The $1 million vacuum cleaner?
This week’s Top of the TweetsBy Camilla McLaughlin
Taking the social out of social media! Companies are being overwhelmed with social media, which is making a sizable demand on marketing and customer service resources. For example, at Dell a team of 70 specialists track 25,000 posts a day. Other companies are using auto-schedule and content optimizing apps and a few are even deploying virtual agents and sophisticated bots to automatically respond to consumers’ queries and comments. Ryan Holmes, @invoker, the brains behind HootSuite, explains in CNN Money @FortuneMagazine. http://bit.ly/P0fomK
Challenging the naysayers. Few journalists know real estate as well as syndicated columnist Ken Harney. In a much Tweeted story in Forbes, Harney took on the recovery naysayers, outlining several bellwether indicators that show the recovery is underway. Last month, I heard Lawrence Yun and other economists bring a similar message to journalists at the National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE) annual conference. According to June sales data, median sale prices nationally have increased for the last four months. June’s median sale price was up by 7.9 percent over a year ago and some metros are showing double digit price improvement. San Francisco’s median price is up 15 percent, year over year; Washington, D. C. media is up 13.6 percent and Santa Barbara’s prices are up by a third, year over year. http://onforb.es/NUcHaC
Going, going, gone! Homes are selling faster; the total number of homes for sale is now 24 percent below what it was a year ago. Nationally there is a 6.6-month supply of homes for sale. Typically a 6-month inventory represents a market that is equally balanced between buyers and sellers. http://bit.ly/OEehsX
Luxe on the Rebound Sales in the upper end continue to lead some markets. Upscale sales in Denver metro jumped 52 percent in June over June 2011. @cmygatt and others bring the story. http://t.co/YK8skN8C Calgary’s luxury home market continues to take the chill off there, from @MiamiLuxHomes and others. http://bit.ly/OEhF7o In Scottsdale, Ariz., the sale of a 2.1-acre home site for $2.8 set a record for the exclusive community of Silverleaf. http://t.co/ELlgcPZk
Tighter inventories and a drop in the number of distressed properties pushes prices up in some areas. @jonathanmiller links to a good explanation on the D.C. market via @RBIntel. http://bit.ly/LNUH1E
New construction did not fare was well in June, despite builder optimism. The number of contracts to purchase new homes in June fell 8.4 percent over the prior month. However, they are still up 15 percent compared to June 2011. @CNBC has the story. http://t.co/T4vROJyc
It’s official: going green pays, especially if a home is certified as energy efficient. This might seem like a no-brainer, but researchers at UCLA documented the value of certifications such as Energy Star, NAHB Green or LEED for Homes with a study of 1.6 million homes sold in California over a five-year period. Green labels add, on average, 9 percent to the selling value, according to study authors. And consumers in areas where sentiment regarding conservation is high are more willing to pay the extra dollars. Journalists jumped on this story generating a burst of tweets. Two good reports on the study: http://wapo.st/Q4lkfQ and http://t.co/Gb2XD8AK
Let the games begin! The Brits I’ve been talking to this week for an upcoming story on real estate in Europe seem less than thrilled with the congestion the Games are creating, but soon it will be easy to see what everyone in Britain is thinking. The London Eye, the city’s famous Ferris Wheel, will portray the mood of the British people in a nightly light show based on a data analysis of their Tweets by the UK’s foremost expert on Twitter sentiment and a team of MIT grads using an algorithm that gauges emotion in the message. Yellow is positive, green is neutral and purple is negative. http://on.mash.to/SUh1ai
Next to the $1 million, gold-plated vacuum cleaner, a $10,000 martini complete with a single piece of ice from the in-house jewelers at New York’s Algonquin Hotel or a $25,000 dog house might seem trivial, but Time doesn’t think so. All three are among items Time profiles as conspicuously indulgent (and expensive). http://on.wsj.com/P0sOiF and http://ti.me/NXPktO
