tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49369541861130877052024-03-16T14:49:29.650-04:00Florida Real Estate InsiderNews, links and information about real estate in FloridaUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1887125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-19101569596719836412024-03-14T07:42:00.000-04:002024-03-14T07:42:24.762-04:00Study: Renters Would Be Happier Owning a Home<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Nearly 70% of renters say owning a home would make them happier, yet 60% say it’s out of reach, a new study found. At the same time, 90% of owners say they’re happier since buying a home.</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">NEW YORK – When asked to name the single biggest benefit of homeownership, the most common answer for homeowners was privacy (14%), while renters pointed to stability (16%).</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">On every single aspect of life from overall quality of life to mental health, homeowners are more satisfied than renters, according to new research from Home Bay, an online publication owned by Clever Real Estate that connects readers with expert real estate advice.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">However, <b>although 69% of renters believe owning a home would make them happier, 60% say homeownership is out of reach.</b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The survey found that homeowners, on average, rate their overall happiness at 7.5 out of 10, 20% higher than where renters rate their happiness at just 6.2. Moreover, renters report 22% higher stress levels, with an average score of 6.2 out of 10, compared to homeowners, with an average rating of 5.1 out of 10.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In addition, about 2 in 3 renters (67%) are stressed about their finances, compared to fewer than half of homeowners (44%). Further, <b>renters are 86% more likely than homeowners to not consider themselves financially comfortable.</b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><b>A resounding 90% of homeowners say they're happier overall since they bought a home, and another 80% say owning a home was the best decision they ever made.</b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">However, 19% of homeowners wish they were still renting. Nearly half of homeowners (47%) say they miss not having to take care of repairs, and 56% wish they spent less time on maintenance.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">More than half (52%) of homeowners say owning a home is more expensive than expected, and 43% find it more challenging than expected. Since purchasing their home, 20% of homeowners admit to being in more non-mortgage debt.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Copyright © 2024 BridgeTower Media; and © 2024, The Mecklenburg Times (Charlotte, NC.) All rights reserved.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-74717259858168598652024-03-14T07:38:00.001-04:002024-03-14T07:38:47.803-04:00FAU/FIU Study: Housing Premiums Stabilizing<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: OpenSans-Bold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">FAU/FIU Study: Housing Premiums Stabilizing</span></p><div class="far-byline-name" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0em;"><div class="field field--name-field-byline field--type-string field--label-hidden field--item" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-right: 1em;">By Amber Bonefont</div></div><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Some Florida markets – including Cape Coral and Tampa – are seeing housing premiums decline, providing greater opportunities for buyers and reducing the risk for losses.</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">BOCA RATON, Fla. – Housing premiums in many markets in the country are starting to decline, suggesting that many areas across the country are moving toward stabilization, according to researchers at Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In eight out of the 10 most overvalued housing markets, housing price premiums have started to edge back down toward their long-term pricing trends, according to January data from the Top 100 U.S. Housing Markets. <b>A premium is measured by the degree of overpricing in terms of a percentage difference between actual and statistically modeled home prices.</b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><b>Atlanta, the most overvalued market in the country according to the study</b>, posted a 12-basis point decline in its housing premium over the past month. The second most overvalued market, <b>Cape Coral</b>, had a 62-basis point decline; <b>Tampa,</b> fourth most overvalued, had a 17-basis point decline; <b>Palm Bay</b>, fifth most overvalued, a 31-basis point decline; <b>Knoxville</b>, sixth most overvalued, had a 13-basis point decline; <b>Lakeland</b>, the eight most overvalued had a 23-basis point decline; <b>Orlando</b>, number nine, a six-basis point decline; and <b>Charlotte</b>, the 10th most overvalued saw a 14-basis point decline. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“This is good news as it signals these markets could be getting to where prices should be, slowly but surely, creating less risk for catastrophic loss in average home value,” said Ken H. Johnson, Ph.D., real estate economist in FAU’s College of Business. “Ideally, we want to find our way back to the long-term trend for each metro area with as little pain as possible.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Top 100 U.S. Housing Markets, a monthly index in FAU’s Real Estate Initiative, measures housing premiums and discounts in the 100 most populated metropolitan areas in the country by looking at the difference in actual average home price in a city and comparing it to the long-term home pricing trend for the same city to calculate how overvalued or undervalued housing markets are using publicly available data from Zillow.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><b>Several Florida metros also signaled that prices are stabilizing as eight out of the nine measured metros saw small declines in premiums</b>. Examples include North Port with a 75-basis point drop in its housing premium between end of December 2023 and the end of January; Deltona with a 39-basis point drop; and Jacksonville with a 16-basis point drop.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Equity gains remain strong for current homeowners and prospective homebuyers can get a little breather knowing that prices are slightly more stable. All in all, these are good signs for the housing market,” said Eli Beracha, Ph.D., director of FIU’s Hollo School of Real Estate.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><b>South Florida remains an area of concern for researchers as it was the only measured metro in the state where housing premiums did not decrease, instead going up by 23 basis points.</b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2024 Florida Atlantic University</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-88940209962868357192024-03-07T15:34:00.001-05:002024-03-07T15:34:36.105-05:00The percentage of Hispanic and Black homeowners in Miami-Dade and Broward counties has decreased<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">The percentage of Hispanic and Black homeowners in Miami-Dade and Broward counties has decreased as home prices have increased.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">MIAMI – Since 2012, there are fewer Black and Hispanic homeowners in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the latest U.S. Census Bureau data shows.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Census Bureau said there were 983,509 occupied Miami-Dade County residences in 2022, and owners lived in a total of 507,879 of those residences. Redfin found 44% of all homeowners were Black, down from 47% in 2012, and 51% were Hispanics, down from 55.4%.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In Broward County, 544,611 residences were occupied by owners out of 867,215 occupied residences, with Blacks accounting for 50.5% of those owner-occupied homes, down from 51.7%, and Hispanics accounted for 57.1%, down from 62%.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Linda Neverson, a Miramar resident who purchased her two-story townhouse in Miramar in 2022, said, "My experience in terms of the path towards homeownership is that it has gotten a lot harder. What I believe is happening is the earning power or economic gap between minorities and others is widening. The purchasing power in Miami is being diluted."</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The median sales price for a single-family home in Miami-Dade is $610,000 and the median price for a condo is $410,000. Broward falls slightly below at $570,000 for a house and $275,000 for a condo.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">However, these prices are far higher than what most South Floridians can afford. Ken H. Johnson, a finance professor specializing in real estate at Florida Atlantic University, added that the trend of fewer homeowners is nationwide.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Source: Miami Herald (02/21/24) San Juan, Rebecca</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Copyright © 2024 Smithbucklin</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-3387820651417738142024-03-05T07:01:00.002-05:002024-03-05T07:01:46.943-05:00Better, Not Bigger, Homes Among 2024 Design Trends<h4 style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">NAHB: Buyers say they want smaller homes now and are looking for homes around 2,070 sq. ft., compared to 2,260 sq. ft. 20 years ago.</span></span></h4><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">WASHINGTON – Following a brief uptick in new home sizes in 2021, <b>the average size of a new home continues to inch smaller</b> – dropping from 2,479 square feet in 2022 to 2,411 square feet in 2023, the smallest average size in 13 years – to match home buyer preferences for less square footage.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">According to the latest “What Home Buyers Really Want” study from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), home buyers are looking for homes around 2,070 square feet, compared to 2,260 square feet 20 years ago.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“It’s related to two factors that are linked,” said Rose Quint, NAHB assistant vice president of survey research. <b>“First, we’ve seen changes in home buyer preferences. Second, housing affordability has worsened in recent years.”</b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Builders are acting on this trend, with 38% indicating they built smaller homes in 2023 to help support home sales and 26% indicating they plan to build even smaller in 2024.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">They are also working to bridge the gap on housing affordability by cutting home prices, providing sales incentives and offering more affordable finishes. Median new homes prices dropped to $427,400 in 2023 – down 7 percentage points from 2022, a drop not seen since 2009 – while existing median home prices continued to rise to $394,600, marking a 1 percentage point increase over the prior year.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Home buyers are not only shifting their preferences on size; they’re shifting their overall design preferences as well, placing higher value on personalization and authenticity.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Our homeowners are looking to personalize their homes,” said Donald Ruthroff, AIA, founding principal at Design Story Spaces LLC. “They want to it feel like it was made just for them and be significantly different than their neighbors’ homes.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">This is reflected in the style of the home and the upgrades that buyers choose to incorporate into their homes, whether it’s creating an island that looks like a piece of furniture, higher quality cabinets or more expensive flooring.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Home features that remain at the top of buyers’ wish list include four outdoor features, two kitchen features and two related to energy efficiency:</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Laundry room</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Patio</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Energy Star window</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Exterior lighting</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Ceiling fan</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Garage storage</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Front porch</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Hardwood flooring</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Full bath on the main level</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Energy Star appliances</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Walk-in pantry</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Landscaping</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Table space in the kitchen</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Technology features are becoming increasingly popular, most notably security cameras, wired home security systems, programmable thermostats, video doorbells, multizone HVAC systems and energy management systems.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Other home features that have seen strong growth in popularity over the past 10 years include:</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Quartz or engineered stone for kitchen countertops</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Lighting control systems</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Outdoor fireplaces</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Outdoor kitchens</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Built-in kitchen seating</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">•Exposed beams</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Additional information on home buyer trends can be found in NAHB’s </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">What Home Buyers Really Want</span></em><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> (2024 edition).</span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2024 Florida Realtors®</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-66236693725358435512024-03-05T06:58:00.000-05:002024-03-05T06:58:04.179-05:00Home Price Gains Continued in December<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Jing Fu</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">CoreLogic Case-Shiller’s Home Price Index rose at a seasonally adjusted annual growth rate of 2.4%, slower than Nov.’s 3% increase. <b>Miami’s<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span>price index rose 8%.</b></span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">WASHINGTON – National home prices continued to increase, hitting a new all-time high in December. Despite high mortgage rates, limited inventory and strong demand continued to push up home prices. Six of 20 metro areas, experienced negative home price appreciation in December.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index (HPI), reported by S&P Dow Jones Indices, rose at a seasonally adjusted annual growth rate of 2.4% in December, slower than a 3.0% increase in November. It marks the fourth straight month of deceleration since September.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Nonetheless, <b>national home prices are now 70% higher than their last peak during the housing boom in March 2006.</b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">On a year-over-year basis (YOY), the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index posted a 5.5% annual gain in December, up from a 5.0% increase in November. It was the highest year-over-year gain over the past twelve months</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Home price appreciation slowed greatly over the past year; the average YOY home price gain for 2023 was 2.4%, after the double-digit gains seen in the previous two years. Home prices are stabilizing as more buyers and sellers enter the market.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Meanwhile, the Home Price Index, released by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), rose at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.2% in December, following a 4.3% increase in November. On a year-over-year basis, the FHFA Home Price NSA Index rose 6.5% in December, down from 6.6% in the previous month.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In addition to tracking national home price changes, S&P Dow Jones Indices also reported home price indexes across 20 metro areas in December on a seasonally adjusted basis.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">While six out of 20 metro areas reported negative home price appreciation, 13 metro areas had positive home price appreciation. Home prices for Cleveland (OH) were unchanged from the previous month. Their annual growth rates ranged from -2.7% to 10.1%.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Among all 20 metro areas, 10 metro areas exceeded the national average of 2.4%. Las Vegas led the way with a 10.1% increase, followed by Los Angeles with an 8.6% increase and <strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Miami </strong>with an 8.0% increase.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The six metro areas that experienced price declines are Portland (-2.7%), Minneapolis (-1.6%), San Francisco (-1.4%), San Diego (-1.3%), Detroit (-0.6%) and Dallas (-0.6%).</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Source: NAHB Eye on Housing blog, Jing Fu, Ph.D., director of forecasting and analysis</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2024 Florida Realtors®</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-71406655927990758622024-02-28T20:11:00.007-05:002024-02-28T20:11:57.313-05:00US Housing Supply Gap Grows in 2023<p> <b><span style="font-size: medium;">Realtor.com - </span></b><b><span style="font-size: medium;">by Hannah Jones </span></b></p><p>DATA, ECONOMIC COVERAGE, HOUSING SUPPLY</p><p>Feb 27, 2024</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: bolder;">Highlights:</span></p><ul style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px;"><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">US housing markets continue to struggle with a growing shortage of new homes, the result of more than a decade of under-building relative to population growth. </span></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">In 2023, the U.S. saw 1.67 million household formations, resulting in 17.2 million household formations between 2012 and 2023. In this time period, 14.7 million housing units were started, and 13.4 million were completed.</span><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: disc; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px;"><li aria-level="2" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">The total housing starts count includes 9.98 million single-family and 4.71 million multi-family homes. Housing completions include 9.5 million single-family homes and 3.9 million multi-family homes.</span></li></ul></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">The gap between single-family home constructions and household formations grew to 7.2 million homes between 2012 and 2023. However, including multi-family home construction reduces this gap to 2.5 million homes.</span><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: disc; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px;"><li aria-level="2" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Multi-family home construction fell as a share of all home starts in 2023, but remained above 2017-2021 levels.</span></li></ul></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">The rate of overall housing starts slowed in 2023 while completions climbed.</span><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: disc; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px;"><li aria-level="2" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">In 2023, roughly 947,200 single-family homes were started, which is 5.8% fewer than in 2022, though still more than in any other single year back to 2010.</span></li><li aria-level="2" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Multi-family home starts settled to 472,700 starts, down 13.6% compared to 2022, but still up 22.7% compared to the 2012-2022 average.</span></li><li aria-level="2" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">In 2023, 1.5 million housing units were completed (+4.5% YY), including 1 million single-family units (-1.9% YY) and 450,100 multi-family units (+22.2% YY). The overall number of home completions and the rate of multifamily home completion were both the highest since 2007 and 1987, respectively.</span></li></ul></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Household growth has outpaced single-family home permits in 73 of the top 100 US metros.