What is the key to happiness? It may be living in a city known for having happier residents.WalletHub, a personal finance website, analyzed more than 180 of the largest U.S. cities to find the happiest cities of all. They examined 31 key indicators they culled from positive psychology to rate happiness, including the depression rate, income growth, average leisure time per day, life expectancy, job satisfaction, unemployment, commute time, d
Fewer homes were flipped in 2018, but investors are still on the hunt and have not shied away from quick resales, according to a new report from ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate data firm.Single-family homes and condos that were flipped fell 4 percent in 2018, reaching 207,957 homes, according to ATTOM’s 2018 U.S. Home Flipping Report, released this week. Home flips comprised 5.6 percent of all single-family home and condo sales last year, t
Laundry rooms and Energy Star–compliant windows topped the list of what buyers considered the most “essential” or “desirable” features in a home, according to the National Association of Home Builders’ 2019 “What Home Buyers Really Want” report, released at the NAHB International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas this week. Most of the features that new homeowners or aspiring buyers ranked highest related to helping them save in
Seniors choosing to age in place—staying put in their current homes—are creating a barrier to young adults buying their first homes, according to Freddie Mac’s February Insight. About 1.6 million existing homes are being held off the market due to seniors’ decision to age in place and remain in their current home, the report notes.Researchers note that those 1.6 million units are roughly the same as the number of new single-family an
Homeowners should have felt richer in 2018. Equity rich properties comprised 25.6 percent of U.S. properties with a mortgage in 2018, according to a newly released report from ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate research firm.In the fourth quarter, more than 14.5 million U.S. properties were considered equity rich, where the combined estimated amount of loans secured by the property was 50 percent or less of the property’s estimated market valu
Luxury home shoppers can have high expectations for what they want in a home. “The higher the price point, the more features buyers expect and that desire intensifies,” says Alec Traub, a real estate professional with Redfin in Los Angeles.Many of these high-end homes share some traits. Redfin recently highlighted some of the top amenities it's noticing on more luxury shoppers’ wish lists, including:Greater privacy: Buyers purchas
Homeowners can become “noseblind” to their home’s own smell, and that could be problematic when putting the home up for sale. After all, the smell of a property can have a big influence on buyers’ perceptions of the home. And no one wants to have the smelly house.Noseblindness happens when a nose detects an odor but determines it’s no longer an annoyance. It then shuts down receptors for that smell. As such, a lingering smell no longer
Real estate professionals say now is the time to purchase a high-end vacation home, and they’re already seeing buyers pick up on the cues.“We are seeing sales up in the resort areas, including Hawaii and Vail,” Stephanie Anton, president of Luxury Portfolio International, told forbes.com. She notes that sales and prices in Vail, Colo., are up over 25 percent from a year ago. “I think we are seeing people pulling money out of the stoc
The real estate community is on alert after a broker in the Salt Lake City area was shot and killed last Thursday while reportedly attempting to evict tenants from a building he owned. Two women and one man have been arrested in connection with the death of David Stokoe, who worked with RANLife Real Estate in Sandy, Utah, and whose body police found Saturday in a “semi-hidden crawl space” in the building, according to reports.Police have char
More builders reportedly are offering incentives to attract home shoppers, including paying closing costs, buying down mortgage rates, and even cutting prices—a move builders are usually reluctant to make, the Los Angeles Times reports. “We are really working a little bit harder to get people in the door and to get people excited,” Mark Mullin, a real estate professional who sells new homes in the L.A. area, told the Times.
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