Asking prices of homes listed for sale on real estate portal Trulia.com in January were up from a year ago in 86 of the 100 largest U.S. metros, according to a monthly report released today.

The report, which covers roughly 4.5 million for-sale and for-rent properties listed on Trulia through Jan. 31, showed asking prices up 5.9 percent from a year ago, and growing by a seasonally adjusted 0.9 percent from December to January — the biggest month-over-month gain since March 2012.

In some markets, the strong growth in asking prices doesn’t necessarily indicate that worries are over, said Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist.

“In many local markets today, dramatic price gains can mask serious red flags,”Kolko said in a blog post. “Strong job growth, low vacancy rate, and low foreclosure inventory — not huge price gains — are signs of a healthy housing market.”

Trulia identified San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Denver and Salt Lake city as “booming” markets with strong fundamentals.

Home values rose nearly 6 percent in 2012, according to year-end data from the real estate Web site Zillow. But such increases aren’t likely to continue.

The increase is the largest annual gain since 2006, near the peak of the housing bubble, and is greater than the typical appreciation seen in healthy markets. Zillow forecasts an increase next year of about 3.3 percent, more in line with typical housing market appreciation. (Historically, annual appreciation averages about 3 percent, according to Zillow’s research.)

Stan Humphries, Zillow’s chief economist, said he expected the housing recovery to continue this year, but at a “more sustainable” pace. Tight inventory in some markets, combined with strong demand and a slowing pace of foreclosures, contributed to the rise in values, he said. As values rise, fewer homeowners are underwater, or owe more than their home is worth, and may be more willing to put their homes on the market. The increase in inventory, in turn, should moderate future price increases.

As home values rose in the fourth quarter, foreclosures slowed, to 5.22 of every 10,000 homes nationwide in December. That was the lowest pace since November 2007, when the rate was 5.18 per 10,000 homes, Zillow said. Sales of foreclosed houses stood at 12 percent of the market, down 4 percent from the end of 2011.

The housing recovery, however, is uneven. Phoenix, for instance, which has had strong investor interest, showed an increase of more than 22 percent year-over-year, a pace reminiscent of the real estate bubble. Cincinnati and Chicago, meanwhile, showed slight declines. Seven of the top 30 metropolitan areas in the study, however, showed an increase in home values of 10 percent or more.

While it’s encouraging to see housing values rise rather than fall, there’s a risk that consumers may get used to such large increases and expect them to continue, Mr. Humphries said. And that’s probably not a good thing. The recent volatility in the housing market makes it easier to think of housing as a shorter-term, speculative investment, he said, rather than as a place to live. “Housing should be thought of as a long-term investment.”

Has the recent rise in home values changed your perspective on housing as an investment?

Your website can be a great tool for building relationships outside of the sales cycle and driving hyper-local content creation can be the foundation for a successful long-term, long tail search engine optimization strategy.

The short-term downside with both of these approaches is they are time consuming and can take years to fully bear their fruits. Time is money and most agents need to drive real results in the days and months that are right around the corner.

As you’re working to make 2013 the most prosperous and efficient year ever, we invite you to take a look at a few web engagement strategies designed to realize more results faster. Use these to target web visitors that are ready to buy, and push that traffic directly to you.

1. Organic traffic from Google search results

Ranking number one for Springfield Real Estate (or whatever city you market in) sure would be a great way to drive a ton of traffic, right? Unfortunately, all of your competitors all agree, which means ranking for general terms has become very difficult. Some real estate professionals have had success in ranking for “long tail” results instead.

To do this, they write about everything in their community – schools, restaurants, events, etc… While this often works, it takes a long time to write all that content, and the people who find it aren’t necessarily interested in buying or selling a house.

To achieve similar success in a lot less time, don’t go quite so “long.” People who are ready to do a transaction are essentially searching for the answers to at least one of three questions:

1. How much is my house worth?
2. Which houses are for sale?
3. How is the local market? (Or, is now a good time to buy or sell?)

