Housing Wire

JANUARY 3, 2025

The California Department of Insurance unveiled a new regulation this week that aims to increase homeowners insurance coverage in areas prone to wildfires , a response to the recent pullback in policies by several major insurers. Announced by California insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara on Monday, the regulation is under administrative review and is set to take effect by the end of January, according to reporting by The Associated Press (AP).

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Real Estate News

JANUARY 3, 2025

After remaining largely stable during the second half of 2024, recent threats from agents and local associations could result in further declines this year.

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Agents 356

Keeping Current Matters

JANUARY 7, 2025

Wondering what’s in store for the housing market this year?

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Inman

JANUARY 8, 2025

LA-area agents on Wednesday told Inman that they were checking in on clients and keeping an eye on evacuation orders while lamenting the "catastrophic" toll the wildfires were taking on the community and real estate market.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 9, 2025

Several fires burning more than 45 square miles in the Los Angeles area have forced more than 100,000 residents from their homes and killed five people, The Associated Press reported on Thursday. Nearly 2,000 homes, businesses and other structures have been destroyed, with many displaced residents scouting for rental properties and temporary shelter.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 16, 2025

The 10-year yield and mortgage rates have been on a wild ride lately, even testing my top-end forecast at 7.25%, but today, the 10-year yield fell after remarks by Fed President Chris Waller about whether the Fed would do even more rate cuts than the market was anticipating. His statement on this, in a CNBC interview : If inflation continues on this path through the beginning of 2025, it’s reasonable to think that possibly rate cuts could happen in the first half of the year.” This w

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 10, 2025

Real estate and mortgage firms are stepping up to help housing professionals and the Southern California community as wildfires ravage the area. Here’s a roundup of the companies and people offering help, which will be updated with new information as it becomes available. Help for those in the community Coldwell Banker Realty in Southern California, which is affiliated with Anywhere , created a Facebook group page for its network to coordinate a wide variety of needs from short- and long-t

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 9, 2025

This week, the Seattle City Council had its first meeting of 2025 and housing was a key topic of discussion. But if the meeting itself was any indication, determining a path forward for the citys severe housing shortage will be a struggle as elected leaders attempt to ascertain a sustainable plan for the next decade, according to reporting by The Seattle Times.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 8, 2025

As wildfires tear through Southern California and firefighters battle winds up to 100 mph, tens of thousands of residents have evacuated. The looming impacts on real estate and insurance are also at the forefront of Californians minds. According to Anthony Marrone, the fire chief for Los Angeles County , the wildfires have torched more than 1,000 structures, killing at least two people and injuring several more.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 8, 2025

Heading into the 2025 housing market, we havent had this many homeowners with mortgage rates over 6% since 2016. According to the latest FHFA data , as of Q3 2024, 17.2% of outstanding mortgages, around 8.7 million borrowers, carry a mortgage with an interest rate over 6%. In the last decade, as more and more homebuyers financed their purchases with mortgage rates in the 4s or lower, an interesting thing happened: We held on to these homes longer and resold them less often.

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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.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 6, 2025

Vanderbilt Mortgage & Finance , part of Warren Buffetts conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway , has been accused by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) of manipulating underwriting standards and setting borrowers up to fail in manufactured home loans. The consumer watchdog on Monday filed a lawsuit in a U.S. district court in Tennessee against Vanderbilt for purported violations of the Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z.

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Loans Finance Lending Mortgages 448

Housing Wire

JANUARY 2, 2025

Rising mortgage rates suppressed applications in the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) final mortgage applications survey index of 2024, released on Thursday. Unsurprisingly, application volume dropped significantly even with a seasonal adjustment to account for the holidays. Mortgage demand declined 21.9% from two weeks earlier during the week ending Dec. 27, the MBA reported.

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FHA loan Mortgages VA loan Loans 468

Housing Wire

JANUARY 15, 2025

Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) released an in-depth study this week in which they argue that decades of policy missteps have created a shortage of affordable housing across the U.S. and are pushing homeownership out of reach for millions of Americans. The full study , which was published in the January edition of The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, goes back 20 years to examine the origins of the current housing crisis.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 9, 2025

In 2024, more people moved out of Illinois than into the Prairie State. According to the National Movers Study conducted by United Van Lines , 60% of moves in Illinois last year were outbound, which was the second-highest percentage of outbound moves among all states. The most popular reasons for relocating out of state were family (cited by 25.9% of respondents), jobs (20.7%) and retirement (20.3%).

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Marketing Agents As-is Mortgages 418

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 7, 2025

Experian has become the latest focus of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) as the agency intensifies its regulatory and enforcement activity ahead of the impending White House transition. On Tuesday, the CFPB filed a lawsuit against Experian in a U.S. district court in California, accusing the credit reporting giant of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA).

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 19, 2025

The sight of beautiful houses in Los Angeles transports you to an idyllic version of the city found in classic Hollywood movies. But the harsh realities of its pricy housing market more resemble the citys dark underbelly reflected in a David Lynch LA noir film. And the wildfires ripping through Los Angeles could make its housing affordability crisis worse.

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New Construction Land Construction Marketing 396

Housing Wire

JANUARY 13, 2025

Youre bound to find variability in the total cost estimates related to the damage and destruction caused by the wildfires in Southern California , but some of the variations are exacerbated by what is included versus what is excluded in these estimates. According to CoreLogic , the total damage cost estimate for the Los Angeles wildfires as it relates to insured properties is currently at $30 billion.

