Do you enjoy keeping up with the news? I still subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, but don’t always read it So much is online now, but that’s another discussion. Here’s the top real estate news:
*These recently came across my desk, simply type in any address and find the recent crime reports
*Bidding Wars Return: The number of home sales that included a bidding war is treading upward. Thirty-three percent of all sales were at or above the asking price, which is often indicative that more than one bidder was involved in a transaction, according to data from the National Association of REALTORS®. That marks the highest rate since 2006. Bidding wars are rising mostly due to a lack of houses for sale. The inventory of homes for sale has been at about 1.8 million properties for the past three years. Prior to that, inventories were about double– reaching a peak of about 3.5 million properties for-sale in 2007
*It’s been seven years since the housing bubble burst and foreclosures skyrocketed, but in 2015 we’ll see the end of that era. Already this year has seen a major improvement in the composition of sales—that is, there are fewer foreclosures and short sales in the mix. Read the rest here:
Do it yourselfers; learn how to convert an antique into a bathroom vanity
*A separate laundry room clearly topped the list when the National Association of Home Builders recently surveyed millennials to discover what their “most-wanted” item on their home shopping list was. Fifty-five percent said they wouldn’t buy a new home that didn’t have a separate laundry room. They also ranked storage as important, such as linen closets, a walk-in pantry, and garage storage.
*LA is the Least Affordable City for Buying a Home in the U.S. Los Angeles is unique among American cities: it’s hugely desirable, with accompanying high housing prices, but it’s big enough that all the lower-income residents haven’t been pushed out yet, unlike in San Francisco and Manhattan. It’s also short on the high-wage jobs in tech and finance that those cities have, and hesitant to pass a decent minimum wage, let alone a living one. Plus, it’s lagging on building affordable housing. So while prices aren’t quite as high as the most expensive places in the US, wages are much lower, and overall affordability is the worst. Literally the worst. Over at CityLab, Richard Florida reveals a new index comparing median housing prices to median wages across the US, and Los Angeles is the number one worst big city.
