Real Estate News & Tips
As of Feb 23. 2025_________> Best Coming Up Home Colors
As of February 24, 2025 ——>January Sales Fell 5 % MoM.
As of Jan. 7, 2025—————> Tips on home maintenance
As of. Jan 7, 2025—————-> Pending and existing home sales are encouraging
As of Dec 19, 2024—————> Fed cut rate by 25 basis points
As of Dec 13, 2024—————-> Home buyers expectation for 2025
As of Dec 11, 2024—————-> Top housing market for 2025
As of Nov 2, 2024——————-> Top 10 Issues That Will Impact Real Estate in 2025
As of Oct 22, 2024——————> How to deal with an outdated kitchen.
As of Oct 22, 2024——————> Benjamin Moore’s 2025 Color of the Year
As of Oct 17, 2024 —————-> Hispanic Ownership up
As of Sept 27, 2024—————-> Home Maintenance Tips
As of Sept 26, 2024—————-> Outdoor Upgrades That Make your Home More Valuable.
As of Sept 21, 2024 —————-> What the Fed rate cut mean to you?
As of Sept 21, 2024 —————-> Existing homes sales disappointed.
As of Sept 10, 2024 —————-> MBS Highway’s September Survey Results.
As of Sept 5, 2024:
"Jobs week" (JOLTs, ADP, Challenger etc.) has so far delivered a very consistent message - hiring is slowing and layoffs are rising. We know that rate cuts will start on September 18. But whether we'll get a 25 or 50 basis point cut will depend on the strength of the Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report out today. Hope you enjoy my weekly update on all things real estate!
#housingmarket #realestatenews #housingmarketupdates #realestatemarket #mortgage #realestate #whatsupwithrealestate
Cultivating and maintaining good credit is crucial when it comes to securing a loan with a favorable interest rate. Top tips include: always pay your credit card bill on time (more than the minimum where possible), limit hard inquiries into your credit score, prioritize paying down debt, and avoid closing your oldest credit cards!
#realestate #realestateagent #buying #selling #listreports #realestateexpert #fhm903 #financehub #dreamhome #homeownership #homebuying #homesearch #buyingahome
As of Sept 4, 2024 —->>>>. Mortgage rates drop ahead of the Fed.
As of August 23. 2024.
What a week! We had a huge downward revision to the BLS jobs growth figures, the Fed minutes explicitly said that a rate cut on Sept 18 was likely, and average mortgage rates moved below 6.5% (and are now 1% lower than they were a year ago).
July housing starts disappoint. New home starts fell 7% month-over-month to 1.24 million units (annualized) — their lowest level since July 2019 (excluding the onset of COVID). [Much more on this later.] [Census Bureau]
818,000 jobs — GONE. Every quarter we get the QCEW (Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages). The latest QCEW showed that the job gains previously reported by the BLS between March 2023 and March 2024 had been revised lower by 818,000!
TP: Jerome Powell and the other Fed members will have to take this into account. Instead of average monthly job gains of 242K, it was actually 174K — a downward revision of 28%.
Fed minutes let the cut out of the bag. The notes from the Fed’s last meeting (held on July 30–31) included a big reveal: “The vast majority [of Fed members] observed that, if the data continued to come in about as expected, it would likely be appropriate to ease policy at the next meeting.”
TP: Keep in mind that the last Fed meeting happened before: 1) the July unemployment rate jumped to 4.3%, 2) July CPI came in lower than expected, and 3) the huge, downward QCEW revisions to jobs growth. It’s looking more and more likely that Mr. Powell might have something exciting to say at Jackson Hole.
Million dollar listings. They aren’t so rare anymore. According to Redfin, 8.5% of homes in the US are worth more than $1 million. That percentage was 4% before the pandemic sent home prices rocketing nationwide. [Redfin]
TP: This is really just an attention-grabbing alternative to saying that prices have risen a lot. Think about it: if we assume that prices rose 40% during the pandemic, that means that any home that was worth between $700K-$999K before COVID is now valued above $1 million. And, of course, the ones that were worth more than $1 million before COVID are still worth more than $1 million. In other words, that percentage will only rise (unless prices begin plunging).
Existing home sales rebound, sort of. July existing home sales rose 1.3% month-over month, (-2.5% year-over-year) to 3.95 million units (seasonally-adjusted and annualized). It looks like transaction activity has finally bottomed, but we’re still deep in the trough. The median sales price fell 1.0% month-over-month to $423K, but was still up 4.2% year-over-year. [NAR]
TP: Over the last 2.5 years, existing home sales have declined month-over-month in 25 out of 30 months. But with the sharp decline in mortgage rates since May, the moribund housing market is showing signs of life.
Confidence rising; competition falling. It’s very normal for competitive ferocity to begin waning in July/August. The latest Realtors Confidence Index showed a decline in the % of homes sold above list price (29% in June → 24% in July), the number of offers per sale (2.9 → 2.7), and the number of homes sold in less than a month (65% → 62%). But unusually for this time of the year, more Realtors see rising buyer demand in the next 3 months (13% → 16%). [NAR]
The “hottest” zips. The ZIPs in Realtor.com’s Top 10 are seeing nearly 4x as many views per listing and selling 1 month faster than the typical home nationally. All of them are located in Midwestern or Northeastern metros. #1 was Gahanna, OH (Columbus). #2 was Ballwin, MO (St. Louis). #3 was Salem, MA (Boston/Cambridge). [Realtor.com]
Starts & Permits: Long-term Perspective
Housing starts disappointed in July 2024, falling 7% month-over-month to 1.24 million units (SAAR). But let’s zoom out and look at housing starts (this is single family + multifamily) over the last 60 years. Three things stand out from the graph below:
New home construction is wildly cyclical
New home construction really hasn’t grown in 6 decades, but
Our population has risen by 150 million over the same time period!
So what’s the problem? It’s a lot of things. As I’ve written previously, the Top 20 builders have been rapidly gaining nationwide market share (>50% in 2023 vs. 33% in 2013). Most of them are listed companies (they have a stock price), which means they really care about margins and earnings growth. The shortage of available housing is GOOD for them. Nobody (including the NAHB) talks about this.
Second, it’s become far more complicated to build new homes from a regulatory standpoint (takes longer, costs more). Third, labor shortages. The NAHB talks about these. Let’s look at the impact those last two have had on the time it takes to deliver a new home (or apartment building).
Stages in New Home Construction
Application for Construction Permit
Permit Approval (2–12 months after application depending on where/what you want to build)
Start (2.8 months after approval for MF, 1.3 months after approval for SFH)
Under Construction
Completion (17 months after start for MF, 8.3 months after start for SFH)
What does this mean? From the time that your new apartment complex gets its permit approved to the building being completed could take 20 months. If you include the time waiting for your application to be approved, it could easily be 2 years.
These timelines keep getting stretched out. Just look at the average number of months from Start to Completion for Multifamily buildings over the last 50 years. 17 months is a record! This tells a familiar story of labor and material shortages.
Note: Obviously, a big part of the recent rise is COVID-related. I would hope to see that figure drop in 2023. Even if it does, it will still be very high relative to history.
