Author: Brad Beckett

Last month we learned about the 10 hottest markets for millennials.  Combine that with the NAR’s latest Profile of Home Buyers & Sellers, where the median age of all first-time home buyers is 31 years old and you’ll see that “older” millennials (25-36 years old) are diving head-first into homeownership market.  Happy Friday…. Hat tip to Keeping Current Matters

Realtor.com says that flipping is back and it’s better than ever!  In fact they report (like many others) that the number of flipped properties is reaching levels not seen in a nearly decade.  So, Realtor.com’s number-crunchers put their pencils to paper and identified the largest 100 markets by ratio of flips to all home sales and came up with America’s most “flipworthy” hotspots. They are: Deltona, FL Stockton, CA Nashville, TN Tampa, FL New Orleans, LA Los Angeles, CA Knoxville, TN Providence, RI Phoenix, AZ Denver, CO “Flipping activity is hot again, due to the fact that we are seeing…

The Mortgage Bankers Association predicts that it expects to see $1.10 trillion in purchase mortgage originations during 2017, an 11% increase from 2016.  On the flip side, the MBA says that refinance originations will decrease by 40%.  They attribute this to strong household formation, job growth, rising wages, and continuing home price appreciation into the foreseeable future. Click here to read the full report on MBA.org.

Last week we saw the SFR market’s “hidden gems” and now, drawing from their Q3 2016 Single Family Rental Market Report, RealtyTrac recently identified 22 markets they consider the best for high rental yields with low vacancy rates out of the 473 U.S. counties analyzed in their report.  To get their list they limited it only to counties with an investment property vacancy rate below 3% and a gross annual rental yield (annualized rental income divided by median sales price) of 10% or more.  RealtyTrac says that many of these counties are “a bit off the beaten path” so to speak…

Home-finding site Trulia recently conducted a report on homeownership entitled “When it comes to the American Dream of homeownership, immigrants are closing the gap on the native-born.”  They showed that the homeownership rates for immigrants has slowly gained ground against US-born residents.  In addition, they they found that states where immigrants have resided in the U.S. for the longest periods of time there are higher rates of immigrant homeownership.  The report uses data from the U.S. Census Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey.  There is a lot of good information that can be gleaned from this report, but…

Why Single-Family Rental Homes Are Best For Investors By John Triplett NationalREIA You can often hear discussions at local real estate investor clubs about the relative merits of investing in single-family homes or in multifamily homes. With the trends today, single-family homes are proving to be the best for many real estate investors, according to veteran investor Larry Arth. In a recent interview, Arth set out the reasons single-family homes for rent work so well for so many investors. “If you find a need and fulfill it, you have a good business.” Based on that statement, “There has proven to…

Is Airbnb a threat to the hotel industry?  We have seen industry disruption before  – and no I don’t mean the buggy-whip and candlestick makers from around the turn of the 20th century.  I’m talking about how Uber and Lyft have revolutionized getting a ride from point A to point B – remember YellowCab?  So is it now time for the hospitality industry to be disrupted?  A recent article in US News & World Report explores that subject and concludes that, no, they’re not a threat to the hotel industry per se….However they have started to grab a larger share…

What cities across the US are the most stressed-out?  Using 11 metrics covering such items as sleep, working hours, commute time, unemployment rate and even the number of yoga centers per capita, recently the number-crunchers over at Realtor.com came up with a top 10 list.  And, in case you wondered about the opposite list – with the most relaxed cities – they covered that as well.  So if you’re looking for a relaxing area to call home, look no further than the upper mid-west.  The entire list in itself is pretty interesting. “Where you live can have a major effect…

Today is Veterans Day…November 11th.  Here’s a little history about this important day;  In 1918, the armistice of the First World War officially took effect on the 11th day, of the 11th month, at the 11th hour.  The following year President Woodrow Wilson declared November 11th as Armistice Day.   It would later become a holiday to honor veterans of World War I and then not to long after World War II, all American Veterans.  Finally, in 1954, it was renamed “Veterans Day” to honor all American veterans who served in times of war and peace…..Be sure to thank someone who…

Back in September we posted a cool infographic to help explain this thing called blockchain.  Quite frankly, it’s kind of hard to get our arms around (it all started with Bitcoin, after all) but we know it has the potential to have a large impact on the entire real estate industry.  Most recently the folks over at Real Estate Tech News posted a story about three ways blockchain will change real estate – all of which make sense, no matter what the technology is applied to. “A blockchain creates a digital ledger shared amongst a computer network. Whenever an information…