Jul 10
Student Housing ‘Ripe With Opportunity’ in Real Estate Student housing is getting more attention from the real estate industry as more developers take their projects upscale and bring them on campus. “This is an industry that is ripe with opportunity,” Bill Bayless, CEO of American Campus Communities, the largest student-housing REIT in the country, told …
Jul 09
The Biggest Hurdles to Home Ownership With mortgage rates still near historical lows, why aren’t more home owners making a move? Housing analysts blame student loan debt, overly strict lending standards, and lost equity as the leading culprits behind a sluggish housing recovery. But what do home owners say? Mortgage information site HSH.com surveyed 786 …
Jul 08
Retail Rents on the Rise as Vacancies Dwindle The U.S. retail real estate market is heating up, with shrinking vacancies allowing landlords to raise rents. At strip malls, vacancies fell to 10.3 percent in the second quarter and are nearly a percentage point lower than a post-recession high set in the third quarter of 2011, …
Jul 01
Minorities to Drive Household Growth Minorities are projected to make up nearly half of first-time home buyers by 2025, and account for more than one-third of U.S. households by then, according to a study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. The Joint Center is expecting the number of households to rise …
Jul 01
4 Reasons Why Buyers Should Be Happy Home shoppers may find there’s good reason to breathe a sigh of relief this summer, according to the real estate brokerage Redfin. They pointed to higher inventories, fewer bidding wars, and slowing home prices as welcoming signs for home buyers this year. In particular, home buyers this summer …
Jun 30
Tech Tools REALTORS® Love the Most Real estate professionals are pouring more money into mobile technologies to make their businesses more efficient and expand their reach to clients, according to the 2013-14 REALTOR® Technology Survey conducted by NAR’s Center for REALTOR® Technology. The survey, based on more than 1,200 responses, found that brokers spent …
Jun 30
Government’s Flagship Foreclosure Program Extended to 2016 The Obama administration announced Thursday that it will extend its Making Home Affordable Program to help home owners avoid foreclosure, as well as use Treasury funds to ramp up construction of affordable rental housing. The Making Home Affordable Program will now be extended through December 2016. More …
Jun 27
More Americans Squeezed by Housing Costs Housing costs remain near record highs, with more than 35 percent of Americans spending 30 percent or more of their incomes on rent or mortgage payments, according to a new study by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. What’s more, 50 percent of renters are considered “cost-burdened,” …
Jun 26
Homes With Deepest Discounts For home buyers who want to score the biggest discounts on a distressed property, they better be prepared to start the bidding. Distressed properties with the biggest price discounts are those scheduled for public foreclosure auction, and they are typically homes built between 1950 and 1990 that are now vacant, according …
Jun 25
Solar-Panel Leases Turning Off Buyers The leasing of solar panels for a home’s rooftop is growing in popularity because home owners can start saving on their utility bills without paying any upfront money for the system, which typically can cost thousands of dollars to install. But the fine print of these leasing contracts may …
Jun 24
First-Timers: Take a Class, Save on Your Loan The Federal Housing Administration will be ending its public comment period in mid-August on a proposed program that would allow first-time home buyers to get a discounted mortgage if they enroll in housing counseling classes. The program, called Homeowners Armed with Knowledge (HAWK), was announced last …
Jun 23
Tech Features Coveted by Baby Boomer Buyers Access to high-speed Internet, nearby grocery stores, and hospital/medical centers were the top three community features desired by Baby Boomers in a recent survey. Philips and the Global Social Enterprise Initiative (GSEI) at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business asked 1,000 consumers age 50-80 about the use of …
