Mortgage rates were mostly in a holding pattern this week, but still eked out the first increase since early June.Overall, mortgage rates this summer have been dropping the past few weeks after sharp rises this spring. “A record number of people quit their job last month, most likely for a new opportunity with higher wages and better benefits,” says Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “This positive trend, along with these lower
More luxury home sales occurred in the first half of 2018. Transactions that were $1 million–plus were up 25 percent year over year, according to realtor.com®’s Luxury Home Index. That marks the largest leap in luxury home sales since January 2014. Luxury is defined as the top 5 percent of all residential home sales in a given market.In the 91 luxury markets analyzed, the entry-level price rose 4.6 percent year over year. Seventeen of those
South Dakota is the best place to retire in 2018, according to the latest retirement rankings from Bankrate.com. South Dakotans still ranked highest for well-being, which is based on their perceptions of social, community, health, and financial security. Plus, South Dakota residents don’t have to pay income taxes when they live in the second most tax-friendly state in the country—a perk for seniors living on a fixed income.Bankrate.com accou
Don’t let an overflowing schedule get the best of you. As a broker-owner or manager, your time should be spent on high-level responsibilities and helping your agents be successful. But if you find yourself spending too much time on routine tasks or handling duties where you lack expertise, here are three things you can remove from your plate immediately, according to Entrepreneur magazine. Let creatives handle it. Work with freelancers or con
A pool can be a selling point for a home, but proper care is key. Some homeowners could be going about their pool maintenance all wrong, which could result in costly leaks or even skin irritations to those who jump in. An article at realtor.com® recently highlighted some common slip-ups, including:Using the wrong chemicalsMixing the wrong chemical balance can cause eye and skin irritation and deteriorate the materials in the pool, which can lea
As agents and brokers go about their business on their own time, clocking in and out during regular business hours isn’t exactly the norm. However, with flexible hours comes the risk of having a poor work-life balance. A survey by Sage Small Business found that small-business owners today work longer hours than they did six years ago in 2012. It’s easy to get lost among scheduling chaos and everyday business, but these tips from a recent Ent
One of the fastest growing cybercrimes in the U.S. is wire fraud in real estate. About 9,600 people were victims of wire fraud in the real estate and rental sector in 2017, with losses of more than $56 million, according to FBI data.The highest reported fraud in real estate last year was Business Email Compromise/Email Account Compromise. Fraudsters will assume the identity of the title or real estate agent and forge the person’s email and othe
Foreclosures can take a long time to process, but they are getting faster. Properties foreclosed in the second quarter took an average of 720 days from the first foreclosure notice to completion. That is down from 883 days a year ago, according to a new report released by ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate data firm.The states with the longest average timelines for foreclosures completed in the second quarter were: Hawaii: 1,553 days Florida: 1,
The gap continues to narrow between homeowners’ and appraisers’ perceptions over home values. The latest Quicken Loans Home Price Perception Index shows that the average home appraisal in June was only 0.25 percent lower than what owners had estimated—this puts the two different value perceptions at their closest since February 2015.Homeowners provide their home value estimate at the beginning of the refinance process; that is then matched
With ride-sharing companies such as Lyft and Uber entrenched in cities and changing how their residents move about, a move into bicycle sharing may bring their users even more flexibility.Lyft paid a reported $250 million earlier this month for Motivate, which operates bike-sharing programs across the country under a variety of names, such as Citi Bike in New York and Divvy in Chicago.With some 35 percent of vehicle trips involving travel of two
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