Battle-tested tips for a shifting market, the geography of investor-owned homes + diversity hiring
In addition to the articles, here are a few items we are reading from across the internet.
This data-heavy article provides an insightful heat map that shows how the housing supply shortage has expanded to more areas of the country, from 2012 to 2019. The housing shortage has spread from a concentration along the coasts to more places in between, something many real estate brokers face on a daily basis. This piece adds some data and perspective to the issue.
RE/MAX announced that it is shuttering booj, the popular end-to-end tech platform it acquired in 2018, and moving to an enterprise technology relationship with Inside Real Estate. The move signals some of the challenges brokerage companies face when they look to buy and operate technology, a significant, daunting challenge, no matter how powerful it is upon acquisition.
This article explores the nuances of the cooling market sparked by rising mortgage rates including with the impact on home sales, individual brokers, agents and consumers. The analysis and reporting adds analysis and perspective to the shifting market, and helps make it all the more real.
The annual “State of the Nation’s Housing” report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies dropped in late June, and it highlights the U.S. real estate industry’s rising housing costs. The report is always a must-read for industry watchers, and this edition is no different. Among other insights, it notes that home and rent prices jumped a higher percentage year over year in 2021 than any year since 2004.
In a bid to rival Zillow’s formidable New York City-focused real estate portal StreetEasy, CoStar Group has launched Citysnap, in partnership with the Real Estate Board of New York, whose Residential Listing Service feed will provide rental and sale listings to the site. Since it jumped into the residential real estate sales side of the industry with its acquisition of Homesnap in December 2020, CoStar Group has been vocal about viewing Zillow as a competitor. The launch of Citysnap brings the competition into a local focus in New York City. Rental and for-sale listings of REBNY members will appear on the portal at no cost; StreetEasy charges agents to display rental and for-sale listings.
Residential real estate writer Rob Hahn, who blogs as Notorious Rob, presents a digest of compelling data and analysis of Opendoor’s strategy of selling homes it owns directly to buyers, outside of the MLS and without the concomitant commission fees. Exclusive marketplaces are one of the big holy grails for the iBuying business model, and scale provides increasing advantages in applying it. This piece adds food for thought in the evolving iBuying model, and the broader alternative finance one.
Building remains a key relief valve in the extreme supply-demand imbalance the housing market has sustained for years. But with affordability hampered by rising interest rates, builders are getting skittish as exemplified in the latest housing starts data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which shows that starts dropped 14.4 percent from April to May.
Jerome Powell, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the organization that perhaps plays the largest role in controlling U.S. interest rates, declared that homebuyers need a “reset” when it comes to supply-and-demand balance in a press conference he held in June. Actions this year by the Fed, which have led to rapidly increasing rates in an attempt to, in part, curb inflation, have revealed this perspective, but hearing it explicitly from the chairman in a public forum gives more weight to the direction and effort by the organization and how it may impact real estate.
The new Rent. brand for the network that Redfin acquired in 2021 covers the rental marketplaces under its umbrella including Rent.com, Rentals.com and ApartmentGuide.com. The nation’s large portals have undergone focused strategies to develop their rental marketplaces as they look to dominate all things home, and expand their relationship with future homeowners. This rebrand continues the evolution as large real estate players evolve their rental strategies.
With rising interest rates and sustained low inventory, Fannie Mae’s Economic and Strategic Research Group has increased the percentage that it believes home sales will drop in 2022 from 2021 to 13.5 percent, in its June forecast. The group forecasts that this year will end with a total of 5.3 million existing-homes sold, down from 2021’s 6.1 million. The market is undeniably changing. Review this month’s Insight article by T3 Sixty CEO Jack Miller with how to successfully respond to a changing market.
Enabling Intelligent Change.
