Millennials Continue Moving to Suburbs
Debt and high home-prices are motivating factors for millennials to move away from cities, and into suburban areas. While rates remain near an all-time low, opportunities abound for more space at affordable prices. This CNBC article with accompanying video details the results of a recent survey.
Read MoreAfrican American? Pick Me! I Promise I’ll Respond.
OK, everyone knows that there’s still discrimination. In fact, there probably always will be. But in a slightly weird piece of data, from a slightly weird source (phys.org), it would seem that the big discrimination still happening in the mortgage industry comes down to responding slowly, or not at all. The research claims that being…
Read MoreThinking on Stephen Karam’s New Play: The Humans
This is slightly off-topic for this blog, but I think it has some relevance, and I think that for those of us who think long-term, it might be very important to the industry. The New Yorker has a piece on the play, which focuses on the challenges of longer life, and the strange blight that seems…
Read MoreTime to Invest? Look at a HELOC.
I’m not an investment advisor — so don’t take this as advice; this is just me thinking out loud. Berkshire-Hathaway’s shareholder letter came out last week. As always, it’s well worth the read, if for no other reason than to be well humored by the Oracle of Omaha. But it did get me thinking: Warren doesn’t believe…
Read More5% Housing Price Increase This Year
Crystal balls are great. Averaging everyone’s crystal ball together makes them even better. That’s kind of the way I look at polls about the future. Kind of a meta crystal ball. And to make things even more meta, Reuters has gone and looked at more than one poll! So, never mind a pinch, take this prediction…
Read MoreWhere’s The Debt?
MarketWatch reporter Andrea Riquier wrote a great article last week, covering the New York Fed’s quarterly report. She makes a lot of great points, and the article is well worth the read. But my question is, where’s the debt? Overall debt is down from $12.68 to $12.12 trillion. But mortgage debt is down from $10 to…
Read MoreMore Than 50% of Adults Have Subscription VOD
Four out of five U.S. homes have a DVR, subscribe to Netflix, or use video-on-demand (VOD) service from their TV provider. That’s up from three out of four, last year. And, more significantly, now more than half of adults (57%) get a subscription VOD service (Netflix, Hulu, etc…). What, may you ask, does this have…
Read MoreThe Bloomberg Week Ahead
I just discovered the coolest thing — The Bloomberg Week Ahead. Maybe you folks already know about it, but it’s news to me, and it seems excellent. Granted, it’s not completely real-estate focused, but it does hit major economic highlights, including those pertaining to mortgage and real estate (e.g., it teed up the National Association of Realtors…
Read MoreLooking for The Next Detroit? Try This Hot Spot.
My article on Tuesday may have gotten you thinking about putting your money to work somewhere harder in real estate. And that may, in turn, have gotten you lamenting the fact that you totally missed out on the Detroit recovery. Well, first of all, the Detroit recovery may not have been quite as solid as…
Read MorePermits Down in January
The future of the housing market remains precarious — and remains precariously tied to the overall economy. As I wrote last week, there are a number of reasons that housing starts may be behind schedule — not least of all, a shortage in the labor market. January was also a rough month from a weather…
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