Who’s Moving? Apparently Not Many People in the Triad

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I stumbled across the blog for realtors Brad and Angela Lawrence and they have a chart on there that's just plain depressing, but before I get into that let me give them a compliment for having the blog in the first place.  I know I've taken some realtors and their association to task in the past, particularly for saying things that make them seem obtuse about current market realities, but that doesn't mean I have it in for all realtors. There are some I really respect and I think they play an important role in the housing market, so it's nice seeing Brad and Angela using blogs and email newsletters to augment their shoe leather sales.

Now, to the numbers.  They have a chart showing the housing market activity for the Piedmont Triad for the week of 11/1/08 – 11/7/08.  What struck me is that the percentage of listed homes that sold seems really low and more houses were newly listed than were sold, which means that the inventory of unsold homes actually grew.  I don't know if the numbers were higher or lower than historical norms, but they just seem really, really low.  Here they are by county:


The following numbers are the Pendings/Solds/New Listings/Actives for Week of 11/1/08 – 11/7/08

Source – Triad MLS

County Pendings SOLDS New Listings All Actives
Guilford 56 17 130 4620
Forsyth 39 22 111 3421
Davidson 8 11 34 1271
Randolph 10 8 34 748
Davie 0 0 14 407
Stokes 4 1 8 300
Surry 3 1 9 421
Yadkin 2 2 7 117
Alamance 7 1 7 378
Rockingham 9 3 13 548

If I'm doing my math right then there were actually 80% more homes newly listed (367) than were sold or pending sale (204). Also only 1.7% of all homes on the market were sold or pending sale.  This really can't be good, especially if those kinds of numbers are consistent for months on end.  Maybe someone out there with access to historic numbers can tell us if this is representative of the market over time.

On another post about where people look for home listings Brad and Angela say the following:

There are so many sources for buyers to use to find homes, with 80% plus buyers searching online, that is the preferred path.

In our area (Piedmont Triad), the preferred online search tool is Listingbook.com,
it is a service that is fed from our MLS every 30 minutes. No doubt it
is best search tool, it is far superior than any other search tool that
we have experienced. It allows buyers to have their own personal
account, save favorites, make property notes, communicate back and
forth with their agent through property notes, very customized search
critera and FREE………here are more benefits of Listingbook.

We do not know of any buyers that look in the newspaper or magazines
anymore, if we get a call, they saw it online or a yard sign.

What I really like about this is that they take the time to provide information that may not lead directly to a sale, but it does show their expertise and understanding of the market.  Good stuff.

Wish He’d Been Wrong

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Want further proof that you should probably ignore the Wall Street "pundits"?  Look no further than the video below.  It's a tribute to Peter Schiff who was one of the few to accurately predict the market meltdown, and as you'll see in the video he did it in the face of scoffing and ridicule from the other pundits.  Of course Schiff could have been wrong, but he and Roubini seem to have been members of a very small group of economic prognosticators who got it right which in the reality of modern media means that they were barely heard.  The best advice when it comes to investments is thousands of years old: caveat emptor. (Hat tip to commenter Anthony at Ed Cone's blog for the link to the video).

From Voting Booth to Confessional?

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According to this news story a Catholic priest in Greenville, SC sent a letter to his parishioners saying that those who voted for Barack Obama should seek penance for their vote before taking Communion.  This is just another in a list of reasons that I've become disillusioned with the church.  For some background, here's my life journey with religion:

  1. Mormon until age 9.  Don't remember much other than being at church for what seemed like 12 hours every Sunday and a Sunday School teacher who told us about how dangerous it was to be a missionary and illustrated her point by telling us about a missionary in Africa who accepted a ride and had his head cut off.  I think I decided that day that I would not be a missionary when my time came.  Once my parents got divorced we left the church and so I never had to make that decision.
  2. My Mom took us to Presbyterian and Unitarian churches when I was in middle school. Didn't like either, the former because they seemed too uptight (I hated wearing ties) and the latter because they couldn't seem to make up their minds about what they were exactly.
  3. Went to Lutheran High School. Daily religious studies there for three years. My principal used to tell me he considered it his job to make sure I didn't have any of the Mormon "cult" left in me. He was a nut-job, but I liked the pastor at the host church and I liked the church too.  I even went to a Lutheran teacher's college for a year.
  4. Converted to Catholicism in my twenties when Celeste and I were engaged.  Really liked the Franciscan brothers who taught our RCIA class and the young Franciscan priest who married us.
  5. Joined the Moravian Church two years ago and it had nothing to do with the cookies or chicken pies, although that didn't hurt.

