Profile Of U.S. Home Sellers

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) conducted a survey to identify the typical profile of homebuyers and home sellers. The most recent findings were published in NAR’s 2006 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers report. This article focuses on the profile of a typical home seller based on the NAR report.

According to the report, the median age of a home seller is 46 years, which is older than the typical home buyer’s age of 41 years. Home sellers have a higher income than homebuyers with a median household income of $83,200 in 2005, as compared to $71,800 for homebuyers. Home sellers being older than the typical home buyer are less likely to have children under 18 living in their home, and are more likely to be married-couples.

On average, homeowners sold their property after 6 years of ownership. Approximately 13% of homeowners are first-time home sellers.

According to the report, the most common reasons why homeowners sell their current home is the need for a larger home, or to move closer to friends and family, or to relocate. Older home sellers (ages 65 and above) were more likely to sell their current homes because they wanted to downsize to a smaller home. Younger home sellers (ages 44 and below) were more likely to sell their home because they wanted larger home.

The median sales price was found to be more or less at par with the listing price. According to the report, the median sales price in 2005 was 99% of the median listing price. An average home stayed on the market for 6 weeks before it was sold.

Real estate professionals continue to play a major role in successful home selling. The percentage of home owners who used the services of a real estate agent or broker to sell their homes was 84%. Of these, 80% sold their homes by using an agent or broker exclusively. For Sale By Owner (FSBO’s) accounted for 12% only.

The major factors that influenced home sellers to choose their real estate agents were – Agent’s reputation (35%), honesty and trustworthiness (21%), agent being a friend or family member (15%) and knowledge of a neighborhood (11%). About 44% of sellers chose their agent based on referrals from friends or relatives and 30% based on previous experience with an agent. Home sellers report great satisfaction with their real estate agent; 82% of them said that they would use the same agent again or recommend their agent to others.

The Internet continues to be the major marketing tool of home sellers with 88% of recent home sellers having listed their homes in the local multiple listing service (MLS). More than 50% of home sellers used yard signs and open houses.

If you are considering buying or selling a home, condo or any other type of real estate, be sure to seek out the services of a knowledgeable real estate agent to help you with this complex transaction.

The Cap and Trade Bill is Bad For The Housing Market & Sellers Wallets

As part of The Cap and Trade Bill HR 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, adds another layer of conditions for selling personal real estate (your home) in the United States.  The American Clean Energy and Security Act, a whopping 1,200 pages defining a cap-and-trade program for greenhouse gas emissions, a federal renewable electricity mandate, and a suite of new mandatory energy efficiency standards, imposes 397 new federal regulations and 1060 mandates on an American public already overwhelmed by extensive federal regulations.  Written in there is a requirement for all home sales to be conditioned upon an energy audit and an energy rating assessment labeling program. How much additional selling costs will all sellers now be required to pay to comply with the proposed requirements?

Congressmen Ron Paul, on 6-29-09 said:

“The Cap and Trade Bill HR 2454 was voted on last Friday. Proponents claim this bill will help the environment, but what it really does is put another nail in the economy’s coffin. The idea is to establish a national level of carbon dioxide emissions, and sell pollution permits to industry as the Catholic Church used to sell indulgences to sinners. HR 2454 also gives federal bureaucrats new power to regulate a wide variety of household appliances, such as light bulbs and refrigerators, and further distorts the market by providing more of your tax money to auto companies.”

Just like the TARP bill, this is all happening too fast. Anyone who thinks that Washington can craft a respectable bill in this short period of time is dreaming. The specifics of the bill aren’t being publicly discussed. The Democrats are trying to push this through so fast no one will know what hit them. The media is complicit in this. This is not the time to increase energy costs, either.

Kansas City Power & Light said the bill will force them to buy so many carbon allowances for coal that electricity rates could rise 50 percent by 2012, and another 70 percent by 2020.

Let’s get some positive economic growth first, not minus 6.6%, before we kick in some expensive program/tax.

Over 7,000 climate scientists have spoken out and signed a petition that states “climate change” is NOT caused by man, more than the number of scientists who wrote the UN charter on the topic.

This, along with the “stimulus” and “health care reform” is able to succeed to a degree because the American people are, for the most part, sheep who demand to be led, do not care to be involved in the process, do not care to know what is happening in their government, do not care to act on their own behalf and figure that Obama is more intelligent than they are. In fact he is leading them down the road to higher taxes, higher inflation and higher costs on all natural resources, all because of a false theory that curtailing carbon emissions can make a difference.

Kim Strassel, published in the (June 2009) Wall Street Journal:

“Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as ‘deniers.’ The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan, and even if less reported, the U.S.”

“In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

“The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. — 13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak ‘frankly’ of her non-belief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming ‘the worst scientific scandal in history.’ Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the ‘new religion.’ A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)

“The collapse of the ‘consensus’ has been driven by reality.”

Scientists – the ones without a political agenda – have shown that solar activity correlates with temperature changes. In fact, it correlates stronger to changes than CO2 does, and changes in CO2 levels FOLLOW changes in temperature by about 800 years. The only reason that CO2 and temperature would be increasing at the same time NOW is that temperature increased about 800 years ago. By the way, temperatures have been decreasing for a couple of years now.

It appears that the government is more concerned about the appearance of making changes and are thus, creating these massive documents that no one can possibly read and digest.  Don’t be naive enough to think we are being saved from disaster; one is being created. France has a better idea called nuclear power.