Power of House Talks by The Cerdafied Development Group

Can Tiny Homes Help Solve America’s Big Homelessness Problem? In June, the Kenton Women’s Village opened in Portland—a project initiated in 2016 by the Center for Public Interest Design at Portland State University. Photo © Mark Stein The Center and several partners hosted a design charrette to discuss solutions, and then organized a public expo showcasing 14 sleeping pods created by local architects and students. Photo © Mark Stein The Community First! Village in Austin, known locally as Tiny Town, opened in 2015 and contains 240 housing units. Image courtesy Mobile Loaves and Fishes The Community First! Village in Austin, known locally as Tiny Town, opened in 2015 and contains 240 housing units. Image courtesy Mobile Loaves and Fishes The Community First! Village in Austin, known locally as Tiny Town, opened in 2015 and contains 240 housing units. Image courtesy Mobile Loaves and Fishes The housing units range from RVs and safari-style canvas tents to stick-built micro homes. Image c

Written by Steve Brown, Real Estate Editor More Dallas-area homes are up for sale, but are they affordable? Filed under Real Estate at 5 days ago             Buyers in the market for a North Texas home this summer will find a couple of thousand more properties to pick from. The bad news is that most of them are not the low and moderate-priced houses that younger and first-time buyers are hunting. At the end of June, almost 22,000 North Texas single-family homes were listed for sale with real estate agents. That's the largest inventory of houses on the market in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in almost four years. But a close look at the increase in property listings shows that almost all of the new inventory is homes priced at more than $300,000. The number of North Texas houses that are on the market for less than $250,000 has dro

Builders Concerns of Lot Availability Unchanged from 2016 By Ashok Chaluvadi on July 21, 2017 • ( 1 ) The monthly NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) survey includes a set of “special” questions on a topic of current interest to the housing industry. In June 2017, the special questions asked builders about the supply and price of developed lots. Sixty-four percent of builders reported that the overall supply of developed lots in their areas was low to very low, the same share in May 2016, but up from 43 percent in September 2012. This is the largest share of builders reporting low to very low lot supply since NAHB began periodically asking the question in 1997 on its monthly HMI survey. The continued low supply of developed lots is a hindrance to a faster housing recovery. The chart below compares the HMI responses on lot supply to housing starts. Starts have recovered from a low of 554,000 in 2009 to over 1 million in 2016 (after averaging 1.5 million a year from

3 Strategies Will Improve Your Negotiations Daily Real Estate News | Wednesday, July 19, 2017    As you negotiate with the other party in a homebuying transaction, you and your counterpart are both seeking the best deal for your clients. Being flexible and entering the negotiations with a three-point plan will give you an edge as you discuss options with the other side. Lifestyle site Lifehacker.com recently shared tips to improve your position in negotiations. First, know exactly what the deal you want is. Called your "aspiration point," this should be "ambitious but realistic" and represent the best deal you believe the other party could agree to. Research similar deals and have your clients list both their desires and their needs to define your aspiration point. The minimum deal your clients will agree to is your "reservation point." You and your clients should keep this to yourselves, but work to uncover the other party's res

Borrowers Are in a Rush as Mortgage Apps Soar Daily Real Estate News | Wednesday, July 19, 2017    Threats of rising mortgage rates may have spooked borrowers last week and prompted them to quickly lock in rates. Total mortgage application volume for refinancings and home purchases jumped 6.3 percent last week on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday. Even though mortgage rates remained steady during the week, refinance volume, which had been dropping in recent weeks, surged 13 percent last week. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.22 percent last week, unchanged from the previous week, the MBA reports. “Treasury yields were slightly lower last week as testimony from [Fed Chair Janet] Yellen was perceived to be more dovish than expected and as the market received data signaling weaker inflation and retail sales for June," says MBA economist Joel Kan. "These factors kept the 30-year fixed-contract rate

Brokers Glean Lessons at New York Confab Daily Real Estate News | Wednesday, July 19, 2017    Risks and opportunities. Those two themes dominated the conversation at Broker’s Edge, a one-day event in midtown Manhattan sponsored by the National Association of REALTORS® in conjunction with the New York State Association of REALTORS®. At Broker’s Edge, a one-day conference for brokers in New York, NAR President-elect Elizabeth Mendenhall moderated a panel on the future of real estate featuring, from left, NAR’s incoming CEO Bob Goldberg; Dan Elsea, president of broker services for Real Estate One in Detroit; and Suzanne Mueller, senior vice president of industry relations for Move Inc. Among the featured speakers was Tom Ridge, a two-time governor of Pennsylvania and the nation’s first U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush. Ridge said that regardless of the size of your company, you need a cybersecurity policy and training on digital h

Foreign U.S. Home Sales Shatter Records Daily Real Estate News | Wednesday, July 19, 2017    Foreign investment in U.S. real estate has surged to a new high, with property expenditures skyrocketing 49 percent over the past year, according to the National Association of REALTORS®’ 2017 Profile of International Activity in U.S. Residential Real Estate . Nearly half of all foreign sales were in three states: Florida, California, and Texas. Between April 2016 and March 2017, foreign buyers and recent immigrants purchased $153 billion of residential property. That surpasses a previous 2015 high of $103.9 billion. In that time, 284,455 U.S. properties were purchased by foreign buyers, up 32 percent from 2016, NAR’s report notes. “The political and economic uncertainty both here and abroad did not deter foreigners from exponentially ramping up their purchases of U.S. property over the past year,” says Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “While the strengthening of

First Ever Real Estate Project on Blockchain Launches in Amsterdam – ICO Today By Richard Kastelein - June 26, 2017 1296 Share with: <img alt='Facebook' style='height: 35px !important;width: 35px !important;' src='https://i1.wp.com/www.the-blockchain.com/wp-content/plugins/miniorange-login-openid/includes/images/icons/facebook.png?w=696' class='mo-openid-app-share-icons circle' data-recalc-dims="1" /> <img alt='Twitter' style='height: 35px !important;width: 35px !important;' src='https://i0.wp.com/www.the-blockchain.com/wp-content/plugins/miniorange-login-openid/includes/images/icons/twitter.png?w=696' class='mo-openid-app-share-icons circle' data-recalc-dims="1" /> <img alt='Google' style='height: 35px !important;width: 35px !important;background-color: circle' src='https://i0.wp.com/www.the-b

Duties on Lumber Now Enough to Threaten Thousands of U.S. Jobs By Paul Emrath on June 27, 2017 • ( 0 ) In a previous post , NAHB analyzed the effect of the 19.88% countervailing duty (CVD) levied by the Department of Commerce on Canadian softwood lumber exported to the United States.  The NAHB analysis showed that, had that duty been in effect throughout 2017, the effects would include a net loss of 8,241 full-time U.S. jobs. On June 26, the Department of Commerce imposed a preliminary 6.87% anti-dumping duty (AD) on top of the CVD announced in April.  The motivations for ADs and CVDs differ, although the two are similar in the way they increase prices paid by U.S. consumers.  The 19.88% CVD is intended to compensate for government subsidies that Canadian firms allegedly receive.  The AD, on the other hand, is intended to bridge a supposed gap between the price for which Canadian producers are selling lumber in the U.S. and the “fair market price” determined by the Departme