2023 – Page 20

Renting Beats Buying in All but Three of the Largest U.S. Metros

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Buying a starter home in the top 50 metros cost $1,111 (60.3%) more than renting in August, as median U.S. rents see fourth consecutive month of year-over-year declines The elevated mortgage rates, steep home prices and declining rent costs familiar in today’s housing market have made it less costly to rent than to buy a starter home in all but three of the largest metros in the U.S., according to the Realtor.com® Monthly Rental Report. In August 2023, the cost of buying a starter home in the top 50 metros was $1,111 (60.3%) higher than renting in those markets on average. “Rents have registered steady declines for the past four months and, while they remain well above pre-pandemic levels, when you factor in the impact of record-high mortgage rates and high home prices, it’s understandable that many would-be homebuyers are choosing to remain on the sidelines,” said Danielle Hale, Chief Economist at Realtor.com®. “The downward trend in rental prices reduces the sense of urgency, giving renters more time to save for a home. In the period ahead as rents soften, we expect more households will remain renters for longer.” August 2023 Rental Metrics – National Unit Size Median Rent Rent YoY Rent Change – 4 years Overall $1,752 -0.6 % 23.7 % Studio $1,463 -0.2 % 18.4 % 1-bed $1,634 -0.5 % 23.6 % 2-bed $1,948 -0.7 % 26.4 % Nationally, rents drop for fourth straight month, while homebuying costs increaseMedian rents for 0-2 bedroom units declined consistently year-over-year for the past four months which, when combined with mortgage rates hovering above 7% and a low enough supply to drive prices up despite subdued demand, tipped the scales further in favor of renting. In August, homeownership costs exceeded renters’ monthly costs by nearly $300 compared with the start of the year. Renting beats buying in nearly all major metros, and the advantage is increasingIn August, renting was more affordable than buying a starter home in 47 of the 50 largest metros, up from 45 during the same time last year. Declining rents and the increasing costs of buying a home contributed to the jump in savings from renting. While skyrocketing mortgage rates pushed up the cost of taking on a mortgage, climbing home prices expanded the base of mortgages as well, making buying even less affordable compared to renting. The advantage of renting continues to grow in all rent-favoring markets. In the top 10 metros that favor renting over buying, most of which have a higher concentration of tech workers and high earners, both the average cost to rent and to buy are higher than the national average. Austin, Texas topped the list of markets that favor renting, where the monthly cost of buying a starter home was $3,946 – 136.3% more than the monthly rent – for a monthly savings of $2,276. Meanwhile, Baltimore and St. Louis flipped from buy-favoring to rent-favoring markets during the past 12 months. In markets favoring buying, the advantage is shrinkingIn August 2023, only three of the top 50 U.S. metros favored buying starter homes rather than renting: Birmingham, Ala., Memphis, Tenn., and Pittsburgh; however, the cost-benefits of buying have decreased since the same time last year. As the benefit of buying diminishes in these markets, prospective homebuyers will need to consider all trade offs when deciding whether to buy or continue renting. This is particularly important given that today’s elevated mortgage rates and still-high home prices pose substantial challenges for would-be buyers. To help homebuyers better understand their options, as part of its RealCost set of tools, Realtor.com® offers a free rent or buy calculator, which estimates how long a new homebuyer would need to remain in their home for buying to make more financial sense than renting. “As we noted in our July Rental Trends report, seasonality and recent momentum in the rental market make it very unlikely the market will see a new peak rent in 2023,” said Jiayi Xu, Economist at Realtor.com®. “Still, rents remain well above pre-pandemic levels, contributing to ongoing affordability concerns for renters, regardless of whether they plan to rent or buy in the months ahead.” Top 10 Metros that Favor Renting over Buying in August 2023 Metro MedianRent MonthlyBuy Cost $Difference(Buy-Rent) %Difference(Buy-Rent) RentYY Buy CostYY Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, TX $1,670 $3,946 $2,276 136.3 % -8.0 % 9.2 % San Francisco- Oakland-Berkeley, CA $2,906 $5,859 $2,953 101.6 % -4.9 % 12.7 % Columbus, OH $1,222 $2,458 $1,236 101.1 % 2.7 % 35.1 % Sacramento-Roseville- Folsom, CA $1,898 $3,779 $1,881 99.1 % -3.9 % 29.9 % Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA $2,892 $5,672 $2,780 96.1 % -2.3 % 23.3 % San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA $3,367 $6,581 $3,214 95.5 % -0.2 % 23.3 % Portland-Vancouver- Hillsboro, OR-WA $1,709 $3,314 $1,605 93.9 % -5.2 % 13.8 % Boston-Cambridge- Newton, MA-NH $2,851 $5,526 $2,675 93.8 % 3.2 % 24.4 % Seattle-Tacoma- Bellevue, WA $2,168 $4,156 $1,988 91.7 % -3.7 % 21.0 % Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ $1,595 $3,015 $1,420 89.0 % -4.5 % 17.7 % SOURCE Realtor.com

