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New Western Grows U.S. Affordable Housing Inventory by 6,540 in 2022 without Building a Single Home

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Inventory growth fueled by 10 new market openings this year including the latest in Washington, D.C.; Fix-and-flip properties purchased through New Western’s marketplace sell for up to 31% less than new builds New Western, the largest national private marketplace for fix-and-flip residential investment properties, announced that the company has made home ownership accessible for more Americans by growing U.S. housing inventory by 6,540 units to date in 2022. Without building a single home, New Western accomplished this increase thanks to its data, advanced knowledge of local markets and its business model, which includes obtaining inventory from among the 16 million vacant homes across the United States as well as other off-market properties for less than $250,000 on average. As a result, homes that are purchased through New Western’s marketplace and later renovated sell for up to 31% less than new builds. New Western’s unprecedented growth in 2022 is driven by its rapid expansion into 10 new markets for a total of 50 locations nationwide. This includes its newest office in Washington, D.C., where New Western has set a goal to revitalize almost $1 billion in properties in that region over the next five years. New Western identified the District of Columbia and its surrounding cities as a strong opportunity for investors because of the need locally for a disruptive force in the residential real estate market: The median sale price of a single-family home in Washington, D.C., in July was $1.153 million, and just 98 homes sold that month, down 19% from July 2021 from Redfin. With 81.8% of homes in the D.C. metro area alone built before 2002, New Western will help address the affordable housing crisis in the D.C. area by returning aged and distressed homes to the market. “Our rapid growth continues to enable us to improve the quality of opportunity that New Western provides, especially as we launch into one of the largest metropolitan markets in the United States,” said Kurt Carlton, co-founder and president of New Western. “D.C.-area home prices have been rising for 13 consecutive years. We are in a unique position to deliver much needed inventory to this market and look forward to creating more affordable housing. I’d like to express my gratitude to all our employees for their hard work and commitment to deliver on this promise.” New Western’s model is growing residential housing inventory in the United States at a time when home ownership is increasingly out of reach for many Americans – due in part to low inventory and cost. Although housing inventory rose in May by 8%, that was the first monthly increase since June 2019. When compared to May 2020, active home listings have decreased by 48.5%, pushing prices up by record amounts in many cities from Realtor.com. “New Western offers substantial opportunity for sellers, buyers, and investors, as well as a positive impact in many neighborhoods. Their unique marketplace delivers value-add homes that would otherwise be unappealing to most residential homebuyers – something I really appreciate as a Chicago native,” said Joan Kaufmann-Stube, Managing Broker of Circled Squared Real Estate in New Lenox, Ill. “In addition to the great value New Western brings to the real estate ecosystem, one of the main reasons I recommend New Western’s marketplace to my investor clients is because their inventory is available on a first-come, first-served basis, eliminating bidding wars and increasing investor profitability.” Born out of the chaos of the 2008 foreclosure crisis, New Western consistently stands strong as a pillar of economic promise, thriving throughout times of hardship. On average, New Western buys a property every 13 minutes, has bought and sold approximately $12 billion in residential real estate. Fueled by more than 100,000 active investors and the belief in making real estate investment more accessible, New Western’s fierce momentum has positioned the company to acquire 10,000 properties and nearly $5 billion in transaction volume by the end of 2022. In addition to Washington, D.C., New Western market openings this year include: Birmingham, Ala.; Chicago; Fort Myers, Fla.; Greenville, S.C.; Indianapolis; Jacksonville, Fla.; Orlando, Fla.; Pittsburgh; and Salt Lake City. For more information about New Western, please visit https://www.newwestern.com.  About New Western  New Western makes real estate investing more accessible for more people. Operating in most major cities, our marketplace connects more than 100,000 local investors looking to rehab houses with sellers. As the largest private source of investment properties in the nation, we buy a home every 13 minutes. New Western delivers new opportunity for all—a fresh start for sellers, exclusive inventory for investors, and affordable housing for buyers. For more information, visit www.newwestern.com. 

