March 2018 Monthly Archive

According to a new report from International Living, based on affordability, value, safety and lifestyle, these five islands made their list of the Top 5 Caribbean islands to live in 2018.

According to JLL, Russia's real estate investments reached $728 million in Q1 2018, down 8% Year-over-Year from $792 million invested in Q1 2017.

The National Multifamily Housing Council and National Apartment Association issued the following statement on passage of the Omnibus Spending Bill this past week.

This represents the lowest level of homebuyer demand in 11 months and the largest month-over-month decline on record for the Demand Index, for which Redfin has data going back to January 2013.

According to global hotel industry consultant STR, there are 184,299 hotels comprising 16,966,280 million rooms around the world in the first quarter of 2018. That number of rooms represents a 17.7% increase over the last 10 years.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, the following firms were the top commercial and multifamily mortgage originators in the U.S. during 2017:

Orlando's median home price rose 10 percent in February 2018 when compared to February 2017, while sales held steady with a 1 percent increase. Inventory declined by nearly 9 percent compared to this time last year.

Independent mortgage banks and mortgage subsidiaries of chartered banks in the U.S. reported a net gain of $237 on each loan they originated in the fourth quarter of 2017, down from a reported gain of $929 per loan in the third quarter of 2017.

Residential median rent across the nation is accelerating at its fastest pace in 21 months. Over the past year, the median rent in the U.S. rose 2.8 percent to a Zillow Rent Index (ZRI) of $1,445.

Sales of newly built, single-family homes remained virtually unchanged, inching down 0.6 percent in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 618,000 units after upward revisions to the January, December and November reports.

According to the Miami Association of Realtors, Miami existing condominium and total luxury home sales increased in February 2018.

According to Freddie Mac's latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey, there was little change to U.S. mortgage rates after falling for the first time in 2018 last week.

ATTOM Data Solutions has just released this week their Q1 2018 Single Family Rental Market Report, which ranks the best U.S. markets for buying single family rental properties in 2018.

Despite consistently low inventory levels and faster price growth, existing-home sales bounced back in February 2018 after two straight months of declines. Sizeable sales increases in the South and West offset declines in the Northeast and Midwest.

A tight vacancy environment and rising rents continues to drive larger occupiers to seek office space beyond Central into other submarkets on Hong Kong Island, including Hong Kong East.

The level of commercial and multifamily mortgage debt outstanding in the U.S. at the end of 2017 was $3.18 trillion, $200.3 billion higher than at the end of 2016, or an increase of 6.7 percent.

Investment in the U.S. data center sector reached record levels in 2017. Total investment in 2017 totaled more than $20 billion (inclusive of all single asset, portfolio and entity-level/M&A transactions), surpassing the volume for the three previous years combined.

According to the California Association of Realtors, led by the San Francisco Bay region, California home sales registered healthy gains in February 2018 on both a monthly and annual basis after January's weak start.

U.S. homeowners with mortgages (which account for roughly 63 percent of all properties) have seen their equity increase 12.2 percent year over year, representing a gain of $908.4 billion since the fourth quarter of 2016.

Aa decline in multifamily starts pushed overall housing production down 7.0 percent in February 2018 to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.24 million units.