Real Estate - Real Estate, Updates, News & Tips

Realtor.com® Debuts ‘Local Pride’ Scholarship

Realtor.com® has launched a Local Pride College Scholarship that it hopes will help foster the next generation of homeowners. To apply, applicants must demonstrate local pride and pen an essay about their neighborhood.Realtor.com® will award scholarships of $2,500 to the first-place recipient; $1,000 for second place; and $500 for third place.“The ability to afford a down payment and monthly mortgage payment is a steep financial hill to climb

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Is the Market Suddenly Softening?

The housing market may not be as robust this spring as some originally predicted, and real estate professionals are pointing to the main culprits as rising mortgage rates, a new tax law, and growing affordability problems among first-time buyers.The spring market will be the true judge of whether the housing market has hit a slowdown. About 40 percent of the year’s sales tend to occur from March through June, according to the National Associa

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Calif. Fire Victims Turn to Quick Prefabs

Wildfires that ripped through Northern California last year left neighborhoods in destruction. Displaced homeowners are now learning that rebuilding can take years. As such, some are being drawn to prefab housing to try to speed wait times. Prefab homes are mass-produced in a factory and then assembled on location. The building style is usually touted for its quick construction times than traditional, stick-built homes that are built complete

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HUD Plans to Change Its Mission Statement

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is considering changing its mission statement to remove what it calls antidiscrimination language. HUD Secretary Ben Carson has been leading the charge and seeking to add in “self-sufficiency,” a major focus of his since taking the helm of HUD.A draft being circulated of the new mission statement reads:HUD’s mission is to ensure Americans have access to fair, affordable housing and opportunit

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Third REALTOR® Lost Child in Fla. Shooting

A third REALTOR® lost a child in the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., REALTOR® Magazine has learned. Mitchell Dworet, a sales associate with Skye Louis Realty in Coconut Creek, Fla., lost his 17-year-old son, Nicholas, in the massacre that killed 17 people. The daughters of two other area REALTORS®, Fred Guttenberg and Shara Kaplan, were also gunned down in the melee, which ranks as one of

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Housing Markets Need Landlords to Sell

Landlords own thousands of single-family homes across the U.S. With housing shortages abounding, some are calling on landlords to start selling. A slowdown in rent growth may convince more to finally unload their inventories.“As new multifamily supply catches up with demand and slows rents, some large investors may begin putting their holdings of affordable single-family homes up for sale, which would be great news, particularly for first-time

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Home Features First-Time Buyers Choose

A living room is considered essential for first-time home buyers, according to a poll of home shoppers conducted by the National Association of Home Builders. Sixty-one percent called the living room a must-have in the home they plan to buy. A laundry room and dining room also ranked high on the must-have list for first-time buyers.The following are home features that first-time buyers call essential, ranked in order of what they deemed as most

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The Nation’s Fastest-Gentrifying ZIP Codes

Los Angeles’ ZIP code 90014 is gentrifying at the fastest rate in the nation, according to a new analysis by RentCafe. The LA ZIP code has seen a lot of change over the past 16 years: home values increasing 707 percent; household incomes rising 85 percent; and the number of residents with higher education growing by 857 percent.To identify the fastest-gentrifying ZIP codes, RentCafe researchers looked at 2000 U.S. Census Bureau data and 2016 Am

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Manufactured Homes to Ease Housing Shortages?

The federal government may increasingly be eyeing manufactured housing as one potential solution to ease shortages of affordable homes across the country. Mortgage financing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced plans in January to purchase more manufactured housing loans over the next three years. Further, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently announced it is reviewing regulations surrounding manufactured housing.Ma

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Oscar Nominee Prompts “Ebbing, Mo.” Home Searches

The Academy Award-nominated movie “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” has some intrigued about the fictional backdrop for the movie. But the many searches for the town are coming up empty on realtor.com®. Instead, visitors will want to search for the movie’s true backdrop: Sylva, N.C.Ebbing, Mo., is depicted in the Oscar-nominated film “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” which picked up two Academy Awards Sunday night

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