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NFHA: Greatest threat to fair housing is government’s failure to enforce the law

“This is a pivotal year for fair housing,” said Lisa Rice, National Fair Housing Alliance president and CEO. “As the 2018 trends report shows, we must put an end to the many institutionalized barriers that prevent too many families in this country from fair access to housing.”

More and more, this outlook is becoming the norm for fair housing groups, saying it is time to end fair housing discrimination.

In April, the Fair Housing Act marked its 50th anniversary, a marker celebrated by fair housing groups across the country and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Now, the NFHA released its 2018 Fair Housing Trends Report: Making Every Neighborhood a Place of Opportunity.

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Matic appoints Shaz Kojouri VP of legal and compliance

Digital insurance agency and 2018 HousingWire Tech100 winner Matic announced recently it has named Shahrzad “Shaz” Kojouri as vice president of legal and compliance.

Kojouri, a licensed attorney with more than 15 years of experience in corporate compliance, will have responsibility over corporate governance, regulatory compliance and vendor management at Matic. Prior to joining Matic, Kojouri was assistant general counsel for nonprofit student loan provider AccessLex Institute.

Before joining AccessLex Institute, Kojouri oversaw regulatory compliance testing and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau readiness for mortgage lender New Penn Financial. She joined New Penn in 2009, in the aftermath of the subprime mortgage crisis, and guided the lender through intense regulatory changes.

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Is the rent finally too damn high? Rent households fall again, homeownership holds steady

Is a combination of high rents and shifting demographics driving a move from renting to buying?

The latest data from the Census Bureau shows that may be exactly what’s happening.

On Thursday, the Census released its quarterly report on residential vacancies and homeownership. And the report had some good news and bad news, depending on which industry you’re in.

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Here are Q1 2018’s homeownership drivers

The homeownership rate was not statistically different from last year in the first quarter of 2018, according to the latest Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership report from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The homeownership rate increased just slightly to 64.2% in the first quarter, up from 63.6% in the first quarter of 2017 and unchanged from the fourth quarter, the report showed.

As the chart below shows, these rates remain significantly below historical levels and only began increasing once again in 2016.

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FHFA: Home prices still on the rise

Home prices are still on the rise, increasing once again in February, according to the latest monthly House Price Index from the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Home prices increased 0.6% from January, the report showed. This is a slight slowdown from the 0.8% increase in January, which was revised upward to 0.9%. Annually, home prices increased 7.2% from February 2017.

The chart below shows home prices continue to increase each month, but March came down slightly from January’s nearly one-year high.

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This is what sells for $1.23 million in the San Francisco area

Think home prices in your area are unaffordable? If you live in California, especially the Bay Area, you might be right. For everyone else, reading this article might help you feel better about home prices in your area.

A home just sold in the Bay Area for $1.23 million. It was condemned, infested with mildew and has holes in the roof, according to a new report from Travis Fedschun for Fox News.

Don’t believe me? You don’t have to. Check out the picture of the home below.

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Construction sees most growth since first quarter of 2016

Construction growth saw a surge in the fourth quarter of 2017 to the highest level since the beginning of 2016, according to the latest release from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The report, Gross Domestic Product by Industry: Fourth Quarter and Annual 2017, shows which of the 22 different industry groups contributed to the 2.9% increase in GDP in the fourth quarter.

A total of 16 of the 22 groups, construction included, posted a positive contribution to GDP growth in the fourth quarter, the report showed.

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Altisource names Patrick McClain senior vice president, Hubzu Auction Services

Altisource, a provider of services and technologies to the mortgage and real estate industries, announced this week that it has named Patrick McClain as senior vice president, Hubzu Auction Services.

In his new role, McClain will be responsible for driving the growth of Hubzu’s residential online marketing and auction business. McClain will report to Joseph Davila, president of servicer solutions, the company said in a press release.

McClain will oversee product innovation for the company’s online auction, live auction, short sale, claims without conveyance of title and national brokerage services businesses along with Hubzu’s client management program and business development strategy, the company explained. 

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New construction surges – but not for single-family

New construction surged in March, however the increase did not carry over into the single-family sector, according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Privately owned housing starts increased to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.32 million in March. This is up 1.9% from February’s 1.3 million in February and up a full 10.9% from 1.19 million starts in March 2017.

However, these increases did not transfer over to single-family housing starts, which decreased 3.7% from 900,000 in February to 867,000 in March, according to the report.

