National News
Zillow announced today it’s ending its iBuyer service, Zillow Offers, and cutting roughly a quarter of its workforce, citing the volatility the service created for the online brokerage as the motivation for the move.
Millennials are purchasing houses — finally. Over the past year, millennials made up the largest share of homebuyers: 37% according to Barron’s.
“Contract transactions slowed a bit in September and are showing signs of a calmer home price trend, as the market is running comfortably ahead of pre-pandemic activity.” — NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun
It’s been a more than a year and a half of technological innovation in real estate in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency has decided to make one tool — desktop appraisals — permanent.
“There simply aren’t enough homes for sale relative to the demand fueled by millennials armed with low mortgage rate-driven house-buying power.” — First American Deputy Chief Economist Odeta Kushi
The median existing-home price for all housing types in September was $352,800, up 13.3% on an annual basis, as every region in the country registered price increases.
The decrease was driven by a 5.1% month-over-month slide in the rate of multifamily starts, while single-family construction was flat.
At 37 years old, the new president will be the second-youngest leader of the national nonprofit trade organization, which works to improve the homeownership rate in the Asian-American Pacific Islander community.
Coldwell Banker’s new group originally aimed to raise $250,000, which it did within the first six months of the year, and by October, it had more than doubled its initial goal.
The new program, DepositLink Pay, allows a broker, agent or title company to direct buyers and renters to a customized URL or a “Pay” button online to make digital earnest-money deposits and rental payments with no cost to brokers, agents or companies.
The user of the app can monitor information about their home and local market conditions, store important documents, generate estimates for home repairs and find a local contractor for more than 1,000 different home-service categories.