Questions galore about “The Catfish Recovery” in last week’s webcast.   The good people at Business Insider covered the event and posted our favorite image:

Here are the main takeaways and responses to a few comments.

1. If you’re expecting a smooth, consistent 3-5% annual growth rate in housing, you’ll be waiting a while. It just ain’t happening.
2. No, we didn’t proclaim – “It’s a great time to buy or sell real estate.”  What we said was that periods of volatility and market inflections offer opportunities for traders to profit with the right information.  (See John Paulson circa 2007)
3. Expect a triple dip, a quadruple dip, and a quintuple dip.  Heck, we saw back in July that 2011 home prices would fall below 2009 levels.  We confirmed this in November. Expect volatility. Repeat: Expect volatility.
4. History shows that volatility is normal. And we all agree that the mid-90′s through 2007 was just a bit abnormal. (a.k.a “The Constant Growth Myth”):

"History of Home Values" from Robert Shiller's "Irrational Exuberance"

Additional comments, criticisms, and scathing remarks welcome.

Okay, not really roar, but I am a panelist on the “Distressed Residential Overview” session on Thursday afternoon.  Click for the full conference agenda .

Here are last year’s presentation slides in which I showed how our active marketing housing indicators lead home price indices such as the S&P/Case-Shiller.

Predicting US Housing Prices: Opal Real Estate Deal Makers Summit (April 2010)

In particular, check out Slide #7:

Turns out that our data and projections back in April 2010 for this year were exactly correct – showing both inflection points and magnitude of housing price movements through early 2011.  More simply – we nailed it.  [patting oneself happily on the back].

Want to know what 2012 will bring?  Guess you’ll have to attend. Register here.

(Note: Neither Altos Research nor I receive any compensation for promoting this conference.)

Highlights from this month’s report (available for download here):

• The Altos 10-City Composite is now at $448,996, off 1.63% from last November 2010.
• All 27 of the major markets tracked by the report showed seasonal price decreases. Most were relatively minor, with the steepest declines seen in San Francisco (down 4.77%), San Diego (down 3.71%), and Minneapolis (down 3.16%), respectively.
• Housing inventory is off by 5.89% nationwide, with dramatic decreases in several major markets, including Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle.

This month’s featured chart highlights the difference in pricing of newly listed properties vs. the prices of the market as a whole. Note two trends in the following chart: First, the major January 1 dip implies a weaker Q1 than in 2009 or 2010 when the federal tax credit artificially boosted buyers. Next notice that the first inklings of the stability for the full year will be evident before January completes.

We have been giving our tech monkeys extra bananas lately to upgrade the Altos tools and create some exciting new applications – but we’ve been rather quiet publicizing them.  So I thought I’d take a moment to share some of the latest and bestest.

New WordPress plugin – Sidebar Slideshow Charts Widget

We love our blinky charts here at Altos, so we built an easy plugin for you to quickly add an eye-catching slideshow of a bunch of charts on the sidebar of your blog. Watch it in action in our side bar.  —————————————>

Here’s Carl with a demo video to see how easy it is to install:

Full screen version for people with bad eyes

Tip: Don’t forget to set the click-through link so that readers can request more detail from you!

Email Contact Database Importers

Our AltosConnect product has for a long time been a great way to set up email campaigns with your Altos market reports.  We’ve now made it waaay easier to import your contact list.  AltosConnect now has a no-brainer import feature for your contact data from Outlook, LinkedIn, Gmail, or Top Producer. Import and start your email campaign in just a few minutes!

Carl again:

Larger Screen Version Here

For in-depth individual screen casts explaining how to download your database from your Outlook, Linked In, Gmail and/or Top Producer accounts, log into your Altos account and go to the My Contacts page. Click on the orange links to watch “how to” screen casts for the database you would like to connect with and upload your contacts.

These are just a couple of new features we’ve rolled out lately for our Realtor clients. Stay tuned for many more!

Altos Research "all-in-one" tool bar WordPress plugin

(ed: yet another post for our real estate pro subscribers. If you don’t care about such things…move along. Back to the meaty market data soon.)

We’ve been spending time a lot of time on our WordPress tools to make including real-time market data in your posts as easy as humanly possible. Affectionately dubbed “The Kitchen Sink” plugin, our latest upgrade is an “all-in-one” drop down menu to for your AltosStats tables and AltosCharts so you can configure and insert the cool content to your WordPress blog posts.

Here’s a short training video that Mike recorded to show you how to easily use the new “all-in-one” button to add market data to your post.

Mike  also created another short video to show you step-by-step how to create a “Current Market Stats” WordPress page off of your blog which will contain weekly updated market statistics. Being the giving person Mike is, he even gives you a marketing tip to draw potential leads from this market stats page to your website.

To learn more cool tips to use Altos tools for lead generation, marketing ideas and more, just log in to your Altos Research account and click on the “Get Support” bar and view our upcoming live training webinars.

(ed: this post is for our real estate pro subscribers. If you don’t care about such things, move along…)

The Altos Research technology elves have been hard at work finding ways to further enhance your subscription benefits.

