way to prevent incorrect assumptions is to be transparent in what you're doing, and Zillow's widgets, while not completely in the spam camp, are still toeing that line, and leaving room for interpretation by not being totally transparent.
Your Options
The first and best action you can take is to immediately and completely remove any Zillow and Trulia widgets from your independent real estate website.
Need a widget? You can find tons of free ones that don't link to your competitors. Want to offer a mortgage calculator to your customers? Talk to a developer about creating a custom, branded one for you.
You may incur some expense, but how much money do you think you're losing by sending your customers to the two 800-pound gorillas in the real estate space rather than offering your customers your own tools and information?
As for Zillow and Trulia, and their predatory linking practices, it will be up to Google to decide whether the two sites have violated the search engine's rules. In the meantime, they'll do just fine without your help.
Homes For Sale In Huntsville Alabama
Search the huntsville al mls for homes for sale in huntsville al at www. Homesforsalehuntsville. Net. No registration required. Request automated real estate search. Get the market value of your property. Rental homes and property management service.
Huntsville AL MLS SEARCH PORTAL. No Registration Required
Huntsville AL MLS SEARCH PORTAL
. No Registration Required We can set up searches on age, size, schools, brick verses frame construction, one story verses two story and a many other features. Just let us know as much as possible about what you are looking for in a home and we can set up the searches for you.
. No Registration Required We can set up searches on age, size, schools, brick verses frame construction, one story verses two story and a many other features. Just let us know as much as possible about what you are looking for in a home and we can set up the searches for you.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Huntsville AL MLS SEARCH PORTAL. No Registration Required
Huntsville AL MLS SEARCH PORTAL. No Registration Required
If you need help searching the Huntsville MLS. Please let us know. We can set up more detailed searches than what the MLS allows the public and can set up automated Huntsville MLS searches for you. Just follow the links or shoot us an email at philipwinburn@mchsi.com and let us know what you are looking for.
At a minimum, we need your price range, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms you need and the locations that you would consider.
If you need help searching the Huntsville MLS. Please let us know. We can set up more detailed searches than what the MLS allows the public and can set up automated Huntsville MLS searches for you. Just follow the links or shoot us an email at philipwinburn@mchsi.com and let us know what you are looking for.
At a minimum, we need your price range, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms you need and the locations that you would consider.
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