</span></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Household formations have outpaced overall (single- and multi-family) permitting activity most significantly in fast-growing sunbelt metros such as Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL, San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX and Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL. </span></li></ul><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">The Housing Market Ambled Along in 2023</span></h3><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/new-home-construction-jan-2024/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">New construction activity settled slightly in 2023</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">, but remained above pre-pandemic levels. Mortgage rates </span><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/freddie-mac-mortgage-rates-jan-5-2023/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">started the year in the low-to-mid 6% range</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"> and finished the year </span><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/freddie-mac-mortgage-rates-dec-28-2023/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">roughly one percentage point higher</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">. Prices hovered near the previous year’s level, but </span><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/june-2023-data/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">did not reach a new all-time high</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">. As a result, the housing market continued along at a relatively low level of activity as buyers struggled with affordability and sellers felt</span><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/2023-q1-sellers-survey-btts/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;"> locked-in by high mortgage rates</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">. Builder confidence climbed through the first half of the year, but remained below pre-pandemic levels. As mortgage rates started to climb towards 8% in the fall, homebuilder confidence tumbled, reaching an index of 34 in November, the third lowest level since 2012.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Though both single- and multi-family housing starts fell year-over-year in 2023, both remained above pre pandemic levels as both buyer and renter demand remained strong relative to supply. Overall housing starts fell 9.0% year-over-year while single-family starts fell 6.0% and multi-family starts fell 14.4%. Mortgage rates remained above 6%, and even </span><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/freddie-mac-mortgage-rates-oct-26-2023/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">reached as high as 7.79% in 2023</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">. High mortgage rates stifled both buyer and seller demand, but low inventory levels meant that home prices hovered close to the previous year’s level for the whole year. Builders responded with a relatively steady rate of construction, but were understandably cautious, looking for buyer demand to drive more construction. Despite low new and existing home inventory, 1.665 million new households formed, outpacing the year’s 1.413 million housing starts, 947,200 of which were single-family. </span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Housing construction of buildings with 2-or-more units was 29.6% of all housing starts in 2021 and grew to 35.3% by the end of 2022. In 2023, this share settled to 33.3%, higher than the period right before the pandemic, but lower than in 2013-2016. The typical multi-family home took </span><a href="https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/avg_starttocomp.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">17 months to complete in 2022, whereas a single-family home took closer to 8 months</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">, which means that surging multi-family starts in 2022 led to the highest level of multifamily completions in over a decade in 2023. As a result, rents fell for 8 consecutive months by the end of 2023 as rental inventory took some upward pressure off of rent levels. Multi-family housing can help with ongoing housing affordability issues by providing more supply for renters.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">The Housing Supply Gap Widens, Multi-family Starts Slow</span></h3><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">In 2023, an additional 1.7 million households formed, resulting in a total of 17.2 million new households between 2012 and 2023.</span> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Homebuilders started construction on 947,200 single-family homes and 472,700 multi-family homes in 2023, bringing the 2012 to 2023 overall housing starts total to 14.7 million homes, roughly 10 million of which were single-family. As household formations outpaced housing starts in 2023, the gap between total housing starts and household formations widened from 2.3 million housing units between 2012 and 2022 to 2.5 million units at the end of 2023. The gap between single-family housing starts and household formations grew from 6.5 million at the end of 2022 to 7.2 million at the end of 2023 as household formations remained steady and single-family home construction waned. Though the gap widened, it was the third smallest single-year gap between households and housing starts since 2016.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/?attachment_id=7014" rel="attachment wp-att-7014" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7014" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" height="576" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" src="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-deficit-1024x576.jpg" srcset="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-deficit-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-deficit-300x169.jpg 300w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-deficit-768x432.jpg 768w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-deficit.jpg 1366w" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="1024" /></a></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">This trend of underbuilding relative to household formation carried over to homeowner vacancy rates as well as rental vacancy rates.</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"> </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">As households form and housing starts fail to keep pace, the number of homes sitting empty falls. </span><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/homeownership-q4-2023/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">Homeowner vacancy dropped</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"> from 2% in 2012 to as low as 0.7% in Q2 of 2023 before recovering to 0.9% by the end of the year. Similarly, </span><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/homeownership-q4-2023/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">rental vacancy rates plummeted</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">, reaching as low as 5.6% in the 2021 Q4 and again in 2022 Q2 before rising through 2023 to 6.6%. The uptick in multifamily activity in 2021 and 2022 trickled through the housing market, providing more rental inventory in 2023 which relieved some pressure on rental inventory and allowed rental vacancy to creep higher.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/?attachment_id=7015" rel="attachment wp-att-7015" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7015 lazyloaded" data-sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" data-src="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-vacancy-1024x576.jpg" data-srcset="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-vacancy-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-vacancy-300x169.jpg 300w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-vacancy-768x432.jpg 768w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-vacancy.jpg 1366w" decoding="async" height="576" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" src="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-vacancy-1024x576.jpg" srcset="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-vacancy-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-vacancy-300x169.jpg 300w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-vacancy-768x432.jpg 768w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-1-vacancy.jpg 1366w" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="1024" /></a></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"> </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Between 2012 and 2023, the average rate of household formation was 1.4 million households per year, while the average rate of housing starts was 1.2 million homes (including both single-family and multi-family) per year. Housing starts climbed each year between 2012 and 2021, reaching 1.64 million in 2021 before falling slightly in 2022 to a year’s end figure of 1.55 million. Housing starts fell again in 2023, reaching just 1.42 million starts in the year. Multi-family properties comprised, on average, 32.1% of housing starts between 2012 and 2021, before growing significantly to 35.1% in 2022 as mortgage rates and prices led to a pullback in demand for single-family homes. Falling demand for single-family homes opened up the opportunity for more building in the multi-family market, which is dominated by rentals. In 2023, multi-family share fell to 33.3% as construction activity shifted back towards single family homes. However, the share of multi-family home completions reached 31.0% in 2023, the highest share since 2015. In 2023, an </span><a href="https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/quarterly_starts_completions.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">average 97.0% of all multi-family units</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"> started were intended to be used as rentals.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/?attachment_id=7016" rel="attachment wp-att-7016" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-7016 lazyloaded" data-sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-src="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-3-sf-vs-mf.jpg" data-srcset="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-3-sf-vs-mf.jpg 1000w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-3-sf-vs-mf-300x240.jpg 300w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-3-sf-vs-mf-768x614.jpg 768w" decoding="async" height="800" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" src="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-3-sf-vs-mf.jpg" srcset="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-3-sf-vs-mf.jpg 1000w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-3-sf-vs-mf-300x240.jpg 300w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-3-sf-vs-mf-768x614.jpg 768w" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="1000" /></a></h2><h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h3><h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">Homebuilder Sentiment Remains Low</span></h3><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">In the 2010-2021 time period, home builder sentiment climbed. In 2010, confidence was still recovering from the housing crash, but the next decade marked a period of confidence-boosting expansion. Even the disruption of the pandemic served to ultimately boost builder confidence to new all-time highs, and to maintain it above pre-pandemic levels after the initial shock wore off. After homebuilder sentiment hit the lowest levels since 2012 in April 2020, it has been on a relatively steady upward trend, reaching an all-time high of 90 in November 2020. In 2021, homebuilder sentiment averaged 81, the highest average yearly sentiment on record, up 11 points from 2020. However, as mortgage rates climbed in early 2022, homebuilder sentiment fell as low as 31, its lowest level since the early months of the pandemic, and before that, since June 2012.</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"> </span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">In 2023, homebuilder sentiment only reached as high as an index of 56 in July, but only fell as low as 34 in December, marking a year of widely varying sentiment on the weaker end of its recent range. Homebuilders were relatively cautious in 2023 in the face of ongoing unaffordability. Both single- and multi-family homebuilding remained low relative to the pandemic era, but were higher than pre-pandemic.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/?attachment_id=7017" rel="attachment wp-att-7017" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7017 lazyloaded" data-sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" data-src="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-4-HMI-1024x576.jpg" data-srcset="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-4-HMI-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-4-HMI-300x169.jpg 300w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-4-HMI-768x432.jpg 768w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-4-HMI.jpg 1366w" decoding="async" height="576" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" src="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-4-HMI-1024x576.jpg" srcset="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-4-HMI-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-4-HMI-300x169.jpg 300w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-4-HMI-768x432.jpg 768w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-4-HMI.jpg 1366w" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="1024" /></a></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"> </p><h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">What Would it Take to Close the Gap?</span></h3><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">In 2023, household formations settled from the 2022 surge to a level more in line with 2019-2021. With the lower level of 1.665 million household formations and relatively sustained housing starts, the gap between new households and new construction grew by less than in 2022. With roughly 85 homes started for every 100 household formations, the overall housing supply gap grew to 2.5 million homes, and the single family housing supply gap grew to 7.2 million fewer home starts than household formations since 2012. The single-family housing supply gap overstates the housing shortage, as new multi-family homes offer options to some buyers and many renters. Multifamily housing is an important option and as a result of recent construction trends is poised to offer more inventory, taking some pressure off of both home and rental prices, as seen in 2023.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/?attachment_id=7018" rel="attachment wp-att-7018" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-7018 lazyloaded" data-sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" data-src="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-6-hh-forms-vs-starts-1024x576.jpg" data-srcset="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-6-hh-forms-vs-starts-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-6-hh-forms-vs-starts-300x169.jpg 300w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-6-hh-forms-vs-starts-768x432.jpg 768w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-6-hh-forms-vs-starts.jpg 1366w" decoding="async" height="576" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" src="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-6-hh-forms-vs-starts-1024x576.jpg" srcset="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-6-hh-forms-vs-starts-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-6-hh-forms-vs-starts-300x169.jpg 300w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-6-hh-forms-vs-starts-768x432.jpg 768w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-6-hh-forms-vs-starts.jpg 1366w" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="1024" /></a></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"> If only single-family homes are considered, the rate of housing starts would need to triple to keep up with demand and close the existing 7.2 million home gap in 4 to 5 years. However, if the rate of total (multi- & single-family) housing starts increased by 50% from the 2023 rate to an average rate of 2.1 million housing starts per year, a pace of construction on par with what we saw in the early 1970s and some of the peak months for building in the mid-2000s, it would take between 2 and 3 years to close the existing 2.5 million home gap, assuming the 2012 – 2019 average rate of household formations (~1.3 million households per year). Closing the total housing gap would mean an increase in both single and multi-family supply and would help return balance to the housing market by taking pressure off of both sale and rent prices.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">2023 Home Completions Outpace Previous Years</span></h3><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Housing completions reached the highest rate since 2007 in 2023, due to the sustained uptick in single-family homes started in 2021 and early 2022 augmented by a surge in multi-family completions. As mortgage rates and high prices caught up to buyers, homebuilders pivoted to multi-family housing starts through late 2022. The latest housing completion data suggest that 2024 multi-family completions are on track to climb once again, emphasizing the lasting effect of the mid-pandemic surge in multi-family construction activity.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/?attachment_id=7019" rel="attachment wp-att-7019" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-7019 lazyloaded" data-sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" data-src="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-5-sf-vs-mf-completions.jpg" data-srcset="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-5-sf-vs-mf-completions.jpg 1000w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-5-sf-vs-mf-completions-300x240.jpg 300w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-5-sf-vs-mf-completions-768x614.jpg 768w" decoding="async" height="800" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" src="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-5-sf-vs-mf-completions.jpg" srcset="https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-5-sf-vs-mf-completions.jpg 1000w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-5-sf-vs-mf-completions-300x240.jpg 300w, https://rdceconomics.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/chart-5-sf-vs-mf-completions-768x614.jpg 768w" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="1000" /></a></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">The spillover effect of the uptick in single-family housing starts in 2021 and into early 2022 drove the high number of homes completed through 2022. Single-family home completions remained near the 2022 level in 2023, falling just 2.2% from 1,022,000 completed single family homes in 2022 to 999,700 in 2023. The number of housing starts per completion remained above 1 from 2012 through 2022, but due to the uptick in completions and slowdown in starts, it fell to 0.98 in 2023. The pickup in home completions and the slowdown in starts suggests that builders continue to manage their pipeline, and amid the still increasing housing supply gap, many buyers may continue to struggle to find suitable home options.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">Affordable New For-Sale Inventory Starts to Recover</span></h3><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">In 2022, just 38% of new homes were sold for less than $400,000. However, in 2023, this share increased to 43%, indicating a shift toward more affordability in the new construction space. Many builders offered price cuts and other incentives in 2023 to prompt home sales and also focused on smaller units, which likely led to this progress in affordability. The </span><a href="https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/quarterly_starts_completions.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">median single family home started shrank</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"> from a median size of 2,269 square feet to 2,179 square feet in 2023.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">Housing Stock Losses Claim 0.9% of Housing per Year</span></h3><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Based on the 2017 – 2019 </span><a href="https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/cinch.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">Components of Inventory Change</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"> report (latest available), roughly 0.9% of the existing 2017 housing stock was lost by 2019. A housing stock ‘loss’ could be either permanent (such as demolition) or temporary (could feasibly return to the stock). In the time period studied, housing stock losses were almost entirely temporary (as opposed to permanent) losses. Housing stock losses introduce an additional supply gap to be filled by new construction unrelated to new households. This means that along with the gap discussed throughout this study, there exists a gap between existing households and obsolete housing stock, which would add to the overall housing supply gap. Likewise, there are housing stock additions in the form of recovered temporary losses. For the purposes of this study, we have not factored in these stock losses and additions, but acknowledge that these shifts affect overall housing stock and have implications for the estimated supply gap. </span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">Sunbelt Metros Grow Faster than Home Permitting Activity</span></h3><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">At the metro-level, some areas have seen outsized household growth relative to permitting activity, suggesting that housing supply may be lagging demand. We looked at the change in households between 2012 and 2023 as well as the number of total as well as single-family residential permits in the same timeframe to gauge how permitting is measuring up to population growth in the top 100 US metros. </span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Looking at just the gap between single-family permits and household formations reveals that permitting activity has lagged household growth in 73 of the top 100 metros in the US. The metros with the largest single-family gap include San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX, Austin-Round Rock, TX, and Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL. The top 10 list by size of gap relative to population includes 3 Texas metros, 5 Florida metros, and 2 Washington metros. Many of these areas have seen significant population growth due to the affordable cost of living and overall desirability. Though the potential single-family home supply gap is large in these areas, many of these dense areas have leaned into multi-family housing whether for rent or for purchase. Including multi-family permits, many of which are used for rentals, just 13 of the top 100 metros have seen faster household growth than permitting activity over the last 11 years.