Author: Brad Beckett

The high-tax state of Vermont is paying people up to $10k to relocate to their green mountain paradise, with a catch – you can live there, but you have to work remotely in another state.  According to numerous news outlets, Vermont’s governor recently signed legislation authorizing grants of up to $10k for individuals to make the move ($5k for two years).  The Wall Street Journal reports that Vermont’s top marginal income tax rate was 8.95% along with having the 3rd most onerous property taxes in the nation. Throw in an aging population and a shrinking tax-base and you have a…

On a recent episode of the Real Estate Success with Jim Ingersoll podcast, Jim speaks with Ken Lacy, the founder of Veterans Path Up – a group that  helps those who served achieve stabilized, affordable housing through real estate solutions.  Topics discussed during the show are;  how and why we need to help our vets, the history of Veterans Path Up, and why stabilized & affordable housing is important. “Veteran’s Path Up” mission is to provide affordable stable housing to Veterans and Veteran families through the use of shared living, single family residences, and ultimately a path to home ownership.…

Reversing a trend over the past couple years, the sizes of new single-family homes have been increasing since the start of 2018. The NAHB’s Eye on Housing recently dug into data from the U.S. Census Bureau to show that the median single-family square floor area increased to 2,436 square feet and the average (mean) square footage increased to 2,641 square feet.  It’s also been reported Americans are physically getting larger/fatter…..coincidence??? Click here to read the full story on the NAHB’s Eye on Housing.

According to the latest CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI) Report, home prices (including distressed sales) were up 6.9% year-over-year in April, 2018.  In addition, prices were also up 1.2% from March.  The CoreLogic HPI forecasts that home prices will increase by 5.3% (year-over-year) from April 2018 to April 2019, and 0.2 % on a month-over-month basis.  The CoreLogic HPI Forecast is a projection of home prices using the CoreLogic HPI and other economic variables. Values are derived from state-level forecasts by weighting indices according to the number of owner-occupied households for each state. “The best antidote for rising home prices…

Real estate investors are in the best position to meet the needs of those seeking good quality housing.  That’s why we’ve had several posts about where people are moving to & from across this great nation.  Today’s infographic from the U.S. Census Bureau shows how the West and South are leading the way in population growth….and they all need places to live.  Happy Friday!! Hat tip to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Leave it to Realtor.com to identify the few places in America where prices are actually going down.  In fact, there are only 27 of the country’s 350 metros that saw price drops.   They do, however, point out that in each of these areas there was some sort of legitimate reason for the decline – whether it was from overbuilding, mass job losses, natural disasters, you name it. To come up with their top-10 list, Realtor.com compared two years of median list prices in the 350 largest metros areas over the 12-month periods of May 2016 to April 2017 and May…

National apartment listing site ABODO recently reported that the median nationwide rent price for one-bedroom units were down 3.9% year-to-date, coming in at $1,005.  Two-bedroom units came in at $1,220, which is down 2.7% year-to-date.  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 the full report on Abodo.com.

Which cities are best positioned for price growth for houses, condos and apartment units this summer?  Recently, HouseCanary analyzed the top-100 MSAs to see which ones had the highest year-over-year price growth for those three investments.  They found that price growth is strongest in cities out West and in Florida, and less robust in the Southeast, while parts of the Northeast may require even more digging to find a good investment deal. In addition they suggest paying attention to where people are moving and try to secure investment properties in those markets. “If you’re looking for strong investment opportunities across…

We’ve posted about this before…people are fleeing California in large numbers.  The reasons are numerous (high taxes, onerous regulations, lack of job growth, etc) but in this study’s case it’s the high cost of housing (especially in San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego) that is being examined.  Along that vein, Trulia has this to say about the Golden State;  “you need a lot of gold to live there.”  However they also add (somewhat apologetically) that “Tales of an impending mass exodus from expensive California markets are unsubstantiated from Trulia’s search data since there doesn’t seem to a…

Rental information site Zumper recently released their National Rent Report for June showing that the median national rent for 1-bedroom apartment rose slightly to $1,198 (up 1.1%) while the two-bedroom average grew 1% to $1,436.  However, Zumper says “there were lots of cities spread throughout the country with year over year growth rates that are over 10%, an upswing that will most likely continue into the hot moving season.”  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…