Black Knight’s Mortgage Monitor Report for February, 2022 says home prices increased 1.84% in February – which is nearly four times the 25-year average for the month – and the 14th month of the pandemic to see greater than 1% monthly growth. In addition, the average home has now increased in value by more than 34% since February, 2020. “Home prices grew by 1.84% in February – nearly four times the 25-year average for the month – and they did so while interest rates continued to climb throughout the month…The month’s 19.6% year-over-year growth marked the highest annual rate of…
Author: Brad Beckett
Brad Beckett
Director of Education & Outreach, National Real Estate Investors Association
In the market for a vacation home or looking for a short-term rental or two for your portfolio? The folks over at Realtor.com put together a list of the top 10 places where folks can find the most affordable vacation home right now. They say some urbanites are even buying a second home before securing a primary residence because they can’t afford the type of home they home would like to buy, sending prices even higher. Indeed…. “We’ve seen rising demand for homes in vacation destinations within a three-hour drive of major metro areas, especially in mountain and waterfront areas…
Today’s infographic from the Visual Capitalist reminds us that pipelines are the primary method of transporting & delivering crude oil and its derivative products swiftly to refineries and businesses. Interestingly, the U.S. & Canada alone are home to more than 90k miles of crude oil and petroleum product pipelines (enough to go around the Earth 3x) and has more than 140 refineries that can process around 20 million barrels of oil every day. As always, stay safe and have a Happy Friday! Hat tip to the Visual Capitalist’s Elements.
We have seen the posts about Americans moving at a rapid pace to areas in the South & West that have better all-around climates. A new report from FOX Business says the “Sun Belt” is becoming a hot spot for business relocation. Companies all across the fruited plain are cutting costs by moving south. They point out how this race towards the South is actually fueling a housing boom in Texas, Jeff Holzmann is the CEO of IRM Services, an asset management company. He says the move from The New York-New Jersey area to Dallas has saved the company millions…
Landlords take notice; A prominent Ohio law firm recently obtained a unanimous jury verdict (8-0) to defeat a case of claimed retaliation in response to a tenant’s claimed request for a disability accommodation that was met with a non-renewal of a residential lease. The Finney Law Firm was defending Abundant Life Faith Fellowship against the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, who was also suing the Church’s pastor. An excerpt from their posting is below: “The Civil Rights Commission case was full of demonstrable untruths about a kind-hearted 74-year-old African American minister who had suffered two strokes. By the testimony of two…
According to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI), U.S. house prices rose 1.6% in January, 2022 and were up 18.2% from one year ago. The FHFA produces the nation’s only public, freely available house price indexes (HPIs) that measure changes in single-family house prices based on data that cover all 50 states and over 400 American cities and extend back to the mid-1970s. “House price trends notched up slightly in January…Rising mortgage rates in January certainly reflect a major change from the past several years, but lending costs remain relatively low. The mortgage rate shift…
The NAHB’s Eye on Housing says first-time home buyers want double sinks and pantries in the kitchen as the most popular of 30 kitchen features listed in the recent What Home Buyers Really Want study. Topping the chart, 80% of first-time buyers rated a double sink and a walk-in pantry essential or desirable, closely followed by drinking water filtration and table space for eating. “The most popular kitchen features among first-time buyers are very similar to the most popular among home buyers in general. For example, double sinks and pantries were also the two most popular kitchen features among all…
The U.S. government is reporting that total construction spending in February, 2022 was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,704.4 billion, which is 0.5% higher than January’s revised estimate and 11.2% higher than one year ago. Residential construction came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $850.6 billion in February, which is 1.1% above January’s revised estimate. Click here to read the full report at the U.S. Census Bureau.
National REIA’s Charles Tassell was a recent guest on the Scott Sloan Show (WLW 700 AM, Cincinnati, Ohio) to discuss the languishing covid impact on housing. In 2021 emergency rental assistance funds began to slowly trickle out of non-profit agencies. Many times renters were waiting not just weeks, but months to receive confirmation of a check, let alone the check itself. Low-income housing advocates, always pushing to limit housing providers’ rights, sought to establish a very limited form of affirmative defense. The idea being that, if a renter was behind due to Covid, and their money was in process, the…
Rental information site Zumper recently released their latest monthly National Rent Report showing that their median national rent for 1-bedroom apartments in March, 2022 was $1,400, up 12.2% year-over-year and the median two-bedroom rent was $1,723 up 13.8%, year-over-year. Be sure to check out their list of the top 100 metro areas. Click here to read the full report at Zumper.