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Flipping Rate Declines to Near Low Point Since 2021;Typical Profit Margins Increase at Fastest Quarterly Pace in Three Years Following Extended Slump;Raw Flipping Profits Also Rebound, Up 18 Percent Over First Quarter ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property, and real estate data, released its second-quarter 2023 U.S. Home Flipping Report showing that 84,350 single-family homes and condominiums in the United States were flipped in the second quarter. Those transactions represented 8 percent, or one of every 13 home sales, during the months running from April through June of 2023. The latest portion was down from 9.9 percent of all home sales in the nation during the first quarter of 2023 and from 8.9 percent in the second quarter of last year. Despite the flipping rate remaining historically high, it dropped to nearly its lowest point since 2021. However, the report also reveals that even as flipping activity decreased, investor profits and profit margins both showed more signs of recovering from a slump that had slashed them by more than half in just two years. Both increased for the second quarter in a row, with investment returns climbing at the fastest pace since 2020, and raw profits spiking more than at any point over the past decade. The typical profit margin, while still far below peaks hit in 2021, rose almost five percentage points from the first to the second quarter of this year. Raw profits on typical flips, meanwhile, shot up 18 percent quarterly. The home-flipping profit improvement came amid a rebound in the broader U.S. housing market, which saw the single-family median home price spike 10 percent during the Spring buying season, after falling from the middle of last year to the early part of 2023. “Fortunes for investors who flip homes for quick profits are showing more signs of turning around after a long and unusual period when they went down while the rest of the market went up,” said Rob Barber, CEO for ATTOM. “However, the latest investment returns may not be substantial enough to cover the holding costs on typical deals. And it’s still too early to declare the profit downturn over, as much will depend on whether the second-quarter market surge keeps going or whether it retreats again like it did last year.” Among flips nationwide, the gross profit on typical transactions (the difference between the median purchase price paid by investors and the median resale price) increased to $66,500 in the second quarter of 2023. That remained down 35 percent from $102,063 in the second quarter of 2022 and still stood at one of the lowest points in the past five years. But it was up from $56,250 in the first quarter of this year. The typical gross flipping profit translated into a 27.5 percent return on investment compared to the original acquisition price in the second quarter of 2023. That also was still far below a highwater mark of 61 percent on median-priced flips reached in the second quarter of 2021. But it was up from 22.9 percent in the first quarter of this year as well as from a recent low of 22.3 percent hit in the fourth quarter of last year. Profits and profit margins continued to revive in the second quarter of 2023 as investors were able to take advantage of shifts in prices that went in their favor from the point when they were buying their properties to when they sold them. Specifically, the typical resale price on flipped homes increased to $308,500 in the second quarter, a 2.1 percent over the first quarter of 2023. That contrasted with a 1.6 percent decrease in median prices that recent home flippers were commonly seeing when they were buying their properties. The price shift – from a decrease to an increase – led to the improvement in profits and profit margins. The recent turnaround has at least temporarily reversed an unusual pattern of home-flipping fortunes running counter to the broader U.S. housing market. For the prior two years, flipping returns had mostly dropped despite prices and profits for traditional sellers, continuing to soar during an extended, decade-long boom period. Home flipping rates drop in almost 90 percent of nationHome flips as a portion of all home sales decreased from the first quarter of 2023 to the second quarter of 2023 in 168 of the 190 metropolitan statistical areas around the U.S. with enough data to analyze (88 percent). Flipping rates dropped at least two percentage points in more than a third of the metros reviewed. (Metro areas were included if they had a population of 200,000 or more and at least 50 home flips in the second quarter of 2023). Among those metros, the largest flipping rates during the second quarter of 2023 were in Macon, GA (flips comprised 16.8 percent of all home sales); Columbus, GA (15.3 percent); Spartanburg, SC (13.5 percent); Atlanta, GA (13.5 percent) and Akron, OH (12.5 percent). Q2 2023 U.S. Home Flipping Historical Trends Aside from Atlanta, the largest flipping rates among metro areas with a population of more than 1 million were in Memphis, TN (12.5 percent); Jacksonville, FL (11.1 percent); Cincinnati, OH (11 percent) and Phoenix, AZ (10.9 percent). The smallest home-flipping rates among metro areas analyzed in the second quarter were in Seattle, WA (3.7 percent); Santa Rosa, CA (4 percent); San Jose, CA (4.2 percent); San Francisco, CA (4.3 percent) and Hilo, HI (4.3 percent). Typical home flipping returns up quarterly in two-thirds of nationThe median $308,500 resale price of homes flipped nationwide in the second quarter of 2023 generated a gross profit of $66,500 above the median investor purchase price of $242,000. That resulted in a typical 27.5 percent profit margin in the second quarter of 2023, up from the first quarter, but still far beneath the 44.6 percent level in the second quarter of 2022 and 60.8 percent in the same period of 2021. Profit margins went up from the first to the second quarter in 119 of the 190 metro areas analyzed (63 percent), but they were still less than typical returns from a year earlier in 163, or 86 percent, of those markets. The biggest increases in the typical profit margin during the second quarter of 2023 came in Trenton, NJ (ROI up from 11.3

