The best loss mitigation tool is winning the lottery.
CBS-Chicago recently told the story of Ricardo Cerezo out of Illinois.
Cerezo and his wife were about to lose their home to foreclosure when the pair discovered old lottery tickets stuffed into a cookie jar.
Cerezo’s wife told him to check the numbers or throw the tickets away.
Luckily, Cerezo checked his numbers — a move that resulted in millions of earnings overnight.
From 2008 to 2011, renters’ housing costs increased almost 6%, while their income fell 3.2% according to the Center for Housing Policy. More than 26% of working renters spent at least half their income on housing in 2011, up from about 23% in 2008, writes Bloomberg Businessweek.
One reason: There just aren’t enough affordable rental units to go around. In 2010, there were 5.1 million more low-income families than there were affordable units.
Prices nationwide rose nearly 6% last year — more than most ever expected, writes CNNMoney. While that has continued so far this year, leading builders to build again, prices in some places have risen faster than incomes. Eventually, they could fall back as homes become less affordable.
“If prices keeps going up at this rate for another six months, we will have a bubble, and people will get hurt,” Dean Baker, co-director of theCenter for Economic and Policy Research recently told Bloomberg.
The chief US economist for Deutsche Bank, Joseph LaVorgna, tweeted some great news a little while ago.
He push-posted an economic review of the housing industry that shows the recovery is doing even better than originally thought:
“We believe investors still do not fully appreciate the direct positive effects a rejuvenated housing
sector will have on the economic outlook,” according to the report LaVorgna is tweeting about.
“When combing through the GDP accounts, we estimate that total housing-related spending — beyond just residential construction — accounts for a much larger share of the economy than some market participants currently may believe,” the analysts write.
So the outlook remains bright, as HousingWire yesterday reported, but it’s still not as good as it once was, Deutsche Bank notes.
This 50½-acre property includes a 12-bedroom Victorian, French-renaissance mansion, 4,000 feet of water frontage on Long Island Sound and two offshore islands, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The listing marks the latest test of the ultra-high-end property market, which has seen several record-setting sales in recent years. Pricing in this stratosphere is an imprecise science, however, and it can be difficult for sellers to predict whether a nine-figure listing will lead to a nine-figure sale.
Connecticut mansion becomes most expensive home on market | HousingWire.
American Banker is reporting that Wells Fargo ($39.88 0.62%) andCitigroup ($51.45 0.84%) ‘halted’ most of their foreclosure sales in several states after evaluating the process against the backdrop of new guidance from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Reporters Jeff Horwitz and Kate Berry wrote that within two weeks of the OCC’s release of new guidance on minimum standards for foreclosure sales, Wells, Citi and JPMorgan ‘all but stopped’ foreclosure sales.
Since then, JPMorgan has picked them back up again.
American Banker: Wells, Citigroup halt foreclosure sales in several states | HousingWire.
A video is never guaranteed to go viral, but a few factors make it significantly more likely.
In the first few months of 2013, viral videos covered all kinds of topics: a serious look at female self-esteem, a silly competition between two Star Trek actors, and more. But according to Brian Shin, CEO of video analytics service Visible Measures, these and most other viral videos share at least two things in common: “discussability” and “relatability.”
For a video to be “discussable,” it usually features something shocking or surprising, which compels viewers to share it with others. Likewise, if a video contains something deeply human to which we can relate — even if it’s cuddling cats — we’re more likely to share it out. The two factors often go together.
We chatted with a couple viral video experts to learn what made these clips the biggest hits of the year, so far.
Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches” video is by far the most popular video of 2013 to date, with nearly 54 million views on YouTube and about 68 million views across the web, according to data from Visible Measures. That’s more impressive considering the video was released only a month ago.
Shin believes a few factors played into this video’s success. It’s deeply human, it sparked multiple spin-offs and it shares an incredibly powerful and positive message about the way women see their bodies, which people felt compelled to share.
“The message is something you really can’t be against,” he says. “That’s something everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon and feel good about. It’s a message that can’t be not shared.”
Pepsi and others have pulled pranks in their ads, but this video was in a league of its own. Jeff Gordon dresses in disguise to take a car salesman for a wild ride.
