A tight housing market has pushed prices out of reach for a large chunk of would-be buyers across the U.S., forcing millions into an apartment market that digs deep into monthly paychecks for rent, especially in high-cost markets like Miami.

 

Nearly 39 million U.S. residents live in homes they can’t afford, according to a national housing report released Friday by Harvard University. The findings point to a growing concern over housing affordability and shines a glaring light on Miami-Dade County’s pricey market.

 

Miami was one of 11 large metropolitan areas where more than 40 percent of households were cost-burdened, meaning over 30 percent of their income was gobbled up by housing costs.

 

“While the recovery in home prices reflects a welcome pickup in demand, it is also being driven by very tight supply,” said Chris Herbert, managing director of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. “Any excess housing that may have been built during the boom years has been absorbed, and a stronger supply response is going to be needed to keep pace with demand — particularly for moderately priced homes.”

 

Apartment dwellers have it worse. Among Miami renters alone, 62 percent were considered cost-burdened while 35 percent spent more than half their income on rent.

 

The report also highlighted Daytona Beach, where 57 percent of renters spent over a third of their income on rent in 2016. The least affordable cities were not ranked.

 

The affordability struggle is a function of rising demand for housing combined with limited — and costly — supply.

 

Fewer residential units were built in the U.S. over the past decade than in any 10-year period since the 1960s. A large portion of the new homes tend to cater to higher-end purchasers, not first-time homebuyers.

 

“Construction of smaller starter homes is particularly low,” the report said.

 

The for-sale inventory hit a record low at the end of 2016, further squeezing supply of homes on the market. The result? More and more people are renting rather than buying. The national rental vacancy rate dropped to its lowest level in three decades last year.

 

However, most apartment units built are considered luxury. Twelve of the 20 rental developments with 50 or more units built in Miami-Dade in 2015 were high-end with the average rent swaying near $2,100, according to a study by RentCafe.

 

The total number of units renting for less than $800 in Miami declined by about 20,000 to 131,000 from 2005 to 2015. The number of apartments renting for over $2,400 more than doubled since then to 42,000.

 

The U.S. housing market hit a significant milestone last year when home prices reached their pre-recession peak. This helped reduce the number of homeowners underwater on their mortgages to 3.2 million from 12 million in 2011.

 

While Miami-Dade home prices have risen 74 percent since 2000, they’re still below their peak. About 16 percent of homeowners remained underwater on their mortgages in 2016, more than double the national rate.

 

 

Carla Vianna, Daily Business Review

 

This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Miamiboyz at English Wikipedia. This applies worldwide.
In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so:
Miamiboyz grants anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Wikimedia commons

Developers and lenders in the seniors housing sector have for years only allowed new construction to proceed at a modest pace. The development community’s aim was to avoid the mistakes made in past booms, when too many inexperienced operators built too much new product. However, developers have recently picked up the pace a bit as an aging population has steadily boosted demand.

 

And according to a new report from the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, the seniors housing annual inventory growth rate in the first quarter of 2017 was 3.4%, up 0.2 percentage point from the prior quarter and the fastest pace since at least 2006.

 

“It was another active quarter for inventory growth, with nearly 4,800 units added to the seniors housing stock” in 31 primary markets, says Beth Burnham Mace, chief economist for Annapolis, MD-based NIC. “At the same time, demand slowed during the quarter, as is typically the case in the first quarter due to the seasonal effects of the winter months. Some of the slowdown in net absorption may also reflect the severity of the 2016/2017 flu season.”

 

The pace of new construction helped push down the US occupancy rate for seniors housing properties, according to NIC. The rate in the first quarter averaged 89.3%, a decrease of 0.3 percentage point from the prior quarter and was down 0.6 percentage point from one year earlier.

 

That was 2.4 percentage points above its cyclical low of 86.9% during the first quarter of 2010 and 0.9 percentage point below its most recent high of 90.2% in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Seniors housing annual absorption was 2.8% as of the first quarter of 2017, up 0.1 percentage point from the fourth quarter of 2016 and up 0.2 percentage point from one year earlier, NIC adds.

 

The expansion of the nation’s inventory has not hurt rental rates. During the first quarter of 2017, the average rate of senior housing’s annual asking rent growth was 3.3%, up from 3.1% in the first quarter of 2016.

 

“Considering the continued strong inventory growth and sustained levels of construction, this solid same-store rent growth is notable,” says Chuck Harry, NIC’s chief of research and analytics.

 

 

As reported in GlobeSt.com APRIL 17, 2017 | BY BRIAN J. ROGAL

 

Lawmakers cracking down on unethical practices by condo associations

 

State lawmakers have always looked to curb unethical behavior, and the trend is to continue. Recent grand jury cases have seemed to be about condo associations and the giving of more rights to owners concerning the association’s financial records.

