• BusinessWeek Europe is reporting about the rapid shift in real estate broker advertising from newspapers to the net. “Three new studies say the $11.6 billion real estate ad market is set to shift hard from print to the Internet.” Find out more about how this move to internet advertising will affect the newspaper business.
• Canada’s CBC News is reporting that housing Sydney, Australia is Booming. “Housing prices have jumped as much as 20 per cent over the past five years. The average home in Sydney now sells for about $77,000.” Although a pittance compared to US housing prices, the market is still very competitive, with homeowners getting multiple offers — some with as many as 27.



• Architects yesterday announced plans for 3 new buildings to surround the Freedom Tower on the World Trade Center site in New York. Have a look at the designs to the right.
• The Los Angeles Times is reporting that sales of existing homes in Ventura County, California fell 27% for the first six months in ‘06 from the same period in ‘05. Despite the slowdown, the economy looks strong in the county and housing prices have not seen a decline yet.
• The National Association of Realtors is starting to lose the never-ending optimism that they’ve showed throughout this housing boom. Yesterday, they announced that they expect sales to continue to fall — “it expected prices nationwide to drop during the next few months, instead of appreciating modestly. If that happens, it would be the first time since 1993 that median home prices have fallen in any given month.” . . . looks like a little dose of reality has finally settled in.

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Tags: advertising, australia, classifieds, county, freedom, housing, NAR, realtor, sydney, tower, trade, ventura, world, wtc

• In Houston, Texas the Harris County Housing Authority has teamed up with private development companies to build 5 senior-living complexes, reports the Houston Business Journal. “‘The real story here is that the public/private model works — helping the community balance the need for both market-rate housing and affordable housing,’ says Guy Rankin, CEO and executive director of the Harris County Housing Authority.”
• Andy Beal at WebProNews talks about how real estate agents are shifting their marketing efforts towards blogging; print newspaper ad spending has declined accordingly.
• RealBlogging goes over the Top 10 Most Expensive States for Closing Costs as issued by BankRate.com. New York topped the list with costs of $3,887.
• Calgary, Alberta, Canada is in the midst of a explosive housing growth due to its own oil boom. I’ve been hearing about the market in Calgary for months now, but this RealEstateJournal article captures the picture as well as I’ve seen it described before.

Tags: alberta, bankrate, calgary, Canada, county, harris, housing, realestate, realestatejournal, webpronews