November, 2017 | Ken Winick

November 29, 2017

Thinking Whether To Rent Or Sell Your Home?

If you are relocating and can’t decide whether to rent out or sell your home, take these questions into consideration:

1. Do you want to be a landlord?
2. What does the local rental market look like?
3. Will you be moving back to the area?

November 29, 2017

To figure out how much you can afford to spend on a home

Category : Uncategorized

To figure out how much you can afford to spend on a home, make an estimate! To start, it’s recommended you take your annual household income and multiply it by 2.5!

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Silver Lake

November 29, 2017

buyers haven’t been so eager to give builders their money since 2005.

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By this measure, buyers haven’t been so eager to give builders their money since 2005.

Houses under construction at a KB Home community.

Sales of newly-constructed homes powered to the highest in ten years last month, as pent-up demand for housing bumped up against low inventory of currently-owned properties on the market.

There was another telling detail in the Commerce Department’s new-home sales report out Monday. More than 36% of homes sold during October had not yet been started — the highest share since late 2005.

If buyers are forking over money to buy homes that haven’t even been started yet, let alone finished, it’s a real confirmation of strong demand, said Robert Dietz, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, the industry trade group.

Read:Why aren’t there enough houses to buy?

That should translate into a higher pace of construction and sales in future months, Dietz said.

But there are some caveats.

Home building — already a labor-intensive, difficult-to-scale, high-cost endeavor — has become even more so since the housing bubble burst. Over the past 12 months, home builders and remodelers have hired about 98,500 new workers, but Dietz reckons 150,000 to 160,000 are needed. One and a half million workers lost their jobs in the downturn, and only about half that number have been hired back since the trough, NAHB says.

Read:Home-builder confidence climbs to 8-month high in November

The prices of things builders need to do their work, such as lots and lumber, are also pinching.

Dietz says the industry is aware it needs to do more to staff up, such as working with trade schools and doing more to encourage training. The pace of housing starts won’t jump, he said, so much as “ramp up slowly.”

That’s still good news for employment, the economy, and the supply-starved housing market.

Silver Lake

November 21, 2017

Proposed First Silver Lake Hotel

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Earlier this month—timed with the release of the draft environmental impact report (DEIR) for a three-building, mixed-use development along Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake—we learned that project developers Frost/Chaddock were seriously mulling taking out one of the proposed mixed-users and putting a boutique hotel in its place.

The hotel option was one of the “alternatives” explored in the project’s DEIR, which requires developers to explore a handful of other options (including not building anything at all) that might reduce the impacts of new developments on their surrounding environment (traffic, views, etc.).

Frost/Chaddock (F/C) indicated the hotel option was more than just an on-paper alternative—it was something it was seriously willing to consider, if Silver Lake residents were interested.

The hotel would be a story shorter and smaller in total square footage than the proposed mixed-use building. It would bring 94 hotel rooms and 4,000 square feet to the site at 4000 Sunset, and it would have one level of underground parking. Renderings provided by F/C show a rooftop bar and pool, F/C rep Purvi Doshi tells Curbed the architect would be Lake Flato, “who specializes in boutique hotels.”

The mixed-user would have 84 residential units and about 11,200 square feet of creative offices, restaurant, retail, and community space.

Frost/Chaddock reps have previously said that for the time being, they are focusing on the comment period for the draft environmental report before making any more decisions about the hotel. The comment period ends August 15.

Sunset Junction Might Get a Boutique Hotel [Curbed LA] Silver Lake

November 21, 2017

Existing-home sales rebound in October even as inventory crunch worsens

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Sales of existing homes reached a four-month high in October.

The numbers: Sales of previously-owned homes jumped to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 5.48 million in October.

What happened: Existing-home sales ran at a 5.48 million annual rate in October, up 2% to the best monthly rate since June, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday.

Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast a 5.45 million pace. September’s pace, originally reported as 5.39 million, was revised down to 5.37 million.

The median sales price was $247,000, up 5.5% from 12 months ago, and October marked the 68th-straight month in which prices rose compared to a year ago. At the current sales pace, it would take 3.9 months to exhaust the available supply of homes, down from 4.4 months a year ago.

October’s inventory, when seasonally adjusted, was the second-lowest on record going back to 1999, said David Berson, chief economist for Nationwide who previously held that position at Fannie Mae.

Sales as measured by raw, nonadjusted numbers, are 4.6% higher for the year to date compared to the same period in 2016, NAR said.

Read: Why aren’t there enough houses to buy?

Inventory declined 3.2% during the month, to 1.80 existing homes. That’s 10.4% lower than a year ago, the 29th month of lower inventory versus the year-earlier period.

Regionally, sales growth ranged from a 4.2% increase in the Northeast to a 0.8% uptick in the Midwest. Sales in the South rose 1.9% and in the West were up 2.4%.

First-time buyers made up 32% of the total, up from 29% in September but still well below long-time averages.

The big picture: Demand continues to run hotter than supply, skewing the market, driving up prices, and keeping first-timers and others on the sidelines.

NAR expects only a 3.7% increase in existing-home sales in 2018, but continues to warn that the tax reform bills working their way through Congress would “disincentivize” homeownership.

Read: Generation X recovery boosts homeownership rate

Jennifer Lee, senior economist for BMO Capital Markets, was upbeat after the data release. “The streak of consensus-beating data continues,” she wrote. “One can’t say that it was a rebound from the hurricane-stricken areas as all four regions saw gains in the month. The strong job market is clearly giving confidence a boost. Look for residential construction to add to U.S. GDP growth in Q4, which would be the first time since the first quarter.”