Real estate news you may have missed

New home builders are seeing a positive spike while renters deal with the aftermath of a financial crisis - Let's take a moment to sift through some of the most important real estate news of the month:

New home sales are on fire

June was a really, really good month for new home builders. In fact, you’d have to reach back to 2007 to find a month with a similar sales rate, according to the Commerce Department.

That sales were up nearly 14% and this figure is nearly 7 percent more than last year (pre-chaos) is good news for the housing market.

Low mortgage rates acted as the bait, but the overwhelming urge of so many Americans to move out of the cities was a big attraction as well.

New home sales in the Northeast were booming, up 89.7% from May and 111.1% over May 2019.

Existing homes aren’t doing too bad either

The overall real estate market is on fire as well. In fact, the folks at Ellie Mae say that the “summer market is a scorcher!”

While refinance loan applications gobbled up 62% of the nation’s loan volume, purchase apps represented 32%.

However, that is a 26% increase in June over May.

The 2020 summer purchase market is “… not only atypical, but also quite remarkable,” they said.

The short-term rental business is in deep doo-doo

You won’t find me and most people I know, boarding an airliner anytime soon, let alone staying in a hotel or airbnb. Apparently, we’re not alone.

“This has taken a toll on the short-term rental business, as short-term renters and hosts are working through solutions in response to coronavirus-related cancellations,” according to Desiree Patno at RisMedia.com.

Can you imagine the busy airbnb owner going into the summer season having to offer a full refund to all those vacationers?

“It is resulting in a substantial revenue loss for businesses that depend on the funds from renting out their properties to pay their mortgage and make other necessary payments, or as a source of passive income,” Patno suggests.

Sounds like there may be some listing opportunities coming up. Hey, “One man’s [or woman’s] misery is another man’s fortune,” right?

What sells faster than face masks?

Homes! Well, we aren’t sure how many face masks sell each month, but in mid-July, homes were selling “… at the fastest rate ever recorded by Zillow,” according to Patrick Kearns at Inman.com.

Lots of multiple offers created zippy-quick days on the market — “just more than two weeks,” according to Zillow Research.

The bummer is that all this activity has squeezed inventory even more. Spread the good real estate news and get your potential sellers off the fence.

Is that a listing in your pocket?

Of course not. The fine, upstanding, rule-following agent that you are would never violate a NAR rule.

Neither would the agents and brokers with Top Agent Network, which is why they took the NAR, CAR and San Francisco Association of Realtors to federal court.

They are insisting on what many in the real estate industry agree on: “NAR’s policy is anticompetitive,” according to Andrea V. Brambila at Inman.com.

The NAR’s “Clear Cooperation Policy” went into effect on May 1 this year and, according to Brambila, “… some MLSs have instituted hefty fines to enforce it.”

The federal district court turned down the bid from TAN.

So, for now, holding pocket listings is still forbidden.

What a difference two months makes

“People who thought that now would be a good time to buy a home jumped to a net positive of 34 percent in June from just 2 percent in April,” according to Matthew Gardner, chief economist for Windermere Real Estate.

In fact, 61% said, heck yeah, it’s a good time to buy.

To back that up, Google Trends published the following graph of the explosion in Google searches that include the word “house.”

Analyzing recent data from Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey for Inman.com, Gardener also mentions a question in the survey asked of renters. If you’re going to move, would you rent again or buy a home?

Nearly 70% said they would buy.

Maybe it’s time for you to turn your lead gen tactics toward renters? We offered up some tips for generating these buyer leads back in June.

Shades of 2008?

More than 864,000 families lost their homes to foreclosure in 2008, during the Great Recession. Some think we may be headed for another round in 2020 and beyond.

Google Trends finds a large increase in searches for the words, “eviction” and “foreclosure.”

As you can see, most of the searches were initiated in the western U.S.

But the trend seems to have begun in April, when delinquencies hit an all-time high. Yes, higher than we saw during the Great Recession.

Many of these homeowners are in forbearance, but remember, the federally mandated forbearance was only for those with loans backed by the government. So many, many of those delinquent right now may have no recourse but to sell their homes before they’re foreclosed.

Stay safe!