December, 2023

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This one company owns 9,000+ homes in California (interactive map)

Sacramento Appraisal Blog

Wall Street has invaded Main Street. It’s truly stunning to see that a company like Invitation Homes owns over 9,000 units in California. Today, I want to debut an interactive map I made to show where these homes are located. UPCOMING (PUBLIC) SPEAKING GIGS: 12/08/23 Free Q&A event for appraisers only (on private work) […] The post This one company owns 9,000+ homes in California (interactive map) first appeared on Sacramento Appraisal Blog.

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Mortgage rates should drop below 7% as housing demand picks up

Housing Wire

What a week! Mortgage rates almost fell below 7%, the 10-year yield is below 4.25% again, and people are seriously talking about Fed rate cuts in 2024. Times can change quickly, which is why we created the weekly tracker so you have the information you need in real-time. Purchase application data Hello, early Christmas present! Mortgage rates have fallen by almost 1% in a short time, and it has created four straight weeks of positive purchase application data.

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New details in eXp sexual assault claims revealed by New York Times

Real Estate News

Five women told the Times that it took a lawsuit to get action on predatory behavior. A second lawsuit has been filed. eXp says it let “bad actors” go.

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More Appraiser Censorship??

George Dell

More appraisal censorship is here! Have you noticed this new regulation that censors California appraisers and flat out appears to prohibit accepted sound appraisal methodology and practice? Editor’s Note: A Guest Post from Bruce Hahn, CCIM, MAI, SRA Consider California Business & Professions Code Section 11424(a) which says: Licensees shall not base, either partially or […] The post More Appraiser Censorship??

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Unlock The Blueprint: How To Construct A Better Payment Workflow

Speaker: Timothy Allsopp

Payment challenges often lead to delayed projects, financial bottlenecks, and strained relationships. With construction projects becoming more complex, outdated processes are no longer sustainable. By refining financial workflow, companies can improve cash flow, reduce error, and foster trust between stakeholders. Discover practical strategies for redesigning payment systems to overcome workflow challenges while creating a smoother, more reliable process for contractors and subcontractors alike.

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How to leverage pop culture moments to improve your listings

Inman

When it comes to marketing high-end homes, it pays to think like an ad firm. That means knowing your target audience, using themes they’ll understand, and finding ways to creatively defy convention.

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The housing market sucks, but experts can thrive

Sacramento Appraisal Blog

The housing market pretty much sucked this year for so many real estate professionals. Look, it’s easy to feel like God’s gift to real estate when business is flying off the shelves, but it’s tough when the transaction faucet gets turned off. The truth is everyone feels like an expert when things are good, but […] The post The housing market sucks, but experts can thrive first appeared on Sacramento Appraisal Blog.

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The Federal Reserve delivers lower rates for Christmas

Housing Wire

The Federal Reserve played the good grinch for Christmas this year and delivered the best gift for homebuyers nationwide, leading to lower mortgage rates. The 10-year yield and mortgage rates fell together after the Fed meetings, which gave us mortgage rates under 7% last week. Mortgage rates and the 10-year yield What a crazy week! Not too long ago, on jobs Friday, I was on the HousingWire Daily podcast saying it’s time to declare war on the Federal Reserve for being too restrictive; you can li

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Zillow suing ARMLS and Metro MLS over ShowingTime access

Real Estate News

Zillow Group alleges that the MLSs and the MLS Aligned network are participating in anticompetitive practices by limiting member access to ShowingTime.

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Resolved Resolutions?

George Dell

Resolved: I am going to do better this year. Done! Each new year, most of us give some thought to how the next year might be better or different from last year. We set some intentions. We call these “Resolutions.” Or not. What’s wrong with this pledge to self? Lets look. You have to ask […] The post Resolved Resolutions? appeared first on George Dell, SRA, MAI, ASA, CRE.

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Need Curated Pre-foreclosure Lists to Generate New Real Estate Leads? Trellis Has the Data!

Trellis is a state trial court research and analytics platform that provides Real Estate Professionals (Buyers, Foreclosure, Loan Modification, etc.) with LEADS on Pre-Foreclosures, Lis Pendes, Distressed Assets and more — to help uncover **new** opportunities and grow their business. The process is quick and easy — and all in real time. Trellis will supply you with a link to the relevant dockets, a Leads sheet and access to its UI where applicable.

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3 tips for networking at non-real estate luxury events

Inman

When luxury real estate agents need to foster their referral networks and forge new professional relationships, industry events are fundamental. But what about when you want to connect with prospective clients?