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Reali Closing Operations

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Reali, the real estate and fintech platform transforming home buying and selling, announced it will begin a shutdown and will be laying off most of the workforce on September 9, 2022. Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board Amit Haller said, “Reali was one of the pioneering companies to offer the ‘buy before you sell’ and ‘cash offer’ programs to homeowners. We believed deeply in benefiting the consumer foremost in every transaction. The six years Reali spent evolving the prop tech market in California helped elevate and transform the industry.” Due to the challenging real estate and financial market conditions and unfavorable capital-raising environment, Reali determined the best course of action is to close. Active real estate transactions will continue to be supported through the end of the year by a small team of employees. Reali is in ongoing conversations with companies that have expressed interest in acquiring specific parts of its business, including mortgage origination, title & escrow, and power buying. “We had an incredible six-year run delighting homeowners,” said Tyler Baldwin, Chief Executive Officer of Reali. “We want to extend our deepest gratitude to the thousands of homeowners who trusted Reali with their homeownership journeys, the Reali team, our investors, and those who rooted for us from the sidelines. It has been a pleasure to serve our communities.” About Reali Reali launched in 2016 and is a real estate and fintech company creating a one-stop shop to make homeownership streamlined, accessible, and stress-free every step of the way. We leverage first-in-kind technology and trusted real estate experts to serve home buyers, borrowers, and sellers in a single, integrated platform. Our wide range of alternative financing solutions makes a complicated process like buying and selling at the same time much less complicated. Customers can buy and sell in one coordinated transaction, eliminating resale contingencies, moving twice, and paying two mortgages at once.

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WORD OF THE DAY: Acuity

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[ə-KYOO-ə-dee] Part of speech: Noun Origin: Late Middle English, 16th century Definition: Sharpness or keenness of thought, vision, or hearing. Examples of Acuity in a sentence “Jonah’s natural acuity made him a model student.” “The optician had noticed a worrying decline in the acuity of Martha’s sight in recent years.” About Acuity Acuity comes from the Latin “acuere” meaning “sharpen.” The word “acuere” is found in medieval Latin as “acuitas,” and in Old French as “acuite.” Did you Know? Acuity” shares the same Latin root word as “acute,” a word which, depending on context, can have a similar meaning. “Acute” can mean “having or showing a perceptive insight,” but it can also mean, “experienced to a severe or intense degree.” It has a third meaning as well; “acute” refers to an angle of less than 90 degrees.

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word of the day: Bafflegab

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[ba-fəl-ˌgab] Part of speech: Noun Origin: English, 20th century Definition: Messy, wordy jargon; Incomprehensible gibberish; Confusing legal or bureaucratic language Examples of Bafflegab in a sentence “The contract was full of so much bafflegab that I don’t even know what I agreed to.” “Do your words have actual meaning, or is it all just bafflegab?” About Bafflegab In addition to bafflegab, English has a rich history of words used to describe nonsense. Some standouts include gibberish, gobbledygook, double-talk, and legalese, used specifically for the confusing language often found in legal documents. Did you Know? Bafflegab is a relatively recent word in English, appearing only in the 1950s. If it looks familiar, that’s because it’s a combination of two common words: baffle and gab.

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ZOMBIE PROPERTY COUNT INCHES UP AGAIN IN THIRD QUARTER OF 2022 ACROSS U.S. AMID CONTINUED RISE IN FORECLOSURE ACTIVITY

