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Dwight Clark Playing for Another Champion

By Teressa Francis | July 10th, 2012 0 Comments

Intero Real Estate Services Inc. catches Dwight Clark of the 49ers

Cupertino, California – (July 10, 2012) – Intero Real Estate Services, Inc. is proud to announce the addition of local legend Dwight Clark, former all-pro wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers. Clark and his 49er teammates shocked the world in the 1982 NFC Championship game with a 28-27 win over the Dallas Cowboys. The decisive play in a thrilling finish was Clark’s amazing, leaping grab in the back of the end zone of a Joe Montana pass with only 51 seconds left in the game. Dubbed “The Catch”, Clark’s touchdown sent the 49ers to their first Super Bowl and launched an NFL dynasty.

Clark was a star in the 49ers’ innovative and high-powered “West Coast” offense, an attack, which ultimately revolutionized the offensive approach of the entire league. He earned two Super Bowl rings as a player and three in management for a total of five Super Bowl rings during an era when his 49ers were known as the “Team of the Decade”.

No stranger to innovation and championship organizations, Mr. Clark now joins the Intero team as an athlete endorser. He will focus on building business relationships and expanding the Intero brand. “It’s exciting to see him take some of the experiences from being around leaders like Ed DeBartolo, Bill Walsh, Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott, and Jerry Rice––considered by many to be among the top all-time greats in their respective positions––and weave that into the real estate world,” said Gino Blefari, Intero President and CEO, of Dwight’s alignment with Intero. He continued, “The first time we met, there was instant chemistry.”

Although Dwight is best known as a champion of football, he is an invaluable team player bound to catch Intero a brighter future. Dwight Clark and Intero; two names you can trust.

Check out Dwight Clark’s website and relive “The Catch” at www.rememberthecatch.com

About the Intero® Brand

Founded in 2002, Intero Real Estate Services, Inc. has quickly become one of the premier real estate brands in the U.S.  In 2004, Intero Franchise Services Inc. began franchising and currently is operating in many of the western states.  In 2009, Intero International Franchise Services, LLC embarked on a developing territories in Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and the Americas.  The companies are private and headquartered in California’s Silicon Valley.
Contact:

Teressa Francis

408.342.3010

tfrancis@interorealestate.com

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Intero Evergreen Valley Grand Opening

By Teressa Francis | June 17th, 2011 0 Comments

As a follow up to yesterday’s post on Intero Evergreen Valley Grand Opening, we would like to share the event’s success with you! Check out the video and photos from yesterday!

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Intero Insider: Real Estate Is This Summer’s Biggest Blockbuster for Buyers

By Gino Blefari | June 1st, 2011 0 Comments

Summer is almost here – typically a busy season for home sales. But, what about this year? Will high gas prices and the rising cost of just about everything else from inflation dampen a typically active time of year in real estate? We’re on shaky ground, but could there be a better market for buyers? I don’t think so.

Let’s look at what we know:

  • Home prices fell to 9-year low. According to data from the S&P Case Shiller Home Price Indices, home prices are back to 2002 levels. The national index declined by 4.2% in the first quarter after falling 3.6% in the fourth quarter of 2010. This means the national index hit a new recession low.
  • Pending home sales took a pretty steep dive in April. The index tracked by the National Association of Realtors showed an 11.6% drop. The index is a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings (not closings). Since closings normally have a two-month lag from contract signings, this could mean a worse-than-expected summer.
  • Sales of new homes increased in April, for the second straight month. Sales increased 7.3% to a 323,000 unit annual rate, the highest since December, according to the Commerce Department’s report. April also marked the lowest inventory level of new homes in a year. These are certainly positive signs of underlying strength in this market segment. However, many analysts are cautious because existing home inventory is still very high and full of foreclosures.
  • Inventory of previously owned homes remains high. NAR’s numbers show there were 3.87 million previously owned homes on the market in April. But economists estimate the number could be much higher – between 7 and 8 million if foreclosed properties and those at risk of foreclosure were taken into account. It’s the “shadow inventory” effect.

