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Looking for The Next Detroit? Try This Hot Spot.

My article on Tuesday may have gotten you thinking about putting your money to work somewhere harder in real estate. And that may, in turn, have gotten you lamenting the fact that you totally missed out on the Detroit recovery. Well, first of all, the Detroit recovery...

Permits Down in January

The future of the housing market remains precarious — and remains precariously tied to the overall economy. As I wrote last week, there are a number of reasons that housing starts may be behind schedule — not least of all, a shortage in the labor market. January was...

Canada Flight

A few months ago, I wrote about the fact that with U.S. houses priced as they are, and the strength of the U.S. dollar, it was perhaps time to consider shopping for your next property somewhere up north. Since then, the housing market has stayed strong, the dollar has...

We Need More Homes!

Throughout the first half of the aughts, U.S. rental property vacancy rates hovered at the high 7% range (between 7.75 and 7.9). With the ’08 crash, vacancy rates jumped substantially, to well over 8%. But since the peak in 2009, vacancy rates have been steadily...

Employment Too Good for Housing?

For almost all of 2015 we had an unusual state of affairs — the housing market looked great, because the filings for new permits kept looking great; but at the same time, housing starts didn’t manage to keep up, and sometimes even fell. The Fiscal Times has an...

Manufacturing and Housing Yin and Yang?

Steve Goldstein, D.C. Bureau Chief for Marketwatch, contends that manufacturing and housing are yin-and-yang in the markets. While it is true that the housing market is running along at a frothy pace (and as Goldstein points out, is expected to grow at roughly twice...

The Outcome of The Housing Crash

Towards the end of last year, I wrote a few times about the fact that we have pretty much fully-recovered from the ’08 crash. In fact, some might argue that we’re in a bubble again, or at least very close. But we don’t often look at (or hear in the news about) what...

Treasury Bonds and Mortgage Rates

A few weeks ago I wrote about a blog post from the Federal Reserve. In their blog post, they had explained why the rate hike shouldn’t impact long-term mortgage rates. And they were right. In fact, we’ve seen exactly the opposite happen. We’ve had weeks and weeks of...

A Back-Firing Fed Policy?

This blog covered in a post last month the fact that the Fed has indicated a commitment to keeping long-term interest rates in the housing market low. In fact, as we also reported, the Fed rate hike was unlikely to affect long-term, fixed-rate mortgages. However,...

Housing Demand Looking Good for 2016

Fitch, the rating agency, released their predictions for the 2016 housing market, and concluded that, “low oil prices, generally robust employment growth, demographics, pent-up demand, still attractive affordability/housing valuations, and a steady, moderate easing in...

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