As housing inventory continues to dwindle and prices continue to surge, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has expressed more concern based on the pattern of sharply increasing inflation and how it could further add to the woes of the overall real estate market. She has said that short term inflation i...
In earlier blog posts we had informed you of ongoing class action suits against the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) in a suit alleging anti-trust violations against NAR and the 20 largest Multiple Listing Service (MLS) boards in the Country. Recently there was a settlement reached between N...
Lately there’s been a lot of news about “hacking” and it’s nothing new. For years, banks, financial institutions, websites, heck…even the IRS have been hacked. It’s too early to know if this will ever be stopped because as technology to protect information gets better, so does the techno...
Even as mortgage rates creep up, with today’s fixed-rate 30 year average at 3.38% they are still incredibly low by any measure, but the panic days of the pandemic may be in our rear view. Looking back, it was only in January of 2021 that rates dropped to the lowest ever recorded levels, and while ...
It seems that the chickens may have come home to roost when it pertains to real estate and the continued price escalation of housing. As the pandemic took hold and despite some ghastly predictions as to the fate of housing, the real estate market reacted swiftly and has showed no signs of letting up...
There's a new community outside of San Diego slated to open its first phase later this year with pre-sales beginning in June. It is called “3Roots” located in Mira Mesa, CA. Only 200 homes are expected to be delivered this year, from the total of 1,800 by 2025, has an interest list of already 14...
Covid changed a lot of things, some bad and some not. The eviction moratorium that was fist enacted under the CARES Act in March of 2020 was intended to be a temporary measure that did not apply to all residential housing, but only to properties tied to Federal assistance programs or those funded th...
As prices continue to rise and inventory remains critically low, home Sellers are getting the feeling that there is less and less they need to do in order to make their home attractive to potential Buyers. The practice of “flipping” homes has been around for a long while, but the prices and more...
Despite what the old saying suggests, perhaps the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. In their most recent earnings call and report, iBuying pioneer Opendoor® announce a $270 million dollar loss for Q1 of this tear, which represents an eye-popping 421% increase over the loss recorded in...
It’s fair to say that buying a home or a property is an arduous task for just about everyone, but if you suffer from bad or even just lower credit, the challenge becomes even more cumbersome. Obviously, credit scores are one the factors used to help to determine one’s ability to repay a loan or ...
If ever there were a situation that literally defined the term “The Devil is in the Details”, the part about payment of commission on a sale that does not happen would definitely fit the bill. The accompanying article is about a situation that arose in Canada wherein the Broker did, in fact, sue...
A Federal Appeals Court Judge for the District of Columbia has ruled that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) overstepped their authority by issuing and subsequently extending an eviction moratorium as a result of the pandemic. Judge Dabney Friedrich said that the CDC only has discrete powers that...
Real estate giant Zillow® has filed a motion to dismiss a recently filed lawsuit by real estate upstart REX® claiming their practices violate anti-trust laws, and in conjunction with the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) claim further that their combined practices continue to keep real esta...
In a not so shocking letter to economic advice expert Quentin Fottrelle, aka “The Moneyist” with Market Watch a woman asked if her now ex-boyfriend is entitled to half of the home she purchased 12 years ago. They’d been dating for 13 years. Apparently, he felt some entitlement based on noting ...
The challenge of low housing inventory continues and so do the inevitable bidding wars that ensue as a result. Suggestions on how to win a bidding war come in from every angle, and disturbingly one of the primary methods touted by industry professionals, Realtors®, and Agents alike continues to be ...
Recently we have written on the current administration’s plan to assist first-time home Buyers with a credit of $15,000, which was not intended to be a Tax credit, but actually funds are available at the closing table as down payment assistance. To no one’s surprise, the plan that was touted as ...
In the past, real estate activity that was considered a “boom” was often more prevalent in only a handful of States like NY, CA, AZ, FL to name a select few. The difference this time around is that the pressure created by the nearly unprecedented combination of historical low interest rates, low...
“Normal” markets in real estate have enough competition from investors, which already casts a wide net of classes, but as prices have continued to skyrocket, interest rates remained low along with bond yields, along comes another challenge. Institutional investors can be comprised of REIT’s (R...
The news of the FDA and the CDC temporarily pausing the use of Johnson & Johnson® vaccines has caused a blip on the market radar screens and of course has created anxiety for that part of the demographic that has recently had it and now awaits the study results and to see if they become symptom...
The housing shortage that began in 2020 was not predicted by many, and in fact there were more predictions of a glut of properties available as a result of the fallout from covid and lockdowns across the Country. The inventory crisis has effected both re-sale properties, new construction, and the re...