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The National Association of Home Builders released the results of its First American Leading Markets Index (LMI) this week, showing continued strengthening of housing markets in several cities around the nation. Major metros leading the list include Austin, Houston, San Jose, Los Angeles, Charleston and Nashville.
Markets in 75 of the approximately 360 metro areas nationwide returned to or exceeded their last normal levels of economic and housing activity in the second quarter of 2015. This represents a year-over-year net gain of 13 markets.
The index’s nationwide score edged up to .92, meaning that based on current permit, price and employment data, the nationwide average is running at 92% of normal economic and housing activity. Meanwhile, 66% of markets have shown an improvement year-over-year.
“The markets are gradually improving and economic and job growth continue to strengthen, which bodes well for housing for the remainder of the year,” said NAHB Chairman Tom Woods, a home builder and developer from Blue Springs, Mo.
“Of the three elements in the LMI (house prices, permits and employment), house prices have had the broadest recovery, with 345 markets returning to or exceeding their last normal level,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “Meanwhile, 64 markets have met or exceeded their normal employment levels.
“The number of markets on this quarter’s Leading Markets Index at or above 90 percent has reached an all-time high of 173, which represents nearly half of all markets nationwide,” said Kurt Pfotenhauer, vice chairman of First American Title Insurance Company, which co-sponsors the LMI report. “This is an encouraging sign that the housing and economic recovery continue to gain strength.”
Although winter officially begins in December, you don’t have to wait until then to prepare your home for the colder months. (Okay, South Floridians, you can stop laughing now.) This article from U.S. News offers some helpful advice for preparing your home – and your family – for the winter season.
If you want to make sure the upcoming winter season is one of your best ones yet, there are a few steps you can take as early as this month to save money and be better prepared for cold weather. As we all know, the cooler temperatures bring with them potential money drains, including for heating and snow removal. We might not be able to control the weather, but we can control our preparation for it!
If you know there are a few things you will need this winter, whether it’s warm apparel or snow removal equipment, you don’t have to wait until the first snowfall to make a purchase. Start searching around to compare prices and see if you can find any off-season bargains. You have the luxury of time to wait until you find a great deal, and you can avoid the marked-up prices during winter when everything is in high demand.
As we enter another shopping season, many states have tax-free holiday weekends during August. Use this to your advantage if you’re in need of a new winter coat or boots, as these holidays usually are limited to apparel, computers and back to school supplies.
The summer is a great time to make sure your home is ready for cold weather. Check for air leaks around doors and windows, as these can be a major drain on your energy costs, and seal them with caulk. Make sure you have draft stoppers for any doors that are letting air into the house.
You can also prepare for winter by cleaning out your furnace, replacing air filters and getting the chimney cleaned out. If you need to outsource any of these tasks, it’s a good time to do so – you can get a jumpstart on the experts’ busy seasons, and maybe even bargain for a discount.
If you’re looking for ways to decorate your home, there are several resources that can provide inspiration (and Lennar on Pinterest is a great place to start!). This article from U.S. News outlines some other places to check out for home design ideas, both online and in person.
If you’ve got the urge to brighten up your current space, but don’t know where to begin, relax. Inspiration abounds, and there are great home design resources all around you. You just need to know where to look.
These days, it seems like everything begins with the Internet, and Pinterest, Google and Instagram are great places to begin your search for home design inspiration. In fact, creating a Pinterest account and pin board may be a good idea for this project, as it allows you to quickly find, keep and potentially share the bits of inspiration your searches turn up, whether it’s midcentury drapery or Spanish revival paint colors. The search terms you use in Pinterest will work in Google Image search and Instagram, too. If you’re looking for more than inspiration, the Internet hosts lots of free online courses – many offered by serious real world design colleges and institutions.
Open houses provide an opportunity to see how other people live – and design – offering you the chance to see things in a slightly different way. Even better, many home sellers hire professional stagers to design their rooms to sell, following fundamental design principals about color, light and space.
Another way to look into real people’s homes for free design inspiration is to browse Airbnb and other vacation rental sites like VRBO. The listings usually include lots of photographs, and many owners spend a great deal of time and effort designing their spaces to make them more attractive and comfortable for themselves – and for their paying guests.
Your local library has stacks and stacks of home design inspiration, but you’ll find the real goods in the 700s (that’s where the Dewey Decimal System classifies the arts). You can browse through the history of art, architecture and sculpture to get some ideas, or you can dive right in to classic and contemporary interior design books (look in 729 architecture: design and decoration).
