Author: Brad Beckett

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies recently released their annual State of the Housing Report – released annually since 1988.  They report that over 40 million housing units have been built over the past 30 years, accommodating 27 million new households, replacing older homes, and improving the quality of the nation’s housing stock. Among their findings: “Homeownership rates among young adults are even lower than in 1988, and the share of cost-burdened renters is significantly higher, with almost half of all renters paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing. Soaring housing costs are largely to blame. The…

According to the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices, home prices once again are showing no signs of slowing down as they continued to rise across the country over the last 12 months.  The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions, reported a 6.4% annual gain in April.  Their 10-City Composite annual increase came in at 6.2% and their 20-City Composite posted a 6.6% year-over-year increase.  The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Indices are one of the leading measures of U.S. residential real estate prices, tracking changes in the value of residential real…

You don’t need to watch Tarek & Christina to know that it’s what you put into that flip that maximizes your ROI (return on investment).  Along those lines, the folks over at Keeping Current Matters looked at data from HGTV to come up with the top 4 renovations to maximize your flip’s ROI.  Number 1?  Give that bathroom an upgrade and laugh all the way to the bank!  Happy Friday!! Hat tip to Keeping Current Matters.

Odds are, you probably don’t live in one of these neighborhoods, but you might….However if you own rental property in one of them you might be sitting pretty.  In that vein, the folks over at Realtor.com put together a list of the 10 most expensive neighborhoods in the country.   To come up with their list, their team pulled median listing prices fromJune 2017 to May 2018 (12 months) to find the ZIP codes with the highest home prices.  They included only ZIP codes with an average of at least 12 listings per month, to make sure the results weren’t skewed…

Editor’s note:  We’ve had some previous posts about service animals…Kevin’s piece is a good refresher: Beware of False Service Animals by Kevin Coughlin One of the most effective public policy campaigns of the last few decades has been the one that taught us not to park in spaces reserved for the disabled. A combination of robust public education and stiff penalties has helped make it universally understood that able-bodied persons should avoid parking cars there. A newer push is underway to curb the growing practice of people passing their pets off as service animals. While most people associate the conflicts…

The National Association of Realtors recently reported that, for the second month in a row, sales of existing homes were down.  May’s adjusted annual rate was 5.43 million, which is a decline of 0.4% from April’s number.  The Realtors said the lack of market supply was driving these lower numbers.  In addition, the median existing-home price in May was $264,800 – which is an all-time high and marked the 75th straight month of year-over-year price gains. “Closings were down in a majority of the country last month and declined on an annual basis in each major region,” he said. “Incredibly low…

The U.S. government is reporting that sales of new single-family houses in May, 2018, were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 689k, which is 6.7% higher than April’s revised rate and 14.1% higher than May, 2017.  The median sales price of new houses sold in May was $313,000 and the average sales price was $368,500.  There were an estimated 299k new houses for sale at the end of May representing a 5.2 months supply at the current sales rate. Click here to read the full report on Census.gov.

A recent study by lendingtree ranked the top 10 cities in America with the most non-owner-occupied loan originations.  They suggest that the lack of inventory in market is being exacerbated by a “lock-in” effect where current owners are dissuaded from selling and moving as their new home would be at a higher interest rate.  In addition, they say non-occupant buyers are crowding-out homebuyers by making a market more competitive and forcing prices higher.  Indeed… “Our study looks at the share of mortgages made for non-owner occupied properties to gauge their impact on inventory. Non-owner occupied properties are either vacation homes,…

Local Market Monitor, a National REIA preferred vendor, recently released their National Economic Outlook for June, 2018 where they share their thoughts on developments taking place in the U.S. economy. While the monthly jobs data tell us how the economy is doing overall, it’s also worthwhile to see in what ways it’s been changing. We’re used to the idea that manufacturing jobs have disappeared overseas and that computers will soon be doing all those that are left, but automation and the export of low-skill jobs are part of a self-correcting process by which businesses take advantage of opportunities to provide more…

Is Nashville the new Atlanta?  A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (reposted on Realtor.com) goes in-depth about the Music City and their recent population explosion (up 45% since 2000), low unemployment and their extraordinary economic growth.  Apparently it is the hot place to relocate and that is great for some, and not so much for others.  Either way, they’ll all need good, quality, housing. “Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Miami and other large Southern cities have become the economic powerhouses of the region, drawing more migrants from the North and Midwest. Southern metro areas make up almost 32% of…