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Including both single- and multi-family permits shows that sunny markets such as Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL, San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX, Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL and Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL have seen household growth significantly outpace home permitting activity since 2012. These (mostly) affordable markets offer buyers bang for their buck, and home shoppers have flocked in response. The 10 areas where household growth has outpaced permitting activity the most are home to 5.7% of total US households, and accounted for 5.6% of permits in 2023, so these areas are seeing an justified share of homebuilding. However, these areas have grown an average 13.6% over the last 12 years, and our estimates suggest that more building is needed.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><table style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; caption-side: bottom; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px; max-width: 100%;"><tbody style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">Geography:</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">2012-2023 HH Growth vs Total Permit Gap Scaled by Household Count</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">Median Listing Price Change (Jan 2024 vs Jan 2019)</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">Jan 2024 Listings vs 2019</span></td></tr><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">USA</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">0.5%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">41.5%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">-40.1%</span></td></tr><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach, FL</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">5.1%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">48.4%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">-12.6%</span></td></tr><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">3.3%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">17.7%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">15.2%</span></td></tr><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">2.6%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">38.8%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">-14.8%</span></td></tr><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">2.4%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">72.0%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">-69.3%</span></td></tr><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Grand Rapids-Kentwood, MI</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">1.6%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">46.8%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">-56.8%</span></td></tr><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Stockton, CA</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">1.4%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">41.0%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">-50.6%</span></td></tr><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">1.1%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">46.6%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">-48.6%</span></td></tr><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Providence-Warwick, RI-MA</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">0.9%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">44.3%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">-70.2%</span></td></tr><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Bakersfield, CA</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">0.7%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">56.0%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">-42.1%</span></td></tr><tr style="border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">0.6%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">44.7%</span></td><td style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: inherit; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: inherit; border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: inherit; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; padding: 6px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">-36.4%</span></td></tr></tbody></table><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><h3 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 1.75rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">Moving Forward</span></h3><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">We expect existing home supply to remain lacking in 2024 as mortgage rates ease, but not so much as to encourage homeowners to sell. As a result, builder activity will continue to be an important lever to offer buyers options and to relieve some price pressure. </span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">In the for-sale housing market, low home inventory is keeping time on market quick and prices elevated. Homeowners remain hesitant to sell due to high mortgage rates, but this more favorable selling environment brought more sellers into the market towards the end of 2023, offering a few more options to homebuyers. The housing supply shortage will continue to put pressure on the housing market as buyers return to the market this spring in search of an affordable home but an uptick in existing home sellers and sustained new construction activity could mean some progress toward more balance this year.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Renters are likely to see further relief in 2024 as multi-family completions come online, increasing rental supply and easing rent prices. Renting is likely to remain a more affordable alternative to buying in many US metros until mortgage rates ease further. With the ongoing housing supply gap, new construction creates vitally needed options for new households.</span></p><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">Data:</span></p><ul style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px;"><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Household Formations (</span><a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TTLHHM156N" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TTLHHM156N</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">)</span></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Housing starts (</span><a href="https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/index.html</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">)</span></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Quarterly new home sale prices (https://www.census.gov/construction/nrs/pdf/quarterly_sales.pdf)</span></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Home builder sentiment (HMI) (</span><a href="https://www.nahb.org/news-and-economics/housing-economics/indices/housing-market-index" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">https://www.nahb.org/news-and-economics/housing-economics/indices/housing-market-index</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">)</span></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Homeowner vacancy rate (</span><a href="https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/index.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/index.html</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">)</span></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Housing Starts vs Completions (</span><a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=LCNQ" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=LCNQ</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">) </span></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Home completion time (</span><a href="https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/avg_starttocomp.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/avg_starttocomp.pdf</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">) </span></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Components of Inventory Change (</span><a href="https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/cinch.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #d92228; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-decoration-line: none;">https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/cinch.html</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">) </span></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Metro-level households</span></li><li aria-level="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">Metro-level residential permits</span></li></ul><h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 2rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"></h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bolder; max-width: 100%;">Methodology:</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">To arrive at yearly household formation, the increase in households between December in the previous year and the current year were calculated. This value was used as the number of household formations in the current year. Home starts, completions and permits refer to the total single-family homes metric in the Census construction data. HMI and vacancy data were pulled and displayed as stated in the data source.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212529; font-family: Lora, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%;">To understand how long it would take to close the gap between household formations and housing starts, the assumption was made that each projected year would see the yearly average number of household formations as assessed from 2012-2019. The assumed base rate of home building was the 2023 average. Any reference to double or tripling the rate of homebuilding is referring to the 2023 average rate of home building.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-65468662176399272162024-02-21T08:40:00.001-05:002024-02-21T08:40:45.367-05:00Florida Seeing New Condo Boom<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Developers see luxury condos dotting Florida's shorelines as new construction takes over the first generation of condos. However, it might be tough to convince current residents to sell.</span></span></p><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">MIAMI – Luxury condos are replacing Florida's first generation of condominiums, which are upwards of 60 years old. Many of those older buildings are slated to come down after the 2021 Champlain Tower South collapse in Surfside and the subsequent passage of regulations.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ian Bruce Eichner, CEO of the Continuum Co., says it is “the most significant impact on waterfront real estate that you've ever seen in your professional lifetime. These buildings, they have two things. They're 60 years old, they're on the water and they're in ‘A’ locations. And they're crappy old buildings.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Condo associations are now required to regularly assess the structural integrity of their buildings and fully fund reserves necessary for maintenance and repairs. Many associations are raising their monthly fees significantly, and they must undergo newly required inspections and potentially high assessments that not every condo owner can afford.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Some of the condo owners or associations may be pressured into selling to developers, NPR reported. Florida law requires condo owners receive fair market value for their properties. Eichner says developers have to persuade hundreds of condo unit owners to sell at the same time in order to obtain the totality of the building. He says the land under some of these structures “is worth a million dollars a unit.” He has several condo development projects already in the pipeline but foresees more on the way.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Source: NPR (01/04/24) Allen, Greg</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© Copyright 2024 Smithbucklin</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-16967011761106265632024-02-19T13:19:00.000-05:002024-02-19T13:19:28.788-05:00When will housing affordability improve? Spoiler alert: It will take some time<p> <span class="singleByline" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--black); font-family: Barlow, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15px; text-transform: uppercase;">BY: </span><span class="singleBylineAuthor" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--black); font-family: Barlow, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 15px; text-transform: uppercase;"><a class="author url fn" href="https://floridaphoenix.com/author/caseyquinlan/" rel="author" style="background-image: none !important; background-repeat: no-repeat !important; background-size: 0px 0% !important; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0s ease 0s !important;" title="Posts by Casey Quinlan">CASEY QUINLAN</a> </span><span class="singleByline" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--black); font-family: Barlow, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15px; text-transform: uppercase;">- FEBRUARY 18, 2024 - Florida Phoenix</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Inflation is slowing and job growth has surged, but many Americans still feel the burden of expensive housing – fueled in part by high demand, low inventory and mortgage rates.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Home prices across the U.S. rose 5.5% over the past year in December 2023 and they are projected to increase 2.8% year over year by December 2024, <a href="https://www.corelogic.com/intelligence/us-home-price-insights-february-2024/" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">according to</a> CoreLogic, a consumer and business information company. None of the states in CoreLogic’s data showed home price declines.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Rents shot up 23.9% between the beginning of 2020 and the start of of 2023 and home prices rose 37.5% <a href="https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/reports/files/Harvard_JCHS_The_State_of_the_Nations_Housing_2023.pdf" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">according to</a> Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies’ 2023 state of the nation’s housing report. The median sales price of a home sold in the U.S. is <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">$417,700</a>, according to the St. Louis Fed.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Given the state of housing affordability in the U.S., here’s what to know about ongoing construction shortages, high interest rates, where housing prices are climbing, and what policymakers could do about it.</p><h4 class="editorialSubhed" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--brand_one); font-family: "Barlow Condensed", sans-serif; font-size: 1.5rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px;">How did the housing market get this way?</h4><figure class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_215289" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--dark_gray); float: left; font-family: Barlow, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; margin: 0px 22px 1rem 0px; max-width: 100%; width: 150px;"><a data-slb-active="1" data-slb-asset="156708395" data-slb-group="220976" data-slb-internal="0" href="https://floridaphoenix.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/home-building-scaled.jpg" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="size-thumbnail wp-image-215289" decoding="async" height="150" src="https://floridaphoenix.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/home-building-150x150.jpg" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="150" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 8px;"><span class="fas fa-camera" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: "Font Awesome 5 Free"; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 900; line-height: 1; text-rendering: auto;"></span> New homes.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Getty Images.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;"></p></figcaption></figure><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Much of the current predicament renters and homebuyers face is linked to high housing demand, low housing inventory and the Fed’s cycle of hiking interest rates.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Very low mortgage rates – January 2021 saw the lowest recorded mortgage rate at <a href="https://themortgagereports.com/61853/30-year-mortgage-rates-chart" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">2.65%</a> – fueled demand but drove up prices, exacerbated by low housing inventory, Matthew Walsh, economist at Moody’s Analytics explained. The Federal Reserve then raised interest rates in 2022 to combat inflation, which in turn influenced mortgage rates.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Those rates reached near 8% in October, and higher rates put constraints on housing supply, with more homeowners staying put. It’s now <a href="https://www.freddiemac.com/pmms" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">6.77%</a> for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">A lack of housing stock, both in for sale and overall inventory, is a key long-run problem for housing affordability, said Robert Dietz, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders. A lack of accessible rental inventory that provides both single family and multi-family rental housing is a problem, he said.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">“We simply don’t have enough developed land to build on, particularly in the places where it’s needed the most, which tends to be highly dense, more regulated markets in the largest metros where there’s a lot of population growth,” he said.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">He added that a lack of construction labor as well as expensive building materials – partly affected by supply chain problems – have exacerbated the problem.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">A 2023 Home Builders Institute <a href="https://hbi.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Spring-2023-construction-labor-market-report_final-PDF.pdf" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">report</a> found that construction would need to add hundreds of thousands of workers to meet residential construction demand. An HBI survey done in 2021 found that around 90% of home builders for single family homes said there was a shortage of carpenters and that more than 80% of remodelers said there was a shortage in most of the construction trades they needed subcontractors for.</p><h4 class="editorialSubhed" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--brand_one); font-family: "Barlow Condensed", sans-serif; font-size: 1.5rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px;">What is the Federal Reserve doing with interest rates?</h4><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">The Fed is <a href="https://newjerseymonitor.com/2024/02/01/fed-keeps-interest-rates-same-as-expected-with-changes-likely-months-away/" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">expected</a> to cut rates this year, which should have some impact on housing prices. The Fed may not cut rates until May or later, but economists have forecast multiple rate cuts this year.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Many homebuyers and renters are hoping that a cut in interest rates could provide lower home and rental prices, since a lack of homebuying can drive up rental costs.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">But economists say there won’t be meaningful relief anytime soon.</p><figure class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_205432" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--dark_gray); float: left; font-family: Barlow, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14px; margin: 0px 22px 1rem 0px; max-width: 100%; width: 300px;"><a data-slb-active="1" data-slb-asset="220235201" data-slb-group="220976" data-slb-internal="0" href="https://floridaphoenix.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Highlights_from_Orlando_Florida-_City_scenes_housing_construction_new_homes_Jones_High_School_-_DPLA_-_a3e69cb8129fb4a42a5c44b4498065c6.jpg" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-205432" decoding="async" height="213" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" src="https://floridaphoenix.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Highlights_from_Orlando_Florida-_City_scenes_housing_construction_new_homes_Jones_High_School_-_DPLA_-_a3e69cb8129fb4a42a5c44b4498065c6-300x213.jpg" srcset="https://floridaphoenix.