Eyewitness News 7 (ABC) reported yesterday; USC offers free tuition to students from families making under $80,000; home ownership will not factor in need. According to USC President Carol L. Folt, “USC will increase undergraduate aid by more than $30 million annually. When fully implemented, the expansion will allow the university to provide stronger financial assistance to more than 4,000 students every year. The changes will be phased in beginning with first-year students entering USC in the fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021.” This is great public relations for the University in light of the recent USC enrollment scandals and especially great news for young folks who may have thought attending college was out of reach for them.
2. FAST & DYNAMIC
NextHome Named No. 1 Real Estate Franchise in the U.S. according to Rismedia and Inman News (read it here if you’re an Inman subscriber). Evidently, “NextHome was among 307 franchise brands, representing more than 27,500 franchise owners, that participated in Franchise Business Review’s research. NextHome’s franchisees were surveyed on 33 benchmark questions about their experience and satisfaction regarding critical areas of their franchise systems, including training and support, operations, franchisor/franchisee relations, and financial opportunity.” Pretty incredible for a company that didn’t start franchising until 2015!
3. A DROP IN THE BUCKET
“Amazon Inc. recently made headlines by being the fourth company to achieve a worth over a trillion dollars. They are joining Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Alphabet in this exclusive group. The surge to Bezos’ share in stock boosted his worth by over $12 billion dollars in a matter of hours. This boosted the tech giant CEO to a worth of $116 billion dollars.” That said, Jeff Bezos Sets New Real Estate Record With $165M Beverly Hills Buy says Analyzing America. That’s equivalent to reporting someone who is worth $1M spending 150K on a house. The question is how many expensive homes does Jeff Bezos currently own?
4. CATCH 22
Hoping to Buy a Home in 2020? The Easiest and Toughest Places to Find One. Realtor.com‘s economics team searched for the metropolitan areas where it’s easier to buy a home—and where it’s more difficult. “To come up with our findings, we looked at the number of listings per 1,000 homeowner-occupied households in the 100 largest metros in the fourth quarter of 2019. The analysis was based on the number of homes for sale relative to the local population. And we narrowed our findings to one per state for some geographic variety.” The Catch 22 is while this may sound like an advantage to sellers, remember most of them will also be in the market for a new home. Have a look. How many of these areas would you choose to live in?
5. GET THE GRAPH
Are you interested in seeing a nice graph of the share of homes sold above listing price in January? “In the first month of the year, the nation’s home-sale prices increased by 6.7% from 2019 levels, coming in at a median of $306,400, according to Redfin. Of the 85 largest housing markets Redfin tracks, only three saw a year-over-year decline in the median sale price in January, including San Jose, California; Baton Rouge, Lousiana; and Greenville, South Carolina, which dropped 4.3%, 4.1%, and 1.4%, respectively. During the month, home sales increased by 6.7% year over year, marking the sixth consecutive month of increases.” HousingWire reports There haven’t been this few homes on the market since 2013.
BONUS!
From Forbes: The Hottest Cities For Commercial Real Estate Investing In 2020. “Economists expect the U.S. economy to grow slower this year than last, but a recession isn’t likely. The U.S. remains a reliable option for international commercial real estate investors. Seven cities in particular present the highest commercial real estate investing potential: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, Nashville, and San Jose.”
