With the great housing reform debate underway, the White House recently weighed in with President Obama’s plan for the future of housing finance in America. The President laid out a vision for housing finance, with key elements similar to those embraced by many stakeholders in the nation’s housing finance system. This is an issue that affects the well-being of every American, whether a homeowner or a renter, and we welcome the President’s attention and leadership.
3 Multiple Personality Market Musts for Smart Sellers
In the dramatic world of the theater, they say “it ain’t over ‘till the fat lady sings.“ In the dramatic world of the real estate market, headlines touting multiple offers and appreciating home values can feel like a premature declaration that the recession is over to some homeowners.
As you’ve probably heard a million times, real estate is hyperlocal. And it’s true – in many, many markets across the country, a mood of exuberant recovery has eclipsed the recession era’s stagnation, doom and gloom. But the fat lady hasn’t sung for the 10 million homeowners who are still upside down on their mortgages, according to CoreLogic, or for sellers whose homes aren’t following the national trend of flying off the market after receiving dozens of contingency-free, cash offers.
Here are a few multiple personality market musts for smart sellers…
Real Estate’s New Big Buyers: Middle-Aged Women
Middle-aged women have become the fastest growing group of single female home owners, according to a new study by the real estate brokerage Redfin. The number of 45- to 54-year-old single female home owners has soared 120 percent from 1982 to 2012.
The Redfin report revealed the top U.S. cities for single successful women, factoring in the percentage of women with four-year college degrees, percentage of women with a salary greater than $65,000, and the percentage of women who are single between 25 to 39 years old.
Read the rankings and more details…
And see where Seattle ranks!
The U.S. Housing Market and Its Huge Geographic Differences
The U.S. housing market can no longer be painted with one brush, as the housing recovery is playing out very differently across the country. Here are some anecdotes gleaned from a consulting team…
It Pays for Landlords to Qualify as a ‘Real Estate Professional’
Until this year, landlords who earned profits from their rentals didn’t have to worry about whether they qualified as a “real estate professional” for tax purposes. The only reason to seek to qualify as such was to avoid application of the incredibly complex passive loss rules.
These rules are designed to prevent landlords from deducting rental losses from their other non-rental income. So if you didn’t have rental losses, these rules didn’t concern you and you could care less whether or not you were a “real estate professional.”
This has now changed. Qualifying as a real estate professional will now benefit many landlords who earn profits from their rentals because, by doing so, they won’t have to pay the Net Investment Income tax (NII tax) on them.
Jobs Market Not Helping Housing
The housing recovery is juicing the jobs market, but the jobs market isn’t returning the favor, according to Jed Kolko, chief economist at Trulia.
Riding on rising home sales, residential construction employment has shot up 4.5 percent year over year, far outpacing the national employment growth rate of 1.7 percent, he said.
But a high unemployment rate is holding back housing demand, Kolko noted, saying 25 to 34-year-olds in particular are suffering from the still-weak jobs climate, with only 75 percent of that cohort employed.
Multitask At Your Own Risk
Bernice Ross shares some secrets to success and how to shift from what you ‘could do’ to what you ‘should do.’
Home Prices Climb in Seattle and Beyond
Home prices in 20 major U.S. cities increased 12.2 percent in May compared to a year ago, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index released on Tuesday.
And according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, prices locally continue to rise. The median price for last month’s closed sales area-wide was $279,950, which is about 9.8 percent higher than the year-ago.
The red hot housing market is prompting some realtors to get creative to satisfy eager home buyers that are tired of losing bids on their home of their choice.
New figures from the MLS also show pending sales during June jumped 10.6 percent from twelve months ago as buyers scrambled to lock in loan rates and bid on a limited supply of homes.
Which city is the hardest-working in the U.S.?
You may be surprised!
Credit the coffee or gray weather keeping people inside and at their desks. The city that has been crowned America’s hardest working city is … Seattle. The blog Movoto, which covers “the lighter side of real estate,” says factors including average hours worked per week, unemployment rate, employed workers per hour and lack of sleep earned the Emerald City the No. 1 spot on its list of America’s 50 hardest-working cities.
3 Real Estate Scams to Avoid
Though the housing recovery is trucking along, that doesn’t mean real estate scams have gone away. Home owners have been duped out of an average of $4,000 to $5,000 from scams, but even five-figure losses aren’t uncommon for those who have fallen prey to fake loan modifications and other housing fraud. Forbes recently highlighted three of the most common real estate scams today.
