May 19
5 Property Management Mistakes “It doesn’t matter how good you are in the property management business, there’s always something you’re can get sued for,” Lori Burger, CPM and the Institute of Real Estate Management’s 2014 president-elect, said at a property management forum Thursday during the REALTOR® Party Convention & Trade Expo in Washington, D.C. Part …
May 16
Home Sales Struggle, But Improvement Seen Two years into the economic recovery, residential home sales are struggling. But because of demographic and other trends, long-term growth prospects remain good, NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said Thursday at the REALTOR® Party Convention & Trade Expo. At the Residential Economic Issues & Trends Forum, Yun forecast …
May 15
Home Loan Demand Rises 3.6% Mortgage applications were on the rise this week as interest rates dropped to the lowest level in six months, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday in its weekly market survey. Mortgage applications, reflecting applications for home purchases and refinancing, rose 3.6 percent for the week ending May 9. Broken out, …
May 14
Demand Grows for Big-Screen Phones Bigger is becoming better with smartphones. Shipments worldwide of smartphones with screens 5 inches or larger have grown 369 percent in the first quarter compared to just a year earlier, according to Canalys, a market research firm. Big-screen smartphones comprised 34 percent of worldwide smartphone shipments in the first quarter. …
May 13
Builders See Growth in Master Communities Houston boasted the most housing starts in the nation last year, and one-third of those starts were in master planned communities (MPC), a growing sector for the homebuilding industry. In the U.S., the top 50 master planned communities captured 5.4 percent of new-home sales in 2013 – a 12 …
May 12
30-Year Mortgage Rate Reaches New Low for the Year The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.21 percent this week, the lowest since November 2013, Freddie Mac reports in its weekly mortgage market survey. “Mortgage rates continued moving down following the decline in 10-year Treasury yields after a dismal report on real GDP growth in the first …
May 09
Mortgage Delinquencies Drop by Double Digits The mortgage delinquency rate nationwide stood at 3.61 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2014, down more than 24 percent compared to the same time a year ago, according to the latest mortgage report from TransUnion. That marked the ninth consecutive quarter that the delinquency …
May 08
Buyers Prefer New, But Aren’t Willing to Pay Forty-one percent of Americans say they prefer a new home compared to 21 percent who say they prefer an existing home, according to a new survey of more than 2,000 adults conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Trulia. The cost and availability of new homes are …
May 07
Luxury Home Sales Soar Affluent buyers are feeling bullish about housing, as luxury home sales skyrocket, Bloomberg reports. Million-dollar homes in the U.S. are selling at double their historical average, according to data released by the National Association of REALTORS®. Sales of homes that cost $1 million or more increased 7.8 percent in March compared …
May 06
Historic Low for Young Adult Home Ownership Young Americans are putting off home buying at unprecedented levels. The home ownership rate for the Millennial generation age group has fallen to its lowest level since the U.S. Census Bureau started tracking home ownership by age in 1982. The home ownership rate in the first quarter of …
May 05
Markets Poised for Biggest Price Gains Veros Real Estate Solutions is softening its housing price forecast for this year to 3.4 percent appreciation for the 12-month period ending March 31, 2015 for the top 100 metro areas. Last quarter, Veros had forecasted a 5.1 percent for the following 12 months. “The wave of appreciation may …
May 02
Biggest Regrets About the Purchase of a new home Though buyer’s remorse is never fun, there’s usually something we’d change if we could go back and make a big purchasing decision again. In a new survey, Chase Bank found out what some of the most common things are that recent home buyers would change about …
