Emmanuel Fonte | Music | Art | Leadership
If music be the food of love, play on. Emmanuel Fonte website is about music, art, real estate, architecture, design and decor. Occasionally, I talk about my other passion, hockey.
Bellevue’s newest address has received incredible interest during its recent preview with over 100 residences sold. The excitement continues with the unveiling of the One88 Visual Tour. Take an exclusive first look at an animated tour of the building’s sophisticated residences and world-class amenity collection and experience the attentive design detail that has defined this remarkable new high-rise.
Based on 72,986 Interstate and Cross-Border Household Goods Relocations from January 1, 2017, through December 15, 2017. Click on the map for detail for each Province or State.
A story in the Wall Street Journal gave these new homeownership numbers some context:
“The annual increase marks a crucial turning point because it comes after the federal government reined in bubble-era policies that encouraged banks to ease lending standards to boost homeownership. This time, what’s driving the market is a shift in favor of owning rather than renting.
‘This is market, market and market…There’s no government incentive program in sight that is having this effect,’ said Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, ‘This is back to basics.’”
In a separate report comparing the rental population in America to the homeowner population, RentCafé also concluded that the gap is now shrinking.
“Undoubtedly, the recession had a great impact on homeownership…However, it looks like it takes more to discourage Americans from buying a house than that.
As the years go by, it seems more and more certain that the fact that renting has seen a sudden gain in popularity is more a reaction to the economic crisis than a paradigm shift in the Americans’ attitude toward housing.”
America’s belief in homeownership was also evidenced in a recent survey by Pew Research. They asked consumers “How important is homeownership to achieving the American Dream?”
The results:
Homeownership has been, is and will always be a crucial element of the American Dream.
Contract signings on home sales rose slightly in December, reaching their highest level since last March, the National Association of REALTORS® reported Wednesday. NAR’s Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, moved 0.5 percent higher to a reading of 110.1 last month, 0.5 percent higher than a year ago.
“Another month of modest increases in contract activity is evidence that the housing market has a small trace of momentum at the start of 2018,” says Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “Jobs are plentiful, wages are finally climbing, and the prospect of higher mortgage rates are perhaps encouraging more aspiring buyers to begin their search.”
But Yun cautions that these positive indicators won’t necessarily equate to a stronger sales pace in the long run: “Buyers throughout the country continue to be hamstrung by record-low supply levels that are pushing up prices—especially at the lower end of the market.”
The imbalance in supply and demand in housing throughout the country prompted home prices to appreciate 5.8 percent in 2017, which marks the sixth consecutive year of gains at or above 5 percent, NAR reports. Yun does expect price growth to subside in 2018, with some states possibly experiencing a decline due to the changes in the impact of the mortgage interest deduction and state and local deductions under the new tax law.
“In the short term, the larger paychecks most households will see from the tax cuts may give prospective buyers the ability to save for a larger down payment this year, and the healthy labor economy and job market will continue to boost demand,” Yun says. “However, there’s no doubt the nation’s most expensive markets with high property taxes are going to be adversely impacted by the tax law. Just how severe is still uncertain, but with homeownership now less incentivized in the tax code, sellers in the upper end of the market may have to adjust their price expectations if they want to trade down or move to less expensive areas. This could in turn lead to both a decrease in sales and home values.”
