Real Estate - Real Estate, Updates, News & Tips

Email Scam Surfaces Using Slain Agent’s Name

Real estate professionals in New York and Arizona say they have recently received an email from a real estate professional in Jacksonville, Fla., who was offering them a referral. The problem is that when they Googled the agent’s name, they discovered she had died a month ago.The email sender claims to be late real estate professional Mary Anne Rolnick, 76, who was murdered inside her home in June. Rolnick’s son, Scott Rolnick, has been charg

Read More

30-Year Rates Are Hovering Below 4%

Mortgage rates posted another drop this week, offering more relief to home buyers.Freddie Mac reports the following national averages with mortgage rates for the week ending July 27: 30-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 3.92 percent, with an average 0.5 point, falling from last week’s 3.96 percent average. Last year at this time, 30-year rates averaged 3.48 percent. 15-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 3.20 percent, with an average 0.5 po

Read More

10 Affordable Markets With Top Schools

Aurora, Ill., located outside of Chicago, topped realtor.com®’s list of the most affordable housing markets with the best elementary schools in the country.Researchers analyzed ZIP codes within the top metro areas in the nation that contained at least one public or public charter school. Realtor.com® culled data from GreatSchools.org.“When searching for a new home, finding something affordable in a good school district with family-friendl

Read More

Homeownership Rate Rebounds from 50-Year Low

The U.S. homeownership rate may have finally bottomed out, as the share of Americans who own homes is steadily climbing. The ownership rate posted an increase in the second quarter, reversing a sharp downward trend that begun in the Great Recession.The homeownership rate was 63.7 percent in the second quarter, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday. That marks nearly a full percentage point increase from a year ago.Last year, the homeownership

Read More

July’s Hottest Housing Markets

Homes are selling faster in July, and many markets are hotter today than they were a year ago, realtor.com® notes in its newly released housing report. California markets continue to see some of the most traction from home shoppers.“We normally see the housing market begin to slow down in midsummer, but this year has been a different story,” says Javier Vivas, realtor.com®’s manager of economic research. “Mid- to lower-tier homes are fl

Read More

REALTORS: How to Win Over More Instagram Followers

Instagram boasts more than 200 million active monthly users. It has quickly emerged as one of the most popular social media platforms. How can you use it to grow your own network? Forbes.com columnist Tom Ward recently offered a few tips, including:Create a theme for your page. Figure out what you are trying to promote on Instagram and stick to it, Ward writes. Have a separate account for your personal posts, if necessary. “You can’t expect

Read More

Top 10 ZIP Codes for Rental Returns

More Americans are renting homes today than at any time in the past 50 years, and more investors are looking to cash in, newly released data shows.HomeUnion, which helps investors find single-family rental homes, released a list of projections for investors looking to rent out and hold properties for the next five years. Researchers considered factors like vacancies, rent appreciation, permitting activities for both apartments and single-family

Read More

Best Year for New Construction in a Decade?

A shortage of homes for sale combined with growing buyer demands will likely spark home builders to construct the most homes this year than in the last decade, economists told HousingWire.“Most likely a result of the trending imbalance between homes for sale and demand for new homes to purchase, housing starts finally edged up in the month of June to 8.3 percent,” says Greg Parsons, Semper Capital Management CEO. “The need to balance the g

Read More

22 Offers But No Guarantee on Appraisal

After Dallas-area real estate pro Laura Barnett put a listing on the market three weeks ago, it quickly received 22 offers. But Barnett didn’t take the highest bid.Instead, she took the cash offer because she wanted to ensure that there were no hang-ups along the way toward closing, she told CNBC. Appraisals, she says, are not keeping up with the sales prices. If the appraisal doesn’t match the contracted price, buyers usually can’t get

Read More

REALTORS: Keys to building your real estate reputation

Key Takeaways Effective online and offline marketing must be consistent. Recognition is built over time and multiple channels.In the pre-digital age, marketing was straightforward: You placed an ad in the newspaper and sent out postcards. All marketing was physical.Enter the internet, which now dominates consumers’ attention as they toggle from their desktop to their smartphone, amid their daily life. Today’s marketing needs to reflect these

Read More

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