It’s no secret that inadequate inventories have been stunting the housing recovery.  Through November, total housing inventory has fallen year-over-year for 18 straight months and supplies are now 11.4 percent lower than they were two years ago.[1] As inventories decline, rising income, improved employment, and historically low mortgage rates have given demand a shot in the arm.  Sales in November … Read More »

The national homeownership rate has just fallen to its lowest level since June 1965, the month that the Rolling Stones released “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” and Peter Sellers and Romy Schneider starred in “What’s New Pussycat”.  Only 62.9 percent of families now own the homes in which they live.[1] “They’ said homeownership wouldn’t get any lower because the largest … Read More »

The percentage of renters paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs is increasing while cost-burned homeowners are decreasing, according to the 2014 State of the Nation’s Housing report released yesterday by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. On the owner side, the number of households facing cost burdens has fallen steadily as high foreclosure rates … 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 »

Sales to foreign investors interested in single family rentals are down, largely to a strengthening dollar, but foreign nationals living in the US are participating in the spring boomlet. The National Association of Realtors reports that the number of U.S. homebuyers who identified as international dropped to 2.0 percent during the first four months of 2015 from 2.5 percent a … Read More »

Investors have to hunt harder for well-priced acquisitions these days but the best rents can be found in the nation’s top  for-sale markets, according to new quarterly data from HomeVestors and Local Market Monitor.  “For the last few years, investors have been able to find real estate bargains they could turn into rental properties. That period is pretty much over … Read More »

  With rents rising faster than home values and vacancy rates falling to the lowest levels of the post-Bubble era, something has got to give. In his presentation, “The Rent’s Too Damn High”, at the National Association of Real Estate Editors’ annual meeting, Zillow’s chief economist, Stan Humphries, put the rental crisis in a context everyone who has shared a … Read More »

This is the year when the stars are aligned perfectly for record numbers of tenants to tear up their leases and kiss the renting life good-bye. Historically low mortgage rates won’t last much longer.  Home prices will only rise. New three percent down programs from Fannie and Freddie sweeten the deal for new buyers.  FHA’s mortgage insurance premium cut makes … Read More »

Almost half (46 percent) of the real estate economists and experts surveyed in Zillow’s latest Home Price Expectations Survey believe mortgage underwriting standards are about right today, but an equal number, 47 percent, said they are too still restrictive. Though the experts couldn’t agree on where standards should be, most agreed on where they are going. More than 60 percent … 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 »