National News
“Mortgage rates decreased for the first time since August, as concerns about supply-chain bottlenecks, waning consumer confidence, weaker economic growth and rising inflation pushed Treasury yields lower.” — MBA associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting Joel Kan
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“This will be the first time a home lender will provide an end-to-end ‘mortgage-as-a-service’ solution through Salesforce Financial Services Cloud — a platform that thousands of financial institutions already heavily rely on.” — Rocket Cos. Vice Chairman and CEO Jay Farner
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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.