Once a week, create content that addresses one of these three questions. Give these stories a title that matches – for instance: “New houses for sale in Lakewood, Colorado” or “What are houses selling for in Alameda, California?” You may even want to drill down to specific neighborhoods.

It will take a few months of consistent writing on these topics to move meaningfully higher in your local home search market, but this is the shortest path to success in the long tail search results game.

2. Mobile ready, single property listing landing pages

This one is fairly straightforward. If you have a for sale sign planted in a yard, make sure the consumer standing in front of it can access information about it on their phone.

To do this, you need

• a URL that’s easy to type,
• a landing page that renders nicely on a smart phone, and
• capture tools that make it easy for the consumer to give you their contact information.

Long & Foster recently announced a program that provides these tools for their agents.

If you aren’t a Long and Foster agent, you can copy and paste you’re the custom Trulia listing URL into Bit.Ly or Goo.gl and make your own custom short web address to connect prospects to a mobile friendly landing page.

It’s a small tactic that’s becoming more and more important as real estate search becomes more mobile.

3. Target your advertising

If you’ve been in real estate for more than six months, you‘ve asked, “What marketing really works?” Well, the answer depends on what you consider “working.” When you’re shopping for real estate ads, make sure you focus your efforts on the zip codes, areas, and avenues that offer you measurable focused result.

You don’t need every lead that ever graced a web page. You also don’t need to promote yourself in every publication in your city or town.  You do need leads that are serious buyers and sellers.

The key to shopping for advertising these days is setting your goals and targets before you get into a conversation about tactics. Once you’ve decided on your goals, make sure your sales rep or account manager understands them and can show you how to measure the result before you shell out the cash.

4. Trulia and other web portals

In addition to generating your own traffic, make sure you tap into the traffic from the nation’s largest web portals. If you have listings, make sure your profiles are complete and have the proper email address, phone number and URL for consumers to reach out to you.

If you’re a buyer’s agent, make sure your real estate profile lists your expertise and consider answering consumer questions on forums like Trulia Voices.

Finally, take a look at the products we provide to deliver traffic to you. Remember, time is money. Sometimes it’s more profitable to focus on converting leads into clients than it is to spend all your time generating your own leads.

These four strategies are all great sources of traffic for you website. But once the traffic comes your way, you need to have a strategy for converting that traffic into clients. We’ll tackle that in a few future posts and some of our upcoming trainings.

If you’ve worked, used, or talked to anyone who uses social media for business you’ve heard the question “What posts are going to generate business?” Unfortunately, the answer hasn’t always been easy for real estate agents.

Over the past few years, the ebbs and flows of the market, wavering consumer confidence, and some overly negative press have made it so agents and industry blogs were plagued with only hum drum sad news to share.

But 2012 has been the year of change for agents, bloggers, and anyone who’s job involves “talking” real estate online.

Here’s the proof. Here are 4 social shares help you start 2013 off with Facebook updates, tweets, and other shares that show your clients and prospects that this year could be one of their best opportunities to close a real estate deal.

1. The housing market is recovering fast

If you haven’t already seen, Trulia’s Housing Barometer has been tracking the housing market’s recovery each month.

The most recent release shows that the housing market is 50% back to normal and housing prices are up another 6 percent. This is great news for building buyer confidence in your area or convincing skittish sellers that now is a good time to sell.

Read the latest Trulia’s Housing Barometer update on the housing market’s recovery for more details.

2. Foreclosures have a hit a post-crisis low

A late 2011 study showed that foreclosures have a major effect on buyer confidence. Sharing the recent news that foreclosures have a hit a post-crisis low is a great way to build confidence and catch the eyeballs of your next potential clients online.

For the story on foreclosures and other good news for 2013, check out Housing in 2013: What’s In, What’s Out.

3. Housing inventory has dropped for the 9^thmonth in a row

The National Association of Realtors reported housing inventory has dropped for the 9^th month in a row.

For buyers, that means that now is the time to act before they miss out. For sellers, now is the time start marketing their home as more buyers move off the fence. For you, the agent, now is the time to become the source of good news about the market.

