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One month ago, Nationstar Mortgage celebrated the fact that its revenue grew significantly in the fourth quarter, climbing nearly 46% year-over-year. Now, Nationstar will have a new person in charge of that money as the nonbank announced Wednesday that it named Amar Patel, who previously spent 10 years with the company, as its interim chief financial officer. …read more

From:: Real Estate Wire

Investors saw a slight dip in the single-family rental market, however overall, many metros are still hotspots for investment. In 2017, 86% of the markets analyzed saw a rise in fair market rents even while average wage growth outpaced rent growth in 67% of markets — a recipe for sustainable growth in the rental market. …read more

From:: Real Estate Wire

By Susanne Dwyer

Collaboration with Google Boosts Interest in Real Estate Services

As in most industries, data has changed the way real estate professionals do business. From home valuations to local school, business and crime statistics, today’s brokers and agents are armed with a lot of information—consumers have come to expect nothing less.

While the industry has come a long way in the data arena, a new player stands to raise the bar by empowering agents with credible, three-year projections of a home’s value. San Francisco-based HouseCanary is a real estate analytics company using data science to accurately value and forecast over 18,000 U.S. residential markets and 100 million properties. In January, HouseCanary announced $33 million in funding from several top-level tech players—including Hillspire and Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s family office. Last week, HouseCanary announced its collaboration with Google Cloud Platform Commercial Datasets, adding its home price indices to Google’s service providing premium data to financial institutions.

Big names, big money and big data. The question is, what does HouseCanary mean to the residential real estate professional?

Let’s start with the most important component: the quality of the data. In an industry where accuracy is paramount and valuations have been suspect, data is only as good as its precision. HouseCanary believes it has resolved the inaccurate data dilemma by applying complex algorithms to ingesting, scrubbing, organizing and analyzing data on 100 million U.S. residential properties to create a single source of reliable, accurate insight.

“Other home valuation methods are based largely on historical comparable sales,” explains HouseCanary CEO Jeremy Sicklick. “HouseCanary measures price movements on every residential block in the country, allowing for precise valuations today and three years into the future. Our algorithms combine 40 years of history, 1 billion residential transactions and hundreds of proprietary calculations influencing home values, such as capital markets, jobs, traffic…even views from a property’s backyard.”

Such high-caliber data elevates the real estate professional’s role as information provider and trusted advisor. In markets challenged by low inventory, rising prices and increasing interest rates, the ability to provide prospects and clients with a three-year forecast of a property’s value serves as a clear competitive advantage.

“Giving REALTORS® instant access to accurate house value and the ‘why behind the value’—like market demand, months-of-supply, macroeconomic data, even rental values—allows REALTORS® to become a trusted source of data unattainable elsewhere, and helps them guide sellers to the optimal listing price,” says Sicklick. “We hear all the time that our data allows them to ‘prove their gut’ on property prices and local market trends.”

So, while HouseCanary has established itself with lenders, real estate investors and appraisers, it is also quickly forging new roads for real estate agents, providing them with important tools to compete on the frontlines for listings. Agents can bring their local expertise to HouseCanary reports by adding or removing properties or property details to instantly adjust a home’s comparable value. HouseCanary reports can also be personalized, branded and printed, as well as shared through its mobile-friendly app.

“Our rich reports are accessible instantly, customized with …read more

From:: Real Estate News

By Susanne Dwyer

Existing-home sales sputtered in February as lower-than-low inventory kept a lid on activity, the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) reports. Existing-home sales totaled 5.48 million, a 3.7 percent slip from a decade-high in January and a 5.4 percent hike from one year prior.

“REALTORS® are reporting stronger foot traffic from a year ago, but low supply in the affordable price range continues to be the pest that’s pushing up price growth and pressuring the budgets of prospective buyers,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist of NAR. “Newly listed properties are being snatched up quickly so far this year and leaving behind minimal choices for buyers trying to reach the market.”

Though existing-home inventory expanded to 1.75 million in February, supply is still 6.4 percent below one year prior—and last month marked the 21st month in a row of the downtrend, according to the report.

“The bad news is that February existing-home sales are down 3.7 percent from January, which more than eradicates the growth in sales we saw in January,” says Joseph Kirchner, senior economist at realtor.com®. “The good news is that sales are up 5.4 percent from a year ago.

