Market & Trends
The world of real estate investing moves quickly. Catch the must-know news, market information, and trends for the industry here.
Back To: All Topics
Market & Trends
The world of real estate investing moves quickly. Catch the must-know news, market information, and trends for the industry here.
Back To: All Topics
Mortgage Lending: Buyers Simply Do Not Understand
While most Americans state they believe owning a home is part of the American Dream, only about eight percent of the population reports having the basic knowledge to figure out if they can afford a home and obtain conventional financing in order to make the purchase. Ally Financial recently surveyed ...
Mortgage Industry’s Bad News, Good News for Investors
When LoanLogic’s senior vice president of industry relations and consulting, Les Parker, starts blogging about volatility, it pays off for real estate investors to listen. “This year is shaping up as a year of volatility,” he observed, going on to predict that loan originations would plunge “as interest rates rise ...
A Ponzi Scheme, the SEC and a Real Estate Developer
What housingwire.com calls a “Mini-Madoff,” Robert Shapiro, luxury real estate developer of the WoodBridge Group of Companies, created a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme, pilfering more than 8,400 investors. A minimum of 2,800 of those investors used their IRAs personal retirement accounts for the investment. Shapiro resigned from his position shortly ...
The Time-Suck to Avoid at All Costs
No, it’s not Facebook. This time-suck is not even that two-hour lunch meeting or the team conferences that seem to invariably run over their designated 30, 60, or 90 minutes. It’s something far more insidious that is eating up your workday and decimating your productivity: the “gotta minute?” meeting. In ...
WSJ Stacks up HQ2 Cities with Some Disappointments
Last month, Amazon released its “short list” of 20 cities still in the running to host the web behemoth’s second headquarters, dubbed HQ2, which many analysts predict will revolutionize the winner’s local economy and turn an already thriving economy into a super-engine for growth. While all of the cities on ...
Las Vegas Lagging Behind in Home Appreciation
When Black Knight, Inc., released its most recent Home Price Index (HPI) Report, analysts immediately noted that 12 of the 40 largest U.S. metros hit new highs in home values by the end of 2017. That list included Boston, Massachusetts; Charlotte, North Carolina, and Dallas, Texas. Notably, it did not ...
Expert Warning: Private Lending Social Media Scam
LinkedIn is arguably the most “professional” of social media platforms and, as a result, many real estate investors doing due diligence look to the website to find out as much as possible about potential private lenders and investment partners before they team up. However, even LinkedIn has its weak points, ...
“The Worst Mistake Ever” Revealed to Texas Agent
Julie Ziglar Norman, a real estate agent with Dallas-based Prime Properties Realty and vice president of business development at Ziglar Inc., has seen a lot of things. The worst mistake she’s ever seen in real estate, however, nearly defies explanation. “I think the worst mistake I ever saw an investor ...
3 Actions to Start Self-Directing Your Retirement
“Most financial advisors will tell you that you simply cannot have a better lifestyle in retirement than you did while you were working full time. Most financial advisors are wrong.” So begins Edwin Kelly’s 60-minute training on exactly how real estate investors should begin self-directing their retirement. Kelly, CEO of ...
Lender Reveals Biggest Investor Challenge
When Jon Shipley, a Senior Vice President at Longhorn Investments, thinks about horror stories, he doesn’t think about ghouls and gore. Instead, he thinks about the poor decisions real estate investors make when choosing their contractors. “Making the wrong choice in a contractor can completely change the outcome of any ...
Free Yourself: Fuse Time, Tenants & Tech
Ask Linda Liberatore, the president of national property management company SecurePayOne, what the most important thing in life is, and she’ll answer without a second thought: time. “Time is our most important resource, our true wealth,” she explained. “You want to learn to take the breath, to step back and ...
KB Homes Debuts Germ-Free Doors
As flu season continues to wreak havoc and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issuing dire predictions about the number of flu-related deaths likely before the outbreak is over, national homebuilder KB Home has decided to keep up with the times by announcing its standard interior door ...