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Development As-is Marketing 397

Housing Wire

JANUARY 20, 2025

New contracts for home purchases are coming in very low this month. We counted 10% fewer home sales for the week than the same week a year ago. In the fourth quarter of 2024, sales were coming in at 5% to 10% more than the year prior. Those sales gains have evaporated and even reversed. Buyer activity has been dropping for several weeks and there are now fewer homes in contract than a year ago.

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Sales Mortgages Staging Fixed-rate mortgage 396

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Sales

Housing Wire

JANUARY 6, 2025

The New Years week was expected to be slow, so it’s no surprise that new listings and sales are down. Those will start rebounding in next weeks data. The Christmas and New Year’s holidays fell on Wednesdays this year, which messes up two full weeks in terms of getting home sales done and tracking the numbers. At the same time, mortgage rates jumped back over 7%.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 15, 2025

The year 2025 will be transformative for real estate. Rising personal home insurance rates, fueled by escalating claims costs, increasing property values and the growing frequency of natural disasters, will all have a profound impact on market dynamics and homeowners insurance costs. For real estate professionals and mortgage lenders, these shifts present both challenges and opportunities.

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Marketing Commercial Mortgages Branding 369

Housing Wire

JANUARY 14, 2025

Does experience matter for first-year Realtors? If you dig a little deeper into the backgrounds of the agents on the Real Trends Verified list, you might think so. Most have blue-chip professional experience or personal connections with wealthy homeowners. Some have both. But Brandon Halperin had neither. He was a bartender who started his real estate career in a market that was brand new to him.

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Agents Investor MLS Branding 370

Housing Wire

JANUARY 13, 2025

There were 45,000 new listings for single-family homes across the country this week, which is a big jump. That’s 12% more sellers than a year ago. This is the trend that will be the theme for 2025. It seems more sellers are coming out every week and that will keep inventory pushing upward. Mortgage rates pushed this week close to 7.25%. Its only two weeks into January and mortgage rates have hit the high end of the range we forecasted for the entire year.

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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.

Agents

Housing Wire

JANUARY 10, 2025

While the unemployment rate was up compared to the start of the year, the job market ended the year up, with 256,000 jobs added to the economy in December according to data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Unemployment finished the year at a rate of 4.1%, down from 4.2% the month prior. The unemployment rate has hovered at 4.1% or 4.2% for the past seven months.

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Residential Construction MLS Mortgages 397

Housing Wire

JANUARY 13, 2025

The wildfires in Los Angeles have caused unspeakable damage, heartbreak and loss of life. As of Monday, the five major fires have burned about 60 square miles in the LA area and 24 people have been killed. While the current focus is rightfully on containing the blazes and protecting residents, its worth taking stock of where housing markets stand in the affected parts of the Los Angeles metro area.

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Housing Wire

JANUARY 8, 2025

The Real Brokerage is a already a top 10 company in terms of transaction volume and sides and it continued its growth this week in two of the nation’s most populous states. Miami -based Real on Tuesday announced the addition of Harvest Realty , an independent brokerage in Southern California with 550 agents. Led by the husband-and-wife team of John Zhang and Christine Li, Harvest specializes in serving the Chinese community in SoCal.

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Brokerage Technology Agents Branding 397

Housing Wire

JANUARY 15, 2025

As high home prices continue to impact the market, many homeowners are deciding to stay put in their homes. But most still have plans to purse home renovations and younger generations are leading this new focus on home improvement. Emmy Award-winning home improvement platform This Old House conducted a survey of 2,000 homeowners on their renovation plans for 2025.

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Renovation MLS Finance Closing 418

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.

Agents

Housing Wire

JANUARY 10, 2025

Todays jobs report beat expectations, and in fact, the labor data was solid for jobs week, which means mortgage rates will stay elevated because its always about labor over inflation when talking about rates. Now, the labor market is getting softer from its torrid pace of job creation and wage growth from 2021 to the end of 2023, but the labor market’s softening is right in line with my 2024 forecast for jobs.

Mortgages 488

Mortgages Residential Construction As-is 488

Housing Wire

JANUARY 9, 2025

In the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, home prices have steadily risen, although 2024 saw more stabilized levels of affordability across the nation. According to property data provider CoreLogic , 17 states posted new home-price records in November. CoreLogic released its November 2024 Home Price Index (HPI) and HPI forecast this week, which showed that U.S. single-family home prices increased by 3.4% year over year in November.

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Mortgages Marketing Sales As-is 435

Housing Wire

JANUARY 8, 2025

Higher-for-longer mortgage rates have claimed their first victim of 2025. Ally Financial announced Wednesday that it would exit the mortgage origination business as part of a broader strategy to pursue higher returns on investments. The company also plans to explore strategic alternatives for its credit card business in the first quarter of 2025. These changes are expected to result in a workforce reduction of less than 5% of Ally’s approximately 11,000 employees.

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Closing Mortgages Loan Officer Development 418

Housing Wire

JANUARY 14, 2025

When I started my first brokerage in my late twenties, I was full of ambition but had no idea what to expect. While I would like to say I knocked it out of the park on my first try, I had to make many mistakes before considering myself an expert. Despite the learning curve, becoming a broker has been one of the most fulfilling decisions of my career.

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