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Highlights_from_Orlando_Florida-_City_scenes_housing_construction_new_homes_Jones_High_School_-_DPLA_-_a3e69cb8129fb4a42a5c44b4498065c6-300x213.jpg 300w, https://floridaphoenix.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Highlights_from_Orlando_Florida-_City_scenes_housing_construction_new_homes_Jones_High_School_-_DPLA_-_a3e69cb8129fb4a42a5c44b4498065c6-100x70.jpg 100w, https://floridaphoenix.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Highlights_from_Orlando_Florida-_City_scenes_housing_construction_new_homes_Jones_High_School_-_DPLA_-_a3e69cb8129fb4a42a5c44b4498065c6-592x420.jpg 592w, https://floridaphoenix.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Highlights_from_Orlando_Florida-_City_scenes_housing_construction_new_homes_Jones_High_School_-_DPLA_-_a3e69cb8129fb4a42a5c44b4498065c6.jpg 640w" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="300" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 8px;"><span class="fas fa-camera" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: "Font Awesome 5 Free"; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-weight: 900; line-height: 1; text-rendering: auto;"></span> New housing in Orlando. Credit: File, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;"></p></figcaption></figure><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">“It should push mortgage rates down into the low 6% range and perhaps in 2025 moving into the high 5s,” Dietz said. “That’s not the 2 to 3% rate that we saw earlier, but it will help price in some demand by lowering the monthly payment on a hypothetical mortgage. It is going to have a disproportionate impact on first-time buyers who tend to be particularly sensitive to changes in rates because they don’t have any home equity as first-time buyers.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Selma Hepp, chief economist at CoreLogic, said home prices will remain pricy for quite some time, even when mortgage rates come down.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">“Because home prices have gone up 40%, no matter how much you adjust mortgage rates — and we’re not expecting them to come down to 2% any time soon if ever again — you’d really have to get them to 2% to get that affordability back,” she said.</p><h4 class="editorialSubhed" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--brand_one); font-family: "Barlow Condensed", sans-serif; font-size: 1.5rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px;">What are home price trends in different parts of the U.S.?</h4><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island saw the highest home price increases in December, according to CoreLogic’s data, but no states saw home prices go down.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Hepp said that is significant because until this report, a couple states continued to show year-over-year declines: Utah and Idaho as well as the District of Columbia. She said that change may have been fueled by people moving from parts of California and from Seattle who drove up home prices in their new states.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">A Moody’s Investor Service report released in October showed Florida, Montana, Nevada, and Idaho had the largest decline in affordability, due in part to growth in new residents.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">But no part of the country is being spared by the effects of rising housing prices. Walsh said some of the fastest price appreciation he’s seen is in parts of the northeast and midwest because some of those markets are more affordable compared to parts of the country that saw an influx of residents earlier in the pandemic, such as metro areas in Mountain states including Colorado and Arizona</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">“The places where we’ve seen the most moderation in home prices have been in the places that lost that affordability edge…,” he said. “… Some of the fastest growing places in the northeast, like upstate New York, a place that really hasn’t seen quick increases in home prices in a long time, have been showing signs of life over the past year.”</p><h4 class="editorialSubhed" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--brand_one); font-family: "Barlow Condensed", sans-serif; font-size: 1.5rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; margin-top: 0px;">How are policymakers helping?</h4><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Some states and cities are <a href="https://tennesseelookout.com/2023/12/26/states-biden-administration-push-efforts-to-aid-renters-keep-people-housed/" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">stepping up</a> to the challenge of improving its affordable housing stock.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">A program in Maine is funding more affordable rental housing, which includes the improvement of existing housing. Minnesota’s Family Homeless Prevention and Assistance Program is expanding rental assistance.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Voters in Phoenix and Albuquerque, New Mexico, last year <a href="https://nlihc.org/resource/support-housing-and-homelessness-ballot-measures-transcends-geographic-and-partisan" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">supported</a> bond measures that will spend millions on affordable housing. In 2022, voters <a href="https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2022/12/19/voters-embraced-affordable-housing-initiatives-advocates-say-congress-should-do-the-same/" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">approved</a> housing bonds to fund more affordable housing for Buncombe County, North Carolina; Columbus, Ohio, and Kansas City, Missouri. Localities in Colorado and Montana voted to use tax revenues on affordable housing development and projects in 2023 as well.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">On the federal level, the Biden administration <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/27/biden-harris-administration-announces-actions-to-lower-housing-costs-and-boost-supply/" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">announced</a> in July it would address low housing supply by incentivizing projects with greater density and creating a program to fund projects that focus on zoning reforms. In October, the administration also introduced <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/16/white-house-announces-new-actions-on-homeownership/" style="background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: 0px 100%; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;" target="_blank">new housing initiatives</a> to increase homeownership, such as loans to boost affordable housing on tribal lands and letting homeowners use prospective rental income from “dwelling units” at their home as part of their income when they want to qualify for FHA-insured mortgages. Some economists say that zoning is far too restrictive to increase housing supply and make it more affordable.</p><p><span class="singleByline" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--black); font-family: Barlow, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15px; text-transform: uppercase;"></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Newsreader, serif; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 1rem; margin-top: 0px;">Government policies to address housing affordability should include “thinking about ways to incentivize state and local governments to reduce regulatory burdens and enact zoning reform to promote density where the market demands it,” Dietz said.</p><p>https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/02/18/when-will-housing-affordability-improve-spoiler-alert-it-will-take-some-time/</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-37978267270324282024-02-08T07:42:00.000-05:002024-02-08T07:42:01.192-05:00U.S. Home Prices Saw Record Jump in November<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Alex Veiga</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">CoreLogic Case-Shiller found U.S. home prices are up 45% since March 2020, the biggest gains since December 2022. CoreLogic forecasts home prices will rise by an average of 3% this year.</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">LOS ANGELES — A closely watched housing market barometer shows U.S. home prices in November posted their biggest annual gain in more than a year.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">S&P Dow Jones Indices’ CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index rose 5.1% over the 12 months ended in November. That’s the index’s fifth straight annual gain and the biggest since December 2022, according to data released this week.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The jump “is pretty strong, given where mortgage rates have been and the impact on affordability,” said Selma Hepp, chief economist at CoreLogic.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">U.S. home prices are now up 45% since March 2020, the early days of the pandemic.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">A tight supply of homes for sale nationally has kept upward pressure on home prices despite a severe housing market slump deepened by a sharp runup in mortgage rates last fall.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The average rate on a 30-year mortgage rate reached 7.79% in late October, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac. Since then, home loan borrowing costs have been mostly easing, though they remain well above the rock-bottom levels seen just three years ago.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Elevated mortgage rates and a dearth of available homes have kept the U.S. housing market mired in a slump the past two years. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank to a nearly 30-year low last year, tumbling 18.7% from 2022.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">While annual home price gains remain solid, the month-to-month changes in the latest index paint a less definitive picture of home price trends.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Consider, the November reading was down 0.2% from October, marking the first monthly decline in the home price index since January 2023.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Surging mortgage rates in late 2023 started to impact prices in November, which declined from the month before,” Hepp said. “That suggests pivoting of annual gains over the next few months.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">CoreLogic forecasts that U.S. home prices will rise by an average of 3% this year.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">A version of the index that tracks the value of homes in 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas showed that home prices in November increased in all but one of the metros in the index: Portland, Oregon.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Among the biggest gainers: Detroit, where the index surged to an annual gain of 8.2%, and San Diego, where the index registered an 8% annual gain.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Many economists are projecting that mortgage rates will head lower in 2024, though forecasts generally have the average rate on a 30-year home loan hovering around 6% by the end of the year.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-67116900417054818782024-02-08T07:35:00.004-05:002024-02-08T07:35:42.120-05:00Nearly 32% of Home Sales in the Last Quarter Were Newly Built<h2 style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">New construction accounted for a large share of home sales in 2023 Q4 because homebuilding has increased and the number of homeowners selling has decreased, Redfin said.</span></span></h2><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">SEATTLE — Nationwide, 31.8% of U.S. single-family homes for sale in the fourth quarter of 2023 were new construction, according to a new report from the real estate brokerage Redfin. That’s comparable with 31.9% a year earlier, which is the highest level of any fourth quarter on record.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.redfin.com/news/new-construction-q4-2023/" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Newly built homes are taking up a growing share</a> of the for-sale housing pie for two primary reasons:</span></p><ol style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1.438em 0px; padding-left: 1.5em;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Homebuilding has increased.</strong> Homebuilding has been on an upward trajectory since 2009 as builders have slowly climbed their way out of the hole caused by the Great Recession. Construction also jumped during the pandemic as builders responded to surging homebuyer demand fueled by record-low mortgage rates.</span></li></ol><ol start="2" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1.438em 0px; padding-left: 1.5em;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">The number of homeowners putting their houses on the market has decreased</strong> over the last year and a half. That’s because mortgage rates started rising in 2022 and jumped to a 23-year high in 2023, prompting many homeowners to stay put instead of selling and losing the rock-bottom rate they scored during the pandemic. While mortgage rates have fallen a bit in the last few months, this “lock-in effect” continues to hamper listings, which are higher than they were a year ago but remain far below pre-pandemic levels.</span></li></ol><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Homebuilders have been offering sizable concessions, including money for mortgage rate buydowns, to attract bidders and offload inventory. That has made it hard for some individual sellers of existing homes to compete for buyers.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Newly built homes are selling quickly right now because builders are offering such good discounts,” said Heather Mahmood-Corley, a real estate agent in Phoenix. “I recently had a buyer who wasn’t interested in a new construction home, but the builder offered such a good rate – 5.25% – that they couldn’t afford not to take it. Another one of my buyers got a $10,000 credit for closing costs from a builder.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">While builders are offering discounts, they’ve also boosted prices, according to Christine Kooiker, a real estate agent in Grand Rapids, MI.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“One of the builders in Grand Rapids that focuses on entry-level homes now has prices in the mid $300,000 range,” Kooiker said. “Not long ago, buyers could get a new construction home here for $250,000 or $300,000.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Roughly two of every five (42%) new single-family homes that sold in 2022 went for $500,000 or more, up from under one-third (30%) in 2021 and 18% in 2020.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">©2024 Florida Realtors</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-1672845022440223332024-01-31T06:58:00.000-05:002024-01-31T06:58:58.251-05:00Why It's So Hard to End Homelessness in the U.S.<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Alvin Powell</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Experts said the problem's complexity, rooted in poverty and a lack of affordable housing but including medical, psychiatric and substance-use issues, makes solving homelessness challenging.</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">BOSTON – It took seven years for Abigail Judge to see what success looked like for one Boston homeless woman.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The woman had been sex trafficked since she was young, was a drug user and had been abused, neglected or exploited in just about every relationship she'd had. If Judge was going to help her, trust had to come first. Everything else – recovery, healing, employment, rejoining society's mainstream – might be impossible without it. That meant patience despite the daily urgency of the woman's situation.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“It’s nonlinear. She gets better, stops, gets re-engaged with the trafficker and pulled back into the lifestyle. She does time because she was literally holding the bag of fentanyl for these guys,” said Judge, a psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School whose outreach program, Boston Human Exploitation and Sex Trafficking (HEAT), is supported by Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston Police Department. “This is someone who’d been initially trafficked as a kid and when I met her was 23 or 24. She turned 30 last year, and now she’s housed, she’s abstinent, she’s on suboxone. And she's super involved in her community.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">It's a success story, but one that illustrates some of the difficulties of finding solutions to the nation's homeless problem. And it's not a small problem. A December 2023 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said 653,104 Americans experienced homelessness, tallied on a single night in January last year. That figure was the highest since HUD began reporting on the issue to Congress in 2007.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Scholars, healthcare workers and homeless advocates agree that two major contributing factors are poverty and a lack of affordable housing, both stubbornly intractable societal challenges. But they add that hard-to-treat psychiatric issues and substance-use disorders also often underlie chronic homelessness. All of which explains why those who work with the unhoused refer to what they do as “the long game,” “the long walk” or “the five-year-plan” as they seek to address the traumas underlying life on the street.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“As a society, we're looking for a quick fix, but there's no quick fix for this,: said Stephen Wood, a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics and a nurse practitioner in the emergency room at Carney Hospital in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. “It takes a lot of time to fix this. There will be relapses; there'll be problems. It requires an interdisciplinary effort for success.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Katherine Koh, an assistant professor of psychiatry at HMS and psychiatrist at MGH on the street team for Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, traced the rise of homelessness in recent decades to a combination of factors, including funding cuts for community-based care, affordable housing and social services in the 1980s as well as deinstitutionalization of mental hospitals.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Though we have grown anesthetized to seeing people living on the street in the U.S., homelessness is not inevitable,” said Koh, who sees patients where they feel most comfortable – on the street, in church basements, public libraries. “For most of U.S. history, it has not been nearly as visible as it is now. There are a number of countries with more robust social services but similar prevalence of mental illness, for example, where homelessness rates are significantly lower. We do not have to accept current rates of homelessness as the way it has to be.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Success stories exist and illustrate that strong leadership, multidisciplinary collaboration, and adequate resources can significantly reduce the problem. Prevention, meanwhile, in the form of interventions focused on transition periods like military discharge, aging out of foster care and release from prison, has the potential to vastly reduce the numbers of the newly homeless.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Recognition is also growing at Harvard and elsewhere that homelessness is not merely a byproduct of other issues, like drug use or high housing costs, but is itself one of the most difficult problems facing the nation's cities. Experts say that means interventions have to be multidisciplinary yet focused on the problem; funding for research has to rise; and education of the next generation of leaders on the issue must improve.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“This is an extremely complex problem that is really the physical and most visible embodiment of a lot of the public health challenges that have been happening in this country,” said Carmel Shachar, faculty director of Harvard Law School's Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation. “The public health infrastructure has always been the poor Cinderella, compared to the healthcare system, in terms of funding. We need increased investment in public health services, in the public health workforce, such that, for people who are unhoused, are unsheltered, who are struggling with substance use, we have a meaningful answer for them.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Experts say that the nation’s unhoused population not only experiences poverty and exposure to the elements, but also suffers from a lack of basic health care, and so tend to get hit earlier and harder than the general population by various ills from the flu to opioid dependency to COVID-19.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">A recent study of 60,000 homeless people in Boston recorded 7,130 deaths over the 14-year study period. The average age of death was 53.7, decades earlier than the nation's 2017 life expectancy of 78.8 years. The leading cause of death was drug overdose, which increased 9.35 percent annually, reflecting the track of the nation's opioid epidemic, though rising more quickly than in the general population.