5M Buyers Could Save Big

5M Buyers Could Save Big

Mortgage rates have been near record lows for years, but still more than 5 million borrowers who could qualify and benefit from refinancing have not taken advantage, shows a new report from Black Knight Financial Services.

Mortgage rates have recently fallen back below 4 percent. That means about 2.4 million borrowers stand to save $200 or more on their monthly mortgage payments. An additional 1.9 borrowers could save $100 to $200 per month.

“If rates go up 50 basis points from where they are now, 2.1 million borrowers will fall out of the running; a 100-basis-point increase would eliminate another million, leaving only 2 million potential refinance candidates, the lowest population of refinance candidates in recent history,” says Ben Graboske, senior vice president at Black Knight Data & Analytics.

As such, borrowers who want to see savings better act soon. Mortgage rates are largely expected to rise this year.

While rising home prices have given more home owners equity in the last year, home owners who haven’t seen prices rise as much can take advantage of a government refinance program called HARP. The program is geared for those who have loans backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHA and who still owe more on their mortgage than their home is currently worth. Black Knight estimates that about 430,000 borrowers could still benefit from HARP.

With rising home values, Black Knight also predicts a rise in home owners taking out of home equity lines of credit, or HELOC. The popularity of HELOCs increased in 2015, up 35 percent year-over-year. About 37 million borrowers are estimated to be able to pull out an average $112,000 before hitting the amount of equity most banks require them to keep in the home.

California is the state that has the most borrowers eligible for a refinance or HELOC, according to Black Knight. Meanwhile, Texas and Florida are next with the most home equity that can be tapped.

Source: “Why Home Owners Are Leaving Billions on the Table,” CNBC (Jan. 11, 2016)

Foreign Investors See Big Opportunity in U.S.

Foreign Investors See Big Opportunity in U.S.

Foreign investors are expected to pour more money into U.S. real estate this year than they did last year, according to a newly released survey by the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate of about half of the group’s 200 members.

The survey showed that 64 percent of respondents said they intended to make modest to major increases in U.S property investments this year. Thirty-one percent said they plan to maintain their holdings or reinvest sales proceeds into other U.S. assets.

New York remains the top target market globally, according to the survey.

“This is a very strong response,” says Jim Fetgatter, chief executive of AFIRE. He noted to Bloomberg that China’s economic slowdown, Brazil’s recession, and Europe’s immigration crisis have instilled in international investors that “the U.S., at the moment, really is the safest place for them to go.”

The U.S. ranked as the country with the best opportunities for price appreciation in 2016, followed by Brazil, Spain, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, according to the survey.

Investors from Canada, Asia, Europe, and Australia in search of higher yields have been making investments in office towers, warehouses, apartment buildings, shopping malls, and hotels.

In the residential sector, foreign buyers have remained strong too. About 209,000 homes were estimated to have been sold to foreign buyers in the 12 months ending March 2015, according to a report released last year by the National Association of REALTORS®, “The 2015 Profile of Home Buying Activity of International Clients.”

What’s more, foreign buyers, on average, paid nearly $500,000 for a home – compared to about $256,000 overall for the U.S. average house price. NAR’s report showed that the four states accounting for 50 percent of international sales last year were Florida, California, Texas, and Arizona.

Source: “U.S. Real Estate to Draw More Foreigners in 2016, Survey Says,” Bloomberg (Jan. 3, 2016)

Apartment Rents Are Still Skyrocketing

Apartment Rents Are Still Skyrocketing

Apartment rents surged 4.6 percent in 2015, posting the largest gain since before the Great Recession. It’s a good time to be a landlord, but not a renter, according to the latest report out by Reis, a real estate research firm.

Apartment rents nationwide now average nearly $1,180, which is up from $1,125 a year ago, Reis reports.

The fourth quarter “wrapped up an incredible year for the apartment market, probably the strongest we’ve ever seen,” says Jay Denton, senior vice president of analytics at Axiometrics Inc., an apartment research company that also released a report showing rents rose 4.7 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

For the past six years, rents have been on the rise. Increases have ranged from 2.3 percent in 2010 to about 4 percent in the last two years.

The higher rents edge up, the more difficult it proves for young adults to save enough to become home owners. The number of first-time home buyers in the real estate market, as such, has dipped to a three-decade low, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.

The apartment market may be showing some signs of peaking, however, as a greater supply of apartment buildings hit the market. Vacancy rates edged up slightly in the fourth quarter to 4.4 percent compared to 4.3 percent in the previous quarter.

The increase in competition is causing landlords to limit the amount that they can raise prices, says Bob DeWitt, president and chief executive of GID, a Boston-based apartment owner and developer.

“We certainly believe that over the next two or three years rent trends are going to slow and in some places they may actually back up,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

Some hot apartment markets are already showing signs of slowing. For example, rents in the San Francisco area rose 7.6 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter, compared with 11.8 percent in the third quarter, according to Axiometrics. Also, rents in San Jose, Calif. rose 7.1 percent compared with 9.9 percent in the third quarter.

Source: “U.S. Apartment Rents Rose the Most Last Year Since Recession, Survey Says,” The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 6, 2016)

When Selling a Smart Home, Don’t Look Stupid

When Selling a Smart Home, Don’t Look Stupid

In more home showings today, you may need to show off a home’s high-tech features, including the ability to control lights, thermostats, and a home’s appliances from a smartphone, tablet, or central hub in the home. Smart home technology has grown drastically in recent years as the tech gets easier to use and more affordable. That has put real estate professionals at the forefront of showing off the tech behind how a home can operate smarter.