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First American is the latest cybersecurity attack victim

Housing Wire

First American is the latest real estate firm to suffer a cybersecurity incident. Sources told HousingWire the incident occurred Wednesday afternoon, with First American confirming the incident Thursday morning. In a statement on the title company’s website it notes that First American has “taken certain systems offline” and that it is working to resume normal business operations as soon as possible.

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The Fed holds rates steady at final meeting of 2023

Housing Wire

The Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) held its short-term policy interest rate steady at a range of 5.25% to 5.5% at its last meeting of the year on Wednesday. It was the fourth pause recorded in 2023. Investors will parse Jerome Powell’s press conference this afternoon for clues about when and why the central bank might change its policy stance next year.

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Mortgage rates are (finally) back at 7%

Housing Wire

Mortgage rates continued their downward trajectory this week as the 10-year Treasury yield dropped below 4.2% for the first time since September, according to new data from Freddie Mac. The 30-year, fixed mortgage rate averaged 7.03% for the week ending Dec. 7, according to Freddie Mac ‘s Primary Mortgage Market Survey. That’s down significantly from last week ’s 7.22% and up from 6.33% the same week a year ago.

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Why home prices haven’t crashed even with high mortgage rates

Housing Wire

The most underreported housing story I’ve seen this year is that even with mortgage rates rising to 8%, the number of homes that took price cuts before they sold was 4% below 2022 levels. This happened even with higher home prices and higher mortgage rates in 2023. Weekly housing inventory data We will start with the price cut data percentage because it deserves a detailed explanation. 2022 was a historic year for housing as we had the most significant home sales crash ever, and mortgage r

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The 2023 housing market bent, but didn’t break

Housing Wire

As we approach Christmas day, we can only hope that the Federal Reserve now realizes their fear of 1970s-style inflation created a rate-hike cycle that disproportionately impacted the U.S. housing market and that they need to be pro-housing again. Even with all the drama we have dealt with in 2022-2023, the housing market stayed intact and never broke.

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The mortgage market just had its strongest week in months

Housing Wire

Falling mortgage rates last week brought increased demand. Total home loan applications increased 2.8% for the week ending Dec. 1 compared to the previous week , according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.17% last week. Slower inflation and the confidence financial markets have that we are nearing the end of the Fed ’s hiking cycle has brought mortgage rates to the lowest level since August.

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The Fed was wrong about jobs and inflation

Housing Wire

After today’s jobs report , which showed unemployment at 3.7%, it’s now clear that the Federal Reserve does not need to create a job-loss recession to bring down the growth rate of inflation. The Fed has much to answer for after their massive rate hikes and quantitative tightening policy. These were created to bring down inflation by impacting the labor market but they disproportionally affected housing in a negative way.

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Opinion: To support low-income borrowers, return Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the private sector

Housing Wire

Since the 2008 housing crisis , there have been significant changes that prompted the Treasury to place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under conservatorship. While the conservatorship has allowed for the mortgage market to be restored to its pre-crisis state and strengthened these two government-sponsored entities (GSEs), there are significant downsides to maintaining the status quo indefinitely.

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Mortgage rates continue trending down before Christmas

Housing Wire

Mortgage rates stayed below 7% for the second week in a row, a welcome relief after a 17-week streak of above-7% rates. This week’s dip is the largest weekly drop since November 2022. The 30-year, fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.67% for the week ending Dec. 21, according to Freddie Mac ‘s Primary Mortgage Market Survey. That’s down from last week’s 6.95% and up from 6.27% the same week a year ago.

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First American cybersecurity attack disrupts closings over holidays

Housing Wire

The nation’s second largest title insurer , First American , as well as some of its subsidiaries, remain offline as of Wednesday morning in the wake of the title firm’s Dec. 20 cybersecurity incident. The systems outage has derailed closings across the country over the holidays for homebuyers and sellers using the company’s title services in more than 2,000 locations.

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Zillow, ShowingTime sue 2 multiple listing services

Housing Wire

Zillow Group and ShowingTime are taking two multiple listing services (MLSs) to court, due to their allegedly anticompetitive behavior. On Friday, Zillow Group and ShowingTime filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Arizona against Arizona Regional MLS and Wisconsin -based Metro MLS. The lawsuit also names MLS Aligned , the parent company of showing platform Aligned Showings.

