Author: Brad Beckett

The National Association of Realtors is reporting that existing-home sales were down 10.5% in November, which represents the slowest pace in 19 months.  However they did say that some of the decrease was likely because of an apparent rise in closing time-frames that may have pushed some transactions into December. “It’s possible the longer timeframes pushed a latter portion of would-be November transactions into December…As long as closing timeframes don’t rise even further, it’s likely more sales will register to this month’s total, and November’s large dip will be more of an outlier.” says Lawrence Yun, NAR’s Chief Economist. Click…

The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development office of Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity has launched two consumer videos to show what happens when a fair housing complaint is filed.  In one video, “How to File a Housing Discrimination Complaint – What every home buyer and renter should know,” viewers are given the ABCs of the fair housing complaint process.  In the second video, “Fighting Housing Discrimination – One family’s story,” a family talks about what they went through after they filed a complaint. Click here read more on Hud.gov.

Back in September we shared a report from the Wall Street Journal about how real estate industry bracing for a negative impact from new rules being promulgated by Dodd-Frank. Fast forward to this week and the WSJ is reporting that it’s now taking home buyers longer to get a mortgage which is being attributed to the new federal rules that were supposed to make mortgage terms easier to understand.  Indeed, the report goes on to say that mortgages took an average of 49 days to close in November – which represents a 3-day increase from October’s average and the longest…

US News & World Reports says that last week’s announcement by the Fed to raise rates marked an end to an historic era of near-zero interest rates.  They said for [all]  investors it “signals a shift to a rising interest-rate environment, which opens the door to a new phase of potential winners and losers.” One potential takeaway of interest to real estate investors: Invest in real estate sooner rather than later. Rising interest rates will put upward pressure on mortgage rates. “I would buy real estate now instead of later because mortgage rates will be higher. That would be an…

The Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics blog recently posted a piece showing that over the past 240 years, the rate of inflation has been much higher and, surprisingly much lower than it is today. From the U.S. Revolutionary War to World War II, inflation swung around much more dramatically than it does today. Especially in periods of war, prices would surge, to be followed by long periods of deflation. Over long periods of time, these dramatic swings tended to balance out, but it was a far cry from what anyone today would likely consider “price stability.” Click here to…

Today Congress passed, and President Obama is expected to sign, a year-end omnibus budget bill that included over $1 trillion and new spending as well as over $600 billion in tax cuts.  Included in those tax cuts was an extension of a tax-break for homeowners relieving them of paying income tax on the difference between what they owe on the mortgage and the amount raised in a short sale – especially if the lender reduces the owed principal amount.  The tax break expired at the end of 2014 and was reauthorized today and made retroactive for all of 2015 and…

The National Multifamily Housing Council/Kingsley Associates recently released their 2015 Resident Preferences Survey which analyzes data from nearly 120k responses across the country about their priorities for home features, community amenities and more based on a variety of demographic factors. Click here to read more on NHMC.

This week the National Association of Realtors released their 2015 Remodeling Impact Report, which highlights reasons homeowners choose a remodel, the interior and exterior projects that most appeal to potential buyers, the typical cost for these remodeling projects, and the projects that yield the biggest financial results upon resale.  Interestingly, the report looks at increased happiness certain projects bring upon completion. Click here to read the full report.

Coming on the heels of Redfin’s Estimator, real estate online powerhouse Zillow recently launched “Price This Home, a new tool that enables home sellers to create a custom, private value estimate for their home based on comparable home sales and listings, personal knowledge of their home and surrounding neighborhoods, and local market conditions.” The Price This Home tool uses the Zestimate home valuation as a base, and then allows the homeowner to select information that will give them a more customized value estimate.  To create a Price This Home value estimate, homeowners take several steps: Verify their home facts are…

The U.S. Department of Commerce reported this week that housing starts jumped 10.5% in November to 1,173,000 which marked the eighth straight month that starts remained above 1 million units, the longest stretch since 2007.  In addition, November’s number was 16.5% higher than one year ago.  Building permits rose as well, 11% higher than October’s number and 19.5% higher than one year ago. Click here to read the full release.