Real Estate - Real Estate, Updates, News & Tips

REALTORS: How Technology Influences Your Commission

Technology has been a disruptor in the real estate industry, as more customers head online. But while it may cause many brokerages to rethink how they do business, technology has proven a huge differentiator as well, David Marine, senior vice president of marketing at Coldwell Banker, said during the session “Every Company is a Tech Company” at CES 2018 in Las Vegas on Wednesday.“Technology has helped the real estate industry better compe

Read More

Buyers Betting on Bigger Down Payments

With steep competition, some buyers are scrambling to come up with larger down payments to gain a competitive edge.“In many purchase situations, there are multiple offers, and the buyers who have the bigger down payment are more likely to win out,” Daren Blomquist, ATTOM Data Solutions’ senior vice president, told The Wall Street Journal.The median down payment for home purchases that were financed in the third quarter of 2017 soared to a

Read More

California MLSs Need to Catch Up

California Association of REALTORS® CEO Joel Singer led a panel of industry experts Wednesday in search of ideas for how to move the multiple listing services industry forward. “Can this current structure survive?” Singer asked after outlining the many issues MLSs face, from technology to competition and changing consumer behavior. “Should this current structure survive, if it doesn’t alter?”Art Carter, CEO of California Regional Mult

Read More

Denver Offers Extra Housing to Working Class

Denver is utilizing its overflow of high-end rental apartments to house teachers, medical technicians, and others who are unable to afford skyrocketing rents in the city, The Wall Street Journal reports. Average rents in Denver have surged 30 percent over the past five years, according to MPF Research.City officials and other organizations in the area are unveiling a program, the Lower Income Voucher Equity program (or LIVE Denver), that will

Read More

Where You Most Have to Worry About Bedbugs

Bedbugs travel from place to place and can make their way into homes, apartments, and even offices.Orkin, a nationwide pest management company, released its annual list of cities with the most bedbug infestations. Baltimore and Washington, D.C., continue to rank the highest for infestations. Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, joined the top 10 list this year.Orkin based its list on treatment data from metro areas where it performed the most bedbug treatme

Read More

Storage Tops Kitchen Uses, Owners Say

The majority of homeowners recently surveyed prioritized storage over all other functions of their kitchens, according to the 2018 U.S. Houzz Kitchen Trends Study of more than 1,700 homeowners. Storage, at 63 percent, trumped other priority uses for homeowners in the kitchen like easy to work, play, and live (38 percent), to entertain (32 percent), or to clean (32 percent).Homeowners are remodeling their kitchens to add more storage and organiz

Read More

5G Is Coming... Why You Should Care

5G is one of the buzzwords at this year’s CES, formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas Jan. 9–12. The promises are big behind the fifth-generation wireless technology that is expected to make smartphones and other devices ultrafast.5G is to be 100 times faster and five times more responsive than 4G and 4G LTE systems, the technology currently being used. For example, you’ll be able to stream high-res VR content without

Read More

4 Growth Areas for Homebuilding in 2018

A growing economy, supported by positive demographic trends, bodes well for the housing market in the new year, even as affordability challenges rise from an increase in prices and mortgage rates, according to realtor.com®’s 2018 Housing Forecast, released this week at the National Association of Home Builders’ International Builders’ Show in Orlando, Fla. Realtor.com®’s report highlighted the following key factors for builders in 2018

Read More

Best Places to Buy Rental Properties This Winter

The winter off-peak period may be the best time for investors to snag a deal on a single-family rental property.Single-family rental investors paid 6.6 percent less per square foot on the same property during the winter of 2017/2018 than they did during the spring and summer buying season of 2017, according to a new analysis released by HomeUnion, an online real estate investment and management firm.“For the second year in a row, our study fo

Read More

Best, Worst Places for Commuters

Consistent travel times allow commuters less heartache than cities where it’s constantly fluctuating, says Joseph L. Schofer, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University.“That comes from well-managed road networks, limited congestion, quick incident-clearance times, and [bus and rail] transit [options],” Schofer told realtor.com®.The realtor.com® research team identified the best and worst metros for com

Read More

This website includes images sourced from third party websites including Adobe, Getty Images, and as otherwise noted.