As we’ve discussed here before, there are a ton of factors that can affect home sales – employment numbers, gas prices, the cost of goods and services, overall confidence in the economy, loan standards, interest rates. And also, there’s the local factor – meaning one market may be sailing along, while another is floundering. For example, here in Santa Clara County home prices haven’t dropped as drastically as the rest of the nation, they are actually higher than the Dot-Com crash days of 2002. Santa Clara County’s home prices today are more similar to pricing in 2004, averaging at $684,000. So remember real estate is local and depending on your location sales could pick up as more buyers realize conditions can’t get much better.

Buyers this summer have the best of all worlds: Low interest rates literally shave thousands of dollars off the price of a home; high inventory levels offer a shopper’s paradise in terms of choice; inventory also puts downward pressure on prices; prices are at a new recession low; and nothing major has changed “yet” in lending regulations that would cause major issues.

Calling all home shoppers: This summer is the season of your real estate dreams. The fences are buckling under your weight, and the grass is much greener on the ownership side if you’re ready. Not all homes are going at fire sale prices, of course, but for buyers in most parts of the country it really doesn’t get any better than this.

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Intero Insider: Know Your Market Long Before You Sell

By Gino Blefari | May 25th, 2011 0 Comments

Want to know the best strategy for selling a house regardless of how the economy is doing? It’s dead simple: Know your market.

Part of knowing your market is knowing where your market is – where it ends and begins, because your market is not your city, your state or your region. Your market is your neighborhood. It’s your school district. It’s even your street and block.

Real estate agents know this, of course. But homeowners also need to have a grasp on this. If you’re out there thinking of selling your house or shaking in your boots thinking about the prospect of relocating later this year, next year or even the year after, you need to grasp what constitutes your market, what kinds of homes are in it and what other things affect its value like schools and crime.

How do you get to know your market?

Take a leisurely stroll through some open houses next Sunday. Sure, you may aggravate the real estate agent who’s trying to get the house sold, but you’ll get a sense of what’s out there. What kinds of houses does your home compete against? What kinds of upgrades do they have that yours doesn’t? What price ranges are you seeing for homes similar to yours? Attending open houses also gives you the chance to chat with agents who are selling homes in the area.

Become a casual web surfer. Check out current for-sale listings for your neighborhood. Track any trends you see such as average time it takes to sell, price reductions, number of bank-owned homes for sale. This will help you to get a sense of how fast things are moving and what kind of supply and demand dynamic is happening near your home.

Get local with news. Start doing web searches about the schools in your neighborhood and crime (if it exists). This will help you understand the desirability factor of your home’s location. Things change – just because your schools were the best in the state when you bought your home six years ago, doesn’t mean they are today.

Whether you’re getting ready to sell soon or not, I think it’s important for all homeowners to really understand their home’s value in current conditions. As we’ve seen these last few years, times change and values are not always predictable. Some areas also buck national trends – so relying on the nightly news to know what’s up with your home value is a bad strategy.

Understanding your home’s value is key to getting your house sold. Staying on top of trends on your street is the only way to prepare yourself for pricing right.

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Intero Real Estate Services Agent’s and Employees Contribute Back Through Their Own Intero Foundation

By Teressa Francis | April 14th, 2011 0 Comments

Realtor driven non-profit donates over $170,000 in 2010 to organizations that support children in need

Silicon Valley, California (April 14, 2011) – The Intero Foundation (www.interofoundation.org), a non-profit organization, founded by Intero Real Estate Services founders in 2002 to benefit children in need, announced that it has donated over $170,000 to 22 charities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area in 2010 as part of its mission to positively impact the growth and well being of children in our communities.

The Intero Foundation is funded, promoted and governed by Intero agents – each of whom are vested in the health of the communities in which they work and live. An executive committee, led by Intero President and CEO Gino Blefari, provides strategic guidance. All members of the Intero community – executives, staff and agents – donate their time to further the Foundation’s mission.

