Free Republic

The powerful National Association of Realtors last week agreed to settle a big lawsuit and change the way real estate agents get paid — from a standard commission to something truly negotiable. Why it matters: The deal could open up a tightly controlled market to genuine competition, and create opportunities for new players and business models in a relatively old-fashioned world. It could do for real estate what the internet did for stock trading — bring down broker fees. The impact: That'll likely mean lower costs for sellers, who brought the lawsuit as a class action. The impact on buyers...

African Americans are trailing their white counterparts in homeownership across age groups at a time when high mortgage rates, elevated prices and stifled supply has made the dream of owning a home out of reach for millions of Americans. A third of Black millennials—the age group born between 1981 to 1996—own their home compared to two-thirds of white Americans. Meanwhile, for those between 43 and 58 years old, or Gen Xers, the situation is slightly better with 52 percent of Black Americans possessing a property compared to 80 percent of their white counterparts, and for boomers, the data breaks down...

Homeownership has long been a cornerstone of the American dream. It symbolizes independence, financial security and prosperity — but is it a dream worth chasing? Not if you ask real estate investment guru Grant Cardone. “Buying a home without a doubt is the worst investment people can make, yet it’s also the most common one,” he wrote in an Instagram post earlier this month. “Is it because [of] the lack of knowledge people have when it comes to financial education? Or is it just because too many people are trying to fulfill their American dream?” Whatever the reason, Cardone says...

@LeadingReport BREAKING: Nebraska senator has introduced a bill that could make Nebraska the first in the country to forbid out-of-state hedge funds and other corporate entities from buying up single-family properties.

Let's be honest: While I intend to buy a house next year, and have just met my savings goal to make it happen, I'm not capable of paying cash for the entire purchase. Instead, I'll be shopping around with the best mortgage lenders and financing my home purchase (except for my down payment). But in some alternate universe where I have more money to throw at a home purchase, I still wouldn't buy a house outright in cash. Here's why -- as well as you might want to think twice, too. 1. A home is not a liquid asset While...

The income of a typical homebuyer in the United States surged to $107,000 from $88,000 last year, as home affordability precipitously worsened, according to an annual report from the National Association of Realtors. The 22% jump was the highest annual increase on record, and puts homeownership out of reach for many families in the United States, where the median income is about $75,000, according to the Census Bureau. Buying a home has become much harder for people as mortgage rates surged over the past two years and home prices continue to rise due to very low inventory. “The household income...

President Joe Biden’s climate proposals will substantially increase average Americans’ home expenses for purchases like appliances, according to data from the Alliance For Consumers (AFC). The financial burden of the Biden administration’s policies targeting household appliances totals $9,166 in new costs for average Americans per home, according to the AFC. The Biden administration has set its sights on a number of appliances to regulate as a part of its green agenda, including gas furnaces, water heaters, air conditioners and more, in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. “Any government-imposed efficiency mandate creates a burden for American families and businesses for...

he typical American cannot afford to buy a home in a growing number of communities across the nation, according to common lending standards. That's the main takeaway from a new report from real estate data provider ATTOM. Researchers examined the median home prices last year for roughly 575 U.S. counties and found that home prices in 99% of those areas are beyond the reach of the average income earner, who makes $71,214 a year, according to ATTOM.

The current housing market is showing some concerning trends: House Hacking and Leverage: The term “house hacking” may sound catchy, but it essentially boils down to taking on a substantial amount of leverage with just a 5% down payment and rolling up equity to expand that leverage. This approach reflects the level of greed prevalent in this economic cycle. Many individuals are focusing on the paper value of their assets while excluding their debt, which is largely illiquid, especially in a slowing market. It’s a strategy that can make them seem more financially impressive than they truly are. The big...

Around 90 A.D., the Roman historian Tacitus traveled through Germania observing the lives of its inhabitants. It was quite an eye-opening journey for him. Among his many observations, he noted how the Germanic people chose to live in small separate dwellings, separate from even extended family. Often these dwellings would house just a mother, father, and their children. That seems normal to us today, but it certainly wasn’t to Tacitus and the Romans, or much of the civilized world at that time. Authors Michael Lotus and James Bennett wrote of this in their groundbreaking book “America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity...

falling by 2 percentage points in 10 years’ time, according to Census Bureau data released Thursday. Slightly more than 80 million out of 126.8 million occupied housing units across the country were inhabited by homeowners in 2020, putting the nation’s homeownership rate at 63.1 percent. This is the lowest homeownership rate since 1970. West Virginia and Maine had the highest 2020 homeownership rates at 72.6 percent and 71 percent, respectively. But each of these states experienced a decline from the 2010 Census figures.