“The culprits for the reported drop are declining affordability and lack of inventory,” Kirchner says. “There are plenty of buyers in the market, but they are unable to find the homes they want at the prices they can afford. These affordability challenges are the result of inventory shortages—which leads to bidding wars—and rising mortgage rates, resulting in higher monthly payments. We see the largest inventory shortages among the most affordable homes, which also saw the greatest decline in sales with homes under $100,000 down 15 percent from a year ago.”

“Our biggest challenge is lack of inventory in the entry and move-up price points,” confirmed Rei Mesa, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Florida Realty, in a recent interview for RISMedia’s soon-to-be-released 2017 Power Broker Report. “There is demand, but a great deal of it is pent-up. This is a challenge for all of us, not just my firm.”

“We are experiencing a frenzied market for homebuyers trying to get a home,” echoed Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate. “We are virtually sold out of inventory, so each new listing is receiving multiple offers. With such a severe shortage of inventory, it is now creating seller gridlock in the more affordable and mid-price ranges. Sellers are afraid to put their home on the market because it will sell instantly, and they are faced with trying to win in a multiple-offer situation to get their next home.”

Existing homes in February lasted just 45 days on the market, down substantially from 59 days one year prior. Forty-two percent were on the market for less than one month. Months supply of inventory is currently 3.8. Data from realtor.com show the markets with the shortest days on market were again San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif. (23 days), San-Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, Calif. (27 days), Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif. (33 days) and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash. (36 days), in addition to Boulder, …read more

From:: Real Estate News

By Susanne Dwyer

Existing-home sales sputtered in February as lower-than-low inventory kept a lid on activity, the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) reports. Existing-home sales totaled 5.48 million, a 3.7 percent slip from a decade-high in January and a 5.4 percent hike from one year prior.

“REALTORS® are reporting stronger foot traffic from a year ago, but low supply in the affordable price range continues to be the pest that’s pushing up price growth and pressuring the budgets of prospective buyers,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist of NAR. “Newly listed properties are being snatched up quickly so far this year and leaving behind minimal choices for buyers trying to reach the market.”

Though existing-home inventory expanded to 1.75 million in February, supply is still 6.4 percent below one year prior—and last month marked the 21st month in a row of the downtrend, according to the report.

“The bad news is that February existing-home sales are down 3.7 percent from January, which more than eradicates the growth in sales we saw in January,” says Joseph Kirchner, senior economist at realtor.com®. “The good news is that sales are up 5.4 percent from a year ago.

“The culprits for the reported drop are declining affordability and lack of inventory,” Kirchner says. “There are plenty of buyers in the market, but they are unable to find the homes they want at the prices they can afford. These affordability challenges are the result of inventory shortages—which leads to bidding wars—and rising mortgage rates, resulting in higher monthly payments. We see the largest inventory shortages among the most affordable homes, which also saw the greatest decline in sales with homes under $100,000 down 15 percent from a year ago.”

“Our biggest challenge is lack of inventory in the entry and move-up price points,” confirmed Rei Mesa, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Florida Realty, in a recent interview for RISMedia’s soon-to-be-released 2017 Power Broker Report. “There is demand, but a great deal of it is pent-up. This is a challenge for all of us, not just my firm.”

“We are experiencing a frenzied market for homebuyers trying to get a home,” echoed Lennox Scott, chairman and CEO of John L. Scott Real Estate. “We are virtually sold out of inventory, so each new listing is receiving multiple offers. With such a severe shortage of inventory, it is now creating seller gridlock in the more affordable and mid-price ranges. Sellers are afraid to put their home on the market because it will sell instantly, and they are faced with trying to win in a multiple-offer situation to get their next home.”

Existing homes in February lasted just 45 days on the market, down substantially from 59 days one year prior. Forty-two percent were on the market for less than one month. Months supply of inventory is currently 3.8. Data from realtor.com show the markets with the shortest days on market were again San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif. (23 days), San-Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, Calif. (27 days), Vallejo-Fairfield, Calif. (33 days) and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash. (36 days), in addition to Boulder, …read more

From:: Finance and Economy

By Susanne Dwyer

Editor’s Note: This was originally published on RISMedia’s blog, Housecall. See what else is cookin’ now at blog.rismedia.com:

• Repair or Replace: Tips for Knowing Your Best Option
• Know Your Real Estate: 5 Researching Tips for Homebuyers
• Why Are We Seeing Fewer Appraisers in the Housing Industry

Too many mortgage lenders played it fast and loose in the lead-up to the crash, then wound it up tight when the inevitable struck—and in roughly the decade since, too few have loosened their grip.

A research paper recently published by the Urban Institute classifies today’s credit environment as “extraordinarily tight”—so tight, in fact, that more than one million mortgages were lost in 2015, the majority of which would have gone to homebuyers with credit scores below 660.

