Ten day 4th of July forecast: Expired or canceled listing every 4 minutes across MA!

If recent trends continue, over 3,500 MLS listings across Massachusetts will expire or be canceled listings over the next 10 days (ending July 5, 2009). That's an estimated 350 per day, or an amazing one every four minutes.

What does that mean to real estate consumers? Home buyers, who have been timing the housing market, will be able to make offers directly to sellers at reduced prices; sellers can offer their homes at reduced prices and net the same profit. The ability to buy and sell without paying the traditional, two-sided real estate commission could bring some stalled transactions together, as stated in the blog comment below. Think of it as a "commission-free" holiday for home buyers and sellers.

Many times homes will sit on the market and do not sell [because] the seller is held hostage by the commission amount factored into the price. The house might have sold, but that $50K or $100K commission is the 800 lb gorilla in the room. The seller can't budge and the buyer often can not stretch to come up with that amount for both sides to make a deal happen in these days of expensive and tight credit. (From comment #20 on recent Boston.com blog post.)

If you are a buyer, sign-up to received daily email updates of expired and canceled listings.

If you are a home seller, we can help in two ways. First, if you are interested in selling "for sale by owner," join one of FSBO seminars or visit our FSBO wiki. If you'd prefer to work with a listing agent, either traditional full fee or discount service, find out how our "Listing Agent Report Card" can help you select the most effective listing agent based on recent MLS statistics.

Here's what expired, canceled, and temporarily withdrawn listings have looked like across Massachusetts during June and July over the past 15 years, 1994 to 2008.

Do "do-it-yourself" home buyers need a buyer agent?

Thanks to Google alerts for picking up eestee's comment on today's Boston.com's real estate blog, Does Jason really need a Realtor? He wants to be convinced.

The Real Estate Cafe understands that our fee-for-service business model, which offers fees from $75 to $150 per hour, doesn't appeal to everyone; so we invite do-it-yourself home buyers to review our full Menu of Fees & Rebates to select the (1) hourly fee, (2) flat fee, or (3) performance-based compensation plan that best meets their needs. If you don't like any of plans, you can also propose your own -- about one-third of our recent clients have!

If eestee and other Boston.com readers review our menu of options, they may conclude that one of our 100% commission rebate options was better than the one negotiated with eestee's attorney.

Five years after our 100% rebate option was featured in a Wall Street Journal article on "Cutting the Commission", we're still looking for innovative ways to help DIY real estate consumers save money!

Let's start by asking President Obama's new Consumer Financial Protection Agency to (1) outlaw dual agency; (2) divorce the traditional (now obsolete), two-sided real estate commission; and (3) regulate blind bidding wars.  Your ideas and proposed regulatory reforms are invited!

FLASH BACK / FLASH FORWARD: Will mobloggers pop the real estate bubble?

Questions asked in this blog post, originally posted more than four years ago by The Real Estate Cafe, are echoing in my mind this morning.  The flash back / flash forward is fueled by fantasies of using Apple's new iPhone 3G S to help home buyers share market insights:

Will the prevalence of iPods, smartphones, and digital video recorders create a new generation of house hunters turned citizen journalists? Not if the decade-long, lemming-like rush continues to cause home buyers to view each other as competitors, is my guess.

But if the housing market begins to slide as real estate bubble watchers caution, buyers may look to each other for information about what is really happening in the marketplace rather than traditional real esate agents / listing agents who are obligated to get the highest price for sellers and continue to fan the flames of "irrational exuberance."

How will those peer-to-peer exchanges occur? Will those amatuer roving real estate reporters begin to post their own comments in writing, audio clips, or video clips to the web? Those are the kinds of questions I would like to explore in this discussion of "Moblogging in Real Estate."

Home buyers, are you already using smart phones to house hunt? If so, how have they enhanced your home buying experience? Have you ever posted a comment, photo, or video to a real estate related web site, like our "Best of 2006" real estate bubble map, to share your perspective with fellow real estate consumers?

Do you think that citizen journalism and real estate blogs, particularly bubble blogs like the Housing Bubble and Boston Bubble, helped expose or "pop" the real estate bubble in your local market?

If you are as excited about using the iPhone's new video capabilities as we are, would you like to our mobile real estate user group for a real estate round table or field trip to experiment with leading mobile real estate apps?  Here's one you can begin to use immediately, courtesy of The Real Estate Cafe!

16th Anniversary: Consumer Revolution in Real Estate

Sixteen years after the original event in Boston, The Real Estate Cafe is celebrating the "Consumer Revolution in Real Estate" with the "soft" launch of our Real Estate Cafe fan page on Facebook and a Twitter post with a link to Ralph Nader's keynote speech:

16th ANNIVERSARY: Consumer Revolution in #RealEstate http://tinyurl.com/ConsumerREv1993 Nader text http://tinyurl.com/ConsREvNader93 RE.net

We're also inviting real estate consumers, both buyers and sellers, to help plan a series of real estate round tables to discuss reforms and money-saving opportunities in real estate, including a possible "unconference" for home owners selling for sale by owner tentatively called a "FSBO Camp."

As an idea starter, topics and panelists from the original 1993 conference are shown on our wiki. What NEW topics would you like to see discussed, and who would you like to see participate or lead those discussions? Bonus points for nominating yourself or a product or service you would like to demo!

Several REBarCamps, which are B2B (business-to-business) events, have occurred in the past nine months, and REBarCamp Boston is scheduled for June 12, 2009. Like the original event in 1993, FSBOCamp would focus on business-to-consumer (B2C) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C & C2B2C) opportunities.

Follow http://Twitter.com/RealEstateCafe and individual wiki pages, including our experimental new FSBO wiki, for more updates.

DIY home buyers & FSBOs, join the Million Dollar March!

If you've arrived on this blog post by clicking our on banner ad on Boston.com's open house search page, click on any of the panels in our rotating ad above to learn more about The Real Estate Cafe's track record of saving "do-it-yourself" home buyers more than one million dollars during two of the last three years.  If you'd like to discuss how we can help you save money buying, or selling your home for sale by owner, please call us at 617-661-4046 or follow us on http://Twitter.com/RealEstateCafe

If there is enough activity in the market this year, we'll structure a friendly competition between our buyer clients and customers selling "for sale by owner" to see which group can reach $1 million in savings first!  Regardless of who wins the "Million Dollar March," our goal is to help save at least $1 million by December 1st, World AIDS Day 2009 and encourage them to pledge a fraction of those savings to help AIDS orphans.

Watch for updates, and contact us if you'd like to run a pledge campaign to support your local AIDS fund raising campaign.  Visit our wiki to see sample forms, join our PledgeBank (under construction).