Check out the data on NAR’s website and use it to fuel your own blogs and social sharing.

4. Help for first-time sellers

NAR stats show that one of the biggest market opportunities of 2013 will be first-time sellers. To help you engage these prospects and turn them into clients, we’ve come up with this brandable guide to help you tap this hot niche market.

Download it, add your brand and contact info, and share this on your website or as a printed handout for potential sellers in your area.

Tips for sharing the news

Simply hitting “share” or “tweet” is not enough to build your expertise. Here are a few ways to use housing headlines to boost your expertise locally.

 1. Start a local conversation

National headlines and facts can do a great job of garnering attention, but at the end of the day buyers and sellers want to know what’s happening in your market.

Use the national headlines or quotes from some of the shares in this post as an intro for blog post about what’s happening in your market.

2. Share it with your spin

To convince prospects you’re an expert they need to hear from you.  When your sharing these facts, stats, and helpful tips make sure you add your own commentary on the news you’re re-sharing.

3. Send it in your follow-up

Your ads, social shares, and any of your other marketing tools are pointless if there’s no substance in your follow-up.

Check out Trulia’s Agent Download Center for helpful handouts to include in your client follow-up. You can download them to use in your e-mail follow-ups or feature them as downloads on your own blog or website to help capture new clients.

True Confession: I set a handful of New Year’s Resolutions every single year. Why? They work for me – I’ve got probably a 75 percent success rate. Some of this is in the science of setting the Resolution the right way in the first place, including the preparation.

Here’s my secret: I always get started in December. I like to use my holiday down-time to plan things out, gather up the resources or do the research I need, figure out what my challenges are likely to be and make a plan to deactivate them, set appointments with any professional I need to get on board to make my goals happen and even get some momentum built up with my new eating program, workout plan, financial goals or career endeavors.

I aim to be like that old Marines commercial – by January 1, I’ve already done more than most Resolution-setters do all year!

And I’d like to help you do the same.  Let’s boost the chances that your home buying or selling goals for 2013 will be successful by devoting a little time in December to getting things lined up and in motion.  Here is my short list of tasks I would put on my December to-do list if I wanted to buy or sell a home next year:

1.  Handle your credit horrors.  Maybe you don’t have any credit horrors – kudos to you! But let’s get real, this year will be a year in which many post-foreclosure, post-bankruptcy, post-layoff Americans will find themselves sufficiently recovered, post-recession, to get back into the real estate market and buy a home. If you count yourself among the number of 2013 wanna-be buyers who experienced a financial glitch of any degree during the recession, December is the right time to start pulling your credit reports and doing a damage assessement and control campaign.

• Visit AnnualCreditReport.com (the only website through which you can access your government-mandated free reports) and order your own credit reports from all three reporting bureaus.
• Review them all, line-by-line, checking for errors and discrepancies. It is extremely common for paid-off accounts to still be reporting as delinquent, for foreclosed mortgages to still be listed as open and past-due and for bills that were settled in collection to be reported as behind. Follow the instructions to dispute any such errors you see.
• When you talk with your mortgage broker (see #4), go over the reports with them again, getting a read on precisely when your foreclosure, bankruptcy, delinquencies, gaps in employment or other credit woes will be sufficiently “seasoned” (i.e., long ago) to allow you to qualify for another loan, and get their advice on any action items, like paying a particular debt or set of credit cards down to $X amount will be important for you to complete before you try for a legitimate pre-approval next year.

In fact, this last point applies to everyone – whether or not you think you have any dings on your credit report. It’s essential to get clear on any of the work you’ll need to do to optimize your credit standing now, as the payoffs, disputes and other credit work that can move the needle on your score may take some time.

2.  Purge.  It’s time.  Time to get rid of all that things you know qualify as clutter – all of the stuff you know buyers won’t want to see when they tour your home, and all the stuff that you won’t want to move to your next place. If you donate your junk before the end of the year, you might be able to get a receipt and deduction for the taxes you file in 2013.  And tax break or not, getting all that stuff out of your attic, your closets, your shelves and your rooms will clear up loads of mental space and energy, minimize some of the overwhelm latent in the prospect of moving – and might even surface a few things you can sell to boost your down payment savings or your home staging budget.