Many furniture, home and craft stores, such as Pottery Barn, Michaels and Ethan Allen, offer free design classes and skill-building workshops. Their goal, of course, is to sell you the products, tools and materials required to make design inspiration a reality. But you won’t have to pay a cent for the inspiration, knowledge and skills you’ll gain in an afternoon workshop.
Is the millennial generation really a renter generation? Or are they more interested in owning a home of their own? This article from U.S. News looks at an interesting new report on generational trends from the National Association of Realtors, and also provides some tips that home owners and home buyers can learn from the newly acquired real estate skills of Gen Y.
As a newlywed in his mid-20s, Andrew McFadden lived in an apartment in Fresno, California, with his wife, but they soon felt ready to move into a bigger place. “It met our needs, but as a finance guy, I thought we could get into a home and build equity in something as opposed to just paying out a monthly rental payment,” says McFadden, a certified financial planner. So at age 26, he purchased his first home. Six years and one daughter later, his family still lives in it.
Despite millennials’ reputation as a transient generation that’s not ready to settle down, McFadden’s experience is more common than you might think. The National Association of Realtors 2015 report on generational trends found that millennials, who are currently between ages 25 and 34, make up the largest share of homebuyers at 32%. Even more striking, millennials now constitute 68% of first-time homebuyers. That percentage might soon grow even more: A survey of 1,002 adults by TD Bank released in July found that just under half of millennials will be looking to buy their first home over the next two years.
“It’s surprising because all we keep hearing is that [millennials] don’t want to buy homes, that they’re the renter generation, but that’s just not true. They are the most optimistic that their home purchase is a good investment,” says Jessica Lautz, NAR’s director of survey research and communications. She notes that most millennials did not experience the housing crash firsthand, although they may have seen parents or older siblings go through it.
Dennis Delaney, partner at the law firm Hemenway & Barnes LLP in Boston, says buying a home can be a smart choice for millennials, as long as they are ready to settle down in it for more than a few years. “Having a home base or an anchor in your life is good to ground you,” he says, in addition to having a monthly payment to build net worth.
Several millennial financial planners interviewed for this article pointed out that like the decision to have children, you might never feel really ready to buy a home. Brandon Marcott, a 30-year-old financial planner and founder of Edify Financial Planning in Waukesha, Wisconsin, says he didn’t feel like he was ready to buy a home when he and his wife purchased their house a year and a half ago.
“We felt pressure from multiple sides telling us, ‘Now is the time!’” he says. Still, the father of two says he is glad to have a fixed monthly mortgage payment that can’t go up, as rent can. “This is by far my favorite benefit,” he says.
What’s your version of the American Dream? If you ask a few people that question, you’ll probably hear very different kinds of answers. In an effort to more clearly define what the American Dream of homeownership means to people today, Trulia and Harris Poll conducted an online survey, the results of which are highlighted in this article.
For many Americans, homeownership is part of their personal American Dream. For some, this dream of owning a home is well within reach, but for others it may as well be a dream within a dream. But what does this dream home look like? And where is located? What amenities do people dream of most? To find out, an online survey conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Trulia surveyed 2,026 Americans in late May 2015 to tell us about their homeownership aspirations and the home they hope to buy one day. Here’s what we found.
With the U.S. housing market on the mend, 7 in 10 Americans (71%) said owning a home is part of achieving their personal “American Dream.” While still a majority, this is a notable decrease from 77% in 2010. Yet despite this downward trend, America is not becoming a nation of renters. Most Millennial renters aged 18-34 (89%) plan to buy a home one day – more than any other generation.
But as more people today forgo or delay marriage and children, homeownership has become more of a lifestyle choice than an expected life milestone. Among parents with children under 18 years old, 81% said homeownership is part of their American Dream. In fact, most parents – regardless of their marital status – plan to buy a home as their primary residence once day.
Of the 18-34 years old who aspire to become homeowners, 72% said they plan to buy a home in 2018 or later. The sense of urgency only increased when marriage and children were involved.
Only a small subset of Americans (just 35% of homeowners) said they’ve already purchased their dream homes – that means an overwhelming majority are still searching for a perfect place to call “dream home”. In fact, over one quarter of Americans are regularly searching for a dream home online with 28% looking at least once a month. So what does the American dream home look like? Well, it really depends on how old you are.
In general, Americans aren’t big fans of McMansions or tiny homes. In fact, 44% want a home between 1,401 and 2,600 square feet – one that’s neither too small, nor too big. However, as people get older, their dream home gets smaller.
Moreover, Millennials and Gen X gravitate towards modern homes, which can often have newer home amenities and technologies. Baby Boomers, on the other hand, want ranch homes (aka single-story homes that are typically more accessible and without stairs).