John Thompson, Intero’s Executive Vice President explains, “Agents donate a portion of their commission per transaction. As a company, this commitment makes a big statement. Therefore, when you drive by an Intero for sale sign or work with an Intero Realtor, feel good that at risk children in the community will be served and we thank each and every one of you for your support.”

“When Intero Real Estate Services was founded just nine years ago, its founders set out to create a company that was different. That difference would be based on values,” states Founder, President and CEO of Intero, Gino Blefari. “One of those values is Commitment. The Intero Foundation is our vehicle for expressing a meaningful and sustained commitment to our community.”

Intero Foundation President, Sandy Troia adds, “We have become a large organization, but not too large to remember that we are part of something still larger: a community to which we must give in order to receive.”

The Intero Foundation continues to impact the growth and well being of children and youth in the communities we serve. Empowered by Intero agents and employees, the Intero Foundation has given over $1.9 million in grants to nonprofit organizations that support children in need. In 2010 alone, over $170,000 was granted to organizations benefitting children in need.

Assistant League Los Gatos-Saratoga
Dream Power
One Step Closer
Small Steps
Community Solutions
Family Connections
Learning and Loving Education Center
Advocates for Children
Family Supportive Housing, Inc.
Just Read Centers
Stand Up For Kids
Montalvo Arts Center
Theatre Works Silicon Valley
Special Olympics Northern California
Bay Area Women’s Sports Initiative
Rape Trauma Services
Lincoln High Future Vision
Summer Search
Rotary International – The Rotary Foundation
Bill Wilson Center
My New Red Shoes
Breakthrough Silicon Valley

Intero and its agents have always believed in the importance of giving back to communities in which we serve, and 2010 was a perfect example of ‘paying it forward’.

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The Multi-Family Opportunity

By Gino Blefari | April 12th, 2011 1 Comment

A silver lining to today’s dismal housing markets lies right in Newton’s third law of motion. This law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and that’s exactly what’s happening in a lot of real estate markets right now.

The pace of homeownership slows, and the pace of rentals speeds up. There’s Newton’s law at play. But it actually runs even deeper.

As single-family home sales on average continue at a slow pace, alas, some markets are seeing faster growth in multifamily sales. And according to a recent article in Smart Money magazine, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill investor purchases. These are families or individuals who decided the rock-bottom prices of investment real estate are just too hard to pass by.

This is obviously great news for local economies and real estate markets. But it’s also great news for homeownership in general. We’ve seen the value of ownership being picked at by critics and money gurus like Suze Orman over the last few years (see my post, “Why Aspiring Homeowners Will Ignore Money Gurus“). The growth in multifamily activity and interest is a clear sign that Americans still value the notion of being homeowners and of being entrepreneurs.

Here’s why the growth of multifamily makes a lot of sense:

  • Multifamily properties present an opportunity for owners to earn extra income – something the recent recession has reminded us can be key to making it through rough patches of unemployment or economic hardship.
  • Rental markets are on fire. People have to live somewhere and for most Americans, that will mean either renting or owning a home. This is a positive statistic that multifamily investors are paying attention to.

I’m not one to sit here and hand out investment advice or even broad real estate advice. I think it’s all very personal and the answers and direction vary with each situation. Multifamily investing comes with its own set of problems and risks – you have to be a landlord, prices may not rise as quickly as you’d like, the rental market could soften again.

But if you’re in the market for a new home or on the fence or even just starting to think about how you can take advantage of today’s real estate market, check out the multifamily opportunity in your city. You may find some great bargains that you hadn’t previously considered. Then, next time a recession rolls around, you may find yourself with a few more options and a few more income streams.

If you’re interested in learning more about multifamily opportunities near you, ask an Intero agent where to start.

