Author: Brad Beckett

Remember when elevators first started appearing in new homes?  Now the dumbwaiter, a home feature of the nineteenth century might be experiencing its own resurgence.  The Wall Street Journal recently reported that dumbwaiters are making a comeback in new homes and high-end renovations.  Citing data from Realtor.com, they report that 45% of homes with dumbwaiters were built after 1999 versus 8% that were built between 1850 & 1950.  However, they’re not cheap and can cost anywhere from $4k to 12k a pop.  And, as with any emerging technology or trend, the early adopters pay for that privilege.   Either way, it’s…

Black Knight Financial Services released their Home Price Index (HPI) report for July showing home prices were up 0.4% from June and up 5.3% from one year ago.  Currently at $266K, the U.S. HPI has risen over 33% from the market’s bottom and is now within just 0.8% of a new national peak.  The report also shows that home prices in nine of the nation’s 20 largest states and 14 of the 40 largest metros hit new peaks in July. Click here to read the full report at Black Knight.

A recent article on Bloomberg poses the question;  Are mobile homes a solution to an affordable housing shortage?  When you consider that the average sales price of a new mobile home was $68k compared to $380k for a new site-built home it does makes some sense.  Interestingly, mobile homes are highly concentrated in the South however California leads the nation with over 500k of them.  The article even suggests that a re-branding is in order to over come past stigmas – asking, are they the new “tiny house?”  Either way, the manufactured home industry has come a long way in…

Crowdfunding is hot….and getting hotter.  We’re even starting to see more & more success stories and positive media about it.  Recently, an article on Bloomberg talked about how home flippers have turned to crowdfunding for their funding needs with great success.  Using platform sites such as RealtyShares, LendingHome, PeerStreet and Patch of Land home flippers and developers have learned that financing can be quicker and easier than going through traditional banks. “[A house flipper] crowdfunded nine deals totaling more than $9 million through RealtyShares over the last two and a half years. A July deal for $1 million took him…

Trulia is reporting that data released by this month by the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey show that, nationally, metros with the lowest incomes experienced the highest income growth.  This comes on the heals of recent census data showing that the median U.S. income rose by 5.2% last year.  This could mean higher home prices in areas that have yet to be affected by the housing recovery. “Many of the metros that saw the highest income growth have been in places that have been slow to recover from the recession,” said Trulia’s chief economist, Ralph McLaughlin.” Click here…

The National Association of Realtors are reporting that existing home sales eased up in August for the second consecutive month despite mortgage rates near record lows.   The Realtors say that higher home prices and not enough inventory are behind the decline of 0.9% – representing an annual rate of 5.33 million homes.  The median existing price for all housing types in August was $240,200, up 5.1% from one year ago.  August’s price increase also marks the 54th consecutive month of year-over-year gains. “Hopes of a meaningful sales breakthrough as a result of this summer’s historically low mortgage rates failed…

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently released a report on their Rental Assistance Demonstration program that says it’s on track to accomplish its primary goal of attracting substantial new capital that will stabilize the physical and financial conditions of public housing properties across the country.  The Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) was created in order to give public housing authorities (PHA’s) a powerful tool to preserve and improve public housing properties and address the $26 billion dollar nationwide backlog of deferred maintenance. The report found that by October of 2015, participating PHA’s  successfully generated $2.5 billion in new…

What U.S. states give you the most “bang for your buck?”  The folks over at Keeping Current Matters took data from the Tax Foundation to put together this handy infographic about the cost of living in our 50 states.  The best $$ bangs?  The MidWest and the South……Happy Friday! Hat Tip to Keeping Current Matters.

Recently the data-crunchers over at Realtor.com looked at 30-years worth of data on six major types of disaster (earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, wildfires, and floods) to come up with a pretty comprehensive disaster index for all counties in the United States.  Their conclusion;  while you cannot escape the risk for natural disaster there are areas that are more prone for a perfect storm of instances of multiple disasters.  The graphic below illustrates the top 20 U.S. counties with the highest risk while the report itself is quite extensive and worth a look. “In the South, recent catastrophic floods in Louisiana claimed…

Forbes is reporting that twenty-one states have filed suit against the federal government arguing that last year’s new overtime rules promulgated by the U.S. Department of Labor are a violation of the constitution and exceeds congressional authority.  The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas, accuses President Obama of pushing through a near-doubling of the salary level (to $913 a week or more than $47,000 a year) up to which employers are required to pay overtime.  The new rule is to take effect this December. Click here to read the full story on Forbes.com Click here to read the court…