Redfin Reports Demand For Vacation Homes Is Now Below Pre-Pandemic Levels

High home prices and mortgage rates, along with economic uncertainty and an increase in second-home loan fees, have put an end to the pandemic-driven vacation-home boom Demand for vacation homes has fallen below the pre-pandemic baseline for the first time in two years, with mortgage-rate locks for second homes down 4% from before the pandemic in May, according to a new report from Redfin (www.redfin.com), the technology-powered real estate brokerage. That’s down from a revised rate of 3% above pre-pandemic levels a month earlier, and 70% above pre-pandemic levels a year earlier. Demand for second homes is declining due to high home prices, mortgage rates that have rapidly risen to nearly 6% and a slumping stock market–factors that are also cooling the rest of the housing market. Another deterrent to second-home buyers is the fact that the federal government increased loan fees for second homes in April, adding roughly $13,500 to the cost of purchasing a $400,000 home. “Skyrocketing monthly payments, along with higher loan fees, have priced many second-home buyers out of the market,” said Redfin Deputy Chief Economist Taylor Marr. “Many would-be second-home buyers are also deterred by turmoil in the stock markets, high inflation and recession fears, and they can be quicker to pull back from the market because vacation homes aren’t a necessity the way primary homes are. The cooldown in the second-home market is likely to continue as long as mortgage rates are elevated and the stock market is slumping.” The drop in vacation-home demand marks a drastic change from the second half of 2020 and 2021, when mortgage-rate locks for second homes skyrocketed due to record-low mortgage rates and the flexibility to work from anywhere thanks to remote work. Demand peaked in March 2021, when it was about 90% above pre-pandemic levels. Interest in vacation homes started declining sharply in February as mortgage rates began their ascent. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached 5.81% in the week ending June 23. To read the full report, including charts and methodology, please visit: https://www.redfin.com/news/second-home-demand-falls-may-2022.

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WORD OF THE DAY: Housewright

[HAUS-rite] Part of speech: Noun Origin: North America, mid-16th century Definition: A builder of houses, especially those constructed largely of timber; a house carpenter. Examples of Housewright in a sentence “After working with Habitat for Humanity, Rachel felt like a bonafide housewright.” “With Lincoln Logs, anyone can be a housewright in the comfort of their own home.” About Housewright Housewright developed as an American word in the 16th century through the combination of the words “house” and “wright” (an old Germanic word that means maker or builder). Did you Know? You could hire a handyman to do general repairs around your house, but if you have detailed woodwork, you’ll want a housewright. This term was popular 18th-century colonial America to refer to craftsmen who cut timber and assembled it into houses.

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John Beacham of Toorak Capital Partners Named an Entrepreneur of the Year® 2022 New Jersey Award Winner by EY

Toorak Capital Partners, Inc. (“Toorak”), a leading capital provider to the residential real estate lending industry, announced that John Beacham, its Founder and CEO, has been named an Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2022 New Jersey Award winner by  Ernst & Young LLP (EY US). Entrepreneur Of The Year is one of the preeminent competitive business awards recognizing leaders of high-growth companies who think big to succeed. An independent panel of judges selected Beacham based on his entrepreneurial spirit, purpose, growth, and impact, among other core contributions. “It’s a true honor and a privilege to be recognized by EY as an Entrepreneur of the Year 2022 New Jersey Award winner, and I’m proud to share this recognition with the entire Toorak team, our origination partners, and the incredible real estate entrepreneurs across the country using Toorak capital to renovate and reposition America’s housing stock,” said Beacham. “It’s common for innovation awards to go to companies in tech, healthcare, or retail, rather than capital-intensive industries such as mortgage finance, but I’m proud of the engine we’ve built at Toorak that enables small businesses and entrepreneurs on multiple levels to thrive.” Entrepreneur of the Year is celebrated through regional and national awards programs in more than 145 cities and 60 countries. As a New Jersey award winner, Beacham will now be considered by the National independent panel of judges for the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2022 National Awards. With capital commitments from entities managed by KKR, a leading global investment firm, Toorak has revolutionized the way business purpose residential real estate lenders access capital. The firm was the first to link small-balance commercial and residential originators with institutional capital and has perfected this approach in the single-family residential bridge and 30-year single family rental lending space. About Toorak Capital Partners Toorak Capital Partners is an integrated correspondent lending platform based in Summit, NJ. Toorak acquires small-balance, business-purpose loans backed by residential, multifamily, and mixed-use properties throughout the U.S. and the U.K. Toorak acquires loans directly from lenders that originate high credit quality loans. Toorak’s principals have a deep understanding of mortgage credit in the residential and commercial space with backgrounds in real estate lending, capital markets, securitization, asset-liability management, asset management and credit. Since inception, Toorak has provided more than $8.5 billion in capital and funded over 20,000 business-purpose loans. Toorak-funded projects have renovated, stabilized or provided rental housing for close to 40,000 families to date – an average of approximately 1,000 families per month in 2021. Further information is available at www.toorakcapital.com.

