House for Sale - Cedar Rapids, Iowa

In May 2012, George Ford for Business380.com reported that "Eastern Iowa home prices holding up better than nation" because nationally, the fall in home prices is greater than 19% since 2007, but several eastern Iowa communities (including Iowa City and Cedar Rapids) are showing rising home prices in that same five year period.

In my view, this report suggests that nationally, when experts are saying national home prices are down to 2002 price levels, that Cedar Rapids home prices aren't down to 2002 levels, but instead have been rising since 2007.

In a recent press release, the Iowa Association of Realtors has reported that homes sales were up 12.2% in November 2011 compared to the prior November in 2010.

However, specific to the Cedar Rapids area, sales are up 4.5% from the prior November.

Average purchase prices this November are only down $1000 from last Novembers average of $161,122.

The most stark difference is that days on market in Cedar Rapids is down from 97 days on market a year ago, to 76 days on market this November.

However, specific segments of the market are moving faster.

Realtors perform a lot of drudgery tasks on behalf of their sellers to earn their commission. But I suspect even the hardest working ones of them saw the potential for starving in Cedar Rapids, IA in September 2011.

Nationally there was such a decrease in new listings (think fresh meat on the butcher table), that it was the lowest influx of new listings since 2005.

In Iowa, my rough calculations have Cedar Rapids, IA offering roughly 12.2% of the statewide listings and sales, which means 239 FEWER HOMES were listed this September, than compared to last September (2010).

If people are searching in Google, Bing, and Yahoo for "house for sale" and "Cedar Rapids, Iowa" we'd be stupid to create a website designed around an ego like "Our Real Estate Is Better, Inc."

That's why our website has a plain name: People are searching using those keywords.

"Cedar Rapids, Iowa" House for Sale."

So those realtors who claim to market aggressively on behalf of their clients are really compensating for not knowing how to let customer just 'find your house listing naturally."

As somebody who's lived outside of Cedar Rapids, Iowa for many years but has spent over a decade living and working in Cedar Rapids, you might want to know about the culture of Cedar Rapids, IA.

Cedar Rapids is a town that's full of hard working, mostly common sense citizens. With lower crime that many towns it's size, and lower unemployment than most of the country, Cedar Rapids, IA is an attractive place to work and live.

If you’re thinking of shopping for a home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or one of the neighboring cities, like Hiawatha, Marion, Robbins, or Palo you can find your homes on realtors website, on FSBO (or for sale by owner) website, or by other means to don't fit into either of those two more common and modern ways of discovering a new home for sale.

You might pick-up a lead on a house for sale in Cedar Rapids by watching the newspaper (but who advertises in the newspaper that doesn't advertise online?) Do you really want to do business with them?

One large local real estate company just spent $50,000 redesigning their website only to let it's listing languish. (That's the number we heard from one of their agents during an open house.)

When we were shopping for a home, there were 2-3 different occasions where on Sunday morning around 10 a.m. we'd search for Cedar Rapids open houses on their newly redesigned website, we'd make our list, and we'd go out from 1pm to 4pm to look at houses only to find that no realtor from that company had the house open.