SNIP Gary Berman is CEO of Tricon Residential, a Toronto-based company that has quietly become one of the largest owners of single-family homes in the United States. Gary Berman: So today, we own about 30,000 single family rental homes across the U.S., largely in the Sun Belt. And we've got probably about 75,000 people living in our homes. Lesley Stahl: You are a multi-billion dollar company. You're publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Gary Berman: Correct. Lesley Stahl: And the-- Gary Berman: Toronto Stock Exchange. Lesley Stahl: --Toronto Stock Exchange. I even read in one of your own...

Home prices and rent are soaring faster than wages. This shattered home buying plans of generations Y and Z and put them in a rent squeeze as well.Dreams ChangeThings have really changed in three years according to Yardi's latest Generational Survey on Homeownership Dreams. Three years ago Yardi found that Gen Z was enthusiastic about the prospect of owning a home, whereas Millennials were pessimistic about their homeownership outlook.Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic and societal fallout Yardi has different findings.Key Takeaways From Latest SurveyAffordability concerns have noticeably risen in the past 3 years, with home...

Ordinary Americans are increasingly competing for a roof over their heads against the permanent capital of companies such as BlackRock and J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which are buying single-family homes from real estate developers at double what the middle class can afford. Indeed, the country’s largest homebuilders are betting on America becoming a nation of renters, pouring billions into the built-to-rent sector with the backing of banks and private investment firms. Entire neighborhoods are gobbled up as the stage is set for what John Burns Real Estate Consulting is calling “another speculative investor-driven home price bubble.” The firm estimates one...

The incipient “Great Reset” is a multi-faceted beast. We talk a lot about vaccine passports and lockdowns and the Covid-realated aspects – and we should – but there’s more to it than that.Remember, they want you to “own nothing and be happy”. And right at the top of the list of things you definitely shouldn’t own, is your own home.The headlines about this have been steady for the last few years, but it has picked up pace in the wake of the “pandemic” (as has so much else). An agenda hidden on back pages, behind by Covid’s meaningless big red...

<p>Blackrock is buying every single family house they can find, paying 20-50% above asking price and outbidding normal home buyers. Why are corporations, pension funds and property investment groups buying...</p><p>So who is Blackrock? Only the worlds largest asset manager and the leading proponent of The Great Reset. Theyre looking to redistribute -Get this- $120Trillion dollars. The entire wealth of the worlds middle class and poor combined several times over.</p>

Biden is seeking higher taxes on real estate transactions with gains of more than $500,000, a target aimed directly at the heart of small real estate investors, family farmers and owner-occupied businesses. In combination with his plans to eliminate step-up basis on the resolution of estates, the Biden tax proposal will greatly increase the cost of farmland and thus food prices, property prices and rental costs in some markets. The strategy on the political chopping block is the so-called like-kind or 1031 exchanges, which allow investors to defer paying taxes on real estate by rolling profits into their next property....

(CNSNews.com) - West Virginia ranked No. 1 among the 50 states for its homeownership rate in 2018, which was 74.7 percent, according to new housing data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. New York and California ranked 50th and 49th with homeownership rates of 51.0 and 55.1, according to Table 15 in the Census Bureau’s Annual Statistics on Housing Vacancies and Homeownership. The Census Bureau calculates the homeownership rate by dividing the number of owner occupied housing units by the total number of occupied housing units.

“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained,” Winston Churchill said in 1948 on the birth of Prince Charles. Marriage and parenthood, in other words, are the bedrock of a healthy and flourishing society, but student debt has prevented young Americans from starting families. Millions of college students start their adult lives with tens of thousands of dollars—sometimes more—in debt weighing them down. The mounting pressure of debt looms large over their lives like a specter, affecting monumental life...

For the past six years, climate change has been on the bottom of the list of concerns for real estate industry professionals. Now it’s on top.