Houston’s housing inventory has reached its highest level since 2012. That much supply usually gives buyers more bargaining power and opens doors for investors. But according to Kelvin Louie of KL Integrity Group, many Houston-area sellers bought during the pandemic and paid too much. Values in some areas have since dropped, and these sellers have ...
Houston’s fix-and-flip model thrived after the pandemic, but the numbers no longer add up. Investors want to buy distressed properties, meaning homes that need major repairs, and then renovate and resell them. But they are offering prices so far below what sellers will accept that deals rarely close. According to Tilah Spruel, founder of Lux ...
When relocation buyers compare housing costs in the North Austin suburbs to what they paid in California, Seattle, or Houston, they typically focus on purchase price and mortgage payment. Many miss that Texas property taxes do not follow a single statewide rate. Rates vary between communities, driven in part by a financing tool called municipal ...
Building a new concrete home in the Florida Keys now costs $700 to $1,200 per square foot, according to Lisa Ferringo, who leads the Lisa Ferringo Group, a six-person real estate team in the Keys. Ferringo says those prices reflect a shortage of labor and the difficulty of getting materials to the islands. Homes must ...
State disclosure laws vary widely. Some states require sellers to complete detailed property condition forms. Others require sellers to volunteer almost nothing. But in most states, those laws alone don’t decide whether an agent is liable. Liability usually comes from negligence and misrepresentation rules, which are legal standards built through court decisions rather than statutes. ...
For decades, construction and trades businesses have operated on a simple model: complete a job, collect payment, find the next one. Revenue arrived in irregular bursts tied to project timelines. That model now works against owners at the moment they most need to show value: when they try to sell. Industry transaction data supports this ...
In Long Beach, California, most homes were not built as tract housing, where a builder puts up many similar homes at once. Instead, homes vary block by block in age, layout, and lot size. That variation makes price per square foot, a metric many investors rely on, a poor guide to whether a deal actually ...
Some small investors in Illinois are moving away from long-term rentals. The reason isn’t weak numbers. It’s the legal risk of renting to tenants in the state. In Chicago’s far northwest suburbs, cities like Elgin and McHenry look like strong rental markets on paper. Home prices are affordable, many residents rent rather than own, and ...
Dearborn Heights, a city of about 63,000 residents in western Wayne County, borders both Dearborn and Detroit. Buyers choosing between neighborhoods in Dearborn Heights are sorting themselves into two distinct tiers. One tier is driven by school districts and parks. The other is driven by rental income and affordability. As the market calms, the difference ...
In parts of the northeast Dallas suburbs, listings are expiring faster than in neighboring areas. A listing expires when a home doesn’t sell before the seller’s contract with an agent ends. Whether these expirations create an opportunity for investors depends on which ring of suburbs they target, according to Cindy Dunnican. Dunnican leads The Dunnican ...
In Pekin, Illinois, a city of 32,000 people with only 67 active home listings, building a new home now costs more than most buyers can pay. As a result, most new residential construction does not make financial sense for developers. Demand keeps growing, and supply has no clear path to catch up. Costs Outpace Prices ...
In parts of Arlington, Texas, a well-priced listing sells within days. A few miles away, comparable homes sit for 60 days or more without a serious offer. Both outcomes feed into the same citywide days-on-market average, which measures how long homes take to sell. According to Lauren Kerschen, founder of DFW’s Finest Real Estate Group, ...
When developers in Delaware claim to build affordable housing, their prices often don’t match what nurses, grocery store clerks, and hospital aides can pay. According to George Meringolo, founder of Little Living, major builders price their lowest-cost homes at $300,000 to $350,000. That is well beyond the reach of workers earning $35,000 to $70,000 a ...
Low defaults and a steady economy can make the mortgage market look safe. But periods of calm are often when lenders begin loosening the habits that keep risk in check – and the people best equipped to notice are increasingly absent from the rooms where those decisions get made. That is the view of Clifford ...
In Houston’s Heights neighborhood and nearby northwest areas, some investors are skipping the resale market and buying land to build. Their main target is co-living housing: private bedrooms and bathrooms with a shared kitchen and common areas. That is according to Kurt Peterson, an agent and investor with World Wide Realty, LLC. Peterson says the ...
