Jul 23
What Consumers Want Smart Homes to Do When it comes to smart homes, consumers are more interested in their security features than the gadgets that control the homes’ appliances. New research by Icontrol Networks, a home technology company, shows that 90 percent of 932 respondents recently surveyed say that security is one of the …
Jul 22
Language Skills Boost Agents Real estate agents across the country are leveraging their second-language skills to get ahead in their local markets, particularly as the number of international home buyers grows in the U.S. About 15 percent of real estate professionals report speaking a second language, according to the National Association of REALTORS®. According to …
Jul 21
New Effort to Reduce Impact of Windstorms On Monday, the U.S. House passed the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Act (H.R. 1786) to reauthorize funding for three years to study windstorms and how to reduce their impact. “When a family loses their home in a windstorm, they don’t just have to rebuild their house — …
Jul 18
Decline in Foreclosures Reaches ‘Important Milestone’ Foreclosure activity in June was down 16 percent from a year prior, marking the lowest level since July 2006 — before the housing bubble burst — according to RealtyTrac’s Midyear 2014 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. The report showed a much-improved picture: Foreclosure filings, which include default notices, scheduled auctions, …
Jul 17
Housing Affordability Continues to Soften as Prices Rise Rising home prices pushed housing affordability down in May compared with last year, making homes a little less affordable to the average family, according to the National Association of REALTORS®’ latest Housing Affordability Index. The median price for a single-family home rose to $213,600 in May, up …
Jul 16
Baby Boomers Aren’t Downsizing Yet Baby boomers aren’t showing any signs of leaving the single-family home market that has defined their generation’s real estate habits, despite many predictions that they would by now. As boomers hit age 65 and become empty nesters, many housing analysts forecasted that a huge wave of them would downsize and …
Jul 15
LeBron James’ Return: A Win for Cleveland’s Housing Market? NBA star LeBron James announced last Friday that he is heading home to Cleveland to rejoin the Cavaliers next year, after playing for the Miami Heat for the past four years. But he says his return to his hometown is about much more than just basketball. …
Jul 14
Return of the First-Time Home Buyer? Young people are starting to leave their parent’s home and move out on their own. The Current Population Survey for 2013 showed a drop in the percentage of 20-somethings living with parents, marking the first decline since 2005. As of now, the percentage drop appears minimal: Those aged …
Jul 11
Amenities Buyers Will Make Sacrifices For Home buyers are showing some willingness to pay more for certain amenities in a home, according to the latest PulteGroup Home Index Survey of more than 1,000 adults ages 25 to 65. What’s surprising is that buyers say they’d give up some pretty alluring draws about a property for …
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, …