“Mortgage lenders are taking less than half the credit risk they were taking in 2001, a period of reasonable lending standards,” writes author Laurie Goodman. “Tight credit means that in the future, fewer households will have the opportunity to build wealth by owning their home, contributing to growing economic inequality.”

The paper illustrates stark differences in the lending landscape between 2001 and 2015. Upwards of 5.7 million home sales occurred in 2001, while some 5.5 million occurred in 2015. In 2015, however, mortgages only totaled 3.5 million, compared to 4.6 million in 2001. The former is a 4 percent decline; the latter, 32 percent.

What’s more: In 2001, more than 30 percent of borrowers had credit scores lower than 660—a share that has dropped to less than half, at 14 percent in 2015. Access to credit has not only remained narrow, but has also become closed off completely to those with subpar scores.

Why have lenders been reluctant to relax their standards? According to Goodman, “credit is very tight in large part because originators are putting credit overlays on top of the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHA underwriting box”—in other words, imposing a second set of rules.

“Why would originators knowingly drive away business? Because they are concerned that the costs of producing and servicing mortgages that are less pristine are higher than what they can earn on the mortgages,” Goodman writes.

Lenders are apprehensive specifically about the cost of servicing—as well as the possibility of having to repurchase—delinquent mortgages, and liability, especially as it pertains to the False Claims Act.

To date, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have made more strides in alleviating those concerns than the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)—a problem, because lower-income homebuyers rely more on FHA-backed mortgages.

“The inability of the FHA to match the GSEs’ progress has a particular impact on access to mortgage credit for low- and moderate-income borrowers, most of whom cannot put down a large down payment,” writes Goodman. Though the FHA did lower mortgage insurance premiums in 2015, more action is needed.

“Until the FHA resolves the issues causing lender overlays, it is hard to see how the credit box can open considerably for such borrowers.”

Crunched credit has broader implications, as well. Minorities are set to …read more

From:: Real Estate News

By Susanne Dwyer

Spring is here, and so is spring home-buying and -selling. Buyers and sellers preparing to take action this season should put those plans into play now—according to Zillow Group’s Report on Consumer Housing Trends, the No. 1 regret for both buyers and sellers is “not starting their home search or prepping their home to sell soon enough.”

“This spring, both buyers and sellers should be prepared for fast-moving sales, intense negotiations, and even bidding wars,” says Jeremy Wacksman, CMO at Zillow Group. “Home shoppers and sellers are motivated to become more strategic and knowledgeable about what’s happening in their neighborhood. Understanding whether you are in a buyer’s or a seller’s environment will help you manage your expectations and will give you insight into what you’re going to need to bring to the table in order to close the deal.”

For buyers, that means:

Keep your options open. More than half (52 percent) of homebuyers surveyed in the report said they also considered renting, and more than one-third (37 percent) of first-time buyers seriously considered continuing to rent. Savvy shoppers should have a Plan B in place, hoping to buy if it works out, but willing to sign a lease for a home if they don’t make a deal by the time they need to move.

Be realistic with your budget. Once you set it, stick to it. First-time home buyers are more likely to exceed their budget than repeat buyers (39 percent versus 26 percent), according to the report. Before you meet with a lender to determine how much mortgage you’ll be approved for, take a good look at your individual finances and spending preferences to determine the monthly payment range that you feel you can comfortably afford. (Use Zillow’s mortgage calculator to help with you with the math.)

Get your financing squared away early. Plan to meet a few lenders four to six months ahead of when you’re planning to buy to ensure you can make a competitive offer quickly when you find your dream home. The majority (82 percent) of buyers get pre-approved, with 77 percent getting pre-approval from a lender before finding a home on which they are interested in placing an offer.

Find an agent with a winning track record. Take the time to find an agent who has expertise in fast negotiation, leveraging escalation clauses, and winning bidding wars. Only 46 percent of buyers got the first home on which they made an offer, according to the report, demonstrating that competition is now part of the process. Use search tools, like Zillow’s Agent Finder, to choose an agent based on sales and listing activity, area of expertise and reputation.

Communication is key. Make sure your preferred method—and frequency—of communication matches that of your agent. One-third (33 percent) of all buyers surveyed in the report preferred phone calls with their agent over emailing (21 percent) or texting (15 percent). Buyers can use the agent reviews on Zillow to learn more about prospective agents and their clients’ experiences.

And …read more

From:: Real Estate News