Author: Brad Beckett

Earlier this month a federal judge sided with Airbnb and Homeaway in blocking a recently enacted New York City law requiring short-term rental sites to disclose certain user data.  According to HousingWire, the law prevented landlords and tenants from illegally renting out apartments for a few days at a time to tourists. It also forced Airbnb-like sites to provide hosts’ names & addresses to the city (New York) each month, along with information about whether the rentals were for a whole apartment or a single room.  HousingWire says the lawsuit nows proceed to discovery, which is scheduled to be completed…

How fast is your internet connection?  According to new data from Ookla (as illustrated by Statista) is has probably gotten a lot faster.  In fact, they report that speeds have increased over 35% in the U.S. lately making it the 7th fastest country for downloads worldwide.  So who has the fastest speeds in America?  That would be Kansas City, Missouri.  And the city with slowest average speeds?  Memphis, Tennessee – but that’s still plenty of bandwidth to binge-watch something on Netflix! “Google Fiber is the fastest Internet service provider in three of the top five cities with the fastest speeds…

If you’re a regular reader of our posts then you’ll know we run stories about “flipping” fairly often.  Along those lines,  a recent article on Realtor.com pointed out some interesting characteristics about the current market for flipping houses.  With the slowdown in housing market now taking place, they caution that falling home prices can eat into the ROI (return on investment) for flipping houses – even as the actual work is being performed!  So, they put pen to paper to find out where home flipping is up (and down), all across America.   They found that markets with the biggest drop in…

A new white paper from Freddie Mac says SFRs are the largest source of rental housing in America and they’re playing an important role in rural areas where they account for two-thirds of the rental housing stock. However, Freddie Mac says that the secondary market for SFR home loans is limited.  In addition, they point out that of the 43 million renter households ̶ in America today,  35.5 million live in urban and suburban markets and 7.5 million in rural markets.  Freddie Mac produced the white paper under their Duty to Serve plan, which aims to expand affordability and address America’s…

According to the latest The CoreLogic Loan Performance Insights Report the serious delinquency rate for September 2018 fell to 1.5%, representing a 0.4 percentage point decline compared with September, 2017. CoreLogic says declining unemployment rates and rising home prices were partly responsible for this decline.  The serious delinquency rates for Federal Housing Administration (FHA), U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and conventional loans were 3.7, 1.9 and 1.1 percent, respectively.  The serious delinquency rate dropped significantly for all loan types in September 2018 compared with September, 2017, representing an 11-year low. “A closer look reveals that today’s delinquency rates are…

Water heaters…those potential time-bombs in that flip you just bought or an aging old trustworthy friend in your basement.  However, if you ever need to replace one, what kind do you replace it with?  And, depending the age, they can consume an inordinate amount of energy!  So which one is best for your property?  The folks at The Home Depot put together this handy graphic to help comprehend and discover the best solution for your situation…..Happy Friday!!! Hat Tip to The Home Depot.

Rental information site Zumper recently released their National Rent Report for January showing that the median national rent for 1-bedroom apartment was $1,217 and the median two-bedroom rent was $1,440.  Year to date, one bedroom prices are down 3.1% and and two bedroom prices are up 3.7%.  However, on a year over year basis, Zumper says the majority of large rent growths continued to be located in the mid to lower tiered markets.  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…

How did the rental market fair in 2018?  ABODO’s recently released 2018 Annual Rent Report breaks the market down and shows where prices increased, decreased and what trends emerged.  They also drill down into the most and least expensive markets and what to expect in 2019.  Be sure to look at their entire dataset. “Rental rates that looked unexciting in January initiated a slow decline in February. By June, the decline became more pronounced as one-bedrooms fell by almost 4 percent to $1,005. Two-bedrooms also posted their peak weakness in June losing 2.71 percent at $1,220…By year-end, one-bedroom units settled…

The National Association of Realtors is reporting that overall pending home sales declined 0.7% in November.  The NAR’s Pending Home Sales Index (a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings) declined to 101.4 in November.  However, year-over-year contract signings dropped 7.7%, making this the eleventh straight month of annual decreases. “The latest decline in contract signings implies more short-term pullback in the housing sector and does not yet capture the impact of recent favorable conditions of mortgage rates,” Said Lawrence Yun, the NAR’s chief economist. Click here to read the full report at the National Association of Realtors.

Where are the hottest housing markets going to be in 2019?  The folks over at Realtor.com have it covered for you.  Using data from the 100 largest markets they looked existing home sales & prices and the amount of new home construction. Then they analyzed each area’s local economy along with population trends, unemployment rates, median incomes, and several other factors.  Nationally, they predict that the number of overall home sales to decrease 2%, after years of steady climbs.  However they point out that these 10 cities have the potential to be overachievers in 2019.  Indeed… “The diversity of these…