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WORD OF THE DAY: Deontology

[dee-on-TALL-oh-jee] Part of speech: noun Origin: Greek, early 19th century Definition: A theory of ethics that establishes rules of right and wrong actions; the study of determining the right way to live life, based on duty and moral obligation Examples of Deontology in a sentence “After studying deontology in her Intro to Philosophy class she became obsessed with creating rules for her roommates to follow.” “The Golden Rule is one of the most basic principles of deontology — treat others how you wish to be treated.” About Deontology Deontology determines a moral framework for right and wrong — basically, rules for how to live your life. Nihilism, the philosophy that there are no moral principles and life has no meaning, can be considered the opposite of deontology. You may experience a bit of nihilism when you struggle to get out of bed to go to work. “What’s the point?” you may think. Try to summon up inspiration from deontologists: Go forth and do the right thing. Did you Know? In many names for philosophies or ideas, the root word can be converted into other parts of speech. Deontology, the name for the ethical rule-following philosophy, is the noun. A deontologist, also a noun, is one who practices or studies the philosophy. And deontological, the adjective, describes anything that follows the principles of deontology.

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What are the Most Popular Real Estate Listing Photos? New HomeJab Study Reveals the Answers

A new study of real estate photography data from HomeJab finds that the most popular real estate listing photo is not the home’s front exterior. Instead, bedroom photos were ranked first, barely nudging out kitchen photos. Front exterior shots placed a distant fifth. HomeJab, which provides real estate agents on-demand professional real estate photography and other visual production services in all 50 states, partnered with Artificial Intelligence firm Restb.ai to study more than 14,000 photos of homes for sale. Professional real estate photographers hired by listing agents took the images used for the research from a random selection of 600 properties listed for sale in early June 2022. The HomeJab study – using Restb.ai computer vision technology – found: 1. Bedroom photos topped the list. More than one in ten images used to sell a home were bedroom photos (11.92%).2. Kitchen photos came in second place, just 1/50th of one percent lower than bedroom photos (11.90%).3. Living room photos took the third spot, with 10.79%.4. Bathroom photos were No. 4 with 9.75%.5. Front exterior photos rounded out the top 5 most popular real estate listing photos with 8.70%. “When you scroll through listings of homes for sale online, typically, you see an exterior shot,” said Joe Jesuele, founder and CEO of HomeJab. “But that’s not the most popular photo that real estate photographers capture. Instead, professionally shot photos of the kitchen and bedroom are the most common ones used to help sell homes,” he said. HomeJab enlisted the help of real estate’s leading computer vision firm, Restb.ai, to automatically sort through thousands of photographs from homes currently for sale, use its computer vision technology to identify the type of photo, and then classify and sort the images. “What would take a research team hundreds of total people hours to accomplish manually, Restb.ai was able to provide these research results in minutes,” noted the founder and CEO of Restb.ai, Xavi Hernando. HomeJab’s Jesuele explains that using only professionally shot real estate photos improves the quality of the study findings because research shows that high-quality, professional real estate photos are more effective in selling homes. He notes that past research from the Center for Realtor Development shows that professional real estate photography helps homes sell 32 percent faster. And homes in the $200,000 to $1 million price range sell for $3,000 to $11,000 more when using professional images. Rounding out the Top 15 listing photos in the HomeJab study were: 6. Dining area – 4.48%7. Aerial – 4.32%8. Yard – 3.00%9. Back exterior – 2.48%10. Patio terrace – 2.10%11. Home office – 1.84%12. Laundry room – 1.81%13. Deck – 1.72%14. Hallway – 1.39%15. Foyer – 1.26% The bottom six were Basement (1.22%), Garage (1.12%), Front door (1.11%), Pool (1.11%), Stairs (.93%) and Walk-In closets (.66%). Other photos comprised the remaining 16.38%. Jesuele added, “It will be interesting to see if these numbers change over time – especially with the increased accessibility and use of drone footage for aerial photography and video. And because of the pandemic, will we see more photos of home offices in the future? Time will tell.” A summary report on this new HomeJab study is available here.

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HOME FLIPPING SPIKES ACROSS U.S. IN FIRST QUARTER OF 2022 BUT PROFITS DROP TO 13-YEAR LOW

