For a good number of real estate professionals, 2012 wasn’t a great year. We were still on a downward spiral towards the bottom of the real estate market. This wasn’t exciting news for real estate investors looking to make profitable deals investing in real estate. But as we move deeper into 2013, it’s becoming...
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The budget shenanigans in Washington so far haven’t had an effect on the recovery, but an extended period of lower government spending and job cuts will quickly lead to economic stagnation. The economy is a self-reinforcing mechanism, a small dip in growth will be followed by further declines, even if the first dip was...
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The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday what home buyers and real estate investors in many parts of the United States have known for months: it’s becoming a seller’s market. The number of homes listed for sale in January fell by 4.9%, leaving 1.74 million properties on the market. That’s the lowest since...
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Home construction rarely matches the actual demand for new homes, which can change quickly – there’s often too much or too little. Because the US population grows one percent per year about 1.5 million new homes are needed every year. During the boom of the mid-2000s, two million homes were built per year; at...
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It’s becoming clear to me that what we’ve been thinking of as a stage in the recovery actually is the recovery. Job growth at a 1.5 percent annual rate is well below our hopes from previous cycles but its getting hard to imagine faster growth unless the government starts spending more money (ha-ha) or...
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I just locked down a 2.875% interest rate, fixed for the 15-year term of the mortgage. No points. With rates like these, I find myself rethinking the idea that I want to pay off my mortgage. I can do a lot better than 2.875% investing the money. If I just sock it away in...
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Sixty-five percent of U.S. housing markets are worse off today than they were four years ago according to the California-based real estate research firm RealtyTrac. The results of the survey arrive the same day as the final presidential debate and just weeks before the general election. Read the rest of 65% of Housing Markets...
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Unemployment in September fell to 7.8% (according to government stats) but otherwise the economic situation was pretty much as it has been for the last six months: improving but at a slow rate. Employment was up 1.4% over last year, with health care and business services providing the bulk of new jobs, as usual. Some...
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Let’s do the jobs math. In August, as in the preceding months, the number of jobs was 1.4 percent higher than last year. We’re probably stuck at this growth rate which translates to 1.8 million new jobs per year. Unemployment is at 8 percent but it rarely gets below 5 percent, so the “excess”...
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Why has this economic recovery been so sluggish? In a normal recovery, job growth would be accelerating at this point, rather than dragging along at the same modest level month after month. One culprit, off course, is the housing boom that left many homeowners with more debt than their home is worth. Another is...
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