Monthly Archives: April 2011

Tech Thursday: YouTube founders make a Delicious deal

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Nora Brown

Remember Delicious? The social bookmarking site, once styled as del.icio.us, allows you to save, organize, and access your favorite websites from anywhere.

The social bookmarking concept was innovative when Delicious debuted in 2003 – and still fresh in 2005 when Yahoo bought the service from Aaron Schachter. But Delicious grew stale as other social sites emerged. It appeared on Yahoo’s “sunset” list in December 2010 (alongside… Continue reading

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8 Major Markets in Double-Digit Dip

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Linda Peal

According to FNC’s Residential Price Index, home prices continue to fall in double digits below the levels seen a year ago in Phoenix (15.7%), Atlanta (14.1%), Orlando (13.5%), Sacramento (11.3%), Portland (11.2%), Las Vegas (11%), Charlotte (11%), and Chicago (10.3%), followed by high single-digit declines in Tampa (9.8%), St. Louis (9.4%), Minneapolis (8.1%), San Antonio (7.7 %), and Miami (7.1%). In particular, the steady declines in recent months in St… Continue reading

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Accepting Imperfect

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Kent Jackson

A while back, I had an opportunity to speak to a college class about what it was like to be a project manager. They had been studying different aspects of project management all semester, and I was the final guest speaker brought in to discuss the real-world applications.

I spent the first 15 minutes discussing resource management, software development life cycles, and documentation. I stressed the importance of managing… Continue reading

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Amazon’s Clouded (Computing) Vision — and why you should care

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Nora Brown

On Thursday, server problems at Amazon’s EC2 data hosting center left thousands of buzzworthy websites (HootSuite, Quora, and Foursquare, to name the buzziest) crippled or out of commission completely. Said Computerworld:

For a company that’s known as the dominant player in the cloud market, Amazon’s troubles on Thursday means a black eye for the company and for the cloud in general.

The incident is unlikely to cause… Continue reading

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True Foreclosure Price Discounts Nonexistent…Until Now

Posted on April 21, 2011 by Linda Peal

Last month FNC, Inc. released the industry’s first market value-based foreclosure price discount data on single-family homes. Now a distressed property’s foreclosure sale price can be compared to its underlying market value, what it would have sold for if it weren’t in the foreclosure pipeline. FNC’s estimation of a property’s underlying market value is based on the FNC Residential Price Index™, the industry’s leading hedonic price index. In a report this week… Continue reading

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February Single-Family Home Prices Decline 0.7 Percent

Posted on April 21, 2011 by FNC

February Single-Family Home Prices Decline 0.7 Percent
RPI Indicates Better-than-Expected February Seasonality in Price Declines

Oxford, Miss. (Apr. 21, 2011) – FNC announced Thursday that U.S. home prices weakened only slightly in February—a better-than-expected price seasonality.

Based on the latest data on non-distressed home sales (existing and new homes), FNC’s Residential Price Index™1 (RPI) indicated that home prices in February declined 0.7% from January, or 5.3% from a… Continue reading

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Housing in Pre-pre-pre Recovery?

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Linda Peal

The National Association of Realtors led the housing news today with its release of existing home sales data for March. For the media, the difference wasn’t in numbers, but in attitude. Here’s how it was reported:

WALL STREET JOURNAL, cautiously: “Housing Starts Remain Subdued,” and they report: “Home building rebounded a bit in March from a winter slump, but construction remains near historically low levels heading into the crucial… Continue reading

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Money Left on the Table? Don’t Bet on It.

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Yanling Mayer

FNC, Inc. released yesterday its latest quarterly update of foreclosure price discounts. The study highlighted several important characteristics of foreclosure sales that may provide insight into the severity of market distress through the current housing cycle.

  • Compared to states where power-of-sale provisions in mortgages allow lenders to foreclose on properties in the event of borrower default, foreclosed homes in judicial-foreclosure states are sold at additional 10%
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Status Quo is Dead! Evolutionary Software is Here to Stay

Posted on April 18, 2011 by AJ Ureel

Volatile markets, domestic and international monetary policy, changing regulations and politics, rapidly updating technology, and shifting global resources: The list of items impacting our software systems is constantly growing. Within the housing markets we’ve lived through a plethora of these changes, let alone the adoption of software to begin with.

Like business practices and products, software continues to adapt. This is true for software serving a market, a company… Continue reading

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China’s Housing Bubble—and other Chinese-related Bubbles

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Linda Peal

Bloomberg commented today that housing prices in Beijing are up as much as 800% over the past eight years. Prices for traditional Chinese art (18th century) rose 300% from 2009-2010 bouncing China right over the U.S. as the world’s biggest fine-art auction market, just as China fed an insatiable demand for fine wines—the most sought-after bottles rose 261% in China the last six years. Chinese cemetery spaces rose 200% last year supporting… Continue reading

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