Knowledgebase
All of Think Realty's extensive content archive is at your fingertips. Filter by media type and keyword to hone in on exactly what you need.
Knowledgebase
All of Think Realty's extensive content archive is at your fingertips. Filter by media type and keyword to hone in on exactly what you need.
Home-Flipping Cools Off in Q3 2016
U.S. home-flipping activity decreased in the third quarter of 2016, after hitting a six-year high in the previous quarter, according to a new report from ATTOM Data Solutions. ATTOM Data Solutions is the parent company of RealtyTrac and curator of the nation’s largest fused property database. The Q3 2016 Home ...
Little Movement in Pending Home Sales
Pending home sales — deals involving existing homes where the contract has been signed, but the transaction hasn’t closed—were up slightly in October, according to the National Association of Realtors. The NAR’s Pending Home Sales Index was up 0.1 percent on a monthly basis, and 1.8 percent higher than October ...
Fewer Purchase Loans, More Refi in Q3
Home loan originations were down about 2 percent in the third quarter compared to the second, though up 1 percent compared to a year earlier. The value of the loans was bigger, too—$502 billion, 8 percent higher than the same timeframe in 2015. If you dig deeper into the numbers, ...
New Single-Family Home Sales Down
Sales of new single-family homes—which had been trending up since 2015—dipped 1.9 percent in October, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The NAHB’s report was based on data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau. “Though slightly down from last month, ...
As more and more homebuyers look to parents and other sources for the lump sums required to make a down payment on a new home, the idea of down-payment assistance is becoming more familiar in the housing sector. However, any time that assistance goes undocumented with the mortgage lender, you’re ...
Good Times for Sellers … Won’t Last Forever
It’s an amazing time for sellers, but the momentum is expected to shift to buyers by 2018 or 2019, according to a Zillow survey of housing experts. In October, the median U.S. home value of $191,200 was up 6.2 percent compared to a year earlier, thanks partly to a 6 percent ...
A Facebook Face-Off About Housing
Facebook doesn’t shy away from a problem, even one as big as California’s affordable housing crisis. The social media giant recently announced that it would begin combatting its home state’s massive lack of affordable housing squarely in the most expensive metro area in the country, San Jose, where the median ...
Will Trump Really Dismantle Dodd-Frank?
As the Trump presidency takes hold, the debate over Dodd-Frank is growing. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to dismantle the banking reform act. Fed Chief Janet Yellen has promised to defend it. Congress has the power to change it. And, the battle has already begun. The House just passed an ...
Trump Taps Carson for HUD Secretary Position
President-elect Donald Trump has nominated retired neurosurgeon, outspoken Obamacare opponent and former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson for the position of U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). By tapping Carson for the position, Trump diverges once again from the “norm” of appointing individuals with bureaucratic experience in government ...
Rental Vacancy Increase in October 2016
Morningstar Credit Ratings has recently published its Single-Family Rental Performance Report for November 2016 showing vacancies increased to 5.2 percent in October while transactions worked through the summer’s increased lease expirations. Rental properties backing single-family rental securitizations increased by 4.4 percent from prior contractual rents. They are now below the ...
Let Professionals Handle the Commercial Property Caretaking
The backbone of any commercial property is strong property management. If you have recently purchased a commercial building or have a building that you have owned for a while, there comes a time when you must truly consider hiring a professional property manager to skillfully guide the property through its ...
FHA Loan Limits Increase—For Now
In response to rising home prices nationwide, the Federal Housing Administration has raised loan limits for 2017. So if you have been or will be looking to buy a home, you may be able to qualify for an FHA loan next year a bit easier than you could this year ...
6 Ideas to Prep for Trump’s New Tax Plan
With Donald Trump in the White house, big changes are coming for taxpayers. New tax policies are still a moving target, but there are some things you can do now, to reduce your 2016 taxes, and prepare for 2017. Disclaimer: I am not a tax accountant. Any tax tips mentioned here ...
Save by Buying Property in Winter Months
If you’re willing to buy when the weather is frightful, your real estate investment deals could be quite delightful. So delightful, in fact, you might save as much as $50,000 or nearly $100,000 in certain locales. According to online real estate management and investment firm HomeUnion, the national square-footage price ...
Will You Be Paying Back-Overtime in 2017?
If your real estate investing business has any salaried employees, you could find yourself paying them some serious back-overtime in 2017 if a recently blocked Labor Department ruling is overturned in the New Year. Late last month, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued an injunction against ...
U.S. Home Refi Originations Increase
ATTOM Data Solutions’ newly released U.S. Residential Property Loan Origination Report for Q3 2016 shows more than 1.9 million loans – 1,919,180 – were originated on U.S. residential properties. This is down 2 percent from the previous quarter and up less than 1 percent from last year. Purchase originations were ...
Position Your Deal for Best Exit
And we’ve made it! This is the last installment of our special multi-part video mini-series sharing the steps that will help you dominate your deals. To recap, previously we covered your investment personality, exit strategy, how to find deals in your market & how to evaluate them and also how ...
Renters, Buyers Appreciate In-Home Office Space
We calculate that 39 percent of people shopping for a new home work from home at least one day per week. Almost 25 percent of those homebuyers born in the 1960s and 1970s work at home at least three days per week. This shift in work and home life has ...
5 Reasons to Attend a Real Estate Investor Conference
Sometimes the best thing for real estate investors to do is attend conferences. There are numerous conferences held across the country. You can meet with fellow investors, learn valuable insight from industry experts and expand your network of vendors and lenders. And get useful resources to help you grow your ...
Red-States for the Win: Why Blue-State Investors Buy Elsewhere
No matter what side of the political aisle you prefer, odds are that when it comes to your real estate investment portfolio, your choices tend to be more red than blue. A recent report from ATTOM Data Solutions indicates that although deep-blue California is home base for a vast population of ...
3 “Values” of Real Estate Investors
Though we are most familiar with the concept of value as a number, it is so much more than that. Today we are going to focus on 3 measures of value in real estate investing. There are many other forms of value than just a numerical one that are present ...
How much time do you spend on planning a vacation versus planning your financial future? This was a question asked to me years ago, and it hit home. Now, when I ask it of others, it hits them the same way it hit me. We spend months planning a vacation, ...
7 Ways Landlords Could Benefit from a Trump Administration
Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States on Jan. 20, 2017, with plans to fully “shake things up” on Capitol Hill. Whether he can pull that off remains to be seen. No one really knows what the future holds, but we do have ...
Scaling the Wall of Maturities
A significant portion of outstanding commercial and multifamily mortgages held by CMBS-backed lenders were to mature in 2016-17—an upcoming “wall of maturities.” Online marketplace lenders have a place in sorting out these pre-Recession commercial loans. After-Effects of the Great Recession A huge number of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) conduit loans ...
5 Things We’re Thankful for in Today’s Real Estate Market
When William Arthur Ward wrote that “gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings…and change ordinary opportunities into blessings,” it is a near certainty that he did not have the 2016 housing market in mind. However, as a self-described “Christian optimist,” there is little doubt that were he still opining in ...