“‘Prankverts,’ in which brands create their own stunts involving supposedly innocent members of the public, have been a really hot trend this year,” says David Waterhouse, global head of content and PR at Unruly Media, a video marketing company. “And the most successful of these new wave of commercials is Pepsi ‘Test Drive.'”
The secret sauce behind the video’s success, according to Waterhouse, is that it elicited so many different emotional reactions for viewers. “For most ‘prankverts’, the most common emotional responses are ‘hilarity’ and ‘surprise,'” he says. “However, when we tested ‘Test Drive,’ we found that it went one step further by adding ‘exhilaration’ into the mix. That meant, even if you didn’t find it funny or particularly surprising, you could still be exhilarated by the intense action and the awesome driving skills.”
As if that wasn’t enough, Waterhouse notes there was also a debate about whether the car salesman in the video was aware of the prank or not. That increased the number of people talking about and watching the video.
For a few weeks, the “Harlem Shake” was almost inescapable. Waterhouse says 40,000 “Harlem Shake” videos released in the first 11 days after the meme exploded; people viewed them 175 million times, collectively.
The reason for this success, according to Waterhouse, is because it was “so easy to replicate. It’s short, has a very easy structure to follow and a catchy song intro that makes it instantly recognizable,” he says. “Its simplicity is the cornerstone of its success.”
The Maker version of the “Harlem Shake,” seen above, was the most popular take on the meme early on, according to data from YouTube. Shin suggests this was a combination of good timing — it was one of the earlier videos in the meme — and the fact that it served as an inspiration for many of the videos that came after.
It has been another busy week as summer approaches, and everyone gets restless for the warm weather. If you’ve been too preoccupied soaking up some rays to check out the news, don’t worry — we’ve got you covered.
We at Mashable have rounded up the most important updates in tech and social media to keep you informed. So read below for tons of digital media resources, including everything you need to know about the Google I/O keynote and a great roundup of apps to help you get around your city.
5 Security Tips for Facebook Mobile
You could be doing a lot more to protect your public and private Facebook information, especially if you’re a frequent mobile user. Find out how.
25 Startups in Unlikely Places Around the Globe
The world’s cities are all trying to emulate Silicon Valley’s example and become the next global hub. We’ve rounded up 25 startups — from Russia to New Zealand, Lagos to the Himalayas and Krakow to Uruguay — to show that innovation is not about being in the right place, it’s about doing the right thing.
10 Best Users to Follow on Vine
We highlight of some of Vine’s best accounts, which feature creative uses of stop-motion, videos of beautiful drawings and more.
11 Tips and Tricks for Spotify Power Users
Learn how to become a Spotify power user, including how to discover new music, interact with friends and followers, and add a bevy of useful apps.
8 Things VCs Think About When Valuing Your Startup
How much is your company worth, and how are valuations set? Mashable spoke with VCs about what goes into the equation.
8 Hot Gadgets to Supercharge Your SummerÂ
Whether your M.O is to head to the nearest pool, venture out to the local lake or just bicycle around town, take some gadgets along for the ride.
5 Services That Will Sequence Your DNA
If you’re looking to learn more about your genes, there are several options you can pursue that will ship directly to you.
A new analysis of institutional investor purchases in Atlanta over the past year found that hedge funds are driving up prices and depleting inventories, yet they are still able to buy properties for less than the market rate.
An analysis of hedge funds’ impact by Radar Logic, a real estate data and analytics company that tracks housing values for major U.S. metropolitan areas and publishes the Residential Property IndexTM (RPXTM) to enable real estate to be traded as a liquid asset, via property derivatives marketed by major financial institutions, found that hedge funds’ impact on the Atlanta market over the past year has increased substantially.
Some key findings from the study:
Also, institutional investors are paying up and moving up in size relative to a year ago. In the past year, monthly hedge fund purchases have increased 148 percent in the Atlanta market. Even more interesting is the finding that average investor price per transaction has increased by 65 percent over the past year compared to 15 percent for the market as a whole.
Hedge Funds Drive up Atlanta Prices | RealEstateEconomyWatch.com.