Author: Brad Beckett

National Fire Prevention Week runs October 6-12th, 2019 and one of the best ways to celebrate is to check all your properties’ smoke alarms for functionality and age.  If you find one that’s more than 10 years old, it’s time to replace it.  And when you do, National REIA recommends both ionization and photoelectric technologies be used in all your properties.  You should also have a working & tested carbon monoxide detector and fire extinguisher in each unit as well.  In this case, an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure!  Today’s infographic also reminds us to “Plan…

Is it getting much harder to profit on house flipping today?  According to CNBC’s Diana Olick, home prices are high, there are very few distressed or foreclosed properties available to buy cheaply, and the competition among investors is fierce.  Interestingly, citing data from ATTOM Data Solutions, she says the dollar volume of financed flip purchases in Q2 2019 jumped 31% annually, from $6.4 billion to $8.4 billion.  This is the highest level since Q3, 2006. “We have been seeing a steady incline in total financed purchase dollar volume every quarter since about 2015 and now we are reaching pre-recession dollar…

The number of renters in the U.S. reached 109 million in 2017 (34% of the population) which was due to a lot of factors including affordability and lack of available inventory.  The NAHB’s Eye on Housing recently crunched the numbers (from the 2017 American Community Survey) to examine the types of rental structures people live in and their spatial distribution.  Specifically they broke it down into 4 categories:  Detached Rental Housing, Attached Rental Housing, and Large Rental Housing (Buildings with 50 plus units). Click here to read the full report at the NAHB’s Eye on Housing.

National apartment listing site ABODO recently reported that the median nationwide rent price for one-bedroom units in October was $1,063 with two-bedroom units coming in at $1,340.  ABODO uses over 1 million listings across the United States to calculate the median 1-bedroom rent price by city, state, and nation and then track the month-over-month percentage change. To avoid small sample sizes, they restrict their analysis to cities meeting minimum population and property count thresholds. Be sure to check out their extensive city list. Click here to read the full report on ABODO.com.

The U.S. government is reporting that total construction spending in August was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,287.3 billion, which was 0.1% above July’s revised rate.  Residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $507.2 billion in August, 0.9% higher than July’s revised estimate. Click here to read the full release at the U.S. Census Bureau.

Rental information site Zumper recently released their National Rent Report for October, 2019 showing that the median national rent for 1-bedroom apartment was $1,241 (down 0.7%) and the median two-bedroom rent was $1,485 (down 0.6%).  Year to date, one bedroom prices are up 2.1% and two bedroom prices are up 2.2%.  Zumper analyzes rental data from over 1 million active listings across the United States. Data is aggregated on a monthly basis to calculate median asking rents for the top 100 metro areas by population, providing a comprehensive view of the current state of the market. The report is based…

Here’s an interesting scenario;  What do you do when your business partner goes rogue and ends up destroying your entire Real Estate Portfolio? That’s what happened to a recent guest on the Rental Property Owner & Real Estate Investor Podcast.  However, as host Brian Hamrick helps explain, the good news is that this investor picked himself back up and committed himself to building an even bigger & better portfolio, applying the life-lessons he learned along the way. “…Seth is going to dig deep and share his most painful experience, the disastrous breakup of his business partnership and the Red Flags…

The U.S. government is reporting that sales of new single-family houses in August, 2019 were 7.1% higher than July’s revised rate and 18% higher than in August, 2018.  The median sales price of new houses sold in August was $328,400 and the average sales price was $404,200.  The seasonally-adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of August was 326k representing a 5.5 months supply at the current sales rate. Click here to read the full release at the U.S. Census Bureau.

Today’s infographic from the Visual Capitalist tells us that today’s average consumer is dramatically different than those from prior years.  In fact, they say modern consumers are becoming increasingly more distinct and that we need to rethink and update our image of them. Well, ok then…..let’s get cracking…..Happy Friday!!! Hat tip to Visual Capitalist.

As we close out another summer, Realtor.com has come in with their list of the hottest markets from August – and some of them are in places  you might not be able to find on a map.  They say the hottest real estate markets in America are smaller cities that might lack name recognition but make up for it in affordability and cheaper alternatives to larger & pricier cities.  Indeed… “Smaller markets with smaller price tags continue to heat up feverishly,” says Javier Vivas, realtor.com’s director of economic research. “Buyers have more success in markets that have plentiful supplies of…