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RCN Capital, a leading nationwide private lender specializing in financing for real estate investors, announced its partnership with REiDEAL MASTER, a comprehensive technology platform that provides real estate investors with state-of-the-art tools to help grow and manage their businesses. Through this strategic partnership with REiDEAL MASTER, RCN Capital looks to help equip its investor clients with a full technological suite of resources that can help them succeed in all market conditions. “Seeing the challenges that so many real estate investors are facing in the current market made us realize that RCN needs to provide our clients with access to resources that will allow their businesses to continue to thrive,” said Jeffrey Tesch, RCN Capital’s CEO. “By partnering with REiDEAL MASTER, our clients will be able to utilize some of the top tech solutions in the industry for lead sourcing, contact and project management, deal analysis and so much more.” A robust resource for real estate investors, REiDEAL MASTER is an end-to-end technology solution with tools for every stage of the investment cycle. Highlights of the platform include REiDEAL AI Scoring, which leverages AI technology to generate a Sellability Score providing greater insight into when a property is likely to sell; REiDEAL PIPES PRO, an advanced search tool to enhance lead generation efforts through access to unique lead types, and REiDEAL LIEN FINDER, a tool to search for properties that match a combination of up to 10 lien types to create highly targeted marketing lists. “We are excited to join forces with RCN Capital, a leading name in financial services,” said Pamela Chapman, REiDEAL MASTER’s Retail Platform Sales Manager. “This collaboration marks a significant milestone for REiDEAL MASTER, enhancing our ability to provide real estate investors with cutting-edge tools and expert financial guidance throughout their investment journey. Together with RCN Capital, we’re committed to empowering our clients with the resources they need to excel in the ever-evolving real estate investment market.” About RCN Capital RCN Capital is a South Windsor, CT-based national, direct, private lender. Established in 2010, RCN provides commercial loans for the purchase or refinance of non-owner occupied residential properties. The company specializes in new construction financing, short-term fix & flip and bridge financing, and long-term rental financing for real estate investors. For more information on RCN Capital and RCN’s loan programs, visit www.RCNCapital.com. About REiDEAL MASTER REiDEAL MASTER is an all-in-one subscription-based technology platform that equips real estate investors with all the tools they need to thrive in every stage of the investment cycle. From market research to closing that next deal, REiDEAL MASTER’s comprehensive technology suite gives investors the competitive edge they need to succeed in any market conditions. For more information REiDEAL MASTER, visit www.REiDEALMASTER.com. SOURCE RCN Capital CONTACT: Erica LaCentra, RCN Capital, 860.432.4782, elacentra@rcncapital.com; CONTACT: Pamela Chapman, REiDEAL MASTER, 888.851.4048, pblakes@reidealmaster.com

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Housing Faces Renewed Headwinds from 7 Percent Mortgage Rates, but Downside Risk to Home Sales is Limited With underlying inflation decelerating and signs that the labor market is cooling, the central question for economists remains whether the economy is headed for a soft landing or a mild recession. According to the September 2023 commentary from the Fannie Mae (OTCQB: FNMA) Economic and Strategic Research (ESR) Group, mixed signals from key economic data releases continue to muddle the near-term outlook – and the answer to that question – but a modest contraction remains the most likely outcome as consumption continues to outpace incomes and previous monetary policy tightening works its way through the system. Significant divergence between gross domestic product (GDP) and gross domestic income (GDI) over the past three quarters increases the risk that the ESR Group’s 2023 GDP forecast, which was upgraded this month by three-tenths to 2.2 percent on a Q4/Q4 basis, will come in lower than currently expected. Regardless, the ESR Group notes that robust consumption growth in July was likely due to a series of temporary factors, and credit card transaction data and control group retail sales suggest real consumption growth will pull back in August. The housing market faces renewed headwinds with mortgage rates settling above 7 percent, according to the ESR Group. Still, the downside risk to total home sales is limited as more sales are being driven by life events rather than discretionary factors, and the cash share of purchases remains high. New home sales were surprisingly strong in the first half of the year, due partly to homebuilder rate buydowns, which become more expensive when mortgage rates rise. Going forward, the ESR Group expects new home sales to pull back slightly