Author: Brad Beckett

A recent survey by Redfin revealed that less than half of home buyers said 2017’s Tax Reform affected their home searches.  The survey was conducted in March of over 2k U.S. residents who planned to buy or sell a primary residence in the next year. “Last year more homebuyers were worried that tax reform would hurt their homebuying budgets, but it turns out tax reform wasn’t all bad or all good for homebuyers,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “Some homebuyers, especially in low-tax states, are now paying less in taxes overall, which has left them with more cash for…

A recent report from CoreLogic shows that, over the past 10 years, there’s been a shift in homes that normally would be for sale, into the rental market. They suggest this shift has resulted in an actual “under supply” of available housing for sale.  They point out that as recent as March, inventory has been at an historical low.  Indeed… “During the Great Recession and 2006-2011 home-price drop, many homes were foreclosed upon or traded as short sales and ended up being purchased by investors, with a number of these houses eventually becoming rental properties.” Click here to read the…

“I don’t want to make more money — said no one, ever”…That’s the gist of a recent Realtor.com article that took a close look at eight common investments (three are related to housing) and how well they’ve been doing over the last five years.  They zeroed-in on the highest and lowest one-year, three-year, and five-year returns to provide a snapshot of how various money-making opportunities are performing. The eight common investments are: Home Price Appreciation REITs Bitcoin Stocks Mutual Funds Bonds Home Flipping Single-Family Rentals “Make sure you have reserves for repairs beyond what you plan and expect for,” says…

Rental information site Zumper recently released their National Rent Report for June showing that the median national rent for 1-bedroom apartment was $1,216 and the median two-bedroom rent was $1,471.  Year to date, one bedroom prices are up 1.5% and two bedroom prices are up 2.4%.  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 on all data available in…

The U.S. government is reporting that total construction spending in April was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,298.5 billion, which was nearly the same as March’s revised rate.  Residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $499.3 billion in April, 0.6% below March’s revised estimate. Click here to read the full report at Census.gov.

National apartment listing site ABODO recently reported that the median nationwide rent price for one-bedroom units in June was $1,087 with two-bedroom units coming in at $1,354.  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. “Both one and two-bedroom units are movin’ on up with two-bedroom units rising by over 2 percent…

There’s a new side-hustle for the side-hustlers driving for Uber; bird-dogging for real estate investors.  Realtor.com says that house flippers are paying Uber drivers (during their down time) as their eyes and ears to take pictures of potential flips.  One company they cited pays up to $1,500 per referral that leads to a purchase and some are even paying for good leads. “It’s a great way to be able to reach areas that I can’t drive around town all day,” said Scott Sekulow, who runs a HomeVestors franchise in Atlanta that has hired several drivers. “You don’t need a lot…

The National Association of Realtors is reporting that overall pending home sales declined in April, but predicted higher sales over the next few months.  The NAR’s Pending Home Sales Index (a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings) decreased to 104.3 in April, with the Midwest being the only region to experience growth. In addition, they report that year-over-year contract signings declined 2%, marking the 16th straight month of annual decreases. “Though the latest monthly figure shows a mild decline in contract signings, mortgage applications and consumer confidence have been steadily rising…It’s inevitable for sales to turn higher in a few…

As a regular reader of this site you’ve undoubtedly seen a lot of stories about short-term rentals.  Vacation rentals (Airbnb, etc) are attracting a lot of interest as well as being very lucrative, but you have to know how to market them.  The folks at iGMS put together this cool chart as a guide to vacation rental marketing, with their “4P’s” of strategy…..Happy Friday!! Hat tip to airgms.com.

For the 6th year in a row, Gallup is reporting that more Americans prefer real estate over other long-term investment vehicles for growing wealth.  These numbers broken down show that 35% prefer real estate, 27% prefer the stock market, 15% prefer CDs/bank accounts, and 14% prefer gold. “Gallup has asked a version of the best investment question since 2002, and Americans’ choices have varied, largely in response to the performance of the various investment options. In 2002, as housing prices were increasing rapidly, 50% of U.S. adults said real estate was the best investment, the highest percentage choosing any investment…