We are pleased to announce that the three Altos Research WordPress plugins are available for the first time in the WordPress registry.  The registry will make it easier to find and install the Altos Connect, Altos Toolbar, and Altos Widget plugins so that you get:

* A lead capture form that instantly begins providing a drip email marketing campaign for you.

* Stats charts you can pull directly from the tool bar to create quick and visually effective blog posts.

* Weekly updated Altos market stats charts on data points that you configure.

Altos Research WordPress real estate market plugins

Altos Creates WordPress Plugin Install Guide To Make Set-Up Easy

The tech elves created a step-by-step “Plugins Installation Guide” to help you install these plugins! We figure why should you get bogged down in the set up, when you should be focusing on getting your blog posts written and published!

Go to www.altosresearch.com/wordpress-plugins to quickly and easily learn how to install these exciting features to your blog.

Don’t have a WordPress blog yet? There are dozens of YouTube tutorials that can teach you to set up a blog within a few hours and WordPress.org has an easy set-up guide on its site.

With the Altos Research plugins, which are already part of your subscription service, you can have a fully functional blog with a lead capture form, statistical information your clients will want to keep coming back to see, and an easy way to post informative charts that answer the question, “How’s the Market?”

IMPORTANT: The three existing Altos plugins have been upgraded. If you are an existing plugin user (1) de-activate and (2) delete the installed versions of the three plugins before you install the updated versions. Go to www.altosresearch.com/wordpress-plugins to learn more.

We enjoy seeing how you are using Altos Research charts in your blogs! Please send us a link and you could be featured on our Facebook fansite!

In a software update to the AltosResearch website that went live last night, we’ve added in a whole bunch of new sharing options for AltosCharts users. We have included support for sharing by Email, Facebook, Twitter, Posterous, Tumblr, WordPress Blogs and TypePad Blogs. The buttons for each sharing destination are displayed beneath each chart (screen captures shown below the fold).

For the impatient, here is a short video showing you how to use the new feature:

If you’re in need of other sharing destinations, just let us know and we’ll see if we can get it added.

City/ZIP Charts:

Sharing City/ZIP Charts

Regional Charts:

Sharing Regional Charts

Sharing from AltosXplorer:

Sharing Charts from AltosXplorer

Hi all.. this is my first blog post, so please be gentle. Ricky Fernandez here [Products Specialist / @AltosSalesDude] and I am so excited to introduce our latest feature roll out designed to help you be more successful in your marketing efforts. The “Pay Per Report” tool is already available and located in your Altos Research account and ready for use. With this new tool, YOU can create a custom branded report and call it whatever you wish. Perhaps you have a very affluent client that you want to dazzle… Call it the “Very Important Client I Must Dazzle” Report. You can even brand the report as the “4500 Old Mill Road” Report for a listing presentation or meeting. You can upload a photo of the property too! This new feature permits you to run one report at a time for just $9.95 each. No minimums, use it as needed. Oh ya.. and you can run reports from any of the 15,000 zip code regions that we are monitoring all over the USA! That’s a total of 120 Metropolitan Statistical Areas.. all big ones! It’s a great way to really engage that “RELO” Client from the other coast. Check out my screen cast for a quick intro and demonstration: Pay Per Report Demonstration

Join us for a Webinar on July 16

(Anyone can join, but yes, space is limited!)

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/842714963

Yep – we know – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging – who has the time for it all!?  But that’s where your clients and contacts find you the most online, so Altos Research developed a number of specific Social Media solutions to help you market yourself on these websites and your blog – with many of these solutions updating automatically to save you time!

Today’s home buyers and sellers want to know “How’s the market?“. During this short webinar, we’ll show you both free and subscription-based products available from Altos Research to use in your Social Media marketing .  Show your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and blog readers that YOU are the LOCAL MARKET EXPERT!

Title:         Social Media Marketing with Altos Research
Date:        Thursday, July 16, 2009
Time:        9:30 AM – 10:30 AM PDT

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/842714963

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

Just announced last week in a Reuters press release and on Relocation.com’s blog:

Relocation.com, the leading online consumer resource for moving services, today announced its listing of the “Best Real Estate Agent Blogs” in San Francisco.

Guess what?  4 of the 7 on the list are Altos Research clients!  Woohoo! We’ve long said that they are three (3) fundamental questions that home buyers and sellers care about in real estate:

1. What’s my home worth?
2. What’s for sale?
3. How’s the market?

If you’re a real estate professional and you don’t offer the answers to all three questions, you’re just inviting your website visitors to bounce to someone else who will provide answers to these questions.

Of course here at Altos Research, we specialize in “How’s the market?” and helping our clients provide real-time, transparent information to buyers and sellers out there.  Here’s a list of the top 7 blogs:

- The Front Steps from Alex Clark
- Marin Real Estate Guide from Ginger Wilcox
- Absolutely Foster City from Jim Minkey
- San Mateo Real Estate from Vicki Moore
- Living Well in San Mateo from Raymond Stoklosa, Rebecca Williamson, and Chris Williamson
- Marin Homes from Ken Dara
- The White Oaks from Chuck Gillooley
- Marin County Real Estate from Mark Lomas

Congratulations to all that made the list and a special shout out to our peeps – the Altos Research “Data Geeks!”