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">A closer look at the data shows that impacts vary depending on age, sex, race and ethnicity. All-cause mortality was highest among white men, age 65 to 79, while suicide was a particular problem among the young. HIV infection and homicide, meanwhile, disproportionately affected Black and Latinx individuals. Together, those results highlight the importance of tailoring interventions to background and circumstances, according to Danielle Fine, instructor in medicine at HMS and MGH and an author of two analyses of the study's data.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“The takeaway is that the mortality gap between the homeless population and the general population is widening over time,” Fine said. “And this is likely driven in part by a disproportionate number of drug-related overdose deaths in the homeless population compared to the general population.”</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Inadequate supplies of housing</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Though homelessness has roots in poverty and a lack of affordable housing, it also can be traced to early life issues, Koh said. The journey to the streets often starts in childhood, when neglect and abuse leave their marks, interfering with education, acquisition of work skills and the ability to maintain healthy relationships.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Most advocates embrace a “housing first” approach, prioritizing it as a first step to obtaining other vital services. But they say the type of housing also matters. Temporary shelters are a key part of the response, but many of the unhoused avoid them because of fears of theft, assault and sexual assault. Instead, long-term beds, including those designated for people struggling with substance use and mental health issues, are needed.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“You can either be admitted to a hospital with a substance-use disorder, or you can be admitted with a psychiatric disorder, but very, very rarely will you be admitted to what's called a dual-diagnosis bed,” said Petrie-Flom's Wood. “The data is pretty solid on this issue: If you have a substance-use disorder there's likely some underlying, severe trauma. Yet, when we go to treat them, we address one but not the other. You're never going to find success in the system that we currently have if you don't recognize that dual diagnosis.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Services offered to those in housing should avoid what Koh describes as a “one-size-fits-none” approach. Some might need monthly visits from a caseworker to ensure they're getting the support they need, she said. But others struggle once off the streets. They need weekly even daily support from counselors, caseworkers and other service providers.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“I have seen, sadly, people who get housed and move very quickly back out on the streets or, even more tragically, lose their life from an unwitnessed overdose in housing,” Koh said. “There's a community that's formed on the street so if you overdose, somebody can give you Narcan or call 911. If you don’t have the safety of peers around, people can die. We had a patient who literally died just a few days after being housed, from an overdose. We really cannot just house people and expect their problems to be solved. We need to continue to provide the best care we can to help people succeed once in housing.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The nation's failure to address the causes of homelessness has led to the rise of informal encampments from Portland, Maine, to the large cities of the West Coast. In Boston, an informal settlement of tents and tarps near the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard was a point of controversy before it was cleared in November.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In the aftermath, more than 100 former “Mass and Cass” residents have been moved into housing, according to media reports. But experts were cautious in their assessment of the city’s plans. They gave positive marks for features such as a guaranteed place to sleep, “low threshold” shelters that don't require sobriety and increased outreach to connect people with services. But they also said it's clear that unintended consequences have arisen, and the city's homelessness problem is far from solved.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Examples abound. Judge, who leads Boston HEAT in collaboration with Sandra Andrade of MGH, said that a woman she’d been working with for two years, who had been making positive strides despite fragile health, ongoing sexual exploitation and severe substance use disorder, disappeared after Mass and Cass was cleared.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Mike Jellison, a peer counselor who works on Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program's street team, said dismantling the encampment dispersed people around the city and set his team scrambling to find and reconnect people who had been receiving medical care with providers. It’s also clear, he said, that Boston Police are taking a hard line to prevent new encampments from popping up in other neighborhoods, quickly clearing tents and other structures.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“We were out there Wednesday morning on our usual route in Charlesgate,” Jellison said in early December. “And there was a really young couple who had all their stuff packed. And [the police] just told them, ‘You've got to leave, you can’t stay here.’ She was crying, ‘Where am I going to go?’ This was a couple who works; they're employed and work out of a tent. It was like 20 degrees out there. It was heartbreaking.”</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Prevention as cure?</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Successes in reducing homelessness in the U.S. are scarce, but not unknown. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, has reduced veteran homelessness nationally by more than 50 percent since 2010.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The city of Houston is another example. In 2011, Houston had the nation's fifth-largest homeless population. Then-Mayor Annise Parker began a program that coordinated 100 regional nonprofits to provide needed services and boost the construction of low-cost housing in the relatively inexpensive Houston market.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Neither the VA nor Houston was able to eliminate homelessness, however.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">To Koh, that highlights the importance of prevention. In 2022, she published research in which she and a team used an artificial-intelligence-driven model to identify those who could benefit from early intervention before they wound up on the streets. The researchers examined a group of U.S. service members and found that self-reported histories of depression, trauma due to a loved one's murder and post-traumatic stress disorder were the three strongest predictors of homelessness after discharge.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In April 2023, Koh, with co-author Benjamin Land Gorman, suggested in the Journal of the American Medical Association that using “Critical Time Intervention,” where help is focused on key transitions, such as military discharge or release from prison or the hospital, has the potential to head off homelessness.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“So much of the clinical research and policy focus is on housing those who are already homeless,” Koh said. “But even if we were to house everybody who's homeless today, there are many more people coming down the line. We need sustainable policies that address these upstream determinants of homelessness, in order to truly solve this problem.”</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The education imperative</span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Despite the obvious presence of people living and sleeping on city sidewalks, the topic of homelessness has been largely absent from the nation's colleges and universities. Howard Koh, former Massachusetts commissioner of public health and former U.S. assistant secretary for Health and Human Services, is working to change that.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In 2019, Koh, who is also the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership, founded the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health's pilot Initiative on Health and Homelessness. The program seeks to educate tomorrow's leaders about homelessness and support research and interdisciplinary collaboration to create new knowledge on the topic. The Chan School's course “Homelessness and Health: Lessons from Health Care, Public Health, and Research” is one of just a handful focused on homelessness offered by schools of public health nationwide.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“The topic remains an orphan,” said Koh. The national public health leader (who also happens to be Katherine's father) traced his interest in the topic to a bitter winter while he was Massachusetts public health commissioner when 13 homeless people froze to death on Boston’s streets. “I've been haunted by this issue for several decades as a public health professional. We now want to motivate courageous and compassionate young leaders to step up and address the crisis, educate students, motivate researchers, and better inform policymakers about evidence-based studies. We want every student who walks through Harvard Yard and sees vulnerable people lying in Harvard Square to not accept their suffering as normal.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">2024 States News Service</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-59175121655532037152024-01-31T06:54:00.001-05:002024-01-31T06:54:17.058-05:00HUD Announces $134 Millions for Florida Homeless<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Amy Connolly</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s funding will go towards projects across the state for continuum of care.</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced nearly $134 million in funding for more than 300 Florida projects to help the homeless. It is part of a $3.16 billion in continuum of care program awards for over 7,000 projects nationwide.</span></p><div class="align-right media--type-image" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; box-sizing: border-box; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 1em 1em; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center;"><div class="far-media-image" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;"><div class="field field--name-field-media-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field--item" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; position: relative;"><span class="photoswipe-gallery photoswipe-gallery--fallback-wrapper" data-pswp-uid="1" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a class="photoswipe" data-overlay-title="United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Professional photo of Marcia Fudge" data-size="1180x1475" href="https://www.floridarealtors.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_uncropped_main_image_1180px_wide_/public/2023-12/Marcia%20Fudge.jpg?itok=x-mESw7I" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;"><img alt="United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Professional photo of Marcia Fudge" height="220" src="https://www.floridarealtors.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/2023-12/Marcia%20Fudge.jpg?itok=nsbTxQAK" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" title="" typeof="foaf:Image" width="176" /></a></span></div></div><div class="field field--name-field-caption field--type-string field--label-hidden field--item" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.8em; padding: 0.6em 0px; text-align: left;">HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge</div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The funding is slated for <a href="https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/CPD/documents/CoC-Florida-2023-Funding-Report.xlsx" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">programs across the state</a> on large and small scales, from $3.4 million for a housing project in Miami-Dade to $3,500 for technology operations in DeSoto, Glades, Hardee, Hendry, Highlands and Okeechobee counties. The total distribution for Florida will be $133,832,958.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Now, more than ever, we are doing all we can to get people off the street and into permanent homes with access to services. That is why we are making sure the service providers on the frontlines of this crisis have the resources they need,” <a href="https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HUD_No_24_018" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge said.</a></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The $3.16 billion represents the largest-ever amount of continuum of care program funding awarded to communities to address homelessness in history and provides a critical expansion of resources at a time when rates of homelessness are rising in most communities, HUD said. The 2023 awards also include approximately $57 million for new projects that will support housing and service needs for survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Fudge said HUD has served or permanently housed 1.2 million people experiencing homelessness in the last three years.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“The historic awards we are announcing today will expand community capacity to assist more people in obtaining the safety and stability of a home, along with the supports they need to achieve their life goals,” she said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2024 Florida Realtors®</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-42888385737755042182024-01-30T07:27:00.002-05:002024-01-30T07:27:54.337-05:00Florida Chamber: State Population to Slow in 2024<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Amy Connolly</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The chamber also said the housing market will begin to stabilize to a new normal, and home prices will no longer spike.</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">TALLAHASSEE – The state’s population will grow in 2024, but not as much as the previous year, and the population demographics will shift, Florida Chamber Foundation economists and researchers said during the organization’s annual economic outlook summit.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The chamber said the state will grow by 225,000 to 275,000 net new residents in 2024, which is slower than last year. Residents age 70+ will grow at a faster clip than in the 20 to 65 age range, the organization said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">With the population declines for those age 9 and under, ages 25 to 35 and ages 50 to 60, the gap in the talent supply is widening as essential working age populations move out.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">At the same time, Florida is creating one in every 13 U.S. jobs, is growing by 1,000 people per day and has the lowest debt per capita of any state.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Florida leads the nation in several important categories and has become the national model for economic growth,” Florida Chamber Foundation President and CEO Mark Wilson said at the 2024 Florida Economic Outlook & Jobs Solution Summit. “As Florida continues to experience extraordinary economic and population growth, it is essential our job creators continue uniting around the right long-term solutions to secure Florida’s future.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Solution Summit, which took place Thursday, included a 2024 Florida economic forecast, a national economic outlook and insight into Florida’s evolving workforce needs, housing trends, population growth, research and development potential and more.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The organization also expects the state’s housing market to stabilize to a “new normal.” In 2024, active listings will remain high and begin leveling off, chamber leaders said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Similarly, median housing prices are not expected to decline, but will also not see the same rapid spikes as in recent years. The median listing price is predicted to be $415,000 to $450,000 and the median rental estimate will be in the range of $1,450 to $1,650,” chamber leaders said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Other insights from the summit include:</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Annual job growth will continue to outpace the nation</strong>: Florida’s job growth in 2023 remained an average of 1.1% higher than the national level and has not been slower than the U.S. since 2017. Rapid economic growth in many areas of Florida’s economy, as well as high levels of population growth, fuels the prediction that Florida will remain on top of the country in job growth.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Florida will continue growing at a faster pace than any other state</strong>: Florida’s GDP grew 9.3% over 2023, the fastest rate in the country. Florida has the fastest growth over the last four years, a long-term trend the organization expects to continue in 2024.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Florida’s economic growth will remain positive but will slow to more sustainable levels:</strong> With national economists split on the potential of a national recession in 2024, the Florida Chamber Foundation does not predict that Florida will experience a recession. Florida’s GDP is expected to grow by 7%, higher than the national average.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">T<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">here will be small interest rate cuts towards the second half of 2024: </strong>The Florida Chamber Foundation expects possible interest rate cuts in the second half of the year. However, the minor cuts are not anticipated to make a large impact on inflation in Florida, as inflation rates in parts of Florida currently exceed the national average.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Florida will see 100,000 to 150,000 new jobs in 2024</strong>: The trend of slowing job growth experienced over the last few months of 2023 will persist this year. Overall job growth for 2024 will be between 1.0% and 1.5%. Slowing growth, or even declines, will be prominent in the professional business services, financial activities and information industries, while high growth will occur in the education and health services industry.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Florida will continue to lead the nation in income migration</strong>: Most recent income migration figures showed $39.2 billion in net income migration to Florida. The Florida Chamber Foundation expects that figure to continue increasing as people from other states relocate to Florida for economic opportunity, no state income tax and other reasons.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2024 Florida Realtors®</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-46141830620962969332024-01-30T07:21:00.002-05:002024-01-30T07:21:57.620-05:00Study: Baby Boomers Own 41.3% of Florida Homes<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A growing number of Americans plan to age in place rather than move to an assisted living or senior living facility, which will leave an inventory shortage.</span></span></p><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">WASHINGTON – A 2021 AARP survey found that 77% of Americans over age 50 plan to remain in their current home, rather than move to a senior living facility, assisted living community or move in with family.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">As more older Americans choose to age in place, the housing market is expected to see less inventory for new home buyers. U.S. Census Bureau data show that while the number of Americans over age 55 that owned homes increased to 54.2%, the percentage of homeowners under age 35 remained steady and the percentage of homeowners between age 35 and 54 declined to 33.8% between 2008 and 2021.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">For 2022, age 55 and older homeowners declined to 53.6%, homeowners under 35 was 12.2% and homeowners between age 35 and 54 totaled 34.2%, which were modest increases.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Baby boomers between age 58 and 76 in 2022 accounted for 38% of homeowners, even though they account for just 20% of the U.S. population. Baby boomers who own homes also dominate housing markets in warmer areas, including Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL (40.0%) and Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL (38.9%).</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Source: Pasco News Online (01/24/24)</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© Copyright 2024 Smithbucklin</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-54375408713583778392024-01-23T07:00:00.000-05:002024-01-23T07:00:01.042-05:00Millennials Also Flock to Florida<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Of the more than 2,000 people who move to Florida every day, 27% are millennials age 28 to 43, a new survey found. They’re drawn by job prospects and affordability.</span></span></p><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">MIAMI – Long hailed as a haven for retirees, a new analysis of the latest migration trends from StorageCafe reveals that Florida is experiencing a shift as millennials (those between the age of 28 and 43) are taking center stage as the primary age demographic favoring the Sunshine State.