Category — Real Estate Articles

Dear Fellow REALTOR®,

By now, we all know about the severe devastation caused by the earthquakes in Haiti. NAR is helping answer the calls for help in two key ways.

First, we are contributing $550,000 to charities that will help bring much-needed supplies and care to the people of Haiti. Included in that sum is $100,000 donated by our REALTOR Benefits® Program partner, Lowe’s®, which we have matched at $100,000. From that we will donate $50,000 to The Harvest of Haiti, founded by REALTOR® Patrick Moore, a 2007 Good Neighbor Award winner. Patrick has done great work for several years in Haiti supporting orphans, delivering clean water and providing medical care for more than 3,500 people a year.

http://www.realtor.org/press_room/news_releases/2010/01/donate_haiti

We are also contributing $500,000 to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, which is supporting earthquake recovery efforts with immediate relief and long-term support to earthquake survivors. For up-to-the-minute information about these efforts, visit NAR’s Haiti relief page on REALTOR.org.

Second, I have asked NAR to accept donations from REALTORS® through the REALTORS® Relief Foundation. Please consider giving today. To make a donation, go to www. realtor.org/relief, and complete the contribution form.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

REALTORS® have earned a reputation for our compassionate work on behalf of others – both here in the United State and around the world. I hope you will join our latest efforts and bring that same compassion and hope to people who desperately need it.

A recent article in Business Week discussing real estate investing, mentions that now is a great time to look into vacation rental homes due to great pricing. 

“If you are in the market for a high-end vacation home, there are tremendous deals out there right now. While certain high-end markets (think Vail or Aspen) have held up well during the recent downturns, most vacation areas have not fared as well and there are deep discounts to be had. “

Great deals can be found throughout the Outer Banks.  Here’s a great source for foreclosures and bank owned homes.

Housing Starts Jump 17.2% in May.  Permits Post Gains in May, Too

Nationwide housing starts rebounded in May from record lows in the previous month, posting a 17.2% gain to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 532,000 units, according to U.S. Commerce Department figures released this week.

While driven largely by a double-digit gain in the volatile multifamily sector, the uptick also reflected a substantial gain on the single-family side and applied consistently to all regions of the country.

“Having drawn down standing inventories to very thin levels over the past year, some home builders are now carefully replenishing their supplies in response to demand from smart buyers who are taking advantage of low interest rates and prices,” said Joe Robson, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Tulsa, Okla.

“Today’s report showing three consecutive months of gains in single-family housing starts and two consecutive months of gains in single-family permits is a very welcome sign that the market may be nearing a turning point,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “That said, our recent surveys tell us that builders remain very cautious about the future, and that they are aware of the upcoming expiration of the first-time buyer tax credit at the end of November. Homes that get started now should be able to close by that deadline, and this may be spurring some of the latest construction activity.”

Single-family housing starts gained 7.5% in May, breaking the 400,000 mark for the first time since November 2008 to reach a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 401,000 units. Meanwhile, starts in the much more volatile multifamily sector posted a 77 percent gain following a nearly equivalent decline in the previous month, for a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 124,000 units.

Building permit issuance, which can be an indicator of future building activity, rose 4 percent overall in May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 518,000 units. On the single-family side, permits rose 7.9% to 408,000 units, while on the multifamily side, they declined 8.3% to 110,000 units.

Both housing starts and permits were up across every region in May. Starts rose 2% in the Northeast, 11.1% in the Midwest, 16.8%in the South and 28.6% in the West. Permits rose 5.7% in the Northeast, 8.9% in the Midwest, 2.3% in the South and 3.8% in the West.

For more information, visit www.nahb.org.

RISMEDIA, July 14, 2008-Amidst the gloom on Wall Street about housing someone forgot to check the stats. The National Association of Realtors® has now reported four straight months of rising housing prices, but it seems no one is listening.

According to NAR statistics, the median home price has fallen from a high of $230,200 in July 2006 to a low in February 2008 at $195,600, a drop of 15%. Since February, however, it has risen steadily every month. By May the index (which will be revised on July 24) had risen to $208,600, up $13,000 and a full 6.6%. Another indicator, the mean home price (otherwise known as the average home price), has also shown strength and has risen from a low of $242,000 also in February of this year to $253,100, a rise of $11,100 or 4.5%. It, too, has risen every month since February of this year.

“I just don’t know where Wall Street’s brains are today,” said David Michonski, CEO of Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy in New York City. “Everyone on the Street is wringing their hands over housing when in fact the average American has been out this spring buying homes and pushing the median price higher. This has got to go down as one of Wall Street and Main Street’s biggest disconnects in history.”

In addition, on an annualized basis the volume of home sales has also risen somewhat from a low of 4,890,000 homes in January to 4,990,000 in May.

“Rising prices on expanding volume should not a crisis make on Wall Street,” says Michonski.

So why the crisis?

“They say that there are bulls and bears on Wall Street but there are also pigs. Pigs try not just to profit from a crisis but create one to profit from. Today there are just so many people who have positioned themselves to profit from a crisis that they refuse to admit the reality of what is happening on Main Street. It might hurt their positions.”

Is this the bottom?

“No one can know for sure, but the hard data is clear. The median price has risen four straight months. The average American is out there taking advantage of bargains in their local real estate market. They are not listening to Wall Street but following their own belief that the best time to buy is when no one else is, and they are out there buying. If this keeps up, February may prove to have been the low in prices.”

“It is possible that it will not be Hank Paulson or Ben Bernanke who will pull this country out of a housing recession, but the good common sense of the average American whose affordability to buy a home is at a five year high and is acting on it.”

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com.