The number of homes nationwide losing value on a monthly basis has more than tripled over the past year while the number of appreciating homes has fallen more than 12 percent, Allan Weiss, CEO of Weiss Residential Research reported today. Depreciating homes increased from 7.60 percent to 23.40 percent while the number of appreciating homes has fallen from 65.20 … Read More »

For the business of residential real estate investing, these are not the best of times.  Bargains on attractive properties to flip or to hold and convert to rentals are tough to find.  Foreclosures and short sales have fallen to ten percent of home sales, the lowest level in four years, according to RealtyTrac.  Moreover, NAR reports the foreclosure discount has shrunk … Read More »

he average gross profit — the difference between the purchase price and the flipped price — for completed flips in the first quarter was $72,450, up from $65,290 in the previous quarter and up from $61,684 in the first quarter of 2014 to the highest level going back to the first quarter of 2011, the earliest where data is available, … Read More »

  Vacation Home Sales Soar to Record High in 2014, Investment Purchases Fall or Homes Sold to Owner-Occupants Drops to New Low in First Quarter, Smaller Investors Picking Up Slack Time for a quiz.  Which headline do YOU think is right?  The first, the second, both or neither? The right answer is that you should never believe a real estate … Read More »

A number of familiar former foreclosure hotbeds top RealtyTrac’s list of best markets to buy a rental property in the first quarter of 2015.  They’ve got the right mix of employment, growth, prices and potential return. The report also looks at which markets are seeing the biggest increases in rental rates in 2015 compared to 2014, and provides rankings of … Read More »

Flipping has flopped to its lowest level since the second quarter of 2009, accounting for only 4 percent of all sales in the third quarter. Only 26,947 single family homes were flipped nationwide in the third quarter of 2014 representing 4 percent of all U.S. single family home sales, down from 4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2014 and … Read More »

While most homebuyers are focused on rising home prices, closing costs are rising nearly as quickly over the past three years, increasing by more than 20 percent since 2010, according to Bankrate.com Mortgage closing costs rose 6 percent over 2013 after rising 6 percent in 2012 and 8.8 percent in 2011 The now average $2,539 on a $200,000 loan. Each … Read More »

“Now we’ll sweep up everybody over the next two years who got stuck, who says I have home price appreciation, which they do. They bought right, but now they are stuck.” The chief executive officer of the second largest hedge fund landlord articulated in an interview with Bloomberg why a handful of megalords are the process of dominating the single … Read More »

  National apartment occupancy reached 95% for the first time in at least six years in May 2014, helping to drive effective rent growth for the year to date ending in May by 3.7%, the highest growth since the trough of the recession. “Axiometrics began tracking apartment data on a monthly basis in April 2008, and this is the first … Read More »

The bloom may be officially off the boom in investment sales as they declined in 2013 for a second straight year after soaring in 2011 at the height of the large foreclosure inventories. Investor purchases declined 15.9 percent last year from the 1.23 million sales peak set in 2011. Investment-home sales fell 8.5 percent to an estimated 1.10 million in … Read More »