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Mile-high appreciation

Whether it’s ranking America’s highest rates of real estate appreciation or just its highest real estate, Washington and Colorado are top of the heap.

Those states, which coincidentally have eight of the 10 highest peaks in the continental U.S., have six of the 10 Metropolitan Statistical Areas topping the recent March 1, 2018 VeroFORECAST projections from Veros Real Estate Solutions.

This is the 15th year that VeroFORECAST has provided these data-rich projections to help U.S. lenders anticipate risk and facilitate loan portfolio management. This most recent report is based on data from single-family residences, condos and townhouses in 342 MSAs. That equates to nearly 1,000 counties, over 13,600 ZIP codes, and approximately 82% of the nation’s population.

In last week’s column I drilled down into what is driving Seattle’s long run of property value appreciation. This week, we upturn our gaze to the mile-high city of Denver and the high-performing Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, Colorado metro area.

As I detailed in my first column for this HousingWire series, four of the five MSAs with the highest projected appreciation over the next 12 months are in Washington State. Ranked fourth for projected appreciation at 9.9%, Colorado’s Denver-Aurora-Broomfield MSA rounds out the top five.

THE NUMBERS ON DENVER-AURORA BROOMFIELD

The 12-month projected appreciation rate of 9.9% for the Denver-Aurora-Broomfield metro area puts it fourth among the 342 MSAs included in the March Q1 2018 VeroFORECAST report. This shows a half-percent rise in the projected appreciation rate from the previous report in December 2017, when this MSA was the sixth highest (behind a solid top five in Washington State) at 9.4%. By comparison, three years earlier, in the December 2014 report, the Denver-Aurora-Broomfield MSA was 17th on the list at just 6.9%.

This is one of the strongest markets in the country, with an extremely tight supply of homes at approximately 1.4 months and a population, currently at 2.81 million, that continues to grow rapidly. Its impressively low unemployment rate is 2.9% and, according to DataUSA, the median household income grew 5.1% between 2014 and 2015.

Charting Colorado home price fluctuations, since the beginning of this century, alongside those in New York, California and the nation, shows that the Centennial State took the shallowest dip as a result of the financial crisis beginning in late 2007. Even with that relatively mild depression, the state is now enjoying property appreciation rates that rival California’s. And, as our newest VeroFORECAST shows, no California metro is projected to outpace Denver-Aurora-Broomfield over the next 12 months.

co home price
(Click to enlarge, source: U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency)

According to the National Association of Realtors, the median property value in the Denver-Aurora-Broomfield MSA, which includes Denver County, Arapahoe County, and Jefferson County is $414,700. DataUSA’s most recent home ownership figure was over 62%. With extremely limited inventory, it’s a seller’s market. According to Apartmentlist.com, there isn’t any relief in the rental market, either. Denver rents are 12.6% above the national average and the statewide median monthly rate has risen more than 20% since 2014.

THE VIEW FROM THE FIELD

“In Denver’s scorching-hot real estate market, the supply of homes is no longer measured by traditional standards such as months of inventory, but in numbers of days,” said Anthony Rael, a REMAX Alliance broker in Arvada, Colorado. “Currently we are at ten days for homes priced from $200,000 to $399,999 and three weeks for homes priced between $400,000 and $499,999. The scarcity of available inventory is turning potential buyers into MMA fighters as they savagely negotiate to purchase a single property. In the higher priced Luxury Market, year-to-date sales of million-dollar plus homes have tripled during the last four years, which is a contributing factor in the latest record-setting average sales price for the Denver metro area.”

Rael added, in regard to his MMA reference, that buyers in his market have been offering “seller assurances” to guarantee a certain cash out-of-pocket amount if the property appraisal comes in short. So in the case of a property listed at $300,000 that gets pushed to $350,000 with an appraisal at $325,000, the buyer is now contractually obligated to make up the $25,000 difference, guaranteeing the seller the $350,000.

“Additional pot-sweeteners buyers have used to sway sellers,” Rael said, “are offers of tickets to Hamilton and Broncos games, expensive dinners, weekend getaways and so on…”

GET ALL THE DATA

Additional forecasts and infographics for U.S. markets are available for download and upon request. Visit Veros.com for the full VeroFORECAST report. Real estate and mortgage professionals and those in the financial services sector who wish to receive either the complete quarterly reports or regional reports as they are released can subscribe. For more information email communications@veros.com or call 714.415.6300, option 6.

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