Nationwide Home-Flipping Rate Jumps to Highest Level This Century;Raw Profits on Home Flips Increase for First Time Since 2020;But Typical Profit Margins on Flips Decline Again, to Lowest Point Since 2009 ATTOM, a leading curator of real estate data nationwide for land and property data, released its first-quarter 2022 U.S. Home Flipping Report showing that 114,706 single-family houses and condominiums in the United States were flipped in the first quarter. Those transactions represented 9.6 percent of all home sales in the first quarter of 2022, or one in 10 transactions – the highest level since at least 2000. The latest total was up from 6.9 percent, or one in every 14 home sales in the nation during the fourth quarter of 2021, and from 4.9 percent, or one in 20 sales, in the first quarter of last year. The jump in the home-flipping rate during the first quarter of this year marked the fifth straight quarterly increase. It also represented the largest quarterly and annual percentage-point gains since 2000. But the report also shows that as home sales by investors spiked, typical raw profits on those deals remained below where they were a year ago, and in a more striking trend, profit margins dipped to their lowest point since 2009. “The good news for fix-and-flip investors is that demand remains strong from prospective homebuyers, as evidenced by this quarter’s report, which shows that one of every 10 homes sold during Q1 was a flip,” said Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence for ATTOM. “The bad news is that rising mortgage interest rates are beginning to slow down home price appreciation rates, and buyers have become more selective – and less willing to outbid other buyers for properties they’re interested in. This is having a predictable impact on profit margins for investors.” Among all flips nationwide, the gross profit on typical transactions (the difference between the median purchase price paid by investors and the median resale price) stood at $67,000 in the first quarter of 2022. While that was up 5.5 percent from $63,500 in the fourth quarter of 2021, and represented the first increase since late 2020, it was 4.3 percent less than the $70,000 level recorded in the first quarter of 2021. Profit margins, meanwhile, fell for the sixth quarter in a row, as the typical gross-flipping profit of $67,000 in the first quarter of 2022 translated into just a 25.8 percent return on investment compared to the original acquisition price. The national gross-flipping ROI was down from 27.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021 and from 38.9 percent a year earlier. It sat at the lowest point since the first quarter of 2009, when the housing market was slumping from the effects of the Great Recession in the late 2000s. The latest return on investment also was less than half the peak of 53.1 percent for this century, which hit in late 2016. Profit margins declined in the first quarter of 2022 as resale prices on flipped homes continued to shoot up more slowly than they were when investors originally bought their properties. Specifically, the median price of homes flipped in the first quarter of 2022 increased to another all-time high of $327,000. That was up 10.5 percent from $296,000 in the fourth quarter of 2021 and 30.8 percent from $250,000 a year earlier. Both increases stood out as the largest for flipped properties since 2000. Home flipping rates up in 95 percent of local markets Home flips as a portion of all home sales increased from the fourth quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022 in 181 of the 191 metropolitan statistical areas around the U.S. analyzed for this report (95 percent). Rates went up quarterly by at least two percentage points in 99 of those metros (52 percent). (Metro areas were included if they had a population of 200,000 or more and at least 50 home flips in the first quarter of 2022.) Among those metros, the largest flipping rates during the first quarter of 2022 were in Phoenix, AZ (flips comprised 18.7 percent of all home sales); Charlotte, NC (18 percent); Tucson, AZ (16.2 percent); Atlanta, GA (16.1 percent) and Jacksonville, FL (16 percent). Q1 2022 U.S. Home Flipping Historical Trends The highest flipping rates during the first quarter of 2022 in metro areas with a population of less than 1 million were in Durham, NC (15.3 percent); Gainesville, FL (14.9 percent); Ogden, UT (13.9 percent); Clarksville, TN (13.4 percent) and Winston-Salem, NC (13.4 percent). The smallest home-flipping rates among metro areas analyzed in the first quarter were in Olympia, WA (4.4 percent); Portland, ME (4.6 percent); Salem, OR (4.7 percent); Syracuse, NY (4.7 percent) and Davenport, IA (4.9 percent). Typical home flipping returns decrease in three quarters of metro areas The median $327,000 resale price of homes flipped nationwide in the first quarter of 2022 generated a gross flipping profit of $67,000 above the median investor purchase price of $260,000. That resulted in a 25.8 percent profit margin. Profit margins dipped from the first quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022 in 139 of the 191 metro areas with enough data to analyze (73 percent). The biggest annual declines came in Salisbury, MD (ROI down from 173.7 percent in the first quarter of 2021 to 29.3 percent in the first quarter of 2022); Elkhart, IN (down from 148.3 percent to 24.9 percent); Macon, GA (down from 120.7 percent to 50.9 percent); Lynchburg, VA (down from 96.2 percent to 31.5 percent) and Flint, MI (down from 126.2 percent to 64 percent). Markets with the largest returns on investment during the first quarter of 2022 on typical home flips were Scranton, PA (115.5 percent); Kingsport, TN (114 percent); Reading, PA (108.6 percent); Pittsburgh, PA (105.7 percent) and Johnson City, TN (101.1 percent). Aside from Pittsburgh, the largest investment returns in the first quarter among metro areas with a population of at least 1 million were in Buffalo, NY (ROI of 88.2 percent); Philadelphia, PA (80.3 percent); Richmond, VA (79 percent) and New Orleans, LA (69.9 percent). Metro areas with the smallest profit margins on typical home flips in the first quarter of 2022 were Boise, ID (4.4 percent return); Fort Collins, CO (5.7 percent); College Station, TX (7.2 percent); Sacramento, CA (9 percent) and Santa Rosa, CA (9.6 percent). Q1 2022 Home Flipping Profit Trends Historical Chart West and Northeast continue to boast largest raw profits; South and Midwest have smallest The highest raw profits on median-priced home flips in

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