Clutter clearing gets overwhelming when you simply lack the time, in the face of everyday urgencies, to invest a few hours or days to go deep, pull out all the minutae and memory-laden How better to spend those wintry days between Christmas and New Year’s than to clear out the clutter in your home – and your mind?

3.  Plan your prep. If you’re thinking of selling your home in 2013, now is a great time to start organizing your list (or spreadsheet, or Evernote file) of home preparation tasks that need to get done before you put the place on the market. Things like painting, carpeting, landscaping and other preparation tasks can be less taxing and less disruptive to your life if you have plenty of time to collect bids, sock away the cash to cover the costs and arrange projects at your family’s convenience or during off-seasons, when contractors might be wiling to charge a bit less.

Talk with your agent before you put a plan in place; they can help you make good decisions which projects to do (and which to forego), as well as choosing finish materials and colors that will appeal to the broadest segment of buyers – to boot, they often can refer you to the most cost-effective contractors in your area for these sorts of pre-listing projects.

3.  Save. More. There’s no such thing as saving too much cash up for your down payment. If you have a home to sell, you have no idea how much you’ll take away from that transaction until it closes. And even if you’re currently renting, having maximum savings set aside allows you maximum flexibility in terms of selecting homes, competing with other buyers, covering closing costs (which can run as high as 3-4% on average for an FHA loan) and even handling post-closing repairs, appliances and property personalization.

4.  Collect your gift money.  Buyers who get gift money from a relative to apply toward their down payments are often subject to seemingly strange and definitely invasive documentation requirements – the most onerous of which is to produce copies of the gift GIVER’s bank accounts proving the source of the funds. If you know Mom, Dad, Granny or Aunt Bernie is going to chip in some cash toward your down payment in the Spring, consider asking them to go ahead and give it to you now, so you can put it in your own accounts and begin “seasoning” it as yours, which will help you avoid all those documentation demands.

Your benefactor should check with their financial and tax advisors to be sure the gift is structured so as to avoid any tax implications, before they give it.

5.  Connect with an agent and a mortgage broker – stat.  Don’t wait until the month before you want to buy or sell to ring up your trusty agent and initiate the conversation. Ask around for referrals or find an agent here on Trulia Voices now, get a mortgage broker (or 3) on the phone, and ask them to help brief you long-lead topics like:

• Whether your market is a buyer’s market or seller’s market, and how that translates into what you can and should expect when you plan to buy or sell next year
• Whether there are any area-specific timing issues you should factor in as you map out your timeline
• What – given the specifics of your financials, your savings, any past credit or other issues you have – you should be doing now in terms of paying bills down, settting savings targets, and such
• What changes, if any, you should plan on making to your property before listing it
• What sort of property you can get for your money in the areas you’re targeting as a buyer, and what kind of money you can expect to command for your property in your local market (this, obviously, will change over time – even over the few months or so between now and the time you list your home, but it still helps to have a general ides of the current market values).

6.  Go Open House hunting.  If you’re selling next year, it’s essential to get a real-life read on what the competition’s like, everything from what sorts of houses in your area are listed at various price points to what your target buyers are going to be seeing on their way into or out of your house.  There’s no reality check on your own home’s preparation and staging – its overall readiness for listing – like putting on a buyer’s shoes and taking a tour through similar homes in your area.  And there’s no time for this reality check like right now: when Open Houses are still a-plenty, you have more time to attend them, and you still have plenty of time to process your takeaways and incorporate them into your own property preparations.

Open House hunting is also helpful for those who have home buying on their 2013 to-do lists.  It’s the only way you can start understanding how to decipher the listings you see online into a reality-based set of expectations about a property.  It’s also the best way to get indoctrinated deeply into the realities of what you get on your local market at various price points, and it’s the most impactful strategy for starting the process of negotiating compromises with your co-buyers.

