Carole VanSickle Ellis
Luxury-Home Owners, Redesigning Traditional Living-Space
If you work in the luxury-home sales business, you may want to start being just a little bit more flexible. Don’t worry, the issue is not that you need to start doing more yoga. Actually, it’s more of a matter of living-space preferences. According to a recent report from the ...
Millennials Prefer Staying Put
The Millennials are at it again. They are “bucking tradition” with their living options and, once again, shaking up housing predictions. In many ways, this generation is far less predictable than the ones prior. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the latest Millennial preference to interfere with the housing market ...
Portland to Fine Landlords Who Raise Rents “Too Much”
Portland-area landlords could soon have to pay to help tenants relocate if the landlords raise rents too high for current renters to afford. Portland, Oregon’s city council members recently approved a bill requiring landlords to offer “relocation assistance” in the form of fees between $2,900 and $4,500 depending on the ...
Denver Neighborhood Serves as “Future City”
A high-tech neighborhood in Denver, Colorado, will serve as a test site for various technologies to show “what the future could hold,” according to the city’s “Smart City Project,” an endeavor partnered with Panasonic. The neighborhood, known as Peña Station Next (PSN), will have everything from smart LED street lights ...
Farmlands Facing Threat of Real Estate Bust
As more and more farmers find themselves in debt thanks to falling prices for corn, wheat, and other agricultural commodities, many are opting to leave the sector entirely. According to economists, the Farm Belt of the United States, traditionally considered to be the central states of the Midwestern U.S., like ...
One-on-One with Kathy Fettke: Offering Hope
Kathy Fettke has spent the last two decades in real estate doing what she calls “offering hope” - and what many others consider to be making great calls on the real estate industry. Fettke is often asked to comment on the housing market on television and radio as well as ...
One-on-One with Shawn Woedl: Busting Real Estate Investing Myths
Shawn Woedl is the Vice President of the National Real Estate Insurance Group (NREIG), industry-recognized speaker and educator, and an expert on all lines of commercial property insurance. He will be presenting a study on “The 13 Insurance Myths for Real Estate Investors” at Think Realty’s San Diego Group Event ...
One-to-One with Sonia Booker: Sharing the Vision
Sonia Booker is a powerhouse on the real estate scene. With a strong voice and a powerful message, Booker has one of the most positive and confident networking skill sets in the business. She is now in demand all over the country, as she works to spread her “wealth-building movement.” ...
Sellers Boasting Biggest Profits Since 2007
If you sold your home in 2016, then the odds are you saw a pretty hefty profit when you checked out that cashier’s check at the closing table. According to ATTOM Data Solutions, homeowners who sold their homes last year saw an average home price gain since purchase of $38,206 ...
3 Risky Moves Most are Willing to Take to Own Real Estate
The “American Dream” of homeownership still has a powerful siren song for many would-be homeowners and it can lead people to do some risky things in order to be able to jingle that special set of door keys in their pocket. According to the Owners.com Home Buyer Study 2017, which ...
New York City’s Housing Trend, Frankenmansions
New York City’s richest homeowners just can’t get enough square footage but they’re willing to go to some pretty great lengths in order to try. The result of the city’s wealthiest real estate buyers’ hard work and extensive renovations conducted with an eye toward wider, more open spaces in their ...
U.S. Cities Dominate Most-Affordable Global List
A recent report from the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey (DIHA) shows once again that everything is relative and that real estate is first and foremost, always a local issue. The DIHA 2017 measured affordability in 406 metro markets in nine countries around the world and despite nationwide concerns about ...
Next Housing Crunch Could Hit Seniors Where it Hurts
As the 65-and-up population surges over the next 20 years thanks to health innovations, medical progress, and constantly lengthening American lifespans, one thing that is not progressing is the availability of senior housing. According to a recent report published by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS), fewer than ...
One-to-One: Eddie Wilson Discusses China, Investing Outlook
Recently, Eddie Wilson, president of Affinity Enterprise Group (AEG), returned from a trip to China to visit AEG’s Chinese division, Affinity Investments Asia (AIA). AIA has a physical office in Shanghai with the sole designated purpose of helping Chinese investors find credible investment opportunities in the United States. The office ...
Is Your Online Business Profile Up to Date?
About one in every 10 brokerages have outdated or inaccurate information about the real estate business online, resulting in potentially huge losses in terms of online leads on deals and traffic. Is your business also guilty of this? According to an audit conducted by the WAV Group, a real estate ...
The ‘Fine Print’ on Rising Home Values
National home values rose by 6.8 percent over the course of 2016, according to the latest Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), putting December 2016 home values just below the highest value ever, set in April 2007. Zillow economists speculated home values would continue to rise in 2017, but added that ...
10 Spots Where Tear-downs Could Be Profitable
If you’ve ever thought about purchasing a property just so you could tear it down and build something better, then you would feel right at home in a number of America’s hottest housing markets these days. According to recent data released by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, there are ...
Report: Homeowner ‘Safety Net’ Has Rips
The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) audited its target program and found that the “Hardest Hit Fund” established under TARP is failing to act as intended. Although that fund is supposed to serve as a “safety net” for unemployed and underemployed Americans, ...
Chinese Real Estate Mogul Takes a Shot at President Trump
One of China’s most successful real estate billionaires is taking a few shots at the new U.S. president, using an end-of-year video to relay his message that “globalism and regional protectionism” simply cannot go hand in hand. Soho China chairman Pan Shiyi started out the video with some optimistic observations ...
Ben Carson Explains Plans for HUD
Former republican presidential candidate and HUD Secretary-Designate Ben Carson told the Senate Banking Committee last week he wants to run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in order to “heal America’s divisiveness.” He went on to say political division, racial conflict, and class warfare are “ripping this country ...
What Trump’s VA Secretary Pick Could Mean for Housing
Last week, president-elect Donald Trump revealed that he will replace sitting Veterans Affairs, VA, secretary Bob McDonald when he takes office. McDonald has held the position since 2014 and is the former CEO of Proctor & Gamble. He is a republican who was appointed by President Obama and enjoys the ...
Economist Says Cincinnati is “Insulated” from Trump Administration
Despite her insistence that her city, Cincinnati, is “insulated” from the national economy thanks to its diversity, Julie Heath, the director of the University of Cincinnati’s Economics Center, said recently that she is worried about the city’s economy. Heath said some of the proposals that the incoming presidential administration has ...
Proposed One-Bedroom-Per-Adult Rental Regulation Creates Uproar in Ohio
An Ohio city council has proposed a rule that will have far-reaching effects on renters and landlords and that could infringe on their civil and private property rights. Brunswick, Ohio, city officials recently proposed that all adult renters in the municipal area would have to have their own bedrooms in ...
Is It ‘The End’ for the Luxury Rental Market?
If you own luxury rental properties and have been enjoying the hefty monthly cash flow that they can generate, you may need to prepare yourself for a dock in pay. According to the Wall Street Journal, you could find yourself cutting rents and offering concessions to either keep tenants in ...
3 Reasons to Run Away from IRA-Held Real Estate
Individual retirement accounts (IRAs) were created to protect investors and enable them to engage in different types of investing that might not be considered entirely “the norm.” Not surprisingly, this includes real estate, historically one of the safest, simplest, and strongest types of investments not usually included in your options ...