Think Realty Magazine February 2018
+ WHAT'S INSIDE Think Realty | News & Events •Member Benefits Coaches Corner | Panel in Print • How Food Delivery Could Change Everything About Commercial Real Estate Marketing | Using Digital Media to Sell Real Estate Cover Feature | Good Timing Runs in the Family Market Breakdowns | 2018 ...
3 Most and Least Affordable Rental Housing Markets
HomeUnion recently released its annual report on the most and least affordable rental housing markets in the country, and Chicago, Illinois, topped the list. “With its low cost of living, relatively large housing inventory levels, and high affordability, Chicago is an excellent market for residents entering the renting pool,” said HomeUnion’s director ...
Down Payment Program: Employers to Help Employees
A new program from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will allow borrowers to crowdfund their down payments from multiple sources, including their employers. HomeFundMe was created by mortgage banking firm CMG Financial, and allows employers to contribute directly to employees’ accounts for the express purpose of helping that employee purchase ...
Realtor.com Report: Housing Inventory Ongoing Problem
Late last week, Realtor.com released its “State of the Housing Union,” an annual report published shortly prior to the president’s State of the Union address. The association stated, “The housing market outlook is looking bright on several fronts: strong buyer demand, particularly among first-timers, and a growing U.S. economy urging ...
Amazon’s HQ2 Short List Silenced, for Now
The location of Amazon’s second headquarters will benefit in enormous ways from the influx of jobs and development that will come with HQ2 but cities vying for the position will be keeping quiet about what they’re offering while the contest continues. According to CNBC reports last week, Amazon has requested ...
Waste DNA Testing, Key to Solving Pet Owner Issues
Dog-friendly rentals are in big demand, and landlords are coming up with some great amenities for their four-legged tenants. But, despite the good behavior of most tenants and dogs, some pet owners don’t pick up after their pets. Tenants either don’t see it, or ignore it, and it’s left for ...
How Housing Agencies are Affected by Government Shutdown
Last week, spending authority for most government agencies expired on midnight, January 29, 2018, as a result of ongoing conflict in the U.S. House of Representatives that prevented a national budget bill from being passed. At time of publication, the Senate had voted to pass a temporary spending bill to ...
3 Markets Might Benefit Most from Amazon’s HQ2
Last week, Amazon announced its 20 finalists for its second headquarters, nicknamed HQ2, and the response was immediate and overwhelming. Cities that made the top 20 were elated and eager to remind everyone exactly why their location looked so good: • “We are excited to learn that Atlanta has been ...
7 Advantages of Attending Events in Person vs Online
When real estate investors think about attending conferences, expos, and in-person education and training, they often cite the following reasons for not getting out and meeting people face to face: No one wants to meet me. I can get everything I need online. I’m too busy. Then they elaborate that ...
12-Year Low in Foreclosure Activity for 2017
ATTOM Data Solutions, today released its Year-End 2017 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 676,535 U.S. properties in 2017, down 27 percent from 2016 and down 76 percent from a peak of nearly 2.9 million in ...
The Case for Real Estate as an Investment
Yes, as you may have heard, Bitcoin has gone through the proverbial roof of late and cryptocurrencies are all the rage. There are also plenty of sexy startups out there and I’m sure your friend has a great stock tip or two. And you probably know at least one gold ...
Real estate investing is all about the personal touch, so it’s not surprising that most investors are not too concerned about one of the hottest topics in tech these days: robots replacing humans in many areas of employment, even possibly realtors. However, a startup called Homie is hoping to change ...
Breaking News: Amazon Announces 20 Finalists for HQ2
Amazon announced today it has narrowed the list of possible locations for its second headquarters, HQ2, down to 20. Not surprisingly, the list features a number of metro areas in the Midwest and South, which are the most affordable regions of the United States, and steers away from what the ...