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Short Sales Pressure Home Prices

By Teressa Francis | April 11th, 2011 0 Comments

Short Sales Pressure Home Prices by Diana Olick, CNBC Real Estate Reporter, published on April 7, 2011 on CNBC Realty Check blog stated home prices fell 6.7 percent in February year over year, according to a new report from CoreLogic. That numbers includes distressed sales, that is, sales of foreclosed properties or short sales, where the bank agrees to let the homeowner sell for less than the value of the mortgage. If you take those sales out, however, home prices were basically flat.

Distressed sales, though, still make up more than a third of all home sales, according to the National Association of Realtors, and that number is likely to rise at least in the near future. The banks have slowed the process of foreclosure, and that has reduced the number of bank owned properties hitting the market lately, but it’s a whole different story with short sales.

Robert Cruz, Vice President and Managing Officer of Intero Silver Creek was featured in the article and shares his insight on today’s short sales.

Cruz says, “In the first quarter of this year Intero Real Estate Service’s short sale closings were up at least 60 percent, thanks to the banks and servicers being far more aggressive in pursuing them; not only are they pursuing them, but they are paying for them”

Short sales used to be a long, tedious process with a very low success rate. “Short sales used to be a waste of time,” Cruz remembers. “Now it’s totally changed.”

Read more on this Realty Check blog at CNBC.com

Realty Check takes you from the housing boom to bust and beyond. Led by Diana Olick, the goal of this blog is to bring the real estate market, the rescue plans, the politics and the pontification home to you, with clear concise explanations of the wildly complicated issues in all facets of real estate today and tomorrow.

Diana Olick is an Emmy Award winning journalist, currently serving as CNBC’s real estate correspondent. She also contributes real estate expertise to The Today Show and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

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Intero Insider: Younger Americans Still Keen on Homeownership

By Gino Blefari | March 1st, 2011 1 Comment

The housing market may not have the rosiest headlines in town, but there are some great things happening if you open up the hood and look closely. Here’s one:

Younger Americans still like the idea of owning a home. The 18- to 34-year-old demographic (also known as Generation Y) in a recent Fannie Mae survey said they believe buying a home has a lot of potential as an investment, despite their peers seeing the steepest decline in ownership during the housing decline.

In fact, this group, along with Hispanics and African-Americans were more positive about homeownership than any other Americans.

In the spirit of helping younger Americans bring their homeownership dreams to life, here are four pieces of advice for making it happen:

1. Start saving as early as you can. Banks have been more stringent with downpayment requirements and there are a number of initiatives in Congress right now that may end up increasing downpayment requirements even more.
2. Don’t wait too long. With interest rates low and supply levels high in many areas, now really is a great time to buy. However, many expect the loan process to get even harder and rates to increase this year so these conditions won’t last forever.
3. Think long-term. Real estate is for the long haul and much more difficult to unload than a stock portfolio. Figure out where you want to be in 5-10 years and then zero in on your real estate goals.
4. Find a Realtor you trust. Real estate is difficult – even for the most intelligent buyers out there. Having an agent you are comfortable working with is priceless when it comes to navigating the process and dealing with unexpected twists and turns.

It’s good to see that owning a home still holds prominence in the minds of young Americans. A lot of folks have speculated that this group would end up not valuing homeownership as much as their parents and grandparents because of the financial collapse, recession and rising cost of ownership compared to personal incomes.

I think it’s a sign that real estate is not and will never be dead.

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Intero International Franchise Services, LLC. Signs First Franchise in Asia

By Teressa Francis | January 31st, 2011 0 Comments

Leading brokerage company to open first Asia office in Shanghai, China

CUPERTINO, Calif. – Intero International Franchise Services, LLC. (“Intero”) announced the signing of its first international franchise in Asia located in Shanghai, China with Global Gate Property Corp (“GGP”).

GGP is an international real estate group, who works with investors seeking to gain exposure to real estate investment opportunities. A highly experienced management team leads GGP. The team has been operating in Asia for over three decades, and has built up an extensive network of connections across Asia.  