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How analysts see 2024 shaping up for mortgage lenders

Housing Wire

Kyle Joseph, a specialty finance equity research analyst at Jefferies , believes that the worst of the current mortgage cycle may be behind us, a sentiment shared by most analysts covering this industry. “Barring any sort of unforeseen consequences, I’d like to think so , ” Joseph said in an interview. “Obviously, this cycle was fast and furious – for lack of a better term – in terms of how quickly rates went up, and volumes basically got cut into a third of what they wer

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Promising signs abound for 2024 housing market

Housing Wire

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us and December is well under way, we can start looking ahead to the 2024 housing market. New listings and home sales remain low this week while available inventory of unsold homes is finally falling across the country after rising with mortgage rates late into November. It’s looking like we’ll end 2023 with higher housing inventory than this time last year.

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Mortgage rates continue a downward trend in the twilight of 2023

Housing Wire

As we prepare to bid adieu to 2023, mortgage rates this week again stayed below seven percent. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.61% as of Dec. 28, a slight decrease from the 6.67% rate recorded on Dec. 21 according to Freddie Mac ‘s Primary Mortgage Market Survey released on Thursday. The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.93% this week, down from 6.95% one week ago.

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New home sales market welcomes lower mortgage rates

Housing Wire

New home sales missed sales estimates , but the builders’ stocks have been roaring higher. What gives? There are two key things to remember before I go into the report’s details. Mortgage rates rising to 8% in October impacted the data line, which I spoke about on CNBC recently. Also, new home sales are notorious for big positive and negative prints that tend to get revised.

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Housing inventory defied all predictions in 2023

Housing Wire

Going into 2023, people thought housing inventory would skyrocket, home prices would crash, and we would see the housing market of 2008 all over again. We created this weekly tracker at the end of 2022 to give people a live weekly outlook on everything that drives the housing market and which factors to follow. Those reading the tracker would have understood why the housing market dynamics shifted on Nov. 9, 2022, and they’ll be ready for what’s coming next.

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Hackers accessed data of 1.3M customers in Fidelity cyberattack

Housing Wire

Mortgage subservicer Loancare informed authorities that the data of about 1.3 million customers was compromised following a cyberattack in November on its parent company, the big four title firm Fidelity National Financial (FNF). This data includes customers’ social security numbers. The company informed officials in Maine and California that 1,316,938 customers had information accessed by hackers during the incident.

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A sub-7% mortgage rate brings holiday cheer

Housing Wire

The holidays have come early for the mortgage industry. Mortgage rates fell below the 7% threshold this week as markets prepared for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s announcement on Wednesday. The 30-year, fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.95% for the week ending Dec. 14, according to Freddie Mac ‘s Primary Mortgage Market Survey. That’s down from last week’s 7.03% and up from 6.31% the same week a year ago.

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Inflation data is good news for real estate in 2024

Housing Wire

Today’s inflation reports show that Federal Reserve rate cuts are in play in 2024 — not because of the labor market breaking, but because real rates are too high. If the labor market gets weaker, meaning jobless claims break over 323,000 on the four-week moving average, we can get even more rate cuts. The labor market is not there yet so for now we can focus on the fact that the Fed overhiked, and because of that, they have room to cut.

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47 Texas real estate firms, associations get hit with second commission lawsuit

Housing Wire

As the saying goes, everything is bigger in Texas. A copycat commission lawsuit filed on Thursday by home sellers in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, accuses 47 real estate industry defendants of allegedly conspiring to artificially inflate real estate agent commissions. This is the second commission lawsuit filed in the Lone Star State since a Missouri jury found the real estate industry liable for colluding to inflate agent commissions in late October.

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Housing starts flexes single-family muscle

Housing Wire

Boom! Housing starts had an epic beat Tuesday, which usually means the data will get revised lower at some point, but one thing is for sure: the housing starts and new home sales sector came to throw shade at the 2023 recession crowd. Many say housing leads the economy into a recession, which has been the case for decades since higher rates tend to put the U.S. economy into a recession.

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What Fed rate cuts in 2024 will mean for homebuyers

Housing Wire

The housing market cheered as the Federal Reserve signaled interest rate cuts next year after making a series of rapid rate hikes starting in 2022. While the central bank did not completely rule out the possibility of a rate increase in 2024, that action seems unlikely. Instead, fresh economic projections from central bank officials showed rates would be slashed to a median 4.6% by the end of 2024, suggesting three 25 basis points (bps) cuts from current levels.

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