New home sales continued to yo-yo in October
Homebuilders must be feeling some whiplash, as new single-family home sales continued to yo-yo in October. After rebounding in August from a drop in July only to fall again in September, new home sales were back up in October, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Census Bureau. […]
Fine-tune your brokerage operations today for sustainability
Who isn’t looking for ways to improve profitability and margins for their brokerage? And, you’re doing this while simultaneously trying to plan for the headwinds that are predicted to take on additional speed in the weeks and months ahead. No doubt, your efforts now will impact the likelihood of creating a sustainable future for your […]
Gratitude: The path out of any real estate rut
Do you ever feel frustrated, stuck, stressed or lacking direction in real estate? There’s a simple solution to changing your mindset immediately and getting right back on track as a result. Get out of frustration and into gratitude. Showing it, feeling it and living it. You’ll have nearly instant results! Cicero called gratitude the parent […]
3 ways to show buyers and sellers gratitude
In this new video series, Rogers Healy, the owner and CEO of Texas-based Rogers Healy and Associates Real Estate, will offer his perspective of the state of the real estate market and how real estate agents can find opportunity and fine-tune their business and marketing plans. Here, he shares three ways to show buyers and seller […]
Here’s why new home sales are up along with prices
Today new home sales beat estimates, and new home median sales prices hit an all-time high. What is going on here? My job is always to be the detective, not the troll so let’s take a look at today’s data, as there is a constant theme here that I have talked about for some time. […]
Buydowns become key for buyers to beat the market
It’s a terrible time for homebuyers. Mortgage rates for a 30-year fixed-rate loan are hovering around 7% levels and still-high home prices are slashing purchasing power. What helped Erica Davis, a loan originator at Guild Mortgage, in the current high-rate environment is a seller-funded temporary 2-1 rate buydown. By taking advantage of the 2-1 temporary […]
Mortgage rates dropped again, so why are some borrowers on the sidelines?
Recent declines in mortgage rates, which are due to a slowdown in inflation growth, have been enough to convince some borrowers to apply for new home loans, according to recent data on mortgage applications. However, there are still forces pushing many borrowers — mainly lower-income buyers — to stay on the sidelines, industry experts say. […]
Biden’s Extended Student Loan Payment Pause: Poor Policy and Expensive Policy
While its Student Loan Forgiveness plan is stuck in court, the Biden administration is not sitting on its hands. Yesterday, the administration announced that it would extend the student loan payment moratorium, often called the “payment pause,” to as late as August 29, 2023. The payment pause, which stops both payments and interest accrual on […]
Nonbank lender job cuts could shorten the market downturn
The current market downturn for mortgage lenders may be shorter than the previous cycles, mainly due to the recent rounds of workforce layoffs imposed by nonbanks. “While it is true that many nonbanks entered this downturn with a large war chest of cash and capital, this is more than offset by the impact of warehouse […]