Real Estate - Real Estate, Updates, News & Tips

Site Matching Sellers, Agents Raises $40M

HomeLight.com, which matches consumers with real estate professionals, is rapidly growing and nabbed $40 million this week to further enhance its process for locating agents based on performance metrics. The site, founded in 2012, connects sellers with real estate agents based on the practitioners’ sales performance data.HomeLight culls data from more than 100 different sources and evaluates nearly 30 million transactions across the country. It

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4 Ways to Cut Kitchen Remodeling Costs

Kitchen remodels don’t come cheap. The average cost to update a 200-square-foot kitchen—including installing new flooring, semicustom wood cabinets, and standard appliances—is a whopping $62,000, according to Remodeling Magazine. Homeowners who want to add in more luxurious touches, such as stone countertops, a commercial-grade cooktop, designer faucets, and top-of-the-line custom cabinets, may pay as much as $123,000.Before your clients

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Why You Won’t See Many New Starter Homes

Starter homes are harder to come by as builders struggle to offer more entry-level real estate options amid higher construction costs, a new study shows. Just 16 percent of new homes are selling for under $200,000, down from 44 percent in 2010, according to an analysis by research firm John Burns Real Estate Consulting.The share of new homes priced between $200,000 and $400,000 has increased to 55 percent from 43 percent in 2010, and the share ab

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Top Destinations Where Renters Want to Move

Nearly two-thirds of renters—about 64 percent—say they plan to move to a different city before settling down, according to rental website ApartmentList.com. So where are they leaving from and going to?Apartment List surveyed about 24,000 renters and analyzed data from 50 of the largest metros across the country. Renters in the priciest cities, such as New York, San Francisco, Denver, and Austin, Texas, indicated the most eagerness to move. Th

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Price Hikes in 87% of Markets; New Record Set

Median home prices in the second quarter eclipsed a record high set in 2016, jumping 6.2 percent year over year as the inventory crunch continues to push property values higher, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.The national median price for an existing single-family home was $255,600, up from $240,700—the previous high—in the second quarter of 2016, NAR reported Wednesday. Prices for single-family homes rose in 87 percent o

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5 Lessons From a Major Flooding Disaster

It’s been a year since Baton Rouge, La., experienced catastrophic flooding due to heavy rains. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 83,000 homes damaged by the flooding were eligible for disaster assistance, with each household receiving an average of $13,100 to make repairs and $3,800 to replace essential household items.Some residents are still recovering, says John Dickson, president of flood insurance provider NFS Edge. He

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9 ways homebuyers can improve their credit scores

Buyers will find it easier to get a home loan using these tipsThe real estate business is booming, and with a scarce supply of starter homes on the market, competition between buyers is fierce. To get loans quickly, potential homebuyers need to keep an eye on their finances and credit.Below, you will find nine general tips that will help ease the process of acquiring a home loan by improving credit scores.1. Always pay on timeNo lender likes

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REALTORS: Does Your Listing Pass the Interior Design Test?

If an interior designer walked through the front doors of your listing, what would their first impression be?Give the house an interior designer spot test before opening it up to buyers. Realtor.com® offers a few tips from behind a designer’s lenses in a recent article :Traffic flow“The first thing I notice is whether or not the furniture placement promotes good flow of traffic,” says Lorelie Brown, a Showhomes franchisee in Charl

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Solar Eclipse May Impact Solar Panel Users

Mark your calendars: Aug. 21 is the day a solar eclipse will cross the United States. This rare event occurs when the moon completely obscures the sun. And the brief period of darkness may have a big impact on the growing number of solar installations, warns a new release from Climate Nexus.The eclipse will stretch across 14 states and likely will obstruct up to 9,000 megawatts of solar power. That is enough to power 7 million homes, according t

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Owners Tap Equity to Start Businesses

Home owners are turning to home equity not just for home renovations but also to launch new businesses. Equity was used as a source of capital to launch 284,618 U.S. businesses—7.3 percent of all businesses, according to a newly released analysis by the U.S. Census Bureau that culls 2014 data.According to the study, the industries that use home equity at some of the highest rates are accommodation and food services, other services, retail trade

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