GGP CEO Gary Ohlbaum said the deal with Intero® creates a great opportunity to link with a company with a strong Western US presence that is the market leader in Silicon Valley, California. “Being part of this global community allows us to offer our partners and clients investment opportunities from within the group rather than referring out the business to other brokerages,” said Ohlbaum.  

David Cheung, who heads GGP’s Shanghai operations, said: “The continued growth of Asia’s economies, high asset prices, particularly in real estate, and rising currencies relative to the US dollar, have made Asians significant buyers of US real estate. The Intero brand’s strength in the US, particularly in California, where many Asians choose to buy given its geographical proximity to Asia, established Chinese community, favorable climate, and economic, educational and work opportunities, make it the ideal partner to provide quality real estate investment opportunities to our client base.”

The first Intero franchise in China follows the company’s plan to expand internationally throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Intero International offers master franchise opportunities in select markets throughout the world.

Intero Chairman Bob Moles pointed to China’s huge growth in home ownership and with 1.3 billion people it presents a great business opportunity. “With the Intero strong value proposition, we know that our company will quickly rise above the competition,” he said.

Intero CEO Gino Blefari noted that the first Shanghai franchise represents the company’s commitment to solidifying the brand’s global presence, a necessary element to thrive and innovate in today’s real estate business.

“We’ve always thought about expansion in terms of the individuals involved. We go where we find people who are the right fit for the Intero brand because they have the same values and believe in the culture we’ve created. The GGP executives are those people. With them on board, we simply couldn’t pass on the opportunity to expand,” Blefari said.

About the Intero® brand

Founded in 2002, Intero Real Estate Services, Inc. has quickly become one of the premier real estate brands in the U.S. In 2004, Intero Franchise Services Inc. began franchising and is currently operating in many western states. In 2009, Intero International Franchise Services, LLC embarked on developing around the world. The companies are private and headquartered in California’s Silicon Valley.

About GGP

GGPC is an international real estate investment and services group, with offices and associates in North America and Asia. GGP brings together a management team with over three decades experience in international real estate and of operating and investing in Asia. GGP works with Asian investors seeking to acquire real estate in the US, the UK and Europe, and with international investors looking to acquire real estate in China, including specialist divisions for Agricultural and Forestry investment into China. GGP is listed on the US NASDAQ OTCBB (stock code GGPC).

For additional information, contact info@globalgateproperty.com or visit www.intero-shanghai.com or www.globalgateproperties.com.

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Intero Insider: Down payment assistance makes a comeback

By Gino Blefari | January 12th, 2011 1 Comment

Down payment assistance programs have been through the ringer in recent years, but now seem to be making a comeback. According to a Smart Money article I read this week, the number of programs across the country now stands at around 1,000 and has increased 3% to 5% in just the last six months.

What does this mean for home buyers, home sellers and the market as a whole? I think it’s a nice positive incentive and help for what continues to be one of the biggest hurdles to homeownership, the down payment – especially in high-cost areas like California and our own Bay Area and Silicon Valley.

Down payment assistance essentially comes in the form of programs that offer either grants or low/no-interest loans to qualifying first-time home buyers, or buyers who haven’t owned in awhile. Programs obviously vary, but generally there is an income and home value limit that qualifies a buyer. It can be a lifesaver for qualified buyers in places like San Francisco, where 20% down on an average home easily costs in the six figures.

Banks in the past had been reluctant to work with these programs because the borrowers who qualify were seen as risky. But that seems to be what’s changed this time around. Lenders are more willing to work with these borrowers now.

Programs like these are great for buyers in need of help. But they’re also good news for the market as a whole. Remember: first-time buyers especially are a significant piece of the housing market food chain. We need first-time buyers to create demand that fuels sales at the lower end of the market – and those sales in turn fuel sales for move-up buyers. Any move this year that can help create demand – especially in a market segment that needs it – will result in a positive effect to the market.

I applaud this new movement toward down payment assistance and hope that we will see more positive help to buyers and the market like this going forward.

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