due to the higher mortgage rate environment and recent decline in homebuilder confidence. “In April 2022 we noted our expectation that the combination of dissipating stimulus impact and tightening monetary policy would result in a mild recession in the second half of 2023; mild in part because we expected the housing supply shortage to keep production from falling significantly,” said Doug Duncan, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, Fannie Mae. “Housing production has indeed held up. However, the pandemic-related fiscal transfers and built-up household savings have supported consumer spending longer than we had expected, providing unforeseen support to the macroeconomy. Our current prediction for a mild downturn in the first half of 2024 is predicated on the belief that consumers will begin pausing their spending, in part due to the exhaustion of those funds and having to realign to a more sustainable relationship between spending and incomes.” Duncan continued: “According to our latest National Housing Survey®, households remain confident in their own employment, even though they don’t feel great about the overall economy, and the vast majority don’t believe it’s a good time to buy a home, as mortgage rates and home prices continue to constrain affordability. This is evidenced by recession-level home sales volumes resulting from the very low levels of existing homes for sale and the significant affordability challenges. The elevated share of new homes relative to total home sales and a similarly elevated share of first-time homebuyers purchasing new homes are additional evidence of the ongoing housing supply problem. We expect that total housing market activity will remain at a low level into 2024 as the Federal Reserve continues to hold the line on interest rates against inflation.” Visit the Economic & Strategic Research site at fanniemae.com to read the full September 2023 Economic Outlook, including the Economic Developments Commentary, Economic Forecast, Housing Forecast, and Multifamily Market Commentary. To receive e-mail updates with other housing market research from Fannie Mae’s Economic & Strategic Research Group, please click here. SOURCE Fannie Mae

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Areas More Vulnerable to Downturns Clustered in New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia Metro Areas, Based on Measures from Second Quarter of 2023; South and New England Less Exposed to Downturns ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property, and real estate data, released a Special Housing Impact Report spotlighting county-level housing markets around the United States that are more or less vulnerable to declines, based on home affordability, foreclosures and other measures in the second quarter of 2023. The report shows that New Jersey and Illinois have the highest concentrations of the most-at-risk markets in the country, with the biggest clusters in the New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia areas. The South, along with other parts of the Northeast, are generally less exposed to market woes. WATCH: ATTOM Q2 2023 Special Housing Impact Report The second-quarter patterns – derived from gaps in home affordability, underwater mortgages, foreclosures and unemployment – revealed that New Jersey and Illinois had 23 of the 50 counties most vulnerable to potential drop-offs. Those concentrations dwarfed other parts of the country amid a time of significant uncertainty when the U.S. housing market was rebounding from a period of flat or falling values. The 50 counties at the top of the most vulnerable list included eight in and around New York City, six in the Chicago metropolitan area and three in or near Philadelphia. Another six were scattered through northern, central and southern California. A majority of the rest were in Indiana and along the East Coast. At the other end of the risk spectrum, the South and two New England states had the highest concentration of markets considered least likely to decline. “We continue to see pockets of the U.S. housing market where the foundation is a bit shakier – or more solid – than others, based on important quarterly metrics,” said Rob Barber, CEO at ATTOM. “As with earlier reports, it doesn’t mean any one area or cluster of areas is about to crash. The overall market and the economy remain way too strong for imminent warnings to be sounded. But there are weak spots that are still popping up as areas to watch, especially if the market turns back downward.” Counties were considered more or less at risk based on the percentage of homes facing possible foreclosure, the portion with mortgage balances that exceeded estimated property values, the percentage of average local wages required to pay for major home ownership expenses on median-priced single-family homes and local unemployment rates. The conclusions were drawn from an analysis of the most recent home affordability, home equity and foreclosure reports prepared by ATTOM. Unemployment rates came from federal government data. Rankings were based on a combination of those four categories in 574 counties around the United States with sufficient data to analyze in the second quarter of 2023. Counties were ranked in each category, from lowest to highest, with the overall conclusions based on a combination of the four ranks. The wide disparities in risks throughout the country continued a pattern seen over the past two years, with the latest scenario coming as the overall U.S. housing market