7.  Think hard about your deductions, if you’re self-employed. In the wake of the recession, most mortgage guidelines for self-employed borrowers changed, so that your income for purposes of qualifying is assumed to be the average of your last two years’ Adjusted Gross Income, as reported on your federal income tax returns.  That means lenders calculate your income after all your business-related and other deductions, not before.

So, yes, this does mean that maximizing your deductions may impact your ability to qualify for a home loan in 2013.  But them’s the breaks – better to know this before you file your tax return, in the event it might change something about how you file.  Loop your tax advisor, business bookkeeper and mortgage broker into your decision-making process about your 2012 taxes before filing, if you’re self-employed and plan to buy or refinance your home next year.

After eight consecutive months of improvement, a reading of home builders’ confidence is closing in on a milestone it hasn’t hit in more than six years.

The National Association of Home Builders’ monthly index of the sentiment in the building industry has been below 50 since April 2006, meaning that the majority of builders view industry conditions as negative. If the number goes above 50, the majority of builders view the sales climate as positive. Readings were in the high 60s and low 70s at the height of the housing bubble.

December’s reading, based on a survey of 411 builders and released by the builders’ group on Tuesday, was up two points to 47–tantalizingly close to the threshold of 50.

Industry officials say the gloomy days are ending. “Builders across the country are reporting some of the best sales conditions they’ve seen in more than five years, with more serious buyers coming forward and a shrinking number of vacant and foreclosed properties on the market,” said Barry Rutenberg, the group’s chairman and a home builder from Gainesville, Fla. in a statement.

Two of the survey’s components—current single-family home sales and expected sales over the next six months–were at 51. The component gauging traffic of prospective buyers rose one point to 36.

The housing market helped pull the economy into a severe recession, which ended in June 2009. But housing has been a contributor to growth the past six quarters.

Regionally, builder confidence rose in two of the four regions of the country in December. The biggest gain was in the Northeast, which rose 12 points to a reading of 42. That growth “likely reflects some boost in activity following (superstorm) Sandy’s destruction” and could also be from “catching up” with improvements that had already been evident in other regions, wrote J.P. Morgan Chase JPM +0.90%economist Daniel Silver.

The Midwest also advanced, up two points to 53. The South and the West posted small declines.

WASHINGTON — At 70, Frank White isn’t a typical first-time home buyer. But a key reason he ditched his Altadena apartment and bought a three-bedroom house in nearby Pasadena has been common for decades: He wanted the tax break.

“I pay very high taxes, and I have no deductions,” said White, who owns an apartment rental business with his two brothers. Now, after purchasing the $500,000 home in November, he’s looking forward to writing off the interest on his 30-year mortgage.

But the longtime tax break could face major changes as Washington policymakers search for ways to reduce the deficit as part of the debate on the so-called fiscal cliff. And that’s sending shivers through home buyers such as White and much of the housing industry.

“My deductions are important to me, what few I have,” White said. “We need to go after the corporations that don’t pay a … cent. Let’s go after those guys first. But leave me alone.”

The home mortgage interest deduction is one of the most cherished in the U.S. tax code. It’s also one of the most expensive, estimated to cost the federal government $100 billion this fiscal year.

Primer: Understanding the fiscal cliff

For that reason, the deduction taken on income tax returns is expected to be on the table in Washington’s search for more money to reduce the budget deficit and resolve the fiscal cliff.

But the specter of scaling back the tax break, particularly with the housing market still trying to recover from the collapse of the subprime mortgage bubble, is raising alarms among homeowners, Realtors and home builders.

It’s also sparking a debate about the true effect of the deduction, which critics argue benefits the wealthy much more than the middle class. They contend that the break hurts first-time home buyers by driving up house prices and that other countries that have no such deduction still have high homeownership rates.

“If we really care about homeownership, then the deduction is just the absolute wrong way to go,” said Dennis Ventry, a UC Davis law professor who has studied its effect.

