Inman News | 5 negotiation tactics for real estate deals

According to recent information from the National Association of Realtors, the National Association of Home Builders, and other reliable sources, the volume of home sales has declined slightly in the last few months compared to a year ago. But home sales prices in most communities have held steady.

As the home sales market adjusts to slightly higher mortgage interest rates, if you are a home buyer, seller, or real estate agent, your negotiation skills will become more important than during the recent "bull market" for home sales. As a long-time student of negotiation tactics, I've learned it pays to periodically review the key negotiation strategies most frequently encountered in home sales.

Yahoo! Real Estate ? Real Estate News and Current Interest Rates

Realty Times | Rolling Boom Lifts Real Estate Beyond Coastal Cities, States

Housing bubble? Out! Rolling boom? In! Migration and immigration patterns are creating news in housing as homebuyers try to find more affordable homes in the South and West.

New state population estimates just released by the U.S. Census Bureau suggest that homebuyers are migrating from higher-priced markets to more moderately priced areas, bringing new growth to cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Jacksonville, Phoenix and Portland.

The effect is called a rolling boom. That's when high prices force homebuyers to the suburbs, or to new towns or across state lines. California, for example, loses about 100,000 residents a year to other states, which has helped to create rolling booms in Nevada and Arizona. As those areas become less affordable, buyers are already migrating to Texas, Georgia and other states.

For the 19th year in a row, Nevada grew the most of any state, with Arizona a close second

Yahoo! Real Estate ? Real Estate News and Current Interest Rates

RealEstateJournal | Housing Affordability Hits 14-Year Low

Soaring house prices and higher mortgage rates have put homeownership out of reach for more people than at any time in more than a decade.

Housing affordability in October sank to its lowest levels since 1991, according to the National Association of Realtors' Affordability Index, a widely followed measure of the average household's ability to buy a home at current interest rates. In some areas, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Miami, housing affordability has dropped to levels not seen since the early to mid-1980s, according to mortgage giant Fannie Mae.


RealEstateJournal | Housing Affordability Hits 14-Year Low

NREI | Hurricane Winds Blow Through Condo Market - Miami-Dade County

The condo market in Miami-Dade County, which is bursting at the seams with new construction and intense investor demand, took an unexpected hit in October when Hurricane Wilma ripped through South Florida. Already burdened by rising construction costs, developers now confront the likelihood of further price hikes and shortages of both building materials and labor.

Hurricane Wilma resulted in total insured losses of $7.2 billion, reports the Insurance Information Institute. Those losses, coupled with higher building costs, have made lenders increasingly reluctant to loan money on condo projects. This latest blow could well be ?the nail in the coffin,? says Jack Winston, senior consultant with Goodkin Consulting in Miami.

Hurricane Winds Blow Through Condo Market

Rising housing costs make apartments unaffordable for many - Boston.com

Rising housing costs make apartments unaffordable for many
By Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press Writer | December 13, 2005

WASHINGTON --The cost of rental housing has increased faster than wages, making it increasingly difficult for low-income families to afford even modest apartments, according to a report released Tuesday.

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Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts "The disparity between what people earn, and what even modest rental housing costs, grows larger each year," Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said in a statement.

In Connecticut, the state with the seventh-most expensive rental housing in the country, a resident must earn $19.30 an hour, or $40,141 a year, to afford a typical two-bedroom apartment without spending more than a third of his or her income on rent, according to the report. That's up from $17.90 a year ago.

Connecticut had a median household income of $56,409 in 2003, the most recent year for which Census data is available. Minimum wage is $7.10; the average statewide fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,004 a month.

"The high cost of housing forces these families to pay 50 percent or more of their income for rent, live in substandard housing, move out of communities in which they grew up, endure long commutes to work, or cycle in and out of homelessness," said Lynne Ide, associate director of the Connecticut Housing Coalition.


Rising housing costs make apartments unaffordable for many - Boston.com

RealEstateJournal | U.S. Home Markets That Are The Most and Least Affordable

U.S. Home Markets That Are
The Most and Least Affordable

By John Spence
From Marketwatch

More good news for residents of Indianapolis, where the hometown Colts are sporting an undefeated 11-0 record so far this NFL football season.

The National Association of Home Builders said Thursday that Indianapolis, where the median price for new and existing homes was $125,000, took the title in the third quarter for the most affordable housing market among the nation's major metropolitan areas. About 90% of homes sold were affordable to families earning the median income of $64,000.

Other areas among the most affordable in the country include Youngstown-Warren, Ohio; Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, Mich.; Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y.; and Oklahoma City, Okla.

RealEstateJournal | U.S. Home Markets That Are The Most and Least Affordable

RealEstateJournal | Rents Rise, Vacancies Drop As Apartments Join the Boom

By Michael Corkery
From The Wall Street Journal Online

The real estate boom has been very good to property owners of all types. But apartment landlords have largely missed the party as low interest rates and the prospect of rising home prices turned thousands of would-be renters into buyers.

Vacant apartments often stayed empty until the landlord lowered the rent. "In some cases we were giving away $50 to $100 in [monthly] rent to keep people coming in the door," says Warren Rose, whose family business owns 52,000 apartments in mostly small cities around the country.

Now that is slowly changing. Vacancy rates are dropping and rents are rising in many parts of the country. About 18 months ago, tenants started trickling back into Mr. Rose's apartments in Virginia and then to his units in the Midwest. These days, he has been able to reduce concessions to renters and his occupancy is rising modestly. "It appears that a recovery is happening," says Mr. Rose, chief operating officer of Edward Rose & Sons, based in Farmington Hills, Mich. "But time will tell."

RealEstateJournal | Rents Rise, Vacancies Drop As Apartments Join the Boom

RealEstateJournal | Investors Start to Retreat From the Housing Market

By Ruth Simon
From The Wall Street Journal Online

Individuals are pulling back from buying homes and condos as an investment, in a move that could accelerate the cooling of the housing market.

In markets such as Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego and Washington, D.C., where investor activity had been heated, fewer people are competing to buy properties as an investment, real-estate brokers and housing analysts say. Some investor-owned properties are returning to the market for sale. With the pace of price appreciation slowing, some investors who were betting on quick profits are instead being squeezed.

RealEstateJournal | Investors Start to Retreat From the Housing Market