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Zombie Properties Still Represent Just One of Every 13,000 Residential Properties Nationwide; But Ratio is Up Since Lifting of Foreclosure Moratorium One Year Ago ATTOM, a leading curator of real estate data nationwide for land and property data, released its third-quarter 2022 Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report showing that 1.3 million (1,277,162) residential properties in the United States sit vacant. That figure represents 1.3 percent, or one in 78 homes, across the nation. The report analyzes publicly recorded real estate data collected by ATTOM — including foreclosure status, equity and owner-occupancy status — matched against monthly updated vacancy data. Vacancy data is available for U.S. residential properties at https://www.attomdata.com/solutions/marketing-lists/. The report also reveals that 270,470 residential properties in the U.S. are in the process of foreclosure in the third quarter of this year, up 4.4 percent from the second quarter of 2022 and up 25.5 percent from the third quarter of 2021. The latest increase marks the fourth straight quarter that the count of pre-foreclosure properties has increased since a nationwide moratorium on lenders pursuing delinquent homeowners, imposed after the Coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, was lifted at the end of July 2021. Among those pre-foreclosure properties, 7,707 are zombie-foreclosures (pre-foreclosure properties that sit vacant) in the third quarter of 2022, up 1.8 percent from the prior quarter and 2.2 percent from a year ago. “We see two trends heading in opposite directions – the number of vacant properties continues to decline and the number of zombie properties continues to increase, although neither trend appears to be particularly worrisome,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM. “Vacancy rates should continue to be low as investor and prospective homebuyers compete for limited inventory. And the number of zombie properties should continue to increase slowly as foreclosure activity climbs back from historically low levels due to government intervention.” The number of zombie-foreclosures does remain historically low and continues to represent just a tiny segment of the nation’s total stock of 99.8 million residential properties. Just one of every 12,947 homes in the third quarter of 2022 is vacant and in foreclosure, meaning that most neighborhoods still have no such properties. The portion of pre-foreclosure properties that have been abandoned into zombie status, meanwhile, continues to decline, from 3.5 percent a year ago to 2.9 percent in the second quarter of 2022 and 2.8 percent in the third quarter of this year. But the level of all homes sitting empty as zombie properties has grown for the second quarter in a row and now is up 3.6 percent from one in 13,424 in the first quarter of this year. The latest bump-ups in overall and zombie-property counts – while presenting an issue to watch – comes at a time when the relentless U.S. housing market boom has continued into its 11th year despite forces that threaten to slow it down. Zombie foreclosures up again but remain tiny portion of overall market A total of 7,707 residential properties facing possible foreclosure have been vacated by their owners nationwide in the third quarter of 2022, up from 7,569 in the second quarter of 2022 and from 7,538 in the third quarter of 2021. While the issue remains nonexistent in most neighborhoods, the biggest increases from the second quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2022 in states with at least 50 zombie foreclosures are in Oklahoma (zombie properties up 22 percent, from 97 to 118), Missouri (up 16 percent, from 55 to 64), California (up 15 percent, from 221 to 254), Massachusetts (up 9 percent, from 54 to 59) and Florida (up 8 percent, from 922 to 998). The biggest quarterly decreases among states with at least 50 zombie foreclosures are in Kentucky (zombie properties down 14 percent, from 63 to 54), Georgia (down 10 percent, from 80 to 72), New Jersey (down 7 percent, from 257 to 240), Pennsylvania (down 6 percent, from 371 to 349) and Nevada (down 6 percent, from 86 to 81). Overall vacancy rates continue downward trend in most of nation The vacancy rate for all residential properties in the U.S. has dropped to 1.28 percent in the third quarter of 2022 (one in 78 properties). That’s down from 1.31 percent in the second quarter of 2022 (one in 76) and from 1.35 percent in the third quarter of last year (one in 74). States with the biggest annual drops are Tennessee (down from 2.33 percent of all homes in the third quarter of 2021 to 1.34 percent in the third quarter of this year), Minnesota (down from 1.24 percent to 0.84 percent), Oregon (down from 1.26 percent to 0.95 percent), Wisconsin (down from 1.03 percent to 0.72 percent) and Georgia (down from 1.82 percent to 1.53 percent). Other high-level findings from the third quarter of 2022: Among metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. with at least 100,000 residential properties and at least 100 properties facing possible foreclosure in the third quarter of 2022, the highest zombie rates are in Wichita, KS (11.9 percent of properties in the foreclosure process are vacant); Peoria, IL (10.5 percent); Cleveland, OH (8.9 percent); Syracuse, NY (8.7 percent) and South Bend, IN (8.2 percent). Aside from Cleveland, the highest zombie-foreclosure rates in major metro areas with at least 500,000 residential properties and at least 100 homes facing foreclosure in the third quarter of 2022 are in Baltimore, MD (7.4 percent of homes in the foreclosure process are vacant); St. Louis, MO (5.6 percent); Pittsburgh, PA (5.6 percent); Tampa, FL (4.7 percent) and Indianapolis, IN (4.6 percent). Among the 27.9 million investor-owned homes throughout the U.S. in the third quarter of 2022, about 888,000 are vacant, or 3.2 percent. The highest levels of vacant investor-owned homes are in Indiana (6.8 percent), Kansas (5.8 percent), Oklahoma (5.3 percent), Alabama (5 percent) and Ohio (5 percent). Among the roughly 4,200 foreclosed, bank-owned homes in the U.S. during the third quarter of 2022, 8.2 percent are vacant. In states with at least 50 bank-owned homes, the largest vacancy rates are in Ohio (14.5 percent vacant), Pennsylvania (13 percent), Illinois (12.5 percent), New York (11 percent) and Maryland (10.5 percent). The highest zombie-foreclosure rates in U.S. counties with at least 500 properties in the foreclosure process during the third quarter of 2022 are in Broome County (Binghamton), NY (11.4 percent zombie foreclosures); Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), OH (10.1 percent); Pinellas County (Clearwater), FL (9.9 percent); Onondaga County (Syracuse), NY (9.3 percent) and Oneida County, NY (outside Syracuse) (8.5 percent).  Among 425 counties with at