Americans love to entertain and eat. The top dream home features were social spaces where guests could gather and mingle, namely a backyard deck, open floor plan, or balcony with a view. Food-related amenities like a gourmet kitchen or vegetable garden were also popular.
A substantial number of homeowners in the U.S. may not be aware of how much their homes have risen in value over the past few years, according to a report from Fannie Mae which looked at data from the National Housing Survey. Here’s the story from HousingWire.
Although home prices have risen around 20% since mid-2011, many homeowners are highly unaware of the true value of their home.
According to a study by Fannie Mae, this could be creating a roadblock in the housing market since it is stopping people from buying move-up homes.
“If homeowners believe that large down payments are now required to purchase a home, then widespread, large underestimates of their home equity could be deterring them from applying for mortgages, selling their homes, and buying different homes,” the report stated.
Fannie’s report looked at data from the National Housing Survey, which pulled a national representative sample of U.S. adults in order to calculate the percent of mortgaged households who perceived they had negative home equity.
Despite a significant rise in home prices, survey respondents still perceived that they had negative equity.
On the other side, borrowers also wrongly assumed how much their home equity had grown.
Fannie explained that one side effect of this is that homeowners who underestimate their homes’ values also likely underestimate how large a down payment they could make with their home equity, their chances of qualifying for mortgages, and, therefore their opportunities for selling their current homes and for buying different homes.
MarketWatch reports on a survey released this week by the Federal Reserve, which showed further strengthening in the demand for mortgages in the U.S.
The trend for stronger demand for mortgage loans continued in the second quarter, a Federal Reserve senior loan officer survey released Monday showed, suggesting financial strains on households are easing.
About 44% of banks reported moderately stronger demand for mortgages, compared with only 5% reporting weaker demand, according to the survey of 71 domestic and 23 branches of foreign banks operating in the U.S.
The increase in mortgage demand was across the spectrum, including both jumbo and non-jumbo mortgages.
This report affirms Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s recent testimony that U.S. households have to “wherewithal and confidence” to boost spending, said Millan Mulraine, economist at TD Securities.
Some people have a passion for music. Some have a passion for reading. Others have a passion for film and television. Here at Lennar, we have a passion for rooflines. That’s why we wanted to share a fun new poster, designed by Pop Chart Lab, that shows how architectural styles have changed – and in some ways remained the same – from the Colonial era in the 1600s to today. Which architectural styles have stood the test of time, which styles have disappeared, and which styles have been reintroduced through the years? This article from Fast Company highlights the creation of the poster.
From post-Medieval English to McMansions, domestic architecture in the United States is as diverse as its denizens. A new poster from Pop Chart Lab makes identifying them easier and offers a glimpse of over 300 years of design history in a single, beautifully illustrated graphic.
“After the success of our two prints celebrating the architectural achievements of iconic structures around the world – The Schematic of Structure and The Splendid Structures of New York – we decided to examine the elegance of the home,” the team at Pop Chart Lab said.
The designers embarked on a comprehensive research project to discover the changing traits of houses – how the rooflines morphed through the decades, how architects mined the past for new styles, and how the houses we come to know today evolved from a complex lineage.
Pop Chart Labs hops the poster fosters “a general appreciation and respect for American design evolution for the home over the past 400 years” and that viewers will “learn more about an interesting topic that we see in everyday life.”
[You can view the poster and read the full article here]
When it comes to credit, one of the most common pieces of advice centers around the idea of proactive protection – adapting a proactive approach in checking, fixing and maintaining your good credit. This article from Bankrate explains the importance of that concept, and offers an interesting look at who checks their credit reports most often.
Checking up on your credit is part of a smart financial plan. Not only can you spot and correct errors, but knowing your credit score will help you to take steps to raise it, if necessary, when it comes time to find the best interest rate on a loan.
So you might assume that it would be the people with credit problems who would look up their score most often.
In fact, a recent Bankrate Money Pulse survey finds that 62% of those earning $75,000 a year or more viewed their credit score in the last year, versus only 34% of those with an annual salary of less than $30,000.
In addition, 59% of the high-income earners say they check their credit report one or more times a year, compared with 38% of those in the lower income brackets.
Joe Heider, financial adviser and president of Cirrus Wealth Management in Cleveland, Ohio, says it makes sense that high-earners check their credit more often. “The affluent are more likely to be purchasing higher-ticket items – more expensive homes, cars – where their credit score comes into play,” he says.
Aside from the impact a credit score has on the cost of borrowing, a credit report will also reveal outstanding debt. Therefore, everyone should check their report to ensure there are no errors or evidence of identity theft, Heider adds.
