News Updates

New Startup in the iBuyer Space

A startup out of Vero Beach, Florida, and Boulder, Colorado, called iBuyer.com is bringing customer education and choice to the iBuyer space. Using a proprietary automated valuation model that uses artificial intelligence, ensemble modeling and historical iBuyer transactional data, iBuyer.com can predict within seconds what an iBuyer is most likely to pay for a house. This eliminates the need to visit numerous sites and answer streams of duplicate questions to determine if selling to an iBuyer makes sense. In addition to instant valuation, iBuyer.com offers a concierge approach to help customers find the best home liquidity solution for each particular situation. Author admin View all posts

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NES Financial Introduces Fund Administration Service

NES Financial has added a new, purpose-built fund administration service to its current lineup of EB-5, 1031 exchange, private equity and Opportunity Zone offerings. The DST Administration Solution leverages NES Financial’s eSTAC administration technology to provide maximum security, transparency and compliance to Section 1031 Delaware Statutory Trust (DST) managers and their clients. Author admin View all posts

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U.S. Home Flipping Activity Drops

In the third quarter of 2019, overall home flips dropped 12.9% over the previous quarter and were down 6.8% from a year ago, according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ third-quarter 2019 U.S. Home Flipping Report. Home flipping rates were down in 78% of the local markets (115 of 147) analyzed in the report. This decline came after an unusually active flipping market in the spring. The declines stood out as the largest quarterly and annual drops since the third quarter of 2014. The homes flipped in the third quarter represented 5.4% of all home sales during the quarter. That level was down from 6% percent of all home sales in second quarter 2019, but up slightly from 5.2% a year ago. Homes flipped during the reporting period typically generated a gross profit of $64,900, an increase of 1.8% from the second quarter and 3.5% from a year ago. Still, that gross flipping profit translated into a 40.6% return on investment compared to the original acquisition price, which marked a decrease from the 41.1% gross flipping ROI in the second quarter. The latest returns on home flips stood at the second-lowest point since 2011, barely above the 40% ROI from the first quarter of this year. “After a springtime selling binge earlier this year, the home-flipping business settled way down over the summer amid a continuing scenario of languishing profits,” said Todd Teta, chief product officer at ATTOM Data Solutions. “The retreat back to more normal levels of sales comes amid broader market forces that are making it harder and harder for investors to complete the kinds of deals they were getting as recently as last year. Those forces are keeping profits way down from post-Recession highs and show no signs of easing.” Maksim Stavinsky, co-founder and COO of Roc Capital noted that borrowers’ declining profits on flips are leading to much greater interest in renting out renovated properties instead of flipping them. “We have been seeing a decline in projected and realized profits for borrowers on projects, despite the fact that borrower financing costs have been meaningfully coming down,” said Stavinsky. “This has led to much greater interest and activity in our rental programs. We expect these trends to continue.” While home flips purchased with financing continued to drop in the third quarter, those bought with cash climbed, up from 56.3% in the second quarter and 54% a year ago. Eight markets bucked the trend, however, and had third quarter 2019 gross ROI flipping margins of at least 100%. Those markets included Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (132.6%); Scranton, Pennsylvania (122.5%); Flint, Michigan (111.2%); Cleveland, Ohio (109.8%) and Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, North Carolina (109.7%). Homes flipped in the third quarter of 2019 were sold for a median price of $224,900, with a gross flipping profit of $64,900 above the median purchase price of $160,000. That profit figure was up from a gross flipping profit of $63,750 in the previous quarter and up $62,700 in the third quarter of 2018. But with prices rising on investor-purchased homes, the median 40.6% return on investment was down from the post-Recession peak of 52.1% in the second and third quarters of 2016. The average time to flip nationwide in the third quarter was 177 days. A copy of the full report is available here. Author admin View all posts

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HouseCanary Launches ComeHome

Real estate technology company HouseCanary has introduced ComeHome, a proprietary platform built for mortgage lenders to attract, retain and convert customers into their suite of loan products. ComeHome is a co-branded mobile and desktop experience  that offers an integrated digital home shopping and homeowner experience embedded into mortgage lenders’ existing digital properties—both websites and native mobile apps. ComeHome integrates property search tools into the lender’s existing digital products by coupling property search with loan products for an integrated experience from search through loan transaction. ComeHome opens more opportunities for lenders to engage more frequently with their existing customers, allowing those customers to manage their home and take advantage of any offers around first mortgage, refinance and home equity line of credit (HELOC) opportunities, right in the lender’s ecosystem. Author admin View all posts

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NTC Adds to Executive Team

Former Fannie Mae executive Robin Belanger joined  Nationwide Title Clearing as vice president in October. In her new role, Belanger focuses on enhancing NTC’s offering in the document certification, custody and capital markets area of the industry. Belanger has more than 20 years of experience in the mortgage banking industry. For the past 10 years, she worked in multiple positions at Fannie Mae, most recently as a director of governance responsible for oversight of Fannie Mae’s 25 document custodians and strategic initiatives. Author admin View all posts

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Rocket Dollar Launches Gold Service

Rocket Dollar, a digital self-directed IRA and solo 401(k) provider, has introduced Rocket Dollar Gold. The new service tier combines premium services such as priority phone support with a checkbook and debit card. Additional features include four courtesy wires a year, expedited rollovers and transfers, and Roth conversion reporting; tax reporting for the IRA or Solo 401(k); and a custom-named LLC to hold investments. Author admin View all posts

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