Once Again, Real Estate Investors Prove Absolutely Anything is Possible By Carole VanSickle Ellis In January of this year, things were, in some ways, very different than they are today. Interest rates on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage were hovering just under 6.5%; the national median sales price for a single-family home had fallen slightly to $385,000, and Moody Analytics was predicting rental rates would rise by 2.5% over the next
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Hot Waters & a Hot Market for “America’s First Resort” By Carole VanSickle Ellis In Hot Springs, Arkansas, 47 natural thermal springs send about 1 million gallons of water measuring 143°F flowing through the area before emptying into Lake Hamilton. The city, which is sometimes referred to as “The Valley of the Vapors” and has dubbed itself “America’s First Resort,” has been primarily supported by the hospitality industry since long
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In the Aloha State, Real Estate Gets More Complicated By Carole VanSickle Ellis Hawaii is a state that stands alone, literally. Of all the states in the United States, Hawaii is the only one located outside of North America, the only archipelago, and the only state in the tropics. It is comprised of 127 volcanic islands, eight of which are considered the “main islands”: Niʻihau, Kauaʻi, Oʻahu, Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Kahoʻolawe,
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Investors, Homeowners Continue to Bank on The Valley of the Sun By Carole VanSickle Ellis Imagine describing the boundaries of your hometown city in this way: “The area is bounded by the shores of Lake Pleasant and the Superstition Mountains.” It sounds like a fairy tale, but the truth is that this description closely matches the boundaries of the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area. In Phoenix, home values are the stuff
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California’s Capital City Remains an Anomaly…In a Good Way By Carole VanSickle Ellis Just before the start of the 20th century, the residents of Sacramento decided to enact a sea change in the local geography. Believing the “City of Plains,” as the area was called in 1855, to be too flat and swampy, locals began planting cottonwoods and imported eucalyptus trees to help dry out swampy areas and create a
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The City of Brotherly Love Faces an “Uncomfortable” 2023 Market By Carole VanSickle Ellis When a national expert like Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi starts your market’s year off with the observation, “We’re in the bad times,” a lot of local homebuyers get chills — and not in a good way. For real estate investors, however, those chills are something like a silver lining, and Zandi only increased investor
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