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Overall, among the top 10 states for net migration gains, Florida took StorageCafe’s top spot as the country’s leading moving destination.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">According to the research, overall, 736,000 people moved to Florida in 2022 and 497,000 left the state, leading to a population upswing of nearly 240,000 people — including a net gain of 34,000 millennials.</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Why are millennials moving to Florida?</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">According to Aura Michelle Mogosanu of StorageCafe, among the roughly 2,015 people who moved to Florida every day, 27% were millennials — and the inviting weather isn’t the only reason. Young professionals and families are likely attracted to Florida’s beaches, the absence of a state income tax and abundant job prospects in hubs like Tampa’s burgeoning technology sector and Miami’s thriving business centers.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Mogosanu also says home affordability is a top driving force behind these relocations.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Even though the explosion in popularity was accompanied by steep home price increases of up to 31% in the past five years in Florida, homes are still about 13% and 18% more affordable than those in New York and New Jersey,” Mogosanu said. “But the most substantial benefits await those trading California for Florida, as they are halving their home buying costs. They could potentially save approximately $364,000 in home acquisition costs by making the swap. It may come as no surprise then that an amazing 56% of Californian transplants become homeowners during their first year in Florida.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The ongoing vitality of Florida’s real estate construction industry continues to play a crucial role in maintaining the state’s competitiveness in the realm of homeownership.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In Jacksonville, more than 37,000 permits were issued for single family homes from 2013 to 2022, the fourth-highest number among the 100 biggest urban hubs. Further, the apartment market experienced significant growth, marked by the issuance of approximately 28,000 permits for multifamily units during the same period.</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Where are Florida’s new residents moving from?</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In America’s ever shifting residential landscape, the five states with the most households who moved to Florida are New York, California, New Jersey, Georgia and Texas.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Among the top three, about 90,000 New Yorkers made the move Florida’s sunny shores. Not surprising, given that on average, single renters in the Big Apple must allocate just over 71% of their median annual salary of $55,810 to afford the $3,308 average monthly rent. In fact, former city dwellers moved to Florida from New York at a rate 1.84 times higher than from California, which contributed 49,000 new Floridians, followed by 47,000 from New Jersey.</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What area of Florida are new residents moving to?</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">A recent report from Zillow placed Orlando and Tampa among the top 10 hottest real estate markets for 2024 for their blend of job growth relative to new construction, swiftly selling homes on the market, an abundance of potential buyers and the expectation of stable home values. Orlando, Jacksonville and Tampa also secured a spot among the best locations for real estate development.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">According to a report from Redfin, more people across the country researched Miami property listings than any other metro area in the country. Four other Florida cities including Tampa, Orlando, Cape Coral and North Port Sarasota – also made the top ten.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2024 Advance Local Media LLC. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-53082625285329802482024-01-22T08:21:00.002-05:002024-01-22T08:21:32.876-05:00Residents, Jobs Helped Florida’s 2023 Housing Market<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Marla Martin</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Florida Realtors chief economist: “Florida weathered the storm” of higher interest rates and ongoing inflation making 2023, a “rough year for residential real estate.”</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">ORLANDO, FL</span><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </strong><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">– As 2023 ended, Florida’s inventory of for-sale existing homes and condo properties showed gains over 2022, while statewide median sales prices continued to rise year-over-year despite higher interest rates and ongoing inflation, according to the latest housing data released by Florida Realtors</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">®</span></span></span></span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Year End 2023</strong></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“2023 was a rough year for residential real estate here in the U.S. and around the world, as central banks continued to raise interest rates to combat inflation, though Florida weathered the storm fairly well,” said </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Florida Realtors</span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">®</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> Chief Economist Dr. Brad O’Connor.</span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> “The state’s economy churned out new jobs at one of the highest rates of any state, and throughout the year, both retirees and working-age adults and their families continued to move here in droves from elsewhere in the country. Both of those factors helped mitigate some of the dampening effect that high mortgage rates had on homebuyer demand in 2023, but they weren’t enough to keep home sales from declining.”</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Statewide closed sales of existing single-family homes at the end of the year totaled 257,679, down 10.3% compared to the 2022 year-end level, according to data from Florida Realtors’ research department in partnership with local Realtor boards/associations. </span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">For existing condo-townhouses, a total of 105,411 units sold statewide in 2023, down 16% compared to 2022. </span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Closed sales may occur from 30- to 90-plus days after sales contracts are written.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">O’Connor pointed out, “Like the rest of the country, Florida remained mired in a housing shortage throughout 2023, although inventory (active listings) levels at the end of the year were higher than where they started</span> <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">by 17.8% for single-family homes and 52.6% for condos and townhouses. However, inventory remains below pre-pandemic levels and while the balance has shifted somewhat toward buyers as of late, we solidly remain in seller’s market territory.”</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">He added that “the amount of housing supply remains too limited and the demand for housing in Florida remains too strong to support any sort of significant home price correction any time soon.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The statewide median sales price for single-family existing homes at year’s end was $410,000, up 1.9% from the previous year. </span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The statewide median price for condo-townhouse properties at the end of the year was $322,500, up 5.2% from the previous year. </span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The median is the midpoint; half the homes sold for more, half for less.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Florida Realtors’ data showed that at the end of 2023, in December 2023 and also in 4Q 2023, inventory (active listings) for single-family homes stood at a 3.6-months’ supply, while </span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">inventory for condo-townhouse properties was at a 5.1-months’ supply.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">December 2023</strong></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In December, closed sales of single-family homes statewide totaled 18,423, down 3.8% from December 2022, while existing condo-townhouse sales totaled 7,202, down 6.2% year-over-year, according to Florida Realtors’ data.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The statewide median sales prices for both existing single-family homes and condo-townhouse properties rose year-over-year in December 2023. The statewide median sales price for single-family existing homes was $410,000, up 3.8% from the previous year. Meanwhile, the statewide median price for condo-townhouse units was $330,000, up 6.5% over the year-ago figure.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">4Q 2023</strong></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Statewide closed sales of existing single-family homes totaled 55,874 in 4Q 2023, down 2% compared to the previous-year figure, according to Florida Realtors’ data. The statewide median sales price for existing single-family homes for the quarter was <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">$</span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">410,805, up 2.7% from 4Q 2022.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Looking at Florida’s year-to-year comparison for sales of condo-townhouses in 4Q 2023, a total of 22,425 units sold statewide, down 3% from the same quarter in 2022. The statewide median price for condo-townhouse properties for the quarter was $325,173, up 4.9% over the previous year.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Looking ahead, O’Connor said, “I expect to see continued improvement in the rate of sales as we go forward in 2024, now that mortgage rates have likely peaked and there’s a good possibility of the Federal Reserve starting to cut rates in the coming months.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">To see the full statewide housing activity reports, go to the </span><a href="https://www.floridarealtors.org/newsroom" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Florida Realtors’ Newsroom</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> and look under Latest Releases or download the December, 4Q or Year End 2023 data report PDFs under</span> <a href="https://www.floridarealtors.org/newsroom/market-data" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;">Market Data</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> on the site.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2024 Florida Realtors®</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-60580320542201293932024-01-16T08:38:00.001-05:002024-01-16T08:38:26.886-05:00Florida Lawmakers: Citizens Insurance for All?<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Ron Hurtibise</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">State Rep. Sheldon Roach thinks Citizens Property Insurance Corp. could become the state’s go-to windstorm coverage provider, but others say it’s not a good idea.</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">MIAMI – What if state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp. became the go-to provider of windstorm coverage for all personal and commercial property owners in Florida who want it?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">State Rep. Sheldon Roach, who lost his home in Hurricane Ian in September 2022, says it’s an idea worth exploring.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“My belief is that Florida eventually and inevitably is going to move into the direction of offering universal windstorm insurance,” Roach said in an interview this week.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Lee County Republican has filed a bill for the upcoming Legislative session that would significantly change Citizens’ mission from the insurer of last resort to the state’s hurricane backstop.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">If enacted, Citizens would no longer offer comprehensive coverage to Florida homeowners who cannot find affordable coverage in the private market, but instead would potentially free the private market to sell “bread and butter” comprehensive coverage. Roach says his plan would lead to insurance rates “dropping like a stone.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The new plan, he says, would be modeled after the National Flood Insurance Program, administered by the federal government, and the California Earthquake Authority.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">But using the two programs as models might not convince legislators to sign on to the idea.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">California’s program was created after a 6.7-magnitude quake hit Southern California in 1994 and prompted companies insuring 93% of California homeowners to either drastically cut back on issuing new policies or stop issuing them altogether.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Separating earthquake risk from other perils convinced insurers to remain in the state, but now only about 10% of homeowners in the state purchase earthquake insurance.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Because the program is required to be self-sufficient, with no state funding, the program last year announced plans to cut coverage of personal property from $200,000 to $25,000 and eliminate the lowest deductibles for homes built before 1980 that have not been retrofitted or homes worth more than $1 million. Rates will also increase.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">A program official recently told KQED-FM, a public radio station, that the changes were prompted by rising costs.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The National Flood Insurance Program, burdened by numerous flood disasters since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, is currently $20.5 billion in debt and paying $1.7 million per day in interest on that debt. A recent effort to bring premiums more in line with risk has resulted in heavy rate increases for properties in areas most vulnerable to flooding.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Unlike state-run insurance, the flood insurance program could be bailed out at any time by the federal government’s ability to print money.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Insurance insiders interviewed about Roach’s proposal voiced skepticism that it would work, and near certainty that the state Legislature would not go along with the idea of putting the state’s treasury and credit rating on the line.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Despite rising premiums in recent years, several insiders say that the private market system is working. That system is comprised of more than 100 private carriers who are responsible to secure reinsurance from private financiers each year to ensure they’ll be able to pay all claims in case of a catastrophic storm, they said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">California’s system and the National Flood Insurance Program were created to cover homeowners at times when no insurer would cover earthquake and flood risks, insurance consultant Lisa Miller said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“If there’s a perception by some lawmakers that private insurance companies are not writing wind policies in the state, they are mistaken,” Miller said by email. “Florida has 7.5 million property insurance policies and private companies are writing homeowners insurance with wind coverage every day. Depending on the location and risk, it is expensive, and that’s because Florida is the most catastrophe-prone state in the country.”</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Too costly, insurance insiders say</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">A state-run program would have to be financed with reinsurance or with state funding, the insiders said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">If the state had to cover losses equal to those sustained during the 2004-05 hurricanes, it would have had to pay $100 billion, adjusted for inflation, said Bruce Lucas, CEO and founder of Slide Insurance Corp. The state would then need to cover an additional $100 billion in potential losses the following year and every year thereafter, he said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“This could bankrupt the State of Florida and cause significant credit defaults and downgrades for the state’s current bonds,” Lucas said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Florida would have to recover the costs by charging special assessments to all policyholders, which would make it more expensive than the current setup, he said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Stacey Giulianti, chief legal officer at Florida Peninsula Insurance, noted that many recent insurance claims in Florida have been caused by weather events that were not hurricanes.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Those storms remain on the risk profile of the private carriers, so moving catastrophe risk to the state will not significantly reduce rates,” he said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">To avoid pledging the state’s treasury, Citizens would have to “purchase an enormous amount of reinsurance,” Giulianti said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“That type of market buying would have a negative ripple effect in the overall insurance market and would not help reduce primary rates,” he said. “In addition, there is a certain cost to taking windstorm risk on any portfolio, and it doesn’t make sense that the government could sell a product below the hard cost.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Plus, he said, the idea flies in the face of the state’s goal to reduce, and not expand, the risk of special assessments that a growing Citizens poses for Florida insurance customers.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Roach, however, says the state should be able to build up a reserve during years without hurricanes that could be tapped when needed.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Too many insurers have collected premiums and “put them in their pocket” during years with no hurricanes, then folded their tents after a major one hits, he said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">When an insurer goes bankrupt, its existing debts are transferred to the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association, which recoups those costs with special assessments that are passed to customers by remaining insurers.</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Similar ideas have fallen flat</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ideas similar to Roach’s have been proposed over the past 20 years but have never been fully explored. Some blame the powerful insurance lobby, which could lose millions in revenue generated during years that the state has no hurricanes.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In the late 2000s, a group of St. Petersburg businessmen proposed combining Citizens and the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund, which provides low-level reinsurance to Florida carriers, to create a company that would only provide hurricane insurance.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Premiums collected during hurricane-free years would be saved for use when windstorms eventually hit. The group predicted that the entity would accrue a surplus of $82 million over 10 years.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Writing in the Tampa Bay Times, retired insurance regulator Thomas Cook proposed a similar plan, among others, in December 2022.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Roach says he has talked to counterparts in the Senate about his bill, but none have agreed to sponsor a version of it in that chamber.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">While he’s not optimistic his bill will advance this year, he’s convinced that his fellow lawmakers will eventually come around to the idea that windstorms are “incalculable” and “uninsurable” under the present system.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Do I have all the answers? No,” he said. “Filing the bill is the starting point. I think we need to start having these discussions and say what are we going to do when the market collapses.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">©2024 South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Visit sun-sentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-7631907249553274952024-01-16T08:35:00.000-05:002024-01-16T08:35:23.644-05:00Economist: Florida Outlook Mostly Sunny<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Sean Snaith</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">UCF’s Dr. Sean Snaith said Florida has a “solid safety net” if the economy stumbles. Snaith will share insights during the Florida Real Estate Trends summit on Jan. 19.</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">SARASOTA – The United States may be entering an economic slowdown in the coming months, but Florida's economy will be largely sheltered from this storm in 2024.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">After the 2008-09 and 2020 recessions hit Florida's economy disproportionately hard, a slowing national economy won't have the same devastating impact on the Sunshine State or in the Tampa Bay and Gulf Coast regions.