The U.S. Post Office has been attempting to reduce or eliminate sidewalk and curbside delivery to single-family homes, and the new construction market is feeling the affects, the National Association of Home Builders reports on its Eye on Housing blog. In a new NAHB survey, 64 percent of single-family builders say they’ve had a local post office require a “cluster mailbox” on one of their developments; 36 percent say they have not encounter
Fannie Mae is seeking to bridge the gap in affordable housing by making manufactured housing a more acceptable alternative to traditional built-on-site housing. It hopes to do that with its MH Advantage program, which is lowering down payment requirements and lender fees on manufactured housing loans.The new MH Advantage loans require a 3 percent down payment, which is down from 5 percent in Fannie’s existing manufactured housing loan. Also, F
Many markets are being saturated with new apartment buildings, and developers in some of the most popular markets are now finding they need to offer incentives to tenants in order to fill growing vacancies.After years of rental hikes, tenants are now finding themselves in the driver’s seat as more landlords look to aggressively court them. Some developers reportedly are offering new residents a month or two of free rent or free parking, accordi
New construction inventory has reached its highest point since the Great Recession, with the number of new single-family homes rising 7.7 percent between 2016 and 2017 to 795,000 units, according to the Census Bureau’s 2017 Characteristics of New Housing report. “It’s good that there’s more construction, but there’s still plenty of room for more building,” says realtor.com® Chief Economist Danielle Hale. “Builders are obviously c
House flipping activity surged to an 11-year high this year, with more than 207,000 homes flipped, according to ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate data firm. But the key is knowing where to be and when. “The sweet spot for successful home flipping is finding the neighborhoods just emerging as the next hot neighborhoods in a city,” says Daren Blomquist, a senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions. The firm says the average profit for a
Lower Puna is one of the most affordable places to live in Hawaii, but the subdivisions were also built on an area long known to be under a lava hazard, The Wall Street Journal reports. So far, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano has destroyed more than 80 houses and other structures and has forced hundreds of residents to evacuate since its eruption near residential neighborhoods on May 3.But some homeowners may have originally been willing to overlook
Homeowners in Texas are still rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey’s 130-mile-an-hour winds tore through communities, damaging and flooding homes and businesses in August 2017. And as the start of a new hurricane season looms on June 1, homeowners in Texas coastal cities are pondering how far they should go in building sturdier homes that can better withstand natural disasters. Some officials are urging for stiffer standards in the state, but othe
Online retail giant Amazon and homebuilder Lennar are teaming up to create “experience showrooms” that feature smart-home technology.“Amazon, Google, Apple—most of the technology-centric companies are starting to think about the home as a centerpiece for the way they think about the future of how their products work and how [users] interact with them,” Stuart Miller, executive chairman of Lennar, told CNBC. “Home automation is
Many house hunters are under the mistaken impression that new construction is flawless, a perception that may be challenging to wrestle with if your seller’s home is surrounded by brand-new development. In reality, there can be just as many inspection issues with new builds as there are with resale properties. If you’re working with clients who are interested in purchasing new, it’s important to manage their expectations and let them know
Townhouse construction continues making gains as buyers’ appetites once again increase for this type of single-family attached housing. Over the last four quarters, ending with the first quarter of 2018, townhouse starts were 7 percent higher than the prior four quarters. Townhouses accounted for 21,000 starts during the first quarter of 2018.The market share of new townhouses now stands at 12.3 percent of all single-family housing starts, ac
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