 

A bill passed through both houses of the State legislation and had broad bipartisan support.

 

Now, the new proposed law will move to Governor Rick Scott for approval. The new law would criminalize the act of giving kickbacks to condo board members, withholding or destroying financial records, fraud or theft of association funds.

 

On the flip side, some in the industry were alarmed by the new proposed legislation. Some believe that this will keep honest individuals from serving out of fear of being criminalized for errors or mistakes and that the bill seems to assume that all who serve have devious intentions.

 

Others joined in that sentiment feeling that the grand jury overreacted from the acts of a small few who were involved in actual criminal acts while serving on a condo association board.

 

All parties involved in this discussion do believe that ethical behavior should be of the highest concern for all who serve and an expectation of all condo owners have towards those on the board.

 

The disagreement lies in the actual need for a formal law to be on the record for Florida.

 

If Gov. Scott passes the bill, it will go into effect on July 1st.

Most guess wrong.

 

A recent survey has been released for RealityShares, and it shows the highest performing asset classes since the turn of the century. The results demonstrate how these investments are as well known to the public as some had thought.

 

Real estate investing seems to be underestimated and could lead to an upswing for this offering.

 

When the surveyed were asked to choose what they believe the top investment classes were, the majority chose stocks while only 16% chose real estate.

 

RealityShares mentioned that those who responded to the survey might have been basing their opinion on the recent climb in the domestic stock market. Obviously, unbeknownst to them was the fact that real estate outperformed the S&P 500 by a ratio of 2 to 1.

 

The report did highlight the fact that the S&P has outperformed real estate in the last six years, but only 1.28%.

 

A Definite Hunger

The poll went on to show that almost half of the surveyed said that they would be more interested in investing in real estate if there were technology available that made the research and the transaction process easier. Those numbers jumped to 63% for the millennials.

 

The report showed some other interesting points:

  • 68% and 64% of men and women, respectively, thought that flipping homes a profitable endeavor.
  • Men were more likely to get involved in flipping home than women.
  • Those aged less than 45 were more positive about getting into flipping homes than those older.

 

Now, not all the results were as positive.

 

Almost three-quarters of those surveyed felt that real estate investing was more difficult a process than other investable assets.

 

About 70% said the higher cost outlay of real estate investing would likely hamper their consideration of investing. Less than 40% stated that they felt that they had the ability for flipping homes.

 

Get the full report here and dig through the numbers and facts.

Homes have not recovered since the housing bubble burst.

 

Trulia has just released its latest new study, and it has some eyebrows raising. Pulling from the study, we can look at a homeowner in Fresno, California and one from San Francisco. Not much distance separates these two cities, but San Francisco has seen its property values skyrocketing since the recession. Unfortunately, Fresno is lucky to have more than 2 percent of its homes get back to or above the pre-recession prices. Why?

 

If one were to look at the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index and the FHFA House Price Index, they would see numbers that show that the country has recovered from the last housing bubble burst. Trulia, on the other hand, says that this is not the whole story.

 

Looking across the country, it appears that 1 in 3 homes have reached a new peak in value. At the same time, larger tech based areas such as the Bay Area and Denver and job centers like Dallas and Nashville have experienced an explosion to new highs. Trulia’s report shows more losers than winners across the country and some of these losers are losing at an unprecedented rate. The report shows a little less than 30 metro areas have not even seen 10 percent of its home values recover. Las Vegas, for example, shows less than 1 percent.

 

The fact that there are so many home values that have not recover from the previous recession is leading some to say that there should not be any talk about a current housing bubble. Adding to that is the fact that there are fewer homes on the market since the bubble burst of 2012.

Man sentenced in ID theft fraud

 

November 2014 was the start of Kesner Joaseus’s new business in which he quickly became an overnight success. Joaseus pulled in over $380,000 leasing single-family houses all over Broward and Palm Beach counties. There was one small problem: The houses were not his to rent out according to the U.S. Department of Justice. It appears he had been renting out vacant homes without the owner’s permission.

 

The properties belonged to RHA 2 LLC, a Georgia-based firm. He created a company with a similar name and convinced unsuspecting renters that he was working for the real firm. Joaseus and two accomplices were involved. Wadno Dorneau and Miguel Tilus, were arrested for mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

 

Joaseus, who pleaded guilty in two fraud cases in July, had additional income streams according to federal prosecutors. He seemed to be scamming identifications to open fraudulent credit cards, buy two luxury cars and other items totaling over $260,000.

 

Joaseus, 47 was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 11 years in prison for the various scams he ran. This also included two 108 month sentences for the real estate fraud and additional years for the identity theft charges.

 

South Florida is a top ten area of the country in relations to fraud. Multiple millions of dollars each year are stolen from unsuspecting citizens and businesses. Various Federal agencies house large district investigation departments to monitor and shut down violators.