On Wednesday at CES 2016, the consumer electronics trade show taking place in Las Vegas this week, Coldwell Banker Real Estate sponsored a session — “Selling Smarter: Real Estate and The Smart Home” — that featured both leading smart home companies such as Nest and Lutron and industry experts who highlighted how “smart” has become the next big trend in real estate.

As smart home tech catches on more rapidly, some agents are increasingly talking up the selling points of smart home features in their MLS listing descriptions and taking the time to highlight the features during home tours. Some agents are even exploring staging a home with portable devices to show how buyers can make a home smarter and more connected.

After all, it’s what a growing number of buyers say they want. The Coldwell Banker Smart Home Marketplace Survey, released this week, shows many home owners would be willing to pay extra to “smart stage” their home. Of more than 4,000 Americans polled, more than half of home owners — 54 percent — say they would purchase or install smart home products if they were selling their home and knew that doing so would make it sell faster. What’s more, 65 percent of those home owners said they would be willing to pay $1,500 or more to add such products.

The products drawing the most attention to smart home technology, according to survey respondents, are centered on security (such as locks and alarm systems), temperature controls (thermostats and fans), lighting systems, and safety (including fire and carbon monoxide detectors and night lights).

Early expectations were that the smart home would become more mainstream by 2020 or later. But the smart home is here now and abundant products are available to make homes more connected than ever, said Sean Blankenship, CMO of Coldwell Banker Real Estate at Wednesday’s session. The technology has become easier to operate, more connected to other tech devices, and more affordable, panelists said. Coldwell Banker Real Estate is cosponsoring the CES 2016 Smart Home Marketplace, which nearly doubled in size from last year.

“The Jetsons are here,” said Michael Smith, vice president of sales at Lutron Electronics, a leader in smart home lighting controls. “They are your next-door neighbors now.”

The technology is expected to continue to increase in popularity as more devices such as those from Nest, Amazon’s Echo, and Lowe’s Iris, among others, join a growing number of partnerships that are expected to broaden the connections that can be made at home.

As for agents, those who fail to keep up with the Jetsons may find themselves missing an important value differentiator in presenting a home.

For example, Danny Hertzberg, a sales associate with Coldwell Banker Real Estate in Miami Beach, Fla., said he’s been to a listing appointment where the selling agent didn’t even know how to turn on the home’s lights because she was not familiar with the smart home technology.

“Smart home technology has become an aspect of differentiation,” Hertzberg said. “It’s one way to stand out when competing against similar properties. … It’s important for agents to understand the technology because your clients most likely do. It’s your job to add value and to be able to explain how the smart home could make buyers’ lives easier.”

—By REALTOR® Magazine

Character Limit on Tweets to Expand

Character Limit on Tweets to Expand

Twitter users are accustomed to the 140-character limit. But it looks likely that they won’t have to boil down their thoughts to pithy phrases much longer. Yes, the social media platform is considering expanding their character limit. A lot.

Twitter says they plan to release a new feature that would allow users to write longer tweets at the end of the first quarter. There is talk that the new character limit will be a whopping 10,000. Get ready for the Twitter novella.

Both the launch date and the character limit might change as Twitter considers how the design of this expansion might look. Previous changes that allowed for more content or bigger pictures reduced user engagement in the past. To counter that, tweets may continue to display just 140 characters, but end with a place to click for expanded and longer content. This would keep timelines neat while allowing for longer posts. Twitter is also working to contain the possibilities this offers to spammers, with a much larger area to tag other users.

Source: “Twitter Considering 10,000-Character Limit for Tweets,” re/code (Jan. 5, 2016).

The ‘Missing Link’ in Housing

The ‘Missing Link’ in Housing

For years, first-time home buyers have made up around 40 percent of all buyers. However, since the recession, this percentage has been shrinking. In 2015, they made up just under 30 percent of the market share, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.

The decrease of first-time home buyers will have broad economic implications, housing analysts say. Without first-time home buyers, an entire cycle of home ownership is stalled. Current home owners are usually unable to sell their homes and move up. And without move-up transactions, many older people can’t sell and downsize for retirement.

“In terms of the real-estate recovery, the missing link is first-time home buyers,” says Rob Chrane, founder and CEO of Down Payment Resource. “They’ve been at record lows. Part of it is legitimate reasons. Part of it is just ignorance.”

It’s not that millennials don’t show an interest in home ownership: according to a survey conducted by Fannie Mae, 56 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 plan to buy a home next time they move.

But housing analysts say that the real estate industry has an important part in bringing them into home ownership by driving home the financial benefits and teaching them about ways to make home ownership possible.

“Ignorance about the process, concern about the economic outlook, and some skepticism about ownership are all hobbling the return of first-timers,” according to a recent article by MarketWatch.

Only 23 percent from Fannie Mae’s survey said they were familiar with low-down payment programs, such as those offered by the Federal Housing Administration. Consumers believed on average that they need 16 percent for a down payment in order to qualify for a mortgage, according to the survey. Lower-educated and lower-income consumers, renters, African-Americans, and seniors were more likely to assume they needed a higher down payment to qualify for a mortgage.

But in reality, homes can be purchased with as little as a 3 percent down payment. Rules enacted in 2015 that decreased the amount of mortgage insurance borrowers must pay on FHA loans and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lowering down payment minimums may have boosted first-time participation slightly, say housing analysts.

Chrane urges the real estate industry to educate would-be buyers on the possibilities to home ownership.

“There are more options out there than they realize, and they really need to look into them before they give up,” says Chrane.

Source: “Why First-Time Home Buyers Are Staying on the Sidelines,” MarketWatch (Dec. 31, 2015)