Jun 22
Apartment Occupancies Soar to Record High Apartments are filling up nationwide. The national occupancy rate in May reached 95.3 percent, the highest ever, reports Axiometrics, a real estate analytics firm. “The May rate historically is the start of each year’s occupancy peak, meaning occupancy should remain at the current level or higher,” says Stephanie …
Jun 19
Lenders Feel More Upbeat About Housing Mortgage lenders are growing increasingly optimistic that demand for mortgages for home purchases will remain strong over the next three months. Fannie Mae’s second quarter 2015 Mortgage Lender Sentiment Survey showed more lenders are reporting credit loosening and there’s a strong demand from borrowers for home purchase loans. The …
Jun 18
A Big Pick Up in Home building Is Coming. Permits for future home construction climbed to a near eight-year high in May, which sets the stage for greater inventories from home builders in the months ahead. Building permits surged 11.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 1.28 million units, the highest since August …
Jun 17
Commercial Agents See Higher Incomes, Sales As the commercial market shows signs of improving, commercial real estate professionals are reporting an uptick in annual gross income as well as the number of sales transactions and their sales volume, according to the 2015 National Association of REALTORS® Commercial Member Profile, which is based on a survey …
Jun 16
Higher Home Prices Push Affordability Down Housing affordability is down from a year ago as higher prices continue to outpace incomes, according to the National Association of REALTORS® Economists’ Outlook blog. Nationally, the median single-family home price is $221,000, up 10 percent from April 2014, NAR reports. The Midwest has seen some of the largest …
Jun 15
Renter Growth to Explode by 2030 The renter population is expected to only get bigger in the next 15 years and will likely exceed new home owners by millions, according to a newly released report by the Urban Institute, “Headship and Home ownership: What Does the Future Hold?” Between 2010 and 2030 – the year …
Jun 10
The Most Common Delays Toward Closing The majority of contracts – 64 percent — are settled on time with no delays to closing, but some REALTORS® acknowledge facing delays or even having contracts terminated for numerous reasons, according to the latest REALTORS® Confidence Index Survey, a survey of more than 1,500 REALTORS®. Twenty-six …
Jun 09
Many Retirees Still Struggling with Mortgages The number of seniors still making house payments into retirement has grown following the recession. “It’s a big problem coming off the housing bubble,” says Cary Sternberg, an adviser to seniors on housing issues in a Florida retirement community called The Villages. “A growing number of seniors are …
Jun 08
What Worries Would-Be Buyers With interest rates threatening to rise in the near future and pent-up demand at high levels in many parts of the country, buyers might feel ready to make a move. But a pair of surveys released this week reveal that many of them aren’t. One survey from TransUnion, a Chicago-based credit …
Jun 05
Lower Sales Bit into REALTOR® Paychecks The decline in sales took a chunk out of overall business activity for REALTORS® as well as their incomes in 2014, shows the newly released 2015 National Association of REALTORS® Member Profile. “Existing-home sales didn’t surpass year-over-year levels until October, which is likely the reason the typical member …
Jun 04
Home Owners See Solar, Wind in Their Future The preferred energy sources for the future of U.S. homes may be solar and wind, according to a new survey conducted by SolarCity, a solar installer, and Clean Edge, a marketing research firm. Of the approximately 1,400 home owners surveyed, half identified solar energy as the most important …
Jun 03
Amp Up Your Website’s Homepage Appeal Is your website’s homepage doing enough to interest buyers and sellers to contact you? Too many websites fail to maximize the power of their homepage, even though it’s often the most visited page to their website, according to a recent article at Forbes.com by contributor Neil Patel, …