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Instead, we've got “sandbags” of population growth to protect us, shoring up the economy here and helping curtail the erosion of economic activity that was so destructive to our region's economy during those previous recessions.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">While Florida's economy may slow some in 2024, our growth will remain positive for the year.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Keeping this overall economic outlook in mind, here are four predictions for how we'll fair in the coming year:</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A softer labor market</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The labor market will show some signs of softening with the unemployment rate drifting upward and some payroll jobs losses, but not in every sector of the economy, as the year progresses.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The good news is that the labor market is in a strong position as we enter this slower-growth environment and will not suffer the severe damage of those prior recessions.</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Inflation woes</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Inflation will continue to ease as we move through 2024 but at the current slow pace. Thus, it is unlikely that the Federal Reserve Bank will begin to cut interest rates until 2025 when the target inflation rate of 2% is clearly in sight.</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Even higher-priced housing</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The housing market in Florida and Tampa Bay has seen a dramatic slowing of transactions, but this slowing has not translated into an easing of home prices.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The combination of high prices, higher mortgage rates and the homeowners' insurance debacle has put the monthly payment needed for homeownership out of the reach of an increasing number of potential homebuyers.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Inventories of homes for sale remain depleted across the state and even more so in the Tampa Bay region. This shortage has prevented prices from softening, despite the diminished demand. The housing market will remain a key challenge for the region's economy throughout 2024 and beyond.</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Transportation troubles</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Our housing affordability woes are intertwined with another of the region's challenges: its transportation network.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">A transportation network that can get workers from where they can afford housing to where they are employed is a key ingredient in addressing the housing affordability problem. Transportation projects like Brightline are just a piece of it.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">At the start of 2023, many were convinced that the U.S. economy was headed for a recession. But as 2024 commences, it looks more like it will be a balancing act next year.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">If the national economy was to stumble – and that is a real possibility – Florida, Tampa Bay and the Gulf Coast's economies have a solid safety net in place to help minimize the damage and “weather the storm.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Sean Snaith is the director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Economic Forecasting and is nationally recognized by Bloomberg News as one of the country's most accurate economic forecasters.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© Copyright, 2024, Business Observer (Sarasota, FL), All Rights Reserved.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-85903555542710739462024-01-16T08:33:00.004-05:002024-01-16T08:33:38.532-05:00Realtor.com: Home Listings Up, Prices Stabilizing<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Amy Connolly</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Realtor.com data from December shows home listings are going up and prices are stabilizing. Still, locked-in owners might be reluctant to sell.</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">NEW YORK – Buyers across the country saw 33,251 more real estate listings in December compared to the same month last year while the median sale price remained relatively stable, Realtor.com reported in its latest housing trends report.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/december-2023-monthly-housing-market-trends-report/#:~:text=Home%20sellers%20were%20more%20active,year%2C%20growing%20by%201.2%25." rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Realtor.com said the median sale price</a> of homes in December grew by 1.2% year over year. The higher number of unsold inventory could be attributed to the ongoing growth in newly listed homes, the organization said. December was the second month since June 2023 that home shoppers were able to see a larger number of unsold homes than a year prior. The South was the only region in the United States that saw significant year-over-year growth in inventory in December with 7.7% growth. Inventory rose 0.2% in the Midwest and declined 8.0% and 14.8% in the Northeast.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">On average, homes spent 61 days on the market, which is four days shorter than last year and about two weeks shorter than before the COVID-19 pandemic.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The organization said the downward trend in mortgage rates could have a positive impact on home-selling sentiment, leading to more new listings on the market.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">‘Nevertheless, once mortgage rates start to decline consistently, there is a potential for a slower-than-expected growth in listing activities,” Realtor.com analysts said. “Given that approximately two-thirds of outstanding mortgages currently have rates below 4%, a significant number of individuals might opt to postpone their home selling in anticipation of even lower rates to buy their next homes.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">On a typical day in December, there were 4.9% more homes actively for sale year over year, Realtor.com said. The total number of unsold homes, including homes that are under contract, increased by 3.6% compared to last year.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“This positive trend can be attributed to a modest monthly decrease in active inventory in December 2023. In fact, during 2017 and 2022, the monthly decline in active inventory from November to December varied between 6.8% and 13.1%. While November witnessed an unusual uptick in inventory, December saw a more conventional seasonal trend with a modest monthly decline of 4.7%. Despite this encouraging annual increase, active inventory still remained 36.0% below typical 2017 to 2019 levels,” said Realtor.com officials.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2024 Florida Realtors®</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-14320393386818620122024-01-10T07:57:00.003-05:002024-01-10T07:57:46.299-05:00Realtor.com: Home Listings Up, Prices Stabilizing<p> </p><h1 class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: OpenSans-Bold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 32px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0.9em 0px 0.1em; padding-right: 1em;"><span style="color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Amy Connolly</span></h1><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Realtor.com data from December shows home listings are going up and prices are stabilizing. Still, locked-in owners might be reluctant to sell.</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">NEW YORK – Buyers across the country saw 33,251 more real estate listings in December compared to the same month last year while the median sale price remained relatively stable, Realtor.com reported in its latest housing trends report.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.realtor.com/research/december-2023-monthly-housing-market-trends-report/#:~:text=Home%20sellers%20were%20more%20active,year%2C%20growing%20by%201.2%25." rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Realtor.com said the <b>median sale price</b></a> of homes in December <b>grew by 1.2% year over year.</b> The higher number of unsold inventory could be attributed to the ongoing growth in newly listed homes, the organization said. December was the second month since June 2023 that home shoppers were able to see a larger number of unsold homes than a year prior. The <b>South</b> was the only region in the United States that saw significant year-over-year growth in<b> inventory</b> in December with 7.7% growth. Inventory rose 0.2% in the Midwest and declined 8.0% and 14.8% in the Northeast.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">On average, homes spent 61 days on the market, which is four days shorter than last year and about two weeks shorter than before the COVID-19 pandemic.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The organization said the downward trend in mortgage rates could have a positive impact on home-selling sentiment, leading to more new listings on the market.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">‘Nevertheless, once mortgage rates start to decline consistently, there is a potential for a slower-than-expected growth in listing activities,” Realtor.com analysts said. “Given that approximately two-thirds of outstanding mortgages currently have rates below 4%, a significant number of individuals might opt to postpone their home selling in anticipation of even lower rates to buy their next homes.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">On a typical day in December, there were 4.9% more homes actively for sale year over year, Realtor.com said. The total number of unsold homes, including homes that are under contract, increased by 3.6% compared to last year.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“This positive trend can be attributed to a modest monthly decrease in active inventory in December 2023. In fact, during 2017 and 2022, the monthly decline in active inventory from November to December varied between 6.8% and 13.1%. While November witnessed an unusual uptick in inventory, December saw a more conventional seasonal trend with a modest monthly decline of 4.7%. Despite this encouraging annual increase, active inventory still remained 36.0% below typical 2017 to 2019 levels,” said Realtor.com officials.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2024 Florida Realtors®</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-19846274933066376542024-01-10T07:55:00.001-05:002024-01-10T07:55:28.207-05:00Important Terms to Understand Homebuying<p> </p><span id="docs-internal-guid-22be7d73-7fff-8603-765e-f9f1872a0ad7"><h1 dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 2pt; margin-top: 22pt; padding: 0pt 23pt 0pt 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 13pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Important Terms to Understand Homebuying</span></h1><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">By Delaney Nelson - © 2024 Growing Community Media, NFP.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The process of getting ready to buy a home can be complicated — and wordy. Especially if it's your first time. Here, we've made it a little easier for you by defining some of the words and phrases you're likely to come across at the start of your home buying journey.</span></p><h3 dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 9pt 0pt 0pt 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The big picture</span></h3><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 21pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Mortgage: an agreement between a homebuyer and lender that says if the borrower fails to pay off their loan plus interest, the lender can take possession of the property. Mortgage is also often used to refer to a home loan.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Mortgage rate: the percentage of interest on a home loan. Mortgage rates can change with overall economic conditions, but also depend on your credit score and financial circumstances.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Variable rate mortgage: This is a type of mortgage where the rate will go up and down as the economy changes.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Fixed rate mortgage: This kind of mortgage has a rate that will stay the same for the duration of the mortgage.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Appreciation: an increase in the value of a home due to changing market conditions, home improvements and/or other factors.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Depreciation: a decrease in the value of a home due to changing market conditions, wear and tear and/or other factors.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Equity: the difference between what you owe on your mortgage and what your home is currently worth.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 21pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Real estate agent: a professional who has completed training and passed a state examination to sell or rent real estate within a particular state. Real estate agents work under a real estate broker. A Realtor® is a real estate agent or broker who is a member of the National Association of Realtors®.</span></p></li></ul><h3 dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 17pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Payment and financing</span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Before looking at potential houses or meeting with a Realtor, it's important to make sure you're financially ready to buy a home. Mortgages almost always require a down payment, and saving for one is a major first step that can take years, depending on your financial situation. Assistance programs do exist that can help with your down payment, only require small down payments or don't require one at all. Knowing more about down payments and what type of loan you may qualify for will help you plan how much to save.</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 21pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Down payment: the percentage or amount a buyer pays upfront when buying a home. The average down payment for first time buyers in 2023 was 8%, according to a study by the National Association of Realtors.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">AMI (Area Median Income): the median (average) household income within a certain geographic area. AMI is calculated and published annually by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and is a key factor for determining eligibility for many down payment assistance programs.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Assets: Broadly, assets are things of value. Some assets that may be used for mortgage qualification include bank accounts, property and retirement accounts.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">DPA (Down payment assistance) programs: loan or grant programs offered by nonprofit organizations, employers or state or local government entities that help people purchase a home. These programs are generally for low- to moderate-income families or first-time homebuyers (FTHBs).</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">FHA loan: a government-backed loan available to low to moderate earners, including those with lower credit scores or other financial issues. FHA loans allow lower down payments than conventional loans.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Maximum housing expense: the greatest amount an individual or household can afford to spend on housing-related expenses. These include mortgage payments, property taxes and property insurance. A frequently cited rule of thumb is housing expenses should not exceed 28% of your gross monthly income.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 21pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">VA loan: a home loan backed by the Department of Veteran Affairs for U.S. veterans. These loans have a low down payment or none at all — and nearly 90% of all VA-backed home loans are made without a down payment.</span></p></li></ul><h3 dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 17pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Credit</span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Working to improve your credit score is another step you can take toward preparing to buy a house. Understanding how credit scores work can help you improve your own. And they do matter: A strong credit score proves to lenders that you are likely to pay back their loan — and is often necessary to qualify for a home loan with optimal terms.</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 21pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Credit score: a three-digit number that attempts to predict how likely a borrower is to default on a future loan. Companies like FICO and VantageScore calculate credit scores using information about a borrower's bill paying, borrowing and loan repayment history. They generally range from 300 to 850 — the higher your credit score, the better. A strong credit score makes it possible to qualify for more favorable loans.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Credit bureau: a company that collects and retains credit information and then provides that information — for a fee — in the form of a credit report to lenders or creditors. A credit bureau is also commonly referred to as a credit reporting agency. The three main credit bureaus are Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Credit repair companies: private, for-profit businesses that claim to help borrowers with debt or credit difficulties. Many companies that say they can “fix” credit problems fast are predatory. Credit repair companies are not the same as credit counseling organizations, which help borrowers safely rebuild their credit.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Credit report: a record of a borrower's credit history, including data from banks, credit card companies, collections agencies and more. This includes whether payments were made on time.The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act of 2003 requires all three major credit reporting agencies to provide credit reports to each consumer once a year upon request, free of charge. Consumers can request their report at annualcreditreport.com.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Default: failure to repay a loan according to terms agreed upon between the borrower and the lender. Generally, one goes into default when they completely stop making loan payments for a period of time. Defaulting hurts your credit score, but there are paths to building your credit back up after a default.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Delinquency: any late payment on a loan, credit card or other debt payment. Depending on how long the loan remains unpaid, your credit score could be affected.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">DTI (Debt-to-Income ratio): monthly debt payments divided by gross monthly income equals your DTI. Lenders use this number to determine how much a borrower can afford to spend on monthly home loan payments.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Equal Credit Opportunity Act: enacted in 1974, it made it illegal for any creditor to discriminate against any applicant based on race, color, national origin, age, sex, marital status, receipt of income from public assistance programs or the applicant's good faith exercise of his or her rights under the Federal Consumer Credit Protection Act.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 21pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Non-traditional credit: If a potential buyer lacks an established credit history, they might assemble a non-traditional credit history which would involve proof of regular payments to entities other than a lender. These might include rent, utility or cell phone payments.</span></p></li></ul><h3 dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 17pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Getting serious</span></h3><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">After you've built up your credit and saved for a down payment, the next step might be pre-qualification or pre-approval for a loan. In addition to showing sellers you're serious about buying, prequalification or preapproval will also give you a clearer idea of what you're able to afford.</span></p><ul style="margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 21pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Mortgage pre-qualification: an estimate from a bank or other lender of how much they would lend a borrower. This is based on information provided by the borrower.</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="color: #2f3034; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 21pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; text-wrap: wrap; vertical-align: baseline;">Mortgage pre-approval: an offer from a lender to loan a certain amount, good for a given time frame. This is based on information verified by the lender including a credit check and is more formal than pre-qualification.</span></p></li></ul></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-15551649133628713932024-01-08T07:02:00.000-05:002024-01-08T07:02:16.102-05:007 Florida Cities Dominated 2023 U.S. Growth<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Amy Connolly</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Seven Florida locales dominated the 2023 U-Haul Growth Index, indicating the Sunshine State continues to be a sought-after destination.