Of millennials aged 18 to 34, 64% express some level of worry that they will have trouble affording their rent or mortgage, according to a survey by Think Finance.
Additionally, the same percentage worry that they will never be able to buy a home, the Fort Worth, Texas-based analytics firm found.
The survey was conducted online among 1,021 Americans by Harris Interactive, on behalf of Think Finance.
Survey: 64% of millennials worry about buying a home | HousingWire.
As the spring home buying season transitions into summer, month-over-month inventories are rising faster than they were as sellers respond to price increases at a faster pace than earlier in the buying season. On a national basis, both list prices and Inventories rose in last month, according to Realtor.com’s May data.
Inventories have risen by about 25 percent since the beginning of the year, signaling a potential end to a sellers’ market and a greater balance between market supply and demand. The monthly increases in the for-sale inventory that took place in the past two months are among the highest observed since Realtor.com has been collecting these data.
In May the inventory deficit fell to 10.11 percent on a year-over-year basis. Realtor.com’s inventory (1,852,740) was larger in May than it has been in ten months.
“We are seeing large regional markets across the country leading the way to national recovery. These regions are acting as a microcosm for what’s slowly happening in the larger real estate market,” said Steve Berkowitz, chief executive officer of Move. “Overall, we’re seeing seller confidence beginning to respond to consumer demand. Nationally, there are more homes going on the market for a shorter amount of time. And this is happening in our hot markets on a much larger scale.”
The nationwide median list price rose to $199,000 in May, the highest level since mid-2009. On a year-over-year basis, the median list price was up by almost 5 percent. At the same time, the average age of the for-sale inventory dropped on both a monthly and year-over-year basis, reflecting a surge of new property listings.
The median age of the inventory fell to 79 days in May, down by 2.47 percent over the month and by 13.19 percent on a year-over-year basis. It’s the youngest median age of inventory ever reported by Realtor.com.
Super-heated markets are in the process of cooling down as a surge in recent listings is a greater balance between supply and demand. For example, the month-over-month median list price increase in the top 10 markets in the nation, which includes 7 California markets, dropped from an average of 7 percent in April to just 3 percent in May, while the size of their for-sale inventories rose by an average of 13 percent.
On a year-over-year basis, median list prices in May were up by 1 percent or more in 103 of the 146 MSAs covered by Realtor.com, and were up by 5 percent or more in 71 MSAs. Only 3 markets experienced a decline of more than 5 percent. These results represent a steady improvement since the beginning of the year, with an increasing number of markets registering increasingly larger list price gains.
Inventories Hit Ten Month High | RealEstateEconomyWatch.com.
Have you ever been asked to show the return on investment (ROI) for your social media work?
Have you had trouble giving an exact number to explain your ROI or even set quantitative goals for your social media?
25% of marketers said that their biggest marketing challenge was finding the ROI of their marketing activities.
In this article, I’ll show you how to tweak some of your social media actions with your business goals in mind and make them easier to tie to your ROI.
Social media is an important channel to promote any content you create. Whether you’ve created an ebook, blog post, webinar or white paper, you should promote it through social media.
Tap into your social audience whether you’re on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,Google+ or Pinterest.
Social Media Examiner uses Twitter to share content and generate traffic.
As you can see on Twitter, it’s important to link to all of your content with your tweets. And remember to include hashtags to gain further visibility on Twitter.
For other social channels such as Facebook or Google+, take advantage of the visual real estate you have and include an engaging photo.
Social Media Examiner adds the image of the report on a Facebook update.
On LinkedIn, post your content in marketing groups that are discussing similar marketing principles.
Is one of your goals for your business to engage potential prospects on social media? Then you’ll want to make sure you use each social media platform in the best way to connect with them.
Part of tying your social media efforts to ROI is to understand what actually comes from social media. You may be promoting an offer across multiple channels, but without understanding if it’s successful or unsuccessful through social media or another channel, it’s hard to plan future campaigns.
One way to attribute campaigns to social media is to tag the URL so you know it comes from social.
In the example below, you can see that the link was promoted on social media because of the UTM tags in the URL line at the top that say “twitter” and “social.”
Link to landing page coming from social.
A UTM tag allows you to add identifying information to your URL that will help youkeep track of the source the link is coming from. By doing this, you’ll be able to properly track what comes from social media vs. other channels.
Is one of your goals to understand how your social media is working for you? Then you’ll want to be sure to track the traffic that comes from social media to see what’s working and what needs to be tweaked.
Another way to find out where your customers are first hearing about your company is through surveys. Include a question that asks how your customers found your company at strategic points of contact. This will help you find out where your visitors first found your company.
In the image below from Born Free, you can see the options for their survey.
Here’s an example of a survey that answers the question “How did you hear about us?”
Of course, when you gather this information from your customers, you can use it to tie into measuring your social media ROI. And it can also be helpful when planning which marketing resources should be used more heavily.
Is one of your business goals to get more leads from social media? Then be sure toinclude a tracking mechanism, such as asking your clients where they first heard about you.
