Author: Brad Beckett

Spring fever: Tips to tidy up for tenants By Lance Allen, Merchant-Cleaning, The Home Depot Spring is a popular time for tenants to move out of rental homes and the perfect time for owners to upgrade and refresh investment properties. Here are tips and techniques that will help you get your properties ready for the rest of the year. Update cleaning equipment While cleaning supplies may not seem like a market rife with innovation, products like the Rubbermaid Maximizer Looped-End Mop feature new technology to help you move faster. The mop provides 30 percent more coverage and weighs 25 percent…

Have you or your group set aside time to give back to your community?  Points of Light, the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service, has announced that the week of April 23-29 as National Volunteer Week.  The annual event was established in 1974 and has grown exponentially each year with thousands of volunteer projects and special events scheduled throughout the week.  National Volunteer Week is an opportunity to recognize and thank volunteers who lend their time, talent, voice and support to causes they care about in their community. Their stories can serve to inspire others to find ways to…

Let’s face it…cybercrime is a real concern of everyday life here in America.  Whether it’s a thief putting a skimmer on a gas pump or someone hacking into your email because your password was 123456, we all need to be aware and concerned (and if your email password is that simple change it right now).  The folks over at Hotspot Shield put together this useful infographic reminding us about the importance of not only being aware, but understanding any potential vulnerabilities your data may have and some simple steps to protect yourself.  Happy Friday!!! Hat tip to Hotspot Shield.

Rental information site Zumper recently released their National Rent Report for April showing that the median national rent for 1-bedroom apartment was $1,164 and $1,377 for a 2-bedroom apartment.  San Francisco continues to dominate their National Rent Index of 100 cities at $3,320/$4430 with Toledo, Ohio rounding out the bottom at $460/$560. “Fluctuation within and between markets may be an indication that peak moving season is quickly approaching and landlords are beginning to price apartments to reflect the upcoming higher turnover.” Click here to read the full report.

For many of us, retirement is a long way off.  However, if you’re a real estate investor, knowing where the hot spots are are, or will be, is essential to making good, sound investment decisions when targeting that “now-retiring” demographic – Baby Boomers.  The folks over at Bankrate.com recently put together a list of the 10 best states in which to retire.  They used criteria such as cost of living, healthcare, crime, weather, taxes and many others.  Their top pick?  New Hampshire….and the worst?  Alaska…..go figure. Click here to read the full story.

HousingWire is reporting that Fannie Mae recently announced that it “no longer accepts plywood boards as an acceptable boarding solution on windows of its properties.”  Recall that last year they said that mortgage servicers would be reimbursed for using clear boarding instead of plywood when securing homes in pre-foreclosure.  As of this new rule, they are now required to replace any plywood boarded windows with the clear boarding (or a new window).  There are two clear boarding products (aka poly-carbonate windows), SecureView and InvisiBoard, that have been approved for use by Fannie Mae.  Also, earlier this year Ohio became the…

National apartment listing site ABODO recently reported that nationwide rent prices slightly rose in March with the median price of $1,005 for a one-bedroom apartment.  New Orleans continues lead the list of the biggest increases at 12%, followed by Glendale AZ with a 10.7% increase and then Seattle, WA at 7.2%.  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…

Data powerhouse ATTOM Data Solutions (parent company of RealtyTrac) recently released their Q1 2017 Single Family Rental Market report, which ranks the best U.S. markets for buying single family rental (SFR) properties in 2017.  The average annual gross rental yield (annualized gross rent income divided by median purchase price of single family homes) among the 375 counties was 9%  for 2017, down from an average of 9.1% in 2016.  The report analyzed single family rental returns in 375 U.S. counties each with a population of at least 100k and sufficient rental and home price data, along with more than 6k…

Are gas stations and convenience stores the new grocery stores?  That’s the gist of a recent article by Chase Bank about the cultural shift taking place among shopping habits – particularly among millennials.   They report that in 2014, convenience stores accounted for 11% of food & beverage stops – up from around 8% in 2006.  Keep in mind that these stores sell an estimated 80% of all fuel purchased.   Real Estate investors take note…..it may not be about the best deal anymore, more and more it’s about convenience. “They are less likely to shop for staple ingredients and more likely…

The U.S. Department of Commerce is reporting that total construction spending in February was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,19 trillion, which is 3% higher than February 2016.  Private residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $484.7 billion in February, 1.8% higher than January’s number. Nonresidential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $432.7 billion in February, 0.3% below January’s number.  Public construction spending was $275.5 billion in February. Click here to read the full release.