Author: Brad Beckett

Existing home sales dropped in March following last month’s “surge of success,” according to a release from the National Association of Realtors.  The NAR said that each of the four major U.S. regions saw a drop-off in sales with the Midwest leading the declines.  Total existing-home sales fell 4.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.21 million in February along with sales as a whole down 5.4% from one year ago.  Total housing inventory at the end of March was 1.68 million which translates into 3.9-month supply at the current sales pace.  The median existing-home price for all housing…

The U.S. government is reporting that privately‐owned housing starts in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,139,000.  This is 0.3% below February’s revised estimate and 14.2% lower than March, 2018.  Single‐family housing starts in March were at a rate of 785k, which is 0.4% below February’s revised figure.  March’s rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 337k.  Privately‐owned housing units authorized by building permits in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,269,000. This is 1.7% lower than February’s revised rate and is 7.8% below the March, 2018. Single‐family authorizations in…

Where are the neighborhoods in America where the typical renter is throwing down $10k, $15k, or even $30k a month?  While that does sound like quite a bit of coin, there are neighborhoods across the county where landlords are fetching those amounts.  After all, nearly one third of Americans are renters and not owners.  Leave it to Realtor.com to zero-in and locate these neighborhoods and then rank the top 10.  To come up with their list, they pulled every two-bedroom rental on realtor.com (as of March 2019) and then calculated the median rent price for every ZIP code.  To keep…

A new report from Bankrate.com says that nearly half of millennial homeowners had regrets about their home purchase.  Bankrate says that, overall 44% of homeowners had regrets about their purchase while 56% did not.  Unexpected maintenance or other hidden costs were listed as the largest item. “When you buy a house, you can’t call the maintenance company or a landlord to fix major issues; it’s all on you,”…adding that these expenses — needing a new air conditioner, furnace or water heater, for example — often take first-time buyers by surprise. “I always advise homebuyers to create savings buckets and open…

Sunday, April 21st is Easter…Each year it falls on the first Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox.  In other words, the date fluctuates each year between March 22 and April 25.   Today’s infographic from the datavizblog.com takes a look at “Easter by the Numbers” all the way from the resurrection of Jesus Christ to the number of chocolate Easter bunnies consumed annually.  So…..Happy Easter and Happy Friday!!! So what exactly is Easter?  The venerable History Channel says: Easter is a Christian holiday that celebrates the belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the New Testament of…

We’ve been talking a lot about Opportunity Zones and you will undoubtedly hear more about them going forward.  A new report by Yardi takes a look at the tax incentives for investing in the 8,700+ opportunity zones across the country that were created by the tax reform passed by Congress in 2017.  Yardi says there are roughly 1.9 million multifamily units, 960 million square feet of office space and 180 million square feet of self storage space that are either in place or under construction in these opportunity zones.  They say the “opportunity is enormous” as there is a huge…

We recently posted about how mortgage delinquency rates were the lowest in 20 years and that potentially means fewer foreclosures for home flippers.  However, in a recent special report about flipping, CoreLogic says that flipping rates are actually near historic highs, but flippers are “playing a different game.”  To come up with this theory, CoreLogic took a deep-dive into home flipping by investigating flipping rates nationally and across  the country’s metro areas.  They also estimated the gross economic returns to home flipping and tested to see what factor is most correlated with such returns. “…we also find that flipping rates…

According to the latest Yardi Matrix, U.S. multifamily rents rose slightly in March, coming in at $1,430 with year-over-year growth dropping slightly to 3.2%.  Yardi says that market dynamics continue to be healthy almost everywhere. “The dynamics continue to be healthy almost everywhere. That gives investors a choice between potentially higher growth and higher yields in faster-growing, less-liquid markets, or slower, steadier growth in larger, more liquid markets.” Click here to read the full report at Yardimatrix.com.

According to recent data from the Joint Center on Housing Studies (reported by Mortgage News Daily), $425 billion was spent nationally in 2017 on home maintenance & improvement – representing a 10% increase from 2015 and more than 50% from the 2010.  In addition they report that nearly 80% of America’s housing stock is at least 20 years old with twice that share of homes having been built 50 or more years ago.  They say that since new construction is still well behind its pre-recession levels older home have been remodeled in greater numbers. “The foreclosure crisis left many homes…

According to recent analysis from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the digital economy accounted for 6.9% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017, amounting to $1.35 trillion.  Interestingly, as noted in the chart below, “real estate and rental & leasing” had the largest share of the nation’s GDP.  The GDP is the value of the goods and services produced by a nation’s economy less the value of the goods and services used up in production.  The GDP by industry, or value added, is a measure of an industry’s contribution to overall GDP. According to the BEA’s initial…