</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Seven Florida locales dominated the 2023 U-Haul Growth Index, indicating the Sunshine State continues to be a sought-after destination.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">PHOENIX – Seven regions in Florida lead in the highest number of one-way U-Haul moves in 2023, underscoring the Sunshine State’s continued allure and appeal.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The U-Haul Growth Index found Florida represented 28% of the top 25 growth cities – the seventh consecutive year the state has had the most cities represented on the list.</span></p><ol style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1.438em 0px; padding-left: 1.5em;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Palm Bay-Melbourne</strong></span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ocala</strong></span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Charleston-North Charleston, S.C.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Sarasota-Bradenton</strong></span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Austin, Texas</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">College Station-Bryan, Texas</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Charlotte, N.C.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Huntsville, Ala.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Dallas</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Myrtle Beach-North Myrtle Beach, S.C.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Kissimmee-St. Cloud</strong></span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Panama City-Panama City Beach</strong></span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">North Port</strong></span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Boise, Idaho</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wake Forest, N.C.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Conroe, Texas</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Knoxville, Tenn.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Surprise, Ariz.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Auburn-Opelika, Ala.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Lakeland</strong></span></span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Murfreesboro, Tenn.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wilmington, N.C.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Queen Creek, Ariz.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Henderson, Nev.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: none; margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Nampa, Idaho</span></li></ol><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In the Palm Bay-Melbourne market, 54.7% of all one-way U-Haul traffic was arriving compared to 45.3% departing in 2023. Ocala, the No. 1 growth city in 2022, fell back one spot in the latest rankings.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Growth in the Palm Bay-Melbourne area has been increasing at an explosive rate,” <a href="https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/U-Haul-Announces-Top-Us-Growth-Cities-Of-2023-30661/" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Cal Conner, U-Haul Company of Eastern Florida president, said</a>. “The Space Coast has many companies investing in this region and creating jobs such as Embraer, SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and L3Harris Technologies. We have a low cost of living compared to many of the northern cities people have left. Add to that our fantastic year-round climate, and you can see why Palm Bay-Melbourne is such a desirable area to live.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">U-Haul calculates growth cities by each city’s net gain (or loss) of one-way equipment from customer transactions in a calendar year. The U-Haul Growth Index is compiled from more than 2.5 million one-way transactions that occur annually across the U.S. and Canada. Neighboring cities in U-Haul markets are often packaged together for migration trends purposes.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2024 Florida Realtors®</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-39052486844755926212024-01-04T08:35:00.000-05:002024-01-04T08:35:21.083-05:00Homebuyers’ Median Age Jumps to 49<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Jeannine Mancini</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The media age of homebuyers is up from 39 two decades ago, suggesting finances play a critical role in homeownership.</span></span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">WASHINGTON – The recent shift in the demographics of homebuyers in the United States paints a concerning picture for younger generations. <b>The median age of homebuyers has risen to 49, a significant increase from 39 two decades ago.</b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The National Association of Realtors (NAR) notes that today's homebuyers are generally older and wealthier, suggesting that financial resources play a crucial role. The difficulty for young people to enter the market is often because of a lack of financial assets or support from family known as the "Bank of Mom and Dad."</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">"We’re talking about a different profile of homebuyer today," NAR Deputy Chief Economist Jessica Lautz told Axios.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The cost of borrowing is another hurdle, with mortgage rates still around 6.5%. Another issue is<b> the income required to afford a typical home has risen dramatically</b>, now standing at $107,000, a 22% increase from the previous year, according to data.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Young Americans are also dealing with inflated everyday prices and significant student loan payments. This financial strain benefits those with more cash on hand or those who have built equity through previous home purchases, a group that tends to be older.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">It's not just a matter of personal finance. A reported 70% of Americans aged 23 to 40 who wish to buy a home state they cannot afford it. This affordability crisis is further exacerbated by <b>housing prices, which have surged nearly 120% since 1965, adjusting for inflation</b>. The root cause of this crisis is the imbalance in supply and demand.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Housing prices are soaring because of limited supply and increasing demand. The supply is constrained by strict zoning laws and environmental regulations, making it difficult to expand housing either vertically through high-density residences or horizontally by building on undeveloped land.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">On the demand side, the growing population, both from natural growth and net migration, intensifies the demand for housing. Millennials, in particular, face multiple challenges. The rising cost of housing, heavy student loan debt, stagnant wage growth despite being well-educated and other financial obligations like high rental costs are all significant barriers to homeownership.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The COVID-19 pandemic further contributed to a shortage of homes for sale, pushing prices even higher. Lending practices have also become less favorable for millennials. Tighter lending standards, requiring good credit scores and low debt-to-income ratios, are especially challenging for this generation, many of whom are still building credit or managing student loan debt.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Generation Z faces similar challenges, compounded by rapid urbanization, population growth and high interest rates, further diminishing their ability to save for a home. The rising median age of homebuyers is a reflection of broader economic and regulatory challenges that disproportionately affect younger generations. The combination of financial constraints, stringent lending practices and limited housing supply presents a significant hurdle for these generations to overcome in their pursuit of homeownership.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2023 Benzinga.com - Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-92097668642864239092024-01-04T08:32:00.003-05:002024-01-04T08:32:30.568-05:00Foreign Buyer Registration Rules Effective Jan. 4<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">The Florida. Dept. of Commerce finalized its rules and their effective date pertaining to certain foreign principals who must register property ownership under a 2023 law.</span></span></p><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">ORLANDO, Fla. – The Florida Department of Commerce Foreign finalized its rules for certain foreign principals to register certain land they directly or indirectly own in the state.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The registration process was already outlined in a Florida Realtors News article – <a href="https://www.floridarealtors.org/news-media/news-articles/2023/12/deadlines-loom-some-fla-foreign-landowners" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;">Deadlines Loom for Some Fla. Foreign Landowners</a>. The rules are final and will be effective Jan. 4.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Of note is <a href="https://www.flrules.org/gateway/ruleno.asp?id=73C-60.003&Section=0" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Rule 73C-60.003 (5)</a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">. It is </span></span></span>a provision entitled Registration for Real Estate Contracts and applies to foreign principals with equitable title, as follow:</span></p><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 1.438em 0px; padding-left: 1.5em;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: url("/themes/custom/floridarealtors/images/bullet.png"); margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">A foreign principal who obtains equitable title by executing a real estate contract with the obligation of closing to obtain legal title within 90 days shall register the real property that is the subject of the contract within 30 days of acquiring legal title.</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: url("/themes/custom/floridarealtors/images/bullet.png"); margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">A foreign principal who obtains equitable title by executing a real estate contract without the obligation of closing to obtain legal title within 90 days shall register the real property that is the subject of the contract within 120 days of acquiring equitable title.</span></li></ul><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Realtors are not part of the registration process, and, due to the complexity of the new law, should advise customers to speak to counsel about their legal responsibilities.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Rule Chapter 73C-60, including the seven updates, can be found on the <a href="https://www.flrules.org/gateway/ChapterHome.asp?Chapter=73C-60" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f6fa7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Florida Administrative Code & Florida Administrative Register</a> website. They include:</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Chapter Title: Community Planning; Purchase of Real Property on or Around Military Installations or Critical Infrastructure Facilities by Foreign Principals</span></span></h3><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 1.438em 0px; padding-left: 1.5em;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: url("/themes/custom/floridarealtors/images/bullet.png"); margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">73C-60.001 – Definitions</span></li></ul><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 1.438em 0px; padding-left: 1.5em;"><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: url("/themes/custom/floridarealtors/images/bullet.png"); margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">73C-60.002 – Real Estate Transactions Prior to July 1, 2023</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: url("/themes/custom/floridarealtors/images/bullet.png"); margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">73C-60.003 – Registration</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: url("/themes/custom/floridarealtors/images/bullet.png"); margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">73C-60.004 – Computation of Time</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: url("/themes/custom/floridarealtors/images/bullet.png"); margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">73C-60.005 – Fines</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: url("/themes/custom/floridarealtors/images/bullet.png"); margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">73C-60.006 – Liens</span></li><li style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-image: url("/themes/custom/floridarealtors/images/bullet.png"); margin: 0.32em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">73C-60.007 – Rebuttable Presumption</span></li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936954186113087705.post-66862922409446506492024-01-04T08:27:00.000-05:002024-01-04T08:27:21.596-05:00South Florida Buyers, Renters to See Positive 2024 Changes<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">By Rebecca San Juan</span></p><div class="field field--name-field-summary field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-SemiBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Forecasters say it’s a great time to buy or rent in South Florida thanks to the shifting market. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.4em; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">MIAMI – Homebuyers and renters are in luck. Real estate experts predict you can expect better deals in South Florida in 2024.</span></p></div><div class="field field--name-field-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f3034; font-family: OpenSans-Regular, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; padding-right: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Thanks to a slowdown in home sales and a growing supply of residences – especially high-rises – it'll be a good time to rent or buy, the forecasters say. Prices will lower slightly, but it won't be a free for all. The market will be just slightly better than in 2023.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">"There's that old saying of what goes up, must come down," said Jack McCabe, owner of the Deerfield Beach-based real estate and economic research firm Jack McCabe Expert Services.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“We're going to see that this year. A lot of what drove the market will taper off,” he said. “Yes, people might be coming from across the globe, but will they make up for the domestic, Northeast buyer? No, they won't. Are we going to see a tapering off of these unrealistic, artificial, inflated prices? Yes, we are.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Miami Herald spoke with seven real estate academics, analysts and real estate agents to hear what they predict will happen in 2024.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Here's what they expect:</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What will happen with affordable and workforce housing?</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Question: Any price relief for buyers or renters?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ned Murray, associate director of the Jorge M. Perez Metropolitan Center at Florida International University: The only good news, if there's any good news, is prices won't go up that much more, including rents. They've maxed out, but prices are so unaffordable that it has paralyzed the market. Where do we go from here? We will pretty much see things stay the same as they are right now. We'll see difficulty in addressing that supply.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ashon Nesbitt, CEO of the Florida Housing Coalition: There is still a great need, and the great need comes from those who earn 50% or below of the area median income. In a lot of cases these are working people who fall within that range. That's people who work full time and earn $40,000 or $50,000 and are raising a child. These are people who work in the medical field, schools and service industry.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ken H. Johnson, a finance professor specializing in real estate at Florida Atlantic University: As we eventually oversupply at the higher end of the market, that will help drive down all prices across the spectrum. We get out and beat the drum of the bad builders, the bad developers, but they're building at margins that they have to make a profit or they have to close. You can't tell someone you have to build a product at below market cost for the good of the community. You let market forces work and then it solves itself over time.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Q: How will the short supply of affordable and workforce housing affect residents?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Johnson: In 2008 and 2009, people left Miami because there were no jobs. This time around the economy should remain robust. I don't think people will leave. I think you'll see an increase in density – more people living together, because they want to stay. We'll talk about affordability. We won't be happy with it, but people should remain in the market with good jobs.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Q: What solutions might we see play out?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Murray: We can be optimistic. Counties and municipalities do have it through their power, land use and zoning to make a difference. That's what we can be hoping for. Maybe a few years ago it was difficult to get local officials to understand just how bad the situation was, but there's a growing recognition of local issues. That begins to play out. The response to that is you don't have to rely on Washington. You don't have to rely on Tallahassee. You can handle this locally. ...We're not asking every municipality to build high-density, mixed-income housing. Even if it's one-to-two acres, that can make a big difference.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Nesbitt: It will be challenging to push for that development, because it has become so difficult and complicated to build in certain cases, because of rising costs and projects have to work financially. That will require a lot of creativity to think that through. That will be the biggest challenge, but I also think it will be a great opportunity to be able to galvanize all of those stakeholders to bring everyone to the table.</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What should buyers shopping for a house or condo know?</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Q: Miami-Dade has a median sales price of $615,000 for a house and $420,000 for a condo, according to the latest home sales report from the Miami Association of Realtors. What will happen to home prices?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ana Bozovic, founder of Analytics Miami and Miami Dealsheet: We do have Fed rate cuts priced into the market. That should hopefully make it easier for people who need to move to move. We'll get lower-priced homes on our market.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Q: Supply remains low. Miami-Dade has 4.4 months of supply of houses and 6.8 months of condos. A balanced market ranges between six and nine months of supply. What will happen to inventory?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">McCabe: We're going to see increases in inventory. We're going to see longer sales time. We're going to see people lowering the asking prices. ... For condos and townhomes, we've got a lot of new product coming on the market. As a result, we're going to see the prices of condos and townhomes coming down.</span></p><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: OpenSans-ExtraBold, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-top: 22px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What will happen with luxury housing?</span></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Q: What will define luxury housing – homes priced at or above a million – in the new year?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Danny Hertzberg, real estate agent at the brokerage firm Jills Zeder Group: The market will be driven by California and Brazilian buyers. I'm talking about hundreds of buyers actively looking from California. After every closing they say they have three friends they want to connect me with that are looking to buy.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Bozovic: The shift away from California and New York has just begun. We are going to keep getting tax refugees. It will be a major force in 2024.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Q: We saw a lot of well-known individuals moving to South Florida in 2023, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and soccer star Lionel Messi. How likely will that type of migration continue?</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Jonathan Miller, president and CEO, Miller Samuel real estate consultancy firm: We're going to see more. Miami is not replacing New York as the center of the securities industry, but it is now on the radar. Work from home has changed the way people think about where they live versus where they work.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">© 2023 Miami Herald. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com