There is agreement that reducing the interest deduction — no one is talking about eliminating it — would cause prices to drop as buyers scale back the amount they could afford to spend.

The concerns are even greater in Southern California and other high-priced regions where homeowners benefit more from the deduction because their mortgages are larger.

“A lot of people buy rather than rent simply because, after the mortgage deduction, it’s more affordable,” said Syd Leibovitch, president of Rodeo Realty in Beverly Hills. “To limit it or take it away, I think you’re going to be surprised at the shocking effect it has on the real estate market.”

President Obama’s deficit commission proposed lowering the limit on mortgage principal eligible for a deduction to $500,000 from the current $1 million, removing any break for interest on a second home and turning the deduction into a tax credit capped at 12% of interest paid.

A tax credit would allow homeowners who don’t itemize deductions to subtract the interest from the taxes they owe. But while more taxpayers could take advantage of the benefit, a cap would mean those with large mortgages on expensive homes couldn’t get a credit for all the interest they pay.

Other proposals have called for similar changes.

Supporters of the tax break worry that proposed changes would not only push down prices but also spook potential buyers.

Lawrence Tang, 38, and his wife own a house in West Covina. But they are renting in San Gabriel and looking for a house there, near where he works as a school technology director. They don’t want to sell the West Covina house because the drop in home values wiped out most of their equity.

So the proposed changes would limit how much interest they could deduct on their first house and prevent them from deducting any interest on what would be their second home, Tang said.

“That would pretty much price us out of that market and push us back to the sideline,” Tang said. Just talk of changes to the mortgage interest deduction is making them hesitant to buy, he said.

The mortgage interest deduction is one of the most popular tax breaks. In a nationwide poll released this week byQuinnipiac University, two-thirds of respondents said they opposed eliminating it.

The deduction has been around since the federal government began collecting income tax in 1913. But contrary to popular belief, the deduction wasn’t put in the tax code to encourage home ownership. All consumer interest was deductible then.

Over the years, however, Congress has pared back interest deductions. The 1986 tax code overhaul eliminated the ability to deduct auto loan and credit card interest.

But lawmakers specifically kept the deduction for home mortgage interest. Then-President Ronald Reagan said he wanted to keep it because it symbolized the American dream.

“For people of my generation, the baby boomers, from the time we were kids we were told by the federal government and its policies to build our nest eggs around housing,” said Gerald M. Howard, chief executive of the National Assn. of Home Builders, one of the strongest supporters of the deduction.

“Now our elected officials are going to tell us in the name of tax simplification they’re going to further reduce the value of our housing by 10% to 15% right as we’re about to retire?” Howard said. “When you make that kind of case to lawmakers, you should see their eyes widen.”

But a lot of that concern is based on the misconception that the deduction is a boon for average Americans, critics said.

“This is a sacred cow to the real estate industry, and it’s almost an entitlement to homeowners,” said Anthony Sanders, a real estate finance professor at George Mason University. “They could cut it in half and it would not harm a lot of middle-income households.”

An analysis by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation found that 78% of the $83 billion in mortgage interest deductions in 2010 went to households with income of more than $100,000. Households with incomes of more than $200,000 got 35% of the benefit.

Wealthier people own more expensive houses and have more interest to deduct. And because their income is taxed at a higher rate, the benefit of the deduction is greater.

The average savings from the mortgage interest deduction was $2,454 in 2010. But for households making more than $200,000, it was $6,370.

In addition, people in high-cost areas benefit the most from the deduction. A 2001 study found that three metropolitan areas — Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York — combined to receive more than 75% of the deduction’s benefit.

“When you turn the light on and see what’s really under the bed, I don’t think there’s really much there,” said Glenn Kelman, chief executive of online real estate company Redfin, which is based in Seattle.

Watch the Hot Air Balloons go over your yard everyday. Furnished home that sits in a cul de sac with minimal traffic. Large yard with plenty of room for play and entertaining with a lovely canyon view. Located in Pacific Highlands Ranch with access to clubhouse, pool and fitness center. Schools are minutes from the house.