Author: Brad Beckett

Every once and a while you come across one of those stories that just epitomizes a notion or concept that hits home.  A recent story on Business Insider chronicles a young Atlanta couple in their 20’s who are successfully using real estate investing to not only pay down their 6-figure student loans, but live the lifestyle of their choosing.  The article says that instead of working to pay down the debt as soon as possible, they decided to buy assets that would generate cash flow and pay for the debt with the passive income. They started with house-hacking a duplex. …

With no end in sight, it was announced that the partial government shutdown taking place in Washington will not affect IRS income tax refunds this filing season.  As reported by Forbes, even if the federal shutdown drags on through the filing season refunds will be paid.  Acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, declared, “Tax refunds will go out.”  Indeed… “Last year, the IRS processed 136,359,149 tax returns during the regular tax season; just over 10% of taxpayers tend to file an extension, bringing the total number of tax returns processed during the year…

According to data recently illustrated by the National Association of Realtors, the price of a typical home was $235,000 in Q3 of 2018. They used data from the FHFA and American Community Survey (ACS) to calculate a median home value for 3,119 counties and county-equivalents across the United States.  Interestingly, their estimates show that 87% of counties had a lower median home value than the national level. Indeed…no go dive in. Click here to read the full story at the National Association of Realtors.

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…