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Buyers gaining time and options as housing market rebalances

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Competition is easing as inventory accumulates, leading the market back toward ‘normal’ U.S. home values fell 0.1% from June to July, the first decline in the raw Zillow Home Value Index since 2012. Home values fell last month in 30 of the 50 largest metro areas, but are still up 16% from a year ago.  Rising inventory is being driven by homes lingering on the market and new listings trailing pre-pandemic levels. It took 10 days for a listing to go pending in July, two days longer than in June. Rent appreciation is slowing, but the growth rate remains much higher than pre-pandemic levels. After two years of unprecedented growth, home values fell slightly from June to July, according to the latest market report from Zillow®. The market is quickly rebalancing. With buyers’ purchasing power diminished by nearly two years of double-digit price growth and higher mortgage rates, competition for homes is dropping off.  The typical U.S. home value declined by 0.1% ($366) month over month in July and now stands at $357,107, as measured by the raw Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI). Monthly growth in this metric has relaxed since reaching a recent peak of 1.9% in April, slowing to 1.2% growth in May and 0.8% growth in June. It’s not unusual for home price growth to decelerate this time of year, but the small decline is the first monthly dip since 2012. The nation’s typical home value is up 16% year over year and 44.5% since July 2019.  “Home values flattening so quickly after recent record growth might surprise, but it’s a badly needed rebalancing that gives home buyers more options, more time to shop and more negotiating power,” said Zillow chief economist Skylar Olsen. “This slowdown is about discouraged buyers pulling back after the affordability shock from higher rates. As prices soften, many will renew their interest, and we will continue our progress back to ‘normal.’ With buyers ready in the wings once confidence returns, homeowners can expect to keep the majority of the equity gains they’ve seen in the last two years.” Home values measured by raw ZHVI fell from June to July in 30 of the 50 largest metro areas, an increase from 13 the previous month. The largest monthly home value declines were in San Jose (-4.5%) and San Francisco (-2.8%) — the nation’s most expensive major markets — followed by Phoenix (-2.8%) and Austin (-2.7%), which saw the most extreme growth over the pandemic. Values rose the most since June in Miami (1.5%), Richmond (1%) and Memphis (0.9%), although monthly growth has decelerated in these markets.  Home shoppers still on the hunt have more time to find and consider their options, and have a better chance of seeing price cuts. Listings’ median days to pending jumped by two days in July to 10 — still nearly two weeks less than in July 2019. Among major metros, typical time on market is rising fastest in Austin, Phoenix and San Jose. A wide swath of sellers are adjusting pricing to meet buyers’ expectations, as the share of listings with a price cut grew to 18.6% in July, a few percentage points higher than in July 2019.  Homes lingering on the market are driving for-sale inventory up at a fast clip. Inventory is up 5.1% on a monthly basis, yet new inventory fell 13.6% month over month in July. Compared to July 2019, 15.5% fewer new listings came on the market. This new inventory figure does not include new construction, so it represents current homeowners deciding not to list their homes.  While total inventory is rising quickly, it still stands 43.5% below July 2019. Low inventory is a key reason Zillow economists do not expect home prices to fall significantly.  “Inventory, the pool of homes available during a given window, is very responsive to easing demand and slowing sales, this year posting the largest month-over-month seasonal increases for any May, June or July ever recorded,” said Olsen. “The flow of homes into the market, however, is slowing. High interest rates are likely keeping current homeowners from deciding to list, as they compare their current rate — and home — against what can be found on the market, keeping inventory far below pre-pandemic norms despite the slowdown in sales.”  Typical monthly rent in the U.S. is now $2,031. After a rapid run-up that peaked in February, rent hikes appear to be stabilizing, easing to 0.6% month-over-month growth in July after seeing higher volatility through much of 2021. Although growth is decelerating, the annual growth rate is still more than three times that of July 2019. Among major metros, the most significant slowdowns in monthly rent growth since July of last year occurred in Las Vegas (from 3.6% to -0.2%), Phoenix (3.5% to -0.3%), Tampa (3.9% to 0.3%), and Austin (3.8% to 0.7%). 

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