Author: Brad Beckett

If you own rental property you will want to listen to this one.  In a recent episode of the Rental Property Owner & Real Estate Investor Podcast, Brian Hamrick discusses rental application fees with RPOA’s Executive Director Clay Powell about recent moves by the Grand Rapids, Michigan City Council to institute a rental application fee ordinance.  This is an issue that has ramifications nationwide and affects landlords, property managers as well as the people they’re trying to serve. It is about property rights and could actually inhibit the ability to provide affordable & safe housing to those that need it…

Are you someone who has thought about investing in a rehab project?  A recent article over on AskaLender.com looks at the process of doing a fix-n-flip and explains the process of buying a fixer-upper, remodeling and/or renovating it and then selling it at a profit.  They rightly point out that “it’s important to know what you’re doing when taking on a fix-and-flip project. If you make a mistake, your profitable investment could turn into a costly money pit.”  Indeed….always do you due diligence before making any investment. Doug DeShields, president of the National Real Estate Investors Association, and an active…

Black Knight Financial Services recently released their “first look” report for June, 2018 showing that active foreclosures continue to decline and have fallen below 300k for the first time since late 2006.  In addition they report that foreclosure starts fell 3.1% in June for the lowest single-month total in more than 17 years.  Black Knight’s month-end mortgage performance statistics are derived from their loan-level database representing the majority of the national mortgage market. Click here to read the full report on BlackKnightInc.com.

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index reported a 6.4% annual gain for May, 2018.  Their 10-City Composite annual increase came in at 6.1%, down from 6.4% in the previous month. The 20-City Composite posted a 6.5% year-over-year gain, down from 6.7% in the previous month.  Seattle, Las Vegas, and San Francisco continued to report the highest year-over-year gains among the 20 cities. In May, Seattle led the way with a 13.6% year-over-year price increase, followed by Las Vegas with a 12.6% increase and San Francisco with a 10.9% increase. Seven of the 20 cities reported greater…

National apartment listing site ABODO recently reported that the median nationwide rent price for one-bedroom units increased slightly coming in at $1,013 (down 3.15% year-to-date).  However, two-bedroom units posted a large gain came in at $1,262, which is $32 higher than July’s number.  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. Click here to read thr full report on ABODO.com.

This weekend several states across the fruited-plain will be kicking off sales tax holidays for the back to school season.  Whether you think these are good or bad public policy is irrelevant;  the bottom-line is saving money!  The folks over that the Tax Foundation recently put together this handy chart showing which states are holding sales tax holidays as well as any threshold limits.  Click here for a detailed list of all the states and their exemptions.  Happy Friday!!! Hat tip to the Tax Foundation!

The U.S. government is reporting that total construction spending in June was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.3 trillion, which is 1.1% lower than May’s revised estimate but is 6.1% higher than June, 2017.  During the first six months of this year, construction spending amounted to $619.9 billion, which is 5.1% more than the same period in 2017.  In addition, residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $568.3 billion in June, which is 0.5% below May’s revised estimate. Click here to read the full report on census.gov.

Rental information site Zumper recently released their National Rent Report for August showing that the median national rent for 1-bedroom apartment decreased ever so slightly to $1,208 (down 0.1%) while the two-bedroom average grew, coming in at $1,446 (up 0.3%).  Year-over-year, both bedroom types are up around 3%.  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…

The U.S. government is reporting that the national vacancy rates in Q2 2018 were 6.8% for rental housing and 1.5% for homeowner housing.  The rental vacancy rate was 0.5 percentage points lower than the rate in Q2 2017  and not statistically different from the rate in Q1 2018. The homeowner vacancy rate was virtually unchanged from the rate in Q2 2017 and Q1 2018.  The homeownership rate of 64.3% was not statistically different from Q2 2017 nor from Q1 2018.  In addition, approximately 87.7% of the housing units in the United States in Q2 2018 were occupied and 12.3% were…

Back in January, 2016 we reported about the federal government requiring real estate companies in New York and Miami to disclose the names behind all-cash real estate transactions.  The measure was supposedly “temporary” and targeted properties purchased with cash in New York City and Miami-Dade County that met certain thresholds.  Now, flash-forward to the present; a recent article in the Miami Herald discusses some recent all-cash real estate deals (where the buyers are anonymous) that are being snagged by that very same Treasury Department rule.  However, in May of this year the thresholds for triggering those reporting requirements were quietly…