Author: Brad Beckett

What are the best & worst city to raise a family?  That’s the question WalletHub recently put to the test by analyzing 150 of the most populated U.S. cities based on 36 key metrics that take into account essential family dynamics such as the relative cost of housing, the quality of local school and health care systems, and the opportunities for fun and recreation.  The top five?  Overland Park, KS; Madison, WI; PLano, TX; Sioux Falls, SD; and Virginia Beach, VA.  Click on the interactive map below for each city’s ranking. Source: WalletHub Click here to see the full list…

Believe it or not, next week is the Autumnal Equinox (the first day of Fall is 9/22) and it’s time to think about lawn-care for the upcoming cooler months.  The following infographic from The Home Depot lays out why Fall is the perfect time and what exactly must be done to prepare yard for the winter months to be in good shape when Spring rolls around.  Happy Friday! Hat tip to The Home Depot.

What’s median time a home stays on the market?  The folks over at the NAR’s Economist Outlook site recently analyzed the data back to the late 80’s to find that over the last 2 years (2014 & 2015) the median has been four weeks!  This is the shortest median time on time on the market in 20 years.  It should be noted that a lack of inventory is partially to blame for this record amount. Click here to read more on the NAR’s EconomistOutlook.org.

Coming on the heels of numerous reports about tenants home-sharing their apartments without landlord knowledge or approval, Forbes is reporting that Airbnb has been working on a new program that will bring owners and landlords of multifamily buildings into its home-sharing service.  Airbnb calls it the Friendly Building Program, a new initiative that will let building owners sign up to work with Airbnb and tenants to allow home-sharing on their properties according to mutually agreed upon rules.  Airbnb will collect and pay applicable taxes and as well as paying the hosts and the landlords – reportedly around 5% – 15%…

This week data powerhouse CoreLogic released their National Foreclosure Report showing that there were 34k completed foreclosures in July, down 16.5% from one year ago.  Across the country, 0.9% of all homes with a mortgage are in the foreclosure inventory, compared with 1.3% in July 2015.  Overall, there were 355k homes in some stage of foreclosure.  Interestingly, five states account for nearly 40% of all completed foreclosures.  They are;  Florida (57k), Michigan (45k), Texas (27k), Ohio (23k), and California (21k). “Loan modifications, foreclosures, and stronger housing and labor markets have each played a role in bringing the foreclosure rate to…

Good data is essential in making any investment decision.  Recently, the National Association of Realtors put together the following interactive-infographic showing July’s national price & sales data for existing homes, single-families, and condos/co-ops and how it is changed over the past 12 months. Click here to read the full report on Realtor.org.

How would you feel about purchasing a house that has been hit by six cars in nine years? That’s the question a family in Raleigh, NC is asking after their house was hit for the 6th time last month (some of them fatal). According to a recent article in Fast Company, the house sits on the corner of a divided road and the entrance to a subdivision – near a sharp curve in the road – and is the victim of bad street design. The current owners purchased the home in 2004 (aware of at least one prior crash) and…

Here’s The Scoop On How Pet DNA Testing Could Fix Your Apartment Poop Problem by John Triplett, National REIA Pets are a way of life in rental housing and if you want your rentals fully leased, pet owners are a key tenant demographic you want to keep. Look just at Millennials: 76 percent are pet owners and a majority are renters. You might have laughed at first at this headline on how pet DNA testing could fix your apartment property’s pet poop problem, but here is the reality. Your tenants may be leaving pet poop lying around for you and…

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, nearly one third of millennials lived at home in 2014 making it the most common living arrangement among this age group.  While there are many reasons for this trend, lingering effects of the last recession, student debt, lack of affordable housing options, the bottom line is that more and more young people are choosing to live at home.  And, when you see the top 5 states they happen to coincide with some of the highest rental rates. “Housing is like a ladder — when there are blockages, it backs up…

The law of supply & demand is one of the most fundamentals of Economics.   Buy low, sell high….We’ve heard it time and time again.  The folks over at Keeping Current Matters recently assembled this handy chart (using data from the NAR) showing how Supply & Demand impact the real estate market.  Happy Friday! Hat tip to Keeping Current Matters.