improved following a downturn that stretched from mid-2022 into early 2023. The nationwide median home price spiked 10 percent from the first to the second quarter of 2023 after dipping 7 percent over the prior three quarters. Home-seller profits and mortgage lending also turned upward in the second quarter, while increases in foreclosures eased. That happened as a surge in mortgage rates stabilized within a range of 6 percent to 7 percent for 30-year home loans, consumer-price inflation fell back to about 4 percent and the stock market improved. Most-vulnerable counties clustered in the Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia areas Seventeen of the 50 U.S. counties considered most vulnerable in the second quarter of 2023 to housing market troubles (from among 574 counties with enough data to analyze) were in the metropolitan areas around Chicago, IL; New York, NY, and Philadelphia, PA. The 50 most at-risk counties included two in New York City (Kings and Richmond counties, which cover Brooklyn and Staten Island), six in the New York City suburbs (Bergen, Essex, Ocean, Passaic, Sussex and Union counties, all in New Jersey) and six in the Chicago metropolitan area (Cook, De Kalb, Kane, Kendall, and Will counties in Illinois, and Porter County in Indiana). The three in the Philadelphia, PA, metro area that were among the top 50 in the second quarter were Philadelphia County, PA, Gloucester County, NJ, and Camden County, NJ. Elsewhere, California had six counties among the top 50: Butte County (outside Sacramento), Humboldt County (Eureka) and Solano County (outside Sacramento) in the northern part of the state; Madera County (outside Fresno) and San Joaquin County (Stockton) in central California and Riverside County in the southern part of the state. Another six were scattered around states along the southeast coast of the U.S., with three others in Indiana – Delaware (Muncie), Elkhart and La Porte. Higher levels of underwater mortgages, foreclosures and unemployment continued in counties most at-risk of downfalls At least 5 percent of residential mortgages were underwater in the second quarter of 2023 in 37 of the 50 most-at-risk counties. Nationwide, 5.5 percent of mortgages fell into that category, with homeowners owing more on their mortgages than the estimated value of their properties. Those with the highest underwater rates among the 50 most at-risk counties were Macon County (Decatur), IL (17.6 percent underwater); Delaware County (Muncie), IN (17.5 percent); Tangipahoa Parish, LA (east of Baton Rouge) (15.1 percent); Peoria County, IL (15.1 percent) and Saint Clair County, IL (outside St. Louis, MO) (14.7 percent). More than one of every 1,000 residential properties faced a foreclosure action in the second quarter of 2023 in 43 of the 50 most at-risk counties. Nationwide, one in 1,431 homes were in that position. (Foreclosure actions have risen since the expiration in July 2021 of a federal moratorium on lenders taking back properties from homeowners who fell behind

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Real Estate’s AI Experts Reinforce their Commitment to Innovation by Introducing the Latest Frontier in Generative AI Technology FoxyAI, a PropTech leader in real estate visualization and property intelligence, proudly announces the launch of FoxyAI-GPT, a highly specialized generative AI model poised to redefine the real estate industry. With unrivaled expertise in artificial intelligence and real estate, FoxyAI continues its mission to deliver practical and effective solutions to real estate professionals. While off-the-shelf GPT solutions have proven their utility in general applications, they often fall short when handling the specific nuances of different industries, including real estate. FoxyAI recognized this gap and developed FoxyAI-GPT to address the industry-specific challenges real estate professionals face. FoxyAI-GPT offers real estate professionals the following benefits: FoxyAI-GPT is a multimodal Generative Pre-training Transformer (“GPT”) model that has undergone rigorous training using a rich dataset comprised of textual and visual real estate data. This unique model integrated seamlessly with various data types, including text and images, offering real estate professionals a versatile tool to enhance their work. It can also be used alongside traditional AI models, e.g., object detection models, in order to refine research beyond predefined classifications. “Empowering real estate professionals with the latest in AI tools to help them make better decisions has always been our mission at FoxyAI,” said Vin Vomero, Founder and CEO of FoxyAI. “FoxyAI-GPT is the embodiment of that commitment, designed to make real estate research and analysis more accessible and insightful than ever before.” For more information about FoxyAI-GPT and its applications in the real estate sector, please visit https://foxyai.com/foxyai-gpt/. About FoxyAIFounded in 2018, FoxyAI is the leading proptech in real estate visualization and property intelligence. The company utilizes artificial intelligence and computer vision to convert everyday real estate photos into actionable data. FoxyAI’s suite of Property Intelligence tools, all available through its API, can instantly compute quality and condition, valuations, renovation costs, detect objects and materials, and much more. For additional information on FoxyAI, visit https://foxyai.com/. Media Contact:Jacqueline Silvajacqueline@silvacommunications.com(917) 880.2464 SOURCE FoxyAI