Carole VanSickle Ellis
Low Construction Rates Constitute a State of Emergency in 15 Cities
Due to low construction rates, a coalition of 15 mayors from the Boston area have set a goal to have 185,000 new homes built in their area in the next 11 years. This will keep pace with job and population growth that is driving up demand and prices for existing ...
Artificial Intelligence Competing with Real Estate Agents
A new brokerage is creating stiff competition for traditional real estate agents. REX Real Estate Exchange (REX) uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robots to connect buyers, sellers, and properties—all for two percent commission. Jack Ryan is the Co-Founder and CEO of REX. According to Ryan, REX can "tell everybody ...
Homeowners Continue to Postpone Selling
Two in every three homeowners need to sell their existing home in order to purchase a new one. This is causing homeowners to put off listing their homes at all. According to CoreLogic’s Home Price Insights report, over a third of recent buyers reported using funds from a home sale ...
Top 3 Cities for Tight Housing Inventories
Many regional housing markets are posting more inventory volumes than they have in recent years. Still, it’s not home-buying season everywhere just yet. According to Realtor.com data, some markets are still experiencing tight inventories. Accompanying tight inventories are the associated bidding wars and rising home prices that come along with ...
LGBTQ Buyers Fear Discrimination, Seek Like-Minded Neighborhoods
Certain members of potential homebuyers may put off homeownership as a result of fears about discrimination. According to a new report from Freddie Mac, less than half of the LGBTQ population are likely to own a home—much lower than the national rate of 64.3 percent. This is despite a group ...
What markets might be ripe for investors with a taste for taking properties down to the studs? Think Realty Magazine looked at nearly 300 metro areas in order to identify housing markets that might offer some promising “gut job” deals. Methodology We looked for markets with well-positioned, older housing inventory in ...
Future-Proof Important for the Future of Apartments
You’ve heard of baby-proofing, but did you know that there is also such a thing as future-proof? The concept does not necessarily involve protecting your investment properties from the future, but it requires preparation for the future. During a panel at the third annual IMN Middle Market Multifamily Forum Southeast ...
Smart Technology Will be Soon be a Multifamily Necessity
Conventional wisdom largely restricts the topic of smart home devices to new construction and class A multifamily developments. But experts in the sector say residents at every income level are willing and eager to pay for technological upgrades. During a panel at the IMN Middle Market Multifamily Forum in Orlando, experts, ...
Chicago is the Only Major Metro Still Rated as Undervalued
In a recent survey of 20 financial centers conducted by UBS, Chicago, Ill. is still an undervalued housing territory. Of the remaining cities on the list, 16 are considered either overvalued or at risk of a bubble and three of the cities are considered fair-valued. The 20 cities evaluated in ...
Economists Recommend Caution When Raising Rent
Rental rates have steadily risen for several years. And thanks to low rental vacancies on a national level, they are likely to continue doing so. However, some economists warn that raising rates too much—even if the market will accommodate such a move—could create a cost-burdened renting population. The balancing act ...
In the Multifamily Sector, Recession Could be Further Out than Many Think
While many analysts say they believe the U.S. economy will experience the beginnings of a recession sometime before the end of 2020, the jury is certainly still out. Panelists at the IMN Multifamily conference in Orlando, Florida set forth several alternative views to what is rapidly becoming "conventional wisdom" on ...
New York City may be Entering a Buyer’s Market
When people think of New York City real estate, they think of prices that start astronomically and head northward indefinitely. However, a new report from Warburg Realty indicates the NYC housing market has moved—“beyond any doubt”—into a buyer's market. Warburg's Founder and CEO Frederick Peters cited offers as low as ...
Mortgage Rates Hit 7-Year High
Last week, the Federal Reserve announced it would raise its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point. In response, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate jumped to 4.72 percent, the highest since 2011. This is up from 4.65 percent prior to the Fed’s announcement. According to Sam Khater, Chief Economist for ...
Riding the Real Estate Roller Coaster with Jamie Wooley
When Jamie Wooley, founder and owner of W Streets Inc., a Dallas-Fort Worth-based real estate solutions company, started investing in late 2015, she already knew she had no plans to take things slowly. That was why four months earlier, she had turned in her notice where she worked as an ...
Fewer Home Sales Closed in August
It's been eight months in which pending home sales volumes have fallen, reports the National Association of Realtors (NAR). This may be a sign more buyers are being priced out of the market, NAR warned. The western United States had the largest declines—the region in which home prices have risen ...
Hurricane Florence Highlights Homeowners Without Flood Insurance
Hurricane Florence is estimated to have caused between $38 billion and $50 billion in total economic losses. Flood insurance is not part of a standard homeowner’s insurance policy, although many people assume coverage. Most homeowners who take out flood insurance do so through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Unfortunately, ...
Market Trend Spotlight: 3 Indicators of Effective Community Revitalization
As the third quarter of 2018 begins, both national and local housing markets are still experiencing pinched inventory. That is good news for today’s sellers and rental investors, who hope to garner top dollar in tight markets for both retail sales and rental properties, but it makes the classic real ...
Homeowners Own $6 Trillion in Tappable Equity
Headlines are full of warnings about the housing market cooling, but homeowners are not necessarily heading for a world of pain this market correction. According to Black Knight, U.S. homeowners with mortgages currently hold about $6 trillion in "tappable” home equity. Tappable equity is the most money a homeowner could ...
The Investor’s Guide to Building a Full Credit Picture
Real estate has always been about credit, even before Congress created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 1938 and the wheels were set in motion to create today’s extremely credit-dependent home-lending environment. As far back as the 9th century, lords of the manor on feudal estates documented rents collected (and associated ...
Agents Credit Social Media for Highest Number of Quality Leads
Real estate agents are reporting their best leads come from social media. In fact, they cited leads from social media as being better quality and coming in higher volumes than other leads. Other leads include MLS sites, brokerage sites, and listing aggregators. This information was recently released by the National Association ...
5 Hottest ZIP Codes for Millennial Living
Millennials remain the largest single home-buying population in the country, and rising home prices are not removing their determination to live – be it by purchase or rent – in urban areas. According to information from the U.S. Census Bureau as analyzed by RentCafé, “millennials are still showing a strong preference ...
Bucking Concerns, Construction Expert Says Marriage Delays Will Help Housing Market
As more Americans delay marriage, housing analysts are concerned that delays in matrimony might postpone homeownership, thereby hurting the new-construction sector. Women are now on average waiting until after reaching 27 to get married, and the average man is getting hitched at 30, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And ...
New Data Reveals Region with Oldest Owner-Occupied Homes
Most owner-occupied homes are less than four decades old, even if the owners themselves are older. But in certain areas in the Northeast, median owner-occupied ages are much higher than other U.S. regions, according to new data from the National Association of Home Builders. For example, Johnston, Pennsylvania, has a ...
‘First Wave’ of Hurricane Florence Damage Could Cost $5 Billion
Hurricane Florence just began dumping water on the Carolinas when CoreLogic released data indicating the staggering value of possible property damage in the affected regions. The first wave alone could cause as much as $5 billion in damages to property, according to the consumer, financial and property analytics firm. Corelogic ...
Homebuyers’ Behavior Shifts as ‘Stressors’ Disturb the Buying Process
A decade ago, homebuyers tended to pick out their dream home and then look into financing. But these days, the buying process has significantly changed. The vast majority of buyers have flipped that process. Now about 74 percent of house shoppers are looking at their financing options first, then picking a ...
