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Posted in Blog
Set up your veggie garden to be productive and healthy year after year with this fall checklist
UC Berkeley professor blames rent control for California’s housing shortage
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Kenneth Rosen, a UC Berkeley economist and real estate consultant, published a paper Wednesday titled The Case For Preserving Costa Hawkins, in hopes of swaying voters against Proposition 10.
Proposition 10, which will go before voters in November, would repeal the 1995 Costa-Hawkins Act, a state law that severely curtails rent control in California cities. For example, under Costa-Hawkins, only San Francisco apartments built before 1979 may be subject to rent control.
Passing Proposition 10 would not in and of itself create any new rent control housing, but it would allow cities to expand rent control stock for the first time in decades if they so choose.
Rosen, however, argues that turning the clock back to 1994 will stifle new housing and drain apartment stock.
Here’s how his case breaks down:
- Rosen cites the usual supply and demand argument about housing costs: “Following decades of strong population growth and persistent underbuilding, California is in the midst of a housing crisis. The statewide failure to keep up with new demand for housing, even through the recent period of rapid economic growth, resulted in a shortage of available housing and rapidly rising housing costs.”
- In fact, Rosen goes one step further and blames the housing shortage partly on rent control: “Rent control incentivizes property owners to convert rental units to other uses, such as for-sale housing units or non-residential buildings. […] Rent control limits the creation of new rental supply by discouraging development activity, especially without guaranteed exemptions for new properties.”
- Of course, there are other factors at play: “Persistent low levels of construction reflect a wide range of factors including a combination of high construction costs, restrictive land use zoning, community obstruction and prohibitive or costly regulatory hurdles.”
- The threat of landlords yanking homes from the rental market looms over the debate: “The supply of rent-controlled units also declined in California cities since the enactment of rent control, as property owners converted apartment buildings to other uses.” Note that this declaration is a little nonsensical—after all, the supply of rent controlled units would be zero before the enactment of rent control—but the gist seems to be that rental stock is lost.
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Posted in Real Estate
Baby Boomers won’t downsize homes anytime soon
Source: Housing Wire
Baby Boomers are staying put and their kids are sticking with them.
A study released Thursday by Trulia examined the housing situations of homeowners 65 and older and compared it with a decade ago.
It uncovered a 3.4% jump in the number of seniors working in 2016 compared with 2005, and a 1.7% increase in the number living with younger generations.
It also showed that seniors appear to be holding off on downsizing just the same as they were 10 years prior.
Only 5.5% of seniors moved,according to Trulia, and of those who did, the split was pretty even between single-family and multifamily residences.
But Trulia analyst Alexandra Lee points out that while the percentage of downsizers hasn’t changed, the number of those moving actually has.
“Because the Boomer generation is so much larger than previous generations, that 5.5% moving rate translates into very different raw numbers across the years,” Lee wrote. “There were about 7 million more senior households in 2016 than 2005, meaning 386,000 more senior households moved in 2016.”
The age at which seniors decide to downsize has also shifted. The survey revealed that in 2005, seniors were moving into multifamily residences by age 75. By 2016, this had moved to 80.
The study sought to examine whether Baby Boomers holding onto their homes was driving up home prices. In looking at the nation’s top 100 metros, it determined that Boomers were not eroding affordability.
“Like the general population, seniors in expensive and unaffordable metros rent at much higher rates,” Lee wrote. “The higher the income required to purchase the median home, the lower the proportion of senior households that could downsize.”
Lee pointed out that a lack of affordable options for downsizing is likely part of the problem.
“The acute shortage in starter home inventory can make it difficult for retirees to move to smaller homes. Not only are seniors not responsible for making inventory-scarce metros unaffordable, they’re feeling the inventory pinch themselves.”
Posted in Home Prices, Housing availability, Senior's homes
First-Time Buyers Have Bought 985K Homes This Year
Source: REALTOR® Magazine
Home sales may be slowing overall, but not among first-time home buyers, according to a new report.
Making sense of the story
- Genworth Mortgage Insurance culled all publicly available government and proprietary mortgage industry data to see how this segment of buyers is faring in the housing market. In the first half of the year, first-time buyers purchased 985,000 single-family homes, the most during the first six months of a year since 2005, according to Genworth’s First-Time Homebuyer Report.
- In the second quarter, first-time home buyers purchased 572,000 single-family homes, up just 1 percent from a year ago. But it’s the six-month snapshot over this year so far that economists say is important to take note of.
- “The market needs to put this quarter’s slowdown in first-time home buyer purchase growth in context,” says Tian Liu, Genworth’s chief economist. “Because while quarterly first-time home buyer purchase growth was nominal, on a semiannual basis this group recorded the most single-family home purchases since 2005. That is impressive considering overall home sales declined by 2 percent during the second quarter, with unusually slow activity in June.”
- The decrease in overall home sales was driven by an uptick in interest rates and home prices, which together raised monthly mortgage payments for first-time home buyers by 12.6 percent year over year, according to the report. Also, many markets have seen a decrease in supply of homes in the “affordable range” of $150,000 to $300,000, according to the report.
- Despite all of this, home buyers under the age of 35 have been increasing their homeownership rates and “showing a determination and resiliency to become homeowners,” according to the report.
Posted in Buying a Home, Real Estate
10 years after the financial crisis, is the housing market still at risk?
Source: Curbed
The economy is booming. The stock market regularly hits new all-time highs. Unemployment is at record lows. Aside from a small recent downturn, the housing market is as hot as ever.
In many ways, the world has moved on from the cataclysmic 2008 financial crisis, triggered when sloppy mortgage lending popped the massive U.S. housing bubble. But the scars of the crisis are still visible in the American housing market, which has undergone a pendulum swing in the last decade.
In the run-up to the crisis, a housing surplus prompted mortgage lenders to issue loans to anyone who could fog a mirror just to fill the excess inventory. But lending today is stricter.
It is so strict, in fact, that some in the real estate industry believe it’s contributing to a housing shortage that has pushed home prices in most markets well above their pre-crisis peaks, turning younger millennials, who came of age during the crisis, into a generation of renters.
Posted in Economy
Simple Hacks to Clean Your House the Smart Way
Each day, we only have 24 hours to accomplish everything that needs done. That includes cleaning our home. Over the years, I’ve learned some simple hacks to clean your house that decrease the time I have to spend cleaning. No one wants to spend all day cleaning. No one wants to spend hours each day scrubbing floors.
Hacks save time, and that leaves time for things that really matter, like friends, family, and hobbies. Hacks are even more helpful if you have kids or pets, dirt and grime just seem to follow them everywhere!
From dog hair to crayons, kids and animals can get a house dirty pretty fast. You need all the help you can get! Ready for the hacks? Let’s take a look at the best simple hacks to clean your house.
21 Simple Hacks to Clean Your House
Are you ready to learn some simple hacks to clean your house the smart way? We have a hack for every room of the house. One of the hardest things about having a job and home is learning how to clean a house fast and properly. You don’t want to waste time. You want to get dinner on the table and be able to relax before the day is over. This list of hacks is far from exhaustive, but it includes some goodies you should try.
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