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Lennar’s CEO, Stuart Miller, appeared on CNBC this morning to discuss the continuing recovery of the U.S. housing market. Stuart highlighted the Fed interest rate hikes, how those moves will affect the employment market, and what that could mean for housing.
People who live in states like Colorado and Texas, where new homes are selling most, have the highest well-being. According to a recently released Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, and Metrostudy data reported by Builder, the top 10 states for well-being make up more than a quarter of 2014’s new home sales.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index ranks states based on five factors pertaining to overall resident well-being including purpose, social, physical, financial, and community. The 10 highest states are predominantly concentrated in the Mountain region and the lowest in the Midwest.
States with greater sense of community well-being aligning with new home sales reaffirm trends like high value placed on walkable neighborhoods and mixed-use developments. These trends reinforce physical and social well-being, too. States with higher well-being are already host to metros with high walkability, and the numbers of new communities capitalizing on this trend are growing.
Working from home can provide a peaceful environment to get things done. But it can also be a lonely experience, and distractions could make it hard to remain focused. This article from TIME offers six tips to keep in mind to stay focused on your work throughout the day.
More and more entrepreneurs are working remotely. Fortunately, technology has allowed everyone – even entrepreneurs who commute to a traditional office every day – to benefit from the flexibility of working from home when it’s needed or preferred.
Most people who work from home find they work too much rather than too little. Other remote workers struggle to keep a regular schedule – working a few hours one day and pulling an all-nighter the next.
Some interruptions can’t be avoided. Client deadlines may unexpectedly require extra hours. Family obligations can interfere as well, especially if children are home during the day.
Do your best to set work hours and stick to them. Then try your best to leave work at the “office” and turn your phone on silent and enjoy the rest of your day. Give yourself some time to recharge so you can be as productive as possible.
A recent article from U.S. News outlines ten ways the millennial generation is changing real estate.
As millennials take a greater role in the housing market, young people’s preferences are starting to shape the way real estate business is done. The real estate portal Zillow predicts that millennials will overtake baby boomers as the generation purchasing the largest number of homes this year, making their preferences even more important.
“Because of their size, whatever they decide to do will have an impact on the housing market,” says Nela Richardson, chief economist for the real estate company Redfin.
For decades, the telephone has been the real estate agent’s tool of the trade. But a new wave of younger homebuyers is changing the way agents use those phones. Millennials, those born between 1980 and the late ’90s don’t want to talk. They want texts.
With a U.S. housing uptick already in progress – seen in last month’s 6.4% jump from 2014 in the ground-breaking of new homes – a new article from Fortune outlines some interesting reasons why the housing market could get a major boost this year, specifically for single-family homes, and especially among first-time buyers.
Everyone sees that the zero interest rate party is coming to an end. If you’ve been waiting to borrow, it’s getting close to “now or never” time.
Demand is pent-up, and pent-up things eventually get un-pent, sometimes all at once. The number of people between ages 35 and 39 is critical to household formation, and we are currently seeing an uptick in this demographic category, back to prior peaks.
The notion that millennials want to stay home forever is not accurate. They’re ready to bust out, and rental prices are comparably high in several key regions.
Employment among college-educated people (read: potential home buyers) is as tight as a drum.
At the end of 2014, Trulia conducted a survey to determine what size homes Americans really want. Do Baby Boomers have different home size preferences than younger generations of homeowners?
As a whole, Americans are living in a world of mismatch – only 40% of the survey respondents said they are living in the size home that’s ideal. Furthermore, over 43% answered that the size of their ideal residence is somewhat or much larger than their current digs. Only 16% said that their ideal residence is smaller than their existing home.
It’s natural to think that baby boomers are the generation most likely to downsize. After all, their nests are emptying and they may move when they retire. As it turns out though, more boomers would prefer to live in a larger home than a smaller one.
Millennials are looking to move on up by a big margin: just over 60% said their ideal residence is larger than where they live now.
According to a study by Merrill Lynch, recently reported in the Los Angeles Times, retirees have the demographic power and wealth to drive housing trends over the next decade, as baby boomers and elders are buying or altering homes to live in them longer or to accommodate family members. People older than 65 are expected to be the fastest-growth demographic from 2015 to 2025, accounting for 10.7 million new households. That’s five times more than the next-largest generation of 34- to 44-year-olds.
According to the study, almost a third of baby boomers and their elders are choosing to buy larger homes in retirement instead of downsizing, and many retirees are altering their homes as they get older as an alternative to moving to institutionalized settings.
The Bank of America Corp. unit said its survey of 3,638 respondents across income groups found that respondents were primarily motivated in their housing choices by a desire to house visiting family members, a preference that is expected to have wide effect in the secondary and new-home markets.
To prepare for what looks to be a busy Spring home selling season, a new article from U.S. News compiles five important things home sellers should do to set their home apart from other homes for sale.
Along with tulips and daffodils, “For Sale” signs will soon be popping up across neighborhood lawns. An improving labor market in the U.S. is expected to spur increased home sales in 2015, so if you’ve been wanting to sell your home, low interest rates and tight inventory levels should create an attractive environment.
Take the time to do a deep Spring cleaning on your home. Clean your windows. Consider a fresh coat of paint. Clean the grout in your ceramic tile. Consider whether your carpets need cleaning. And spruce up your landscaping, which includes flower beds and bushes.
Clean out the clutter in your home, and consider packing away your winter clothes, so the closets appear more spacious.
And don’t hike up the sale price. Real estate experts advise being realistic when it comes to your selling price. It needs to be competitive.
Citing a prediction by the National Association of Realtors that 2015 is going to be “the year of the first-time homebuyer,” a recent article from BrightNest offers up six questions every potential home buyer should ask themselves to determine if the time is right for them to make the move.
At the top of the list are important financial questions, such as determining how healthy your savings are, and how much money you can afford to spend each month.
Another important question to ask: Are you preapproved? If you don’t get preapproved for a mortgage, you’d be wasting both the realtor’s and your own time. Before you get too far into the process, set up a meeting with a mortgage professional to make sure you’re good to go.
And there are location questions to ask yourself as well. Is your city a good spot to buy in? When experts talk about a hot market, that doesn’t necessarily mean your neighborhood is a hot market. In many cities, the market varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. Before you dive head first into homeownership, do your homework. Make sure you’re making a sound financial decision by buying not only in your city, but in the neighborhood of your choice.
