New all-time records were set in June for both median and average sales price in the greater Houston real estate market. The number of transactions closed was also the largest in the history of the MLS. The pending sales figure was up 18.9 percent, so that suggested that July sales will keep up the pace. The luxury end of the market (defined as $750,000 and up) had its eighth consecutive month of increased sales, with the $150,000 to $249,999 segment also performing very well. It’s a good time to be in real estate in Houston. You may read about all the latest statistics here.

If you are one of the nearly 11,000 MLS Platinum subscribers, then you already know about the tremendous products and tools you receive. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, you should read here for more information. Things like the Client Experience Rating, Cloud CMA, MarketInsight, agent-branded mobile apps, agent and company websites, lead management tools, automatic social media posting and more are included. If you are serious about taking your business to the next level, then make sure you find out if MLS Platinum is right for you. You may read more about it here and here.

I was initially sad along with some of our members about the upcoming retirement of Tempo by CoreLogic and the subsequent switch to Matrix. As I learned more about Matrix and took the training courses, I found it to be a great system. We researched many options before selecting Matrix, and I truly think it is the best option under the circumstances that gave us no choice but to move to a new MLS platform. I strongly encourage you to take a training course and explore Matrix. Interestingly, most of the complaints about switching to Matrix have come from agents who have not actually taken a class to learn the system yet. You may read more here. It wasn’t an easy decision to switch to Tempo 15 years ago, but we are trying to minimize any disruption this conversion might cause and come out with an even better MLS in the process.

With an increase recently in the anti-Zillow movement, I have seen a similar increase in the number of members who angrily ask me why HAR sends their listings to Zillow. HAR is merely a conduit from the broker to Zillow. An HAR broker may remove their firm’s listings from Zillow at any time, as HAR does not send the listings to Zillow without the broker’s permission. If you are an agent and upset about your listings being displayed on Zillow, please talk to your broker. This is a broker decision and not an HAR one. It should be noted that we have had six brokers out of 4,300 ever ask for their listings to be removed from the syndication feed to Zillow. And, yes, you may remove your listings from Zillow but still send to Realtor.com, Homes.com, etc. If you’d like your firm’s listings removed from Zillow, you (if you are the broker) can just contact me at cindy@har.com, and I will make sure it happens for you.

The commercial real estate market is typically a good indicator of the economy of a region. While construction is slowing, there are exciting new projects underway, and it is smart to make sure that supply doesn’t outstrip demand and cause an imbalance in the market. The commercial market, while more diversified, is still largely dependent on the energy sector and consolidation in that industry has increased the available space in our region. You may read all about the commercial market here.

Until Next Month,

Cindy Hamann
2017 HAR Chair