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The presence of a Whole Foods on the ground level of an apartment building provides a big bump in rental rates for landlords. There’s a new study that shows renters will pay a premium to live so close to a high-end grocery store. The so-called “premium grocer effect” also applies to single-family neighborhoods with an impact on home prices and equity, if there’s a favorite grocery store nearby.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

Existing home inventory is down. It’s gotten much worse since the start of the pandemic. Realtor.com says there are almost 400,000 fewer homes on the MLS than there were at the same time last year. The lack of inventory is pushing home prices higher, and reducing the number of days it takes to sell a home. That’s pushing many homebuyers and investors into the new home market.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

The pandemic has turned many office employees into remote workers, and for some, that could mean the freedom to move to a new, less expensive location. Some businesses are even encouraging employees to move, with a bonus. But there is a catch. Employees who move to a place with a lower cost of living, may also get a pay cut, and that’s not sitting well with some of them.   Payment processing company Stripe is one company that is encouraging employees to move. It has offices in 16 cities around the globe and almost 3,000 employees. It’s giving $20,000 to employees who move from some of the bigger cities like San Francisco, New York, and Seattle, but is also telling them they’ll get a 10% pay cut. The pay cut will correspond to a lower cost of living in the city they move to.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

In this Real Estate News Brief for the week ending September 19th, 2020... the Federal Reserve offers an improved 2020 forecast for U.S. economic growth, empty nesters are getting their adult kids back, and the Detroit rental market has gotten “wacky.”   We begin with economic news from this past week, and an update on economic policy from the Federal Reserve. The Fed said in a statement it expects to keep short-term bank rates near zero until the end of 2023, and that inflation would have to rise above 2% for “some time” before rates are increased.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

A decline in rent growth for single-family homes brought on by the pandemic appears to have stabilized. The CoreLogic Single-Family Rent Index shows that it moved higher in July at a year-over-year rate of 1.7%. It had sunk to 1.4% in June. While that’s good for the nation, metros vary and some have more catching up to do than others.   The pandemic swept across the country in February, forcing businesses to close and leaving a huge number of people unemployed. Many single-family landlords lowered their rents to keep tenants in place. That brought a steady rate of rental increases in the SFR marketplace to a much lower level. According to data from CoreLogic, they were rising at an average of 2.9%  during the first quarter of the year. From there, they slide to 1.7% in May and then 1.4% in June.    www.NewsForInvestors.com  

There was a slight uptick in foreclosure filings in the U.S. as the pandemic continues and an agreement on a new stimulus to help ailing homeowners has stalled.  Real estate data firm CoreLogic released a report that shows serious delinquencies spiked in June. Without government assistance or major job market improvement by the end of the year, those delinquencies could turn into foreclosures.   The CoreLogic report shows that 2.9% percent of U.S. home loans were overdue by 90 to 119 days in June. That’s the highest they’ve been in 21 years, according to CoreLogic’s chief economist Frank Nothaft. He says: “If there are new government programs, maybe that alleviates some of the risks, but given what we know today, we could be looking at a serious delinquency rate that is four times higher at the end of 2021 than it was before the start of the pandemic.”   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

A national eviction ban is now in place that protects tenants for the rest of the year without offering any help for landlords. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it as an emergency health measure to prevent the further spread of COVID-19. But it does little to solve the problem of unpaid rent for landlords, who have bills to pay, or tenants, who face a giant balloon payment when the moratorium expires.   The CDC order went into effect on September 4th and runs through December 31st. That gives tenants a four-month reprieve from their rent obligations, if they don’t have the means to pay. Local eviction bans that provide equal or greater protection for tenants take precedence, so properties already covered by a COVID-19 eviction ban, are likely exempt from the national ban.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

Corporate landlords are defying the federal eviction ban with a surge in new filings. According to one report, institutional landlords filed more than 900 eviction cases in eight metro areas during the week after the ban was announced. The ban attempts to protect tenants who can’t pay their rent because of the pandemic, but the moratorium is not preventing landlords from challenging tenant claims about their finances.   The Private Equity Stakeholder Project was already tracking evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic before the CDC announced a national moratorium on evictions, and that in early August, the big landlords had only filed 165 eviction claims. The organization attempts to connect investors with the people and communities that are impacted by private equity investments.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

In this Real Estate News Brief for the week ending September 12th, 2020... mortgage rates dipped into record territory once again, apartment rent collection numbers, and a housing market that is on a “sugar high.”   We begin with economic news from this past week, and a mixed report on the job market. The number of people applying for jobless benefits rose slightly this last week. Continuing claims were also slightly higher than they were the week before. But, the government reported a 1.4 million increase in newly created jobs, and an unemployment rate that fell from 10.2% to 8.4%.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

