Housing Wire
DECEMBER 10, 2021
As we approach the end of another hot year for the market, homebuyers and sellers are eagerly looking ahead to the 2022 housing market. Will the market continue its streak of strong growth, or are we finally about to see a slow down? Here’s a high-level forecast for what to expect next year, based on the supply and demand signals we can already see in today’s data.
Realtor.com
APRIL 7, 2021
If you’re buying a home, the listing likely includes the square footage, a key selling point. But if you make an offer that’s accepted and you’ve moved onto the home appraisal step in the process, you might be shocked to find out that the appraiser ‘s square footage is different from what’s on the listing. What gives? Square footage , you may recall, is calculated when you measure how much floor space there is in a home.
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The Residential Specialist
OCTOBER 19, 2021
Buying homes sight-unseen continues to trend, and agents must assist their clients with these purchases. By Andrew Conner. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, more and more homebuyers were buying homes sight unseen. According to Redfin, 63% of buyers made a sight-unseen offer in 2020, almost double the number who did so in 2019. This explosion in sight-unseen offers is due to several factors: better, more comprehensive virtual touring options, an increasingly competitive housing market and mor
The Residential Specialist
OCTOBER 19, 2021
As we head into 2022, agents should be aware of the projected market outlook for the upcoming year. By Michelle Huffman. Whenever clients ask Joe Knab, CRS, when the market is going to slow down, he tells them: “A pandemic didn’t slow the market down, so I’m not quite sure what will.”. The RE/MAX Preferred Group and Cincinnati-based agent’s prediction—shared by agents, economists and researchers alike—is that the 2022 market will look fairly similar to today’s market.
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REX Homes
MAY 5, 2021
Over the past year, your backyard has probably been one of the few places…
Housing Wire
DECEMBER 20, 2021
Fannie Mae met all of the housing goals the Federal Housing Finance Agency imposed for 2020, but Freddie Mac failed its low-income refinance goal. The government-sponsored enterprise lagged the wider market in its acquisitions of low-income refinances. Freddie Mac has 45 days to submit a plan to the FHFA for actions it will take over the next three years to get back on track, according to a letter the regulator sent to Freddie Mac.
Residential Realty Today brings together the best content for real estate professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Housing Wire
NOVEMBER 30, 2021
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today announced the baseline conforming loan limit for 2022 will be $647,200, an increase of 18%. The federal government will now back mortgage loans of nearly $1 million, with the new ceiling loan limit for one-unit properties in most high-cost areas now $970,800 — or 150% of $647,200. Special statutory provisions establish different loan limit calculations for Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and the U.S.
Housing Wire
NOVEMBER 11, 2021
You could buy a top-of-the-line laptop and a new cell phone to match, or you could pay one month’s rent for a single-family home in Los Angeles. It’s not much better for prospective single-family renters across California, a study by HouseCanary found. In Ventura or Carlsbad, median single-family rents are $4,250, and in Santa Clara and Berkeley, median single-family rents reached $4,225 and $4,200, respectively.
Housing Wire
NOVEMBER 29, 2021
Today, pending home sales came in as a big beat of estimates — up 7.5% in October — and since we are days away from December, we can officially label the 2021 housing crash bears as even worse than the 2020 housing crash bears. Like I have often said, professional grifters have plagued the housing sector for many years and shouldn’t be looked to as fundamental economic sources of information.
Housing Wire
DECEMBER 16, 2021
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) on Thursday issued a proposed rule that would require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop, maintain, and submit annual capital plans to the regulator. “The proposed rule will help ensure that the Enterprises have robust systems and processes in place to monitor and maintain proper levels of capital, ” said Acting Director Sandra Thompson, who was nominated to be the permanent agency director on Wednesday.
Speaker: Abdi Ali, Sr. Lease Accounting Consultant
Join this insightful webinar with industry expert Abdi Ali, who will discuss the challenges that can arise from managing lease accounting with spreadsheets! He will share real-world examples of errors, compliance issues, and risks that may be present within your spreadsheets. Learn how these tools, while useful, can sometimes lead to inefficiencies that affect your time, resources, and peace of mind.
