William Vasana Honored with the 2014 Five Star Real Estate Agent Award

William Vasana named one of Jacksonville’s outstanding real estate agents, with fewer than 7% awarded.

Five Star Professional is pleased to announce that William Vasana, Watson Realty Corp., has been chosen as one of Jacksonville’s Five Star Real Estate Agents for 2014.

Five Star Professional partnered with Jacksonville Magazine to recognize a select group of Jacksonville area real estate agents who provide quality services to their clients. William Vasana is featured as the five-year award winner in a special section of the 2014 July issue.

“It is truly an honor to be named a 2014 Five Star Real Estate Agent. It has been great to be recognized five times these past few years by Jacksonville homebuyers and Jacksonville Magazine. Our customers are the reasons we are here today so I would like to personally thank them for recommending me for this honor. It is so rewarding to know we make a difference in their lives,” said William Vasana, Watson Realty Corp.

The Five Star Real Estate Agent award program is the largest and most widely published real estate agent award program in North America. Agents are measured using an objective, in-depth research methodology, with significant focus on customer feedback and overall satisfaction.

“Five Star Real Estate Agents are more than knowledgeable experts in their field. They maintain a sharp focus on building enduring relationships and demonstrate tremendous dedication to the families and individuals they serve.” – Lynn Hargreaves, VP, Research and Services Operations, Five Star Professional

About the research process:

Now entering its 12th year, Five Star Professional conducts in-depth, market-specific research in more than 45 markets across the United States and Canada to identify premium service professionals. Five Star Professional contacts thousands of recent homebuyers to identify award candidates. Phone, mail, and online respondents rate their real estate agent on 10 satisfaction criteria. Candidates with a qualifying client satisfaction rating move on to be evaluated on objective criteria such as experience, production levels, and disciplinary and complaint history. Real estate agents do not pay a fee to be considered or awarded. For more information, visithttp://www.fivestarprofessional.com.

Watson Realty Corp. is honored to be a founding member of Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, and a four-time recipient of the network’s highest honor, the Diamond Award. LeadingRE is the largest network of premier locally-branded firms producing over one million annual home sale transactions and provides its affiliates with an extensive range of brokerage services. These services include lead generation, cross-market referrals, branding support, luxury marketing, online exposure, technology systems, and industry-leading professional development.

U.S. Pending Home Sales Hit Eight-Month High in May

Sales of new U.S. homes rose in May to the highest level in six years, providing the strongest signal yet that housing is recovering from a recent slowdown.

New home sales jumped 18.6 percent last month following a 3.7 percent increase in April, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. The gains followed declines in February and March that were blamed in part on harsh winter weather.

The big May increase pushed the seasonally adjusted annual sales rate to 504,000, the highest level since May 2008.

Home sales peaked last year at an annual rate of 459,000 in June, but then lost altitude. The decline reflected an increase in mortgage rates that occurred after the Federal Reserve began discussing pulling back on its monthly bond purchases that were keeping long-term interest rates low.

The inventory of unsold new homes was unchanged at 189,000 homes at the end of May, the same as April. That inventory level would be depleted in 4.5 months at the May sales pace, an extremely low level that underscored the fact that the supply of new homes remains well below historic averages.

Sales were up in all regions of the country in May, led by a 54.5 percent surge in sales in the Northeast. New home sales rose 34 percent in the West and 14.2 percent in the South. The Midwest had the smallest month-over-month sales gain of just 1.4 percent.

Even with the big overall gain, sales of new homes are still running at just about half the pace of a healthy real estate market.

But there have been some encouraging signs of a spring rebound in housing.

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of previously owned homes jumped 4.9 percent in May, the biggest one-month gain in nearly three years. That increase pushed the sales rate to 4.89 million homes, the strongest showing since last October.

While economists were encouraged by the second straight monthly gain in existing home sales, they noted that the sales rate is still below the recent peak of 5.38 million sales hit last July.

Higher mortgage rates and the bad weather weighed on sales of both existing and new homes in late 2013 and early 2014. But sales seem to be staging a rebound, helped by solid job growth and growing inventories of homes for sale, a development that has helped to hold down price increases.

Economists say there is significant pent-up demand for homes as many potential buyers put off purchases over the past few years because of concerns about the economy.

Source: Associated Press