Don’t forget about using one of the newest social media platforms, Google+. SEO consultants have proven that having a presence on Google+, Google Places andGoogle Authorship can help your SEO. And good SEO translates into better online visibility for your business.
In the case of Google Authorship, your content (especially when you upload a picture) may appear at the top of search engine results.
Here’s an example. Twitter announced that it’s opening its advertising platform to all users in the United States. When you search for “social media twitter advertising,” the first article to appear after a New York Times article and sponsored results is an article that is pulled in from Google+ with an image.
Search results for “social media twitter advertising.”
Also, remember Google pulls in data from social media to make sure that its results are also influenced by social activity.
Appearing higher up on the page on Google’s search results directly influences your business ROI because most people do not click past the first page on Google results. Having your results appear there will drive more traffic to your website.
Is one of your business goals to get more web traffic? Then you’ll want to optimize your presence on Google’s platforms and track how visible your business is in their search engine results.
Use the best social media tactics to tie activity to your ROI.
Remember, you don’t want to fall into thinking that social media is a panacea to cure all of your business’s problems. And don’t expect to see immediate results.
How to Improve Your Social Media Marketing Return on Investment | Social Media Examiner.
Do you want more traffic to your blog?
Are you struggling to catch the attention of more readers?
Does this sound familiar? You write an amazing piece of content. You made sure tocraft an attention-grabbing headline. You share the link on Twitter, Facebook, even Google+.
Then you wait in breathless anticipation for your share count to skyrocket. Except it doesn’t.
Never fear, in this article you’ll find fresh ideas to generate buzz and get your posts noticed.
Use a two-pronged approach with a variety of platforms and different types of media to get your post shared. Image source: iStockPhoto.
Everyone is using Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn to promote their content. It’s tempting to focus only on these four networks because they have popularity and community numbers on their side.
However, you get a competitive advantage when you share your content on smaller or less well-known networks. These sites often have active, focused audiences and offer less competition for attention, so your content will stand out.
Here are some examples of smaller networks:
Intel on Empire Avenue.
Sharing a link to your post isn’t enough to guarantee that it gets read. You need togive users a compelling reason to click your link.
Use one or more of these outside-the-box, creative methods to promote your posts with images, audio and video.
Available for iPhone and Android devices, Dubbler offers a simple way to record up to 60 seconds of audio on your phone, and then share it with other Dubbler community members.
Dubbler brings the simplicity and fun of audio to the social world. Record your voice, add a filter or photo and share with your friends.
The app includes voice filters and lets you add a cover image.
Spark interest in your blog post and record an audio message that communicates your excitement and passion about the content in a way that text or static images can’t.
Add an image, enter your blog post URL in the description and you’ve got a ready-made sound bite that can be shared with the Dubbler community, as well as Facebook and Twitter.
5 Creative Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog Posts | Social Media Examiner.
Despite the fact that inventory improved in April, and will have improved again in May, Redfin anticipates a lull in sales this summer. Months of bidding wars and record-low inventory earlier this year has finally taken a toll on some buyers. Rising interest rates are likely discouraging some buyers as well, writes Redfin.
Month over month, the number of customers taking tours fell 3.0% from April, compared to a 2.2% loss between April and May in 2012. Meanwhile, the number of customers making offers dropped 2.1% from April to May, also slightly more than last year’s 1.1% decline.
The last time the housing market was this hot in Phoenix and Las Vegas, the buyers pushing up prices were mostly small time. Nowadays, they are big time — Wall Street big.
Large investment firms have spent billions of dollars over the last year buying homes in some of the nation’s most depressed markets. The influx has been so great, and the resulting price gains so big, that ordinary buyers are feeling squeezed out. Some are already wondering if prices will slump anew if the big money stops flowing.
“The growth is being propelled by institutional money,” said Suzanne Mistretta, an analyst at Fitch Ratings. “The question is how much the change in prices really reflects market demand, rather than one-off market shifts that may not be around in a couple years.”
Wall Street played a central role in the last housing boom by supplying easy — and, in retrospect, risky — mortgage financing. Now, investment companies like the Blackstone Group have swooped in, buying thousands of houses in the same areas where the financial crisis hit hardest.
Blackstone, which helped define a period of Wall Street hyperwealth, has bought some 26,000 homes in nine states. Colony Capital, a Los Angeles-based investment firm, is spending $250 million each month and already owns 10,000 properties. With little fanfare, these and other financial companies have become significant landlords on Main Street. Most of the firms are renting out the homes, with the possibility of unloading them at a profit when prices rise far enough.
While these investors have not touched many healthy real estate markets, they are among the biggest buyers in struggling areas of the country where housing prices have been increasing the fastest. Those gains, in turn, have been at the leading edge of rising home prices nationwide.
Some see the emergence of Wall Street buyers as a market-driven answer to the nation’s housing ills. Investment companies are buying up rundown homes at a time when ordinary people can’t or won’t.
Nationwide, 68 percent of the damaged homes sold in April went to investors, and only 19 percent to first-time home buyers, according to Campbell HousingPulse. That is helping to shore up prices and create confidence in the broader markets.
