Realty Check with Diana Olick
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With housing now in recovery and apartment rents rising, there is new concern that tenants and investors alike will move out of the multi-family space.
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Home Slice: Bigger Isn't Better
Posted By: Diana Olick
I'm so glad the heady days of big builders building big McMansions are waning. Thank goodness nobody is buying into those over-sized, over-priced, over-the-top entry foyers that lead to oh-so-great great rooms that nobody can possibly fill with enough friends or furniture. Thank goodness, because Shlomi Gal-On now has the model business to build on, now that minimal is mod.
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Houses Affordable! Get More for Your Money! Not.
Posted By: Diana Olick
Every now and then, I like to buck my New York City roots and pretend for a moment that I might be an optimist. It happened this morning, while I was reading the monthly Housing Affordability report from the National Association of Realtors. Apparently, Americans are spending about 22.3% of their monthly incomes on their mortgage payment. That's down from a high of 25.1%, back in July of last year.
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The Dream of Home Ownership--Or Is It The Nightmare?
Posted By: Diana Olick
Interesting new survey popped into the email box today, and let me just preface by saying, YES I NOTICED that the survey was commissioned by the National Apartment Association.That said, prefaced, noted, disclaimed, the survey of more than 2,100 U.S. homeowners surveyed by Harris Interactive, finds that 65% believe, given the current state of the real estate market, there are advantages to renting as opposed to owing.
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New Homes on a Total Tear
Posted By: Diana Olick
Not a lot of numbers shock me, but this one almost took the life out of my "live shot" when I saw the breathtaking number flash on my screen at 10 a.m. New home sales up a whopping 16%!! Now usually I give that caveat that the margin of error on the Commerce Department report is 5 times the actual number, but not this time. This one actually beat the margin of error (+/-13.0%) by three percent!
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Hate Writing the Mortgage Check? Charge It!!
Posted By: Diana Olick
I love plastic. I know, I know, the petroleum issues. But today I learned one more reason to love plastic: I can pay for my mortgage with it. Yes, American Express is breaking new ground, allowing its card members to pay their monthly mortgage bills on the card. I know what you're thinking, but hold on... Amex is requiring that these be prime loans only, so you can forget that whole subprime mortgage implosion issue. And of course, they'll be charging you $395 to enroll in the program.
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Countrywide: A Sign of Good Times?
Posted By: Diana Olick
On TV today, I'm reporting a story about the mortgage bankers pushing back against the very premise of this whole subprime mortgage "crisis." The chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association, John Robbins, is giving a speech at the National Press Club. It opens like this, "I stand before you today mad as hell. I have to be angry. It would be too depressing to accept that a very few unethical people can give my profession, and me, a black eye. But it's worse than that. It's not just our reputations that have been damaged. People have been hurt. The very people we take pride in helping. All because of a very few unethical actors."
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What Goes Around…
Posted By: Diana Olick
Forgive me for getting local, but since all real estate is, I can't help but let you in on a dirty little secret in my neighborhood. Despite all the talk of prices falling through the housing floor, subprime mortgages changing the way banks do business and every other house in every development heading for foreclosure, something is simmering in Washington, D.C.Here it comes... Take a moment to breathe...
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Bernanke's Mortgage Medley
Posted By: Diana Olick
In a speech today at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke detailed the many ways in which financial regulators, including the Federal Reserve and Congress, could act in order to prevent a recurrence of the subprime mortgage crises. Okay, not many ways -- four ways.
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Starting to Defy Logic
Posted By: Diana Olick
Housing starts stopped traffic on the street again, especially after the street predicted a drop and once again, the numbers chose to take another path. Housing starts jumped up two and a half percent in April, despite a bevy of bad indicators: bad weather, high inventories, increased cancellation rates, a credit crunch, the lowest builder confidence in 15 years and low overall confidence among investors about putting their money in housing period.
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Stabilizing Instability
Posted By: Diana Olick
Stabilization. That’s the buzzword today from the number crunchers/housing prognosticators at the National Association of Realtors in its quarterly metro home price report. “Essentially, we see that the existing-home market is stabilizing in a broad cyclical trough and moving in the right direction, with a modest gain from the fourth quarter,” says NAR senior economist Lawrence Yun (yes, the exalted David Lereah is gone).
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About Realty Check
Realty Check takes you from the housing boom to bust and beyond. Led by Diana Olick, we were here when the house came crashing down and we have the singular expertise to explain how it will be rebuilt. The goal of this blog is to bring the market, the rescue plans, the politics and the pontification home to you, with clear concise explanations of the wildly complicated issues in all facets of real estate today and tomorrow. Realty Check is read by leaders in the real estate industry: Investors, Realtors, Big builder CEOs, Mortgage Bankers, Wall Street Analysts and Administration Officials to name a few.
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Olick serves as CNBC's real estate correspondent as well as the author of the "Realty Check" blog on CNBC.com.
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Real Estate Explained
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The housing market is one of the pillars of the U.S. economy and there may be no better indication of how the market is doing than housing starts.
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You may have heard this term in the aftermath of the real estate bubble. So what is an underwater mortgage?
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Sometimes financial terms sound exactly like what they are. CNBC explains jumbo mortgages.
Real Estate
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Rising rates are not welcome news, especially now in the heart of the spring housing market.
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U.S. REIT returns were more than three times those of the broader equity market in April.
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The house at 2207 Seymour Ave. in Cleveland is now on a map of crime scenes that lure curiosity seekers.