The pandemic is not dampening enthusiasm for Crystal Lagoons. In fact, the Crystal Lagoons company says it’s expanding its model for lagoons built for public access, and expects post-pandemic demand to rise. It says people will want to enjoy a vacation-like atmosphere without going on a plane. At Real Wealth, we are looking forward to the 2020 opening of a lagoon connected with one of our developments in Florida.   We’ve been excited about Crystal Lagoons since they were first introduced several years ago as a way to create a tropical beach paradise of any size on just about any piece of property in the world. They change the real estate concept of location, location, location to “wherever you want to build,” because these lagoons “create” a location.    www.NewsForInvestors.com    

In this Real Estate News Brief for the week ending September 5th, 2020... upbeat reports on new jobs and unemployment, another nationwide eviction moratorium, and a pandemic-inspired boom in the purchase of second homes.   We have the latest economic news from this past week, and some good news about the job market and residential construction. But, overshadowing those headlines is an announcement from the federal government for a new nationwide eviction moratorium.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

Some California landlords say a new tenant protection law increases their risk of foreclosure, although the new law is better than the one it replaces. Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB-3088 on August 31st just hours before previous eviction moratoriums expired. Because it includes an emergency clause, it went into effect right away, protecting tenants for another five months.   Newsom approved the COVID-19 Tenant Relief Act of 2020 after “feverish” negotiations by lawmakers and landlord groups. They hammered out AB-3088 as a compromise bill while the clock ticked down on the deadline. Without a deal, the Sacramento Bee says as many as four million California tenants would have been at risk of eviction, for unpaid rent.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

Lumber has become a sizzling hot commodity during the pandemic, and when commodities sizzle, so does the price tag. The cost of lumber has shot sky high since April, and that’s adding thousands on to the cost of new homes and renovations. For some, it isn’t a matter of price. It’s a matter of whether you can get the lumber you need.   In a report by Fortune, research by Random Lengths shows that lumber prices have soared 134% year-over-year due to a lumber shortage and high demand.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

In this Real Estate News Brief for the week ending August 29th, 2020... the Fed unveils a new monetary policy that will allow higher inflation, home sales surge to the highest level since 2006, and the FHFA announced a delay in the new fee on refinance loans. We begin with economic news from this past week, and a new inflation control strategy from the Federal Reserve. Fed officials unveiled the new policy this last week after approval by all 17 committee members. The Fed will now shoot for an “average inflation target” of 2%.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

The pandemic isn’t the only reason that demand is growing for single-family rentals, but it is one of them. And with an already tight supply of existing homes that can be turned into single-family rentals, the build-to-rent strategy is gaining momentum. There’s a new report out from RCLCO Real Estate Advisors that says that demand for single-family rentals will likely outstrip supply for the next ten years, creating “a strong opportunity” for developers, builders, and investors.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

The CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are responding to a massive backlash over an unexpected refinancing fee. In a letter to lenders, they wrote that the uproar was unwarranted, saying it won’t make much of a difference to a homeowner’s monthly payment. And the fee will help the mortgage guarantee companies continue their work of helping others.   If you haven’t heard of the fee yet, it’s a half point surcharge on the cost of a refi that takes effect on September 1st. For the average $280,000 refi, that’s about $1400 added into the amount that is being financed.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

In this Real Estate News Brief for the week ending August 22nd, 2020... home sales are soaring, rent collection is near normal, and Airbnb bans party homes.   We begin with economic news from this past week, and lawmakers that are still battling it out over a new stimulus package. An agreement could be reached soon that includes another $1,200 stimulus check, but the two sides are still about $1 trillion apart on the total amount of a deal. Still being debated are the unemployment bonus, the extension of eviction moratoriums, and new funding for schools and local governments. The Republicans are calling their proposal the Heals Act while the Democrats are calling theirs the Heroes Act.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

The job market is undergoing a big transformation right now because of the coronavirus. Many businesses have adopted work-from-home policies, for at least the near term, to keep the virus from spreading at the office. The situation has raised questions about whether we’ll see businesses resurrect an upgraded version of the office workspace, and for one big company, that answer appears to be “yes.”   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

We typically steer away from politics in this podcast but a change in the presidency could bring about tax changes that impact real estate investors and high-income taxpayers. Some of our listeners have requested a podcast on what Democratic nominee Joe Biden is proposing if he becomes president, so I thought I’d dedicate this podcast to what we know of his plan.   www.NewsForInvestors.com  

The death of a California real estate investor has uncovered what appears to be a 30-year-old Ponzi scheme and hundreds of victims who don’t know if or when they’ll get their money back.  Kenneth Casey died suddenly of a heart attack in May which led to a post-death audit and the discovery of financial irregularities at his two companies. In addition to an SEC investigation, investors are now hoping that a bankruptcy filing will help them recover some of the millions that they have invested.   www.NewsForInvestors.com