I'm very comfortable being Moravian.  I've found it to be much more inclusive than Catholicism and quite honestly the church's general outlook seems to fit my world view much better.  I'm not going to sit here and condemn Catholicism because I do feel there's a lot right about it, but in the end I think religion is a very personal journey and it's very important to find what's right for you.  I just couldn't come to grips with the Catholic church's handling of the priest sex scandal and its outlook on women among other things.  In the end the negatives outweighed the positives.

Oh, and as far as I'm concerned the parish in Greenville should have it's non-profit status yanked.  Denying parishioners the sacrament unless they repent for freely exercising their right to vote is tantamount to actively stumping for a candidate or party, and my understanding is that the IRS sees that as a verboten activity.

College Student Beats Old Incumbent for County Treasurer

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A Dartmouth College junior and Democrat beat a 68-year old Republican incumbent to be treasurer of Grafton County, N.H.  One deciding factor? A $51 ad on Facebook. 

The defeated incumbent ain't happy and called the college kid a "teenybopper" and said she'd only won because "brainwashed college kids" had voted for the Democratic ticket.  The college kid's reply: "I took advantage of new media, and she did not."

Hat tip to Ed Cone for the lead.

The New Publishing Paradigm

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Local blogger Brian Leon is an avid photographer, but it's not his profession.  Still, his pics are appearing in published works including a new travel book about North Carolina.  What's interesting to me is that he's being found by people searching Flickr and then contacting him for permission to use his photos in their work.  Not all of it is paid, but some is and as Brian says there's a great sense of satisfaction in seeing his work published.

On another note Brian recently reformatted his blog to use the "magazine" format and it looks great.  I'm thinking I might need to do something similar.

Them Crazy Liberals

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Some liberal activists handed out 1.2 million copies of a New York Times spoof dated July 4, 2009 to commuters in New York, L.A., San Francisco, Chicago, D.C. and Philadelphia. You can see the web version of the spoof here.

Among the "stories" in the 14-page paper:

  • Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq end
  • Condi Rice apologizes for WMD scare
  • Court indicts Bush on treason charges
  • Maximum Wage Law passes Congress

Them crazy liberals.

Fresh Seafood in Winston-Salem!

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When I migrated from Netvibes to Google Reader for my daily info fix I somehow missed adding the Winston-Salem Journal's food blog Dishing it Out to my Google account.  Luckily I re-found it and was immediately rewarded with a pointer to a fresh seafood store called Sea Products, Inc. tucked away in Winston-Salem.  Proprietor George Streblow has started publishing an email newsletter that you can subscribe to here, and according to the Journal's Michael Hastings the newsletter offers some great info on things like the difference between wild and farmed salmon.

Celeste and I might have a new place to shop for dinner.

DIY Cake in a Cup

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Kids bugging you for an afternoon snack and you don't have a thing in the pantry?  Well, let 'em nuke their own cake in a cup.  Here's the site with video goodness on how to do it, or just follow these instructions:

Grab the biggest microwavable coffee mug you've got in your cupboard,
and cover the inside with cooking spray. Mix up four tablespoons of
flour and nine tablespoons of hot chocolate mix, then throw in three
tablespoons of water, three tablespoons of oil and one egg. Once it's
thoroughly mixed into an even batter, microwave the whole shebang for
three minutes on high.

Apparently the result is a rather gummy cake, but we all know kids ain't big on niceties like texture and in their world the goopier the better.