Author: Brad Beckett

With home sales white-hot across the country,  Realtor.com says not all markets are “turbocharged” to the same degree.  The crunched the proverbial numbers to identify the metros where homes are flying off the market at the fastest pace, as well as the ones where they’re taking the longest to sell.  Their data show that four of the five fastest-moving metros were in the Western U.S., as Californians who are able to work from anywhere looked for more affordable areas.  However, parts of the Midwest and Northeast are also seeing homes move at a fast clip. “For buyers looking for a…

Reuters is reporting that the attorneys general of 22 states recently urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to end the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s residential eviction moratorium that has been challenged by landlord groups who (rightly) say the CDC far exceeded its authority.  The groups asked the Supreme Court to issue an order stopping the CDC’s national ban on evictions, currently set to expire on June 30th.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said it would not lift Judge Friedrich’s stay order.  The D.C. Circuit said the CDC eviction ban was likely lawful, but…

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting that the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was 0.6% in May, 2021.  Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 5% before seasonal adjustment. Click here to read the full release at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

What kind of homes are owners and renters living in?  Using data from the latest American Housing Survey, today’s infographic from the Census Bureau illustrates how owners & renters occupy housing of different types and sizes.  Who knew????  Have a safe and Happy Friday!!! Hat tip to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) says that 77% of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by June 6th, 2021.  This figure is 3.8% lower than those who paid rent through June 6, 2020.  The data comes from the NMHC’s Rent Payment Tracker which uses data from 11.7 million professionally managed apartment units across the country – representing a wide variety of market-rate rental properties that can vary by size, type and average rental price. Click here to read the full report at the NMHC.

According to Arbor’s Q1 2021 Single-Family Rental Investment Trends Report, if there were three real estate headlines to come out of the pandemic, they would focus on work-from-home trends, online retailing and single-family rentals (SFRs).  Adding to that, they say that by the end of the year SFRs may be the only one of the three to avoid some post-pandemic reversion. In fact, Arbor goes on to to say that SFRs are now increasingly filling the role that starter homes had for previous generations and professional residential operators are quickly racing into the sector.  Indeed… In major metropolitan areas, activity…

According to ATTOM Data’s latest Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report, zombie foreclosures represent only one of every 12,256 homes in Q2, 2021, which they say are just a minuscule portion of the nation’s 99 million residential properties. The report says 223,671 properties were in the process of foreclosure in Q2 of this year, up 27.5% from first quarter but still down 13.3% from the second quarter of 2020.   In addition, the number of Zombie homes sitting empty (8,078 in Q2) was up quarterly by 21%, and annually by 5.6%. “The latest numbers show a spike in zombie properties…

Realpage.com says that while there is lots of talk about inflation there is some good news – the incomes of apartment renters are rising.  They report that median household incomes for market-rate renters signing new leases jumped to a record high of $64,656 in April 2021 – which is up 5.5% from two years ago.  The data was taken from apartment renter applications from those signing leases each month. Their figures exclude government stimulus money and only includes income from recurring sources. “This is yet another reminder (of many) that market-rate apartment affordability is a non-issue at a macro scale…

Recent data from the NAR’s Economist Outlook say that the share of all-cash sales to existing-home sales surged to 25% in April, 2021 as non-first-time buyers are paying all cash to increase the competitiveness of their offers, edging out first-time buyers.  The data comes from the most-recent Realtors Confidence Index Survey and shows a significant increase from one year ago (15%) and 2019 (20%). According to one REALTOR who offered a comment in the April 2021 survey “Buyers are losing to cash buyers and VA & FHA buyers are hurting.” Another REALTOR said “there is an unprecedented (number of )…

Rentable says that the median nationwide rent price for one-bedroom units in June was $1,146 (up 1.34%) with two-bedroom units coming in at $1404 (up 1.23%).  Be sure to check out their full data set of U.S. cities. Click here to read the full report at Rentable.