Happy New Year! Welcome to first edition of the Real Estate Resource Roundup of 2014! These are some of the industry articles that caught our eye this week.
Where to buy your next home
Sherry Chris, president and CEO of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, appeared during on FOX Business hosted by Cheryl Casone, discussing the best places to buy a home right now. Chris represented the Northeast/New York real estate market, joining other panelists including Greg Rand, Bob Massi and Rodney Anderson – from Charlotte, Las Vegas and Texas, respectively.
Generation Next
In this contributed piece for RISMedia, Sherry Chris discusses Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate’s efforts in servicing the Millennial generation. The real estate brand has been committed to knowing who Millennials are, what they want and what they expect from their agents. From this research, one thing was clear – Millennials want their agent to tailor service to their needs. (Keep an eye out, we have an interesting two-parter blogpost coming soon here on Clean Slate, all about the experiences of three recent Millennial first-time home buyers.)
With the New Year, New Consumer Protections on Mortgages
Now that 2014 is here, consumers seeking home loans are expecting new rules to kick in. This New York Times article explains how those rules, issued by the federal Consumer Financial Protection, will not only affect potential homeowners but will also affect those who already have mortgages. Under the rules, mortgage services must send you a clear monthly statement, credit your payments on the day they are received and fix any mistakes promptly.
Can Selling Real Estate Make You Rich?
As the housing market continues to recover, there has been an influx of people looking to get real estate licenses. However, getting firmly established in the real estate market, with respectable listings, is harder than most people think. This Wall Street Journal article also includes an interactive graphic, “Are You Smarter Than a Real Estate Agent?”
Buy-and-rent investors get squeezed
According to a recent report from CoreLogic, the auction prices of homes climbed faster than rents in 2013, so returns on investment dropped. The report found that the return on investment fell in eight of the 10 best buy-and-rent cities due to an influx of institutional investors with money to spend at foreclosure auctions.
What’s ahead for 2014 housing market
In 2013, the housing recovery was in full force with bigger than expected price gains and solid home sales. As USA Today tells us, we can expect things to start cooling down in 2014. Home price gains will begin to slow down and there will likely be fewer bidding wars with the smaller increase in prices. Construction on new homes will strengthen enough to be a main force of the housing recovery and experts predict that mortgage rates could be a point higher by the end of 2014.
