The photo above is a clue… Realtor.com just posted America’s 10 Hottest Neighborhoods, 2019 Edition. “As it turns out, this year’s most sought-after neighborhoods are not those nestled in the nation’s biggest, most famous cities where home prices are just about as high as the skyscrapers.” Some of the winners may shock you. The Realtor.com economics team looked at 16,000 ZIP codes and used very specific criteria taken from their January through June (2019) data.
2. BLOCKCHAIN DEFINED
If I told you Blockchain is a system in which a record of transactions made in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency is maintained across several computers that are linked in a peer-to-peer network, are you more or less inclined to read on? Hang in there, The Harvard Business Review (HBR) published a very informative article about How Blockchain Will Change Construction. “While the fundamentals of project management will remain important, blockchain enables managers to focus their talents on solving problems and achieving better project outcomes.” Read the entire article to better understand how Blockchain works.
2. LUXURY MARKET WOES
Forget price tags and bad odors: The top real-estate agent in Beverly Hills says the main factor driving buyers away from luxury homes right now is a need for renovations reports Business Insider. “According to Mills, prospective buyers looking in the $5 million to $10 million range want a house that doesn’t require major work. She told Business Insider that despite the soft market, when she lists a home that is move-in ready and reasonably priced, it sells quickly.” There are certainly other important factors that come into play when selling real estate at any price point. Decor, architecture, and light, good or bad, effect home sales.
4. FADING BIDDING WARS?
Are you or someone you know a millennial homebuyer? “In June, just 16% of home buyers paid in cash, down from 23% in February, according to the National Association of Realtors. The rest bought the old-fashioned way – by taking out a mortgage. Applications for home loans jumped 9.5% last month from a year earlier, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.” You may want to read more because Here’s some good news if you’re buying a home: cash is no longer king from USA Today.
5. DIRECTIONALLY UNCHALLENGED
“Compass — a company that has built a three-sided marketplace for the industry, along with a wide set of algorithms to help make it work — has raised a $370 million round of funding, money that it plans to use to continue expanding geographically (within existing markets in the U.S. such as New York, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, SF and LA and other areas), as well as for more tech and product development. Sources tell me that it’s also now eyeing up an IPO, likely sometime in the next 24 months.” Learn more about the direction of Compass in the Techcrunch article and interview with co-founder and chairman Ori Allon. Real estate platform Compass raises another $370M on a $6.4B valuation en route to an IPO.