Housing Wire
NOVEMBER 1, 2021
With mortgage rates falling during the COVID-19 crisis, many households were able to refinance to lower payments. Because a mortgage payment is almost always the most prominent payment households make each month, lower payments have allowed homeowners who bought homes to have better cash flow over the last few years. This means mortgage holders who have refinanced their homes to lower payments while their wages have also grown look great on paper.
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 22, 2021
Real estate investors are buying more properties, but paying less for them, according to a report from RealtyTrac released Thursday based on ATTOM Data Solutions home sales data. In the second quarter of 2021, investor purchases accounted for 15.4% of all home purchases nationwide, compared with 11.5% of all home purchases a year prior. Despite such a large year-over-year change, it is still slightly lower than Q1 2021 , in which investors held 15.9% of the market.
Housing Wire
DECEMBER 1, 2021
A federal judge ordered Ronald McCord, the founder of Oklahoma City-based lender and servicer First Mortgage Company , who was also once the president of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), to pay $51.8 million in restitution for mortgage fraud. United States District Judge Robin Cauthron ordered McCord also serve 8.5 years in prison — the maximum the federal government said it would seek — as well as three years of supervised release.
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 5, 2021
Nearly one quarter of U.S. home sellers received four or more offers on their home in 2021, according to Zillow’s latest consumer housing trends report. The rise in the number of homes that received multiple offers is reflected in the increased frequency of bidding wars in 2021. Typical sellers received two offers, which is the same as the past three years.
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Housing Wire
OCTOBER 11, 2021
For the second month in a row, national housing affordability improved in August, according to the latest National Association of Realtors housing affordability index report. This improvement came as monthly mortgage payments fell by 1.1% while median family income fell by 0.7%. As of August 2021, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 2.89% compared to 3% a year prior.
Housing Wire
AUGUST 30, 2021
The Sunshine State seems to be getting a lot more foot traffic these days, with the number of homebuyers moving to Miami tripling year-over-year, a new analysis found. According to Redfin ’s monthly migration report, July saw the net inflow of Redfin users packing their bags and moving to Miami rise to 7,610, up from 2,216 last year. Milagros Alvarez, a Miami real estate agent at Redfin, said that the pandemic “has brought even more out-of-towners to the area” because so many people can no
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
Homeowners with mortgages gained $2.9 trillion in equity in the second quarter of 2021, a 29.3% year-over-year increase, according to a new report by CoreLogic released Wednesday. This marks an average gain of $51,500(!) per borrower since the second quarter of 2020. The amount of equity for a property is determined by comparting the estimated current value of the property against the mortgage debt outstanding (MDO).
Housing Wire
AUGUST 3, 2021
When you hear people say that the current housing market is like 2008 all over again, you may want to remind them of the huge differences between this market and that one. The previous economic expansion, from 2010-2019, wasn’t a housing bubble. Quite the opposite: In that cycle we had the weakest housing recovery ever, even with the lowest mortgage rates during the longest economic expansion ever.
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Housing Wire
JULY 28, 2021
The 2021 RealTrends Gathering of Eagles real estate conference captured our attention when the role and future of the real estate transaction process for a homebuyer were lively debated. Big players such as Zillow, Redfin, Compass… etc. claim dominance. We examine the need for complete vendor-provided software solutions vs. building in-house. We watch as consolidation transpires all-around.
Housing Wire
JULY 16, 2021
Cash buyers are pouring into the housing market this year, and they’re picking off more than half of available inventory in certain areas in Florida and New York. As of July 14, nearly one-third of U.S. home purchases this year were paid with just cash — 30%, specifically — according to a recent Redfin study. That represents the largest share since 2014, when 30.6% of homes were purchased with all cash.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 7, 2021
One year ago this month, I coined the term forbearance crash bros , an updated name for the housing bubble boys who never got their housing crash in 2020 so they moved the collapse of housing to 2021. Many other articles were written in tribute to this wonderfully talented group of internet crash callers. As we are in September 2021, we can safely say the housing crash has been moved once again to next year.