“When people write the story of this housing recovery, these investors will be seen to have helped put the floor under the housing market,” said David Bragg, an analyst at Green Street Advisors. “In some of the key markets, that contributed to the recovery.”
The story, though, often looks more complicated on the ground. Joe Cusumano, a real estate agent in Riverside County, Calif., said that in recent months 90 percent of his business had been for companies like Invitation Homes, a Blackstone subsidiary. Home values in Riverside County have risen by 15 percent in the last year, according to CoreLogic.
But Mr. Cusumano said he wondered if faraway investors would properly maintain the homes they buy. He said that Invitation Homes had been willing to put money into the properties, but he was not so sure about the other players. He also worries what will happen when these investors start selling, as they inevitably will.
Behind the Rise in House Prices, Wall Street Buyers – NYTimes.com.
Instead of fixing up an older home and hoping that a buyer likes the improvements, builders are welcoming buyers into the process much earlier, allowing them to customize the renovation with their choice of countertops, cabinets, colors, tile, and more, Time reports.
Normally, a model home is a brand-spanking new, never-lived-in property that serves as a showcase for a new real estate development. A company in Baltimore called Charm City Builders is in the process of building its own model home—only theirs is a rowhouse that’s more than 100 years old.
Boasting of spending up to $8 billion dollars to buy tens of thousands of foreclosures to convert into single family rentals, nearly 50 Wall Street investment firms set real estate markets on fire over the past 18 months. Now they are running for cover as soaring prices water down their return on investment.
The winds have already started to shift in the single-family rental business, according to data from RadarLogic. The composite price per square foot paid by institutional investors in 25 of the largest metropolitan area housing markets increased 14.4 percent year over year in March. Over the same period, asking prices for rents have increased just 2.4 percent, according to Trulia, Inc. As a result, yields on single-family rentals are declining.
During the twelve months ending March 2013, purchases of residential real estate by corporations, partnerships and investment trusts in the 25 metropolitan areas included in the RPX Composite increased 41 percent. To put this figure in context, purchases by all other buyers increased only two percent during the same time period. Across the 25 metropolitan areas, institutional investor purchases accounted for 12.2 percent of all property transactions in March 2013, up from 8.8 percent in March 2012, reported RadarLogic.
Conditions for purchasing investment properties have worked in most markets during the intervening weeks. Since March, the median year-over-year list price has risen 2.63 percent according to Realtor.com and much more in some markets where hedge funds have been active like Oakland (up 12.77 percent in April), Las Vegas (up 7.25 in April), Phoenix (up 4.09 percent in April) and Atlanta (up 2.94 percent in April).
A Bloomberg Businessweek article last week reported two smaller investment funds have curtailed purchases. Och-Ziff pulled out of the business last fall and Carrington Mortgage Holdings has stopped buying. The Bloomberg piece by John Gittelsohn reported that funds are buying property now, including homes sold by Carrington, for rents that yield 6 percent to 8 percent a year, before costs such as insurance, taxes and vacancies, according to Bruce Rose, Carrington’s CEO. Carrington’s model called for mid-single digit net returns on annual rents on an unlevered basis, according to Rose. While returns would vary by market, they would generally be in the mid- to high teens over the duration of the holding period, with the profit from home price appreciation.
However, a spokesman for the largest institutional, Blackstone, said, “We’re continuing to purchase homes where they fit into our business plan.”
Soaring Prices Slow Hedge Funds | RealEstateEconomyWatch.com.
In its latest Local Market Index for home pricing data, Homes.comreported that 96 out of 100 markets showed monthly improvement, a stark increase from the 75 out of 100 that saw gains in February.
However, on a year-over-year time period, 91 out of 100 markets reported a price increase in March, compared to 98 markets in February. According to Homes.com, the Northeast is largely to blame for this weakening.
Month-over-month and year-over-year, Honolulu, Hawaii, posted the largest increase, climbing 2.40 index points from February and 22.55 from last March.
On a regional scale, the distribution was fairly equitable, especially compared to last month when all of the top 10 increasing markets belonged to the Western region.
Homes.com: Local markets improving each month | HousingWire.
Why are home prices rising? One reason: a shortage of homes for sale.
But how can that be? After years of poor sales, shouldn’t there be a flood of potential sellers rushing to market as conditions improve?
That seems logical, but a study by Zillow , the housing and mortgage data firm, sheds light on a big part of the problem: the “effective” rate of underwater homes. Underwater means the mortgage borrower owes more than the home can fetch in a sale. To sell, the homeowner must come up with other money to make up the difference and retire the old loan. Many people just don’t have that much sitting around, or if they do they can’t bring themselves to tap their college or retirement funds.
Zillow says that at the end of the first quarter 25.4% of all homeowners with mortgages were underwater. On top of that 18.2% had less than 20% equity, meaning the mortgage balance exceeded 80% of the home’s value. Together, these two categories create an effective underwater rate of 43.6% – 22.3 million homes.
“These homeowners likely cannot afford a down payment for a new home, tying them to their current homes and contributing to inventory shortages,” Zillow says.