Weekly Real Estate News Quiz: Think You're Up On The Biggest Headlines?
After six months of beta testing, Coldwell Banker on Thursday debuted the finalized versions of its new logo that will replace the well-known branding the company has used for decades.
The finalized version of Coldwell Banker's new logo is similar to the design that the company unveiled in March when the rebranding effort was initially announced. It includes a large "CB" along with a star that is meant to symbolize the North Star. However, the finalized version also includes the words "Coldwell Banker.”
A proposed acquisition that would have given Fidelity National Financial nearly half of the U.S. title insurance market fell apart Tuesday thanks to opposition from federal regulators.
Fidelity first revealed plans to acquire Stewart Information Services Corporation last year. The deal was valued at about $1.2 billion and would have created a kind of title insurance Voltron, combining the resources of Fidelity — a Fortune 500 company that describes itself as "the nation's largest title insurance company" — and Stewart, which says that "it is one of the largest real estate service companies in the industry."
Every homeowner wants to know which home improvement projects give the best return on investment, so it's no surprise that those types of projects — simple things like replacing the carpet or restaining the floors — are among the most popular improvements homeowners made in 2017.
A recent Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies report found that in 2017, 5.2 million homeowners made interior upgrades to carpets, floors, paneling or ceiling tiles, making that the most popular home improvement category. On average, they spent $3,283 for these updates.
Real estate agents with ERA-affiliated brokerages can now easily serve up exclusive discounts and a concierge service to help their clients save time and money during the moving process.
The program gives affiliated brokers the chance to earn referral fees from vendors participating in the program. It's powered by MooveGuru, a startup that integrates with real estate productivity tools and databases to target an agent's contacts with moving-related discounts.
California is on the verge of passing statewide rent control, underlining a growing movement across the U.S. to provide more protection to tenants amid rising housing costs.
The State Senate voted to advance a bill that would prevent landlords from increasing rents on many rental units in California by more than 5 percent a year plus cost of living. It also would require landlords to cite "just cause" when evicting tenants.
The bill would extend rent control to roughly 8 million tenants, expanding price protection far beyond the swath of units covered in a handful of Californian cities at the moment.
While home foreclosure rates are still at a 20-year low, some states have been seeing increases in the number of delinquencies.
Vermont, New Hampshire, Nebraska and Minnesota saw the highest delinquency rates in June, according to the latest data from CoreLogic. The number of homeowners falling behind on their mortgage payments by more than 30 days rose by 0.7 percent, 0.3 percent, 0.2 percent and 0.2 percent in each state, respectively. Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Connecticut also saw modest increases of 0.1 percent.
Housing starts won’t reach the historical average of 1 million new units per month until at least 2022, with the most pessimistic estimates stretching to 2029, according to a Pulsenomics survey of more than 100 economists, investment strategists and real estate experts commissioned by Zillow.
When asked to name the best solution to boost inventory levels, 56 percent of survey respondents said “relaxing local review regulations for projects of a certain size” would be the first course of action, followed by reducing mandatory minimum lot sizes (38 percent) and easing the land subdivision process for landowners (38 percent).
“The American housing landscape was shaped in a big way by the drive for the classic American dream; swaths of cities were set aside solely for single-family, detached homes, with big minimum lot sizes and slow local review processes,” Zillow Director of Economic Research Skylar Olsen wrote in the report. “Jump ahead three decades and housing affordability is a major issue across the country."
Breaking through a year of steady growth, U.S. housing inventory took a serious tumble in August.
According to realtor.com's latest housing trend report, housing inventory fell 1.8 percent year-over-year last month. The median listing price, meanwhile, is at $309,000 — 4.9 percent higher than last year but an 1.8 percent drop from July. Such a steep drop has not been seen since July to August 2012. It is, in part, caused by an uncertain market — according to Realtor.com, some are using the currently low interest rates to snap up homes while others are worried about a recession and holding off on selling.
Zillow has hired Rian Furey, a 20-year veteran in the mortgage space, to serve as President of Zillow Homes Loans, it was announced Monday. The hire comes at a time when Zillow is developing and testing proprietary lending software to make Zillow Home Loans the mortgage platform for its home buying and selling platform Zillow Offers.
Zillow also announced several other key hires for Zillow Loans, including Libby Cooper, who will serve as vice president of strategy and operations; Darren Apfel, who will serve as senior director of product development; Jeff Kibbey, who will serve as vice president of compliance; and Paul Thomas, who will serve as vice president of finance.Read the story here.
Just one day after Compass claimed Realogy explored the possibility of selling itself, Realogy punched back, saying in an internal email that the explosive allegations are "not true" and are instead an attempt to "inspire sensational news coverage.”
The email, which Realogy CEO Ryan Schneider sent to employees and agents Saturday, also doubles down on the company's allegations in a lawsuit that it filed against Compass in July. In the suit, Realogy accuses Compass of engaging in a variety of unfair business practices and of attempting to, essentially, build a monopoly.