Housing Wire
JUNE 23, 2021
Mark Calabria, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency , must go. He is slowly but surely undermining the system he has been charged to oversee, imposing his ideological will on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a way that will leave them weaker, and the housing finance system that depends on them increasingly unable to meet the critical housing needs of the nation.
Speaker: Sarah Santa Ana, Real Estate Coach, Move4Free Realty
Networking is one of the crucial elements in every real estate organization's success. Both agents and real estate companies need to maintain robust networking links. This is why social media is essential for any real estate professional! Social media enables you to stay in touch with your present clients, maintain connections with your past clients, and engage potential customers and investors.
Housing Wire
JULY 16, 2021
Home sales fell 1.2% from May to June, the largest drop at this time of year on record since at least 2012, according to a new Redfin study released this week. The national median home-sale price hit a record high of $386,888, up 25% year over year, but a slight decline from the record of 26% in May. The number of homes for sale fell 28% year over year from 2020, and the typical home sold in just 14 days — a record low and, down from 39 days in June 2020.
Housing Wire
JUNE 10, 2021
It’s no secret that buying a home takes time and money. Well, it turns out, so does selling a home. According to Zillow and Thumbtack’s Hidden Costs of Selling Analysis , the average homeowner spends over $15,000 in “hidden costs” to sell their home. . While a real estate agent’s commission is one of the most expensive costs, it definitely isn’t the only one.
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 8, 2021
Skyrocketing U.S. home prices are quickly shifting the affordability calculus for prospective homebuyers in 2021 — even though mortgage rates have remained near record lows. The median home price nationwide in August increased 14.9% from a year ago to $356,700, according to the National Association of Realtors. August marked the sixth consecutive month where median home prices increased by double-digit percentages from a year ago.
Housing Wire
JUNE 1, 2021
The world has been dealing with a significant health crisis since the beginning of 2020. This has provided the American bear troll crowd numerous opportunities to pontificate about a likely long-lasting depression. If you bought into the theories being peddled by this crash-cult crowd (who, by the way, have been infecting the discourse of economics since the creation of social media and YouTube channels) then you would have believed that the second housing market bubble crash was imminent during
Speaker: Trey Willard, Realtor/Team Leader at Keller Williams Realty, Inc.
In order to create continued success in today’s real estate market, realtors need to utilize an arsenal of technology that will increase their efficiency and presence on social media. Using technology to manage your prospects and tap into their needs through websites, social media, and other channels is critical for real estate success in 2022 and beyond.
Housing Wire
JUNE 7, 2021
During the previous economic expansion from 2008 to 2019, the housing market was subject to the constant refrain of build more homes. Building more homes, it was said, would solve all sorts of social problems, from making homeownership more affordable to ending homelessness. Today we are perhaps less prone to believing that a glut of new homes is the panacea society is waiting for, but the siren call to build more homes continues to be broadcast by a host of housing pundits and social do-gooders
Housing Wire
JUNE 7, 2021
United Wholesale Mortgage has been aggressively price-cutting loans to put pressure on competitors for months now. It appears they’ve just thrown gas on the fire in the hopes of boosting their second quarter numbers, while hitting their rivals ahead of earnings call season. UWM said on Monday that they’ll price-match any conventional loan on primary residences up to 35 basis points with that of 15 different competitors: Caliber Home Loans , Cardinal Financial , Citizens Bank , Financ
Housing Wire
MAY 18, 2021
Skyrocketing prices for lumber, appliances and other building materials continue to handcuff new housing starts all over the country. Single-family housing starts in April dropped 13.4% from March to a rate of 1.09 million, according to the most recent study from the U.S. Census Bureau. Housing completions were at a rate of 1.045 million in April, just 0.1% above the March rate of 1.04 million — proof that builders are delaying housing starts due to the marked increase in costs for lumber and ot
Housing Wire
MAY 7, 2021
The booming real estate market has created a high demand for appraisal services. This is good news for lenders, but it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on appraisers who have to be diligent in their work, while also meeting closing dates. HousingWire recently spoke with PCV Murcor Founder, President and CEO Keith Murray and COO Cindy Nasser on how the appraisal process can be streamlined in today’s tight housing market. .
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