Sep 02
10 Beach Towns With Housing Bargains Beach towns don’t tend to be cheap. However, a few places offer opportunities for more buyers to live in the beach town they always dreamed of. RealtyTrac recently identified the beach towns with fewer than 50,000 residents that have the highest quality of life (e.g. air quality, low …
Sep 01
Real Estate to Get Its Own Stock Category Real estate companies have been included in a category with banks and insurance firms since 1999 in stock markets across the globe. But that soon will change. Come Thursday, real estate will be getting its own dedicated category. The Wall Street Journal reports that the move …
Aug 31
Buyers Will Pay More for Smart Tech Features Home buyers are willing to pay extra in order to have a smart home, according to several new studies. Network-connected thermostats, security devices, appliances, and lighting already installed in a home may help home owners sell their properties faster and for more money, reports The …
Aug 30
HARP Extended to 2017 as Bridge to New Refi Program The Federal Housing Finance Agency is extending the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) until Sept. 30, 2017. The FHFA estimates that more than 300,000 home owners could still benefit by refinancing through HARP. The Home Affordable Modification Program and HARP aim to help borrowers …
Aug 29
Things Pet Lovers Look for in a Home Sure, your clients may think a particular listing is perfect, but what does Fido think? It’s a question becoming more commonplace these days, as more Americans than ever are pet owners. In fact, 79 million U.S households currently own a pet, and 83 percent of …
Aug 26
Google Issues Warning to Sites With Pop Ups If your site has a pop-up ad, you may want to change it soon. Google says it plans to punish sites that have pop-up ads on mobile by factoring it into their search algorithm. It also is going after interstitial, web pages displayed before or after an …
Aug 25
Redesign Slated for Loan Forms Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced Wednesday a redesign for the standardized form borrowers use to apply for a loan, the first substantial revision in more than two decades. The changes to the Uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA) include simplified terminology and new data fields capturing …
Aug 24
Clients Expect Social Media Responses Within 1 Hour If customers contact you via your social media channels, they expect to get a response immediately. In fact, 53 percent of customers who tweet a brand expect a response within an hour. If their tweet references a problem, 72 percent then say they expect a …
Aug 23
Buzzwords That Bump Up a Sales Price Certain words included on the MLS public remarks section about your listing can help bring about a higher sales price than ads that don’t have any comments, finds real estate data firm CoreLogic. The firm analyzed the public comments on 81,025 MLS-listed property sales between January …
Aug 22
Foreclosures on the Rise in a Few Pockets oreclosure starts nationwide plummeted to an 11-year low in July, but not everywhere is seeing the drop. In fact, a handful of cities and counties are seeing the opposite, with even one state seeing a jump by more than 100 percent in starts. Thirteen states posted a …
Aug 19
Household Chores to Tackle Now While spring is a popular time to tidy up a home, there is also summer cleaning to be done. Before summer winds down completely, home owners may want to tackle a few chores around the house, particularly before the cold weather makes these household chores more difficult. 1. …
Aug 18
What Will Replace Golf Course Communities? More than 800 golf courses have closed nationwide in the last 10 years, as interest wanes in the sport. Even if their particular course it still open, some home owners who paid a premium to live nearby may be finding their property values slip. And others are fearful …
