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☆ Signs of pain as easy cash era ends are growing
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

LONDON, March 30 (Reuters) - The easy-cash era is over and markets are feeling the pinch from the sharpest jump in interest rate in decades. Since late 2021, big developed economies including the United States, euro area and Australia have raised rates by almost 3,300 basis points collectively. Japanese, European and U.S. banks stocks, while off recent lows, are still well below levels seen just before SVB's collapse. Reuters Graphics2/ DARLINGS NO MOREAs the SVB collapse showed, stress in the tech sector can quickly ripple out across the economy. Reuters Graphics4/ CRYPTO WINTERHaving benefited from an influx of cash during the easy-money era, cryptocurrencies have felt pain as rates rose last year, then gained on recent signs that tightening could end soon.

☆ The US housing market is tanking - and the banking fiasco could make things worse, RH CEO Gary Friedman says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Theron Mohamed | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The US housing market has slowed dramatically over the past year, RH CEO Gary Friedman said. Soaring interest rates have hit housing demand, and the banking fiasco is a fresh blow, he said. Friedman said the outlook is less clear now than in 2008, and he urged the Fed not to tank the economy. "The fact is, we've been in a massive housing recession for the past year," Friedman continued, adding that "accelerating weakness" in the sector could weigh on his company's revenue and profits for several quarters. Several experts have sounded the alarm on the housing market and economy.

☆ These are the 10 top cities Americans are looking to move to, according to a report — and of them 5 are in Florida
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Florida dominates the list of US cities that Americans want to relocate to, according to Redfin. Four other Florida cities, including Tampa and Orlando, made the top ten. Miami was the most popular destination for Americans looking at property listings in a different metro area to where they currently lived, the report said. Four other Florida cities – Tampa, Orlando, Cape Coral, and North Port-Sarasota – also made it to the top ten. The top ten destinations for Americans looking to relocate outside their metro area, according to Redfin, are:Miami, Florida Phoenix, Arizona Las Vegas, Nevada Sacramento, California Tampa, Florida Orlando, Florida Cape Coral, Florida, Dallas, Texas North Port-Sarasota, Florida Houston, TexasSome people, however, are bucking the trend by moving out of the Sunshine State.

☆ Redfin CEO on housing market: Banking crisis has spooked customers
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailRedfin CEO on housing market: Banking crisis has spooked customersGlenn Kelman, Redfin CEO, joins ‘Closing Bell: Overtime’ to discuss why home prices are falling despite inventories being low.

☆ Buying a home is only going to get harder this spring as hopeful house hunters get thwarted by fewer options and still-high prices
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Alcynna Lloyd | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

But buyers won't have many homes to pick from, which can lead to competition that keeps prices high. Owners are reluctant to sell because they would have to give up locked-in low mortgage rates. Considering growing expectations that the Federal Reserve will stop, or even reverse, its benchmark rate hikes this year, mortgage rates may fall further in the weeks to come. Owners happy with their homes and low, locked-in mortgage rates, aren't moving much. More competition, or demand, for a smaller number of homes, or supply, usually keeps prices high.

☆ Housing market in tech hubs cooling faster than other parts of US - report
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

March 27 (Reuters) - Housing markets in tech hubs are cooling more rapidly than other parts of the United States amid a wave of layoffs in the technology sector and elevated mortgage rates, according to real estate broker Redfin Corp's (RDFN.O) report on Monday. Seattle, San Jose, Austin and Phoenix are among metros that have been affected the most as high mortgage rates, turmoil in the tech sector and unavailability of homes deter buyers, the report stated. Redfin agents report that uncertainty around the stability of the banking and tech industries is exacerbating nerves in some buyers and sellers. The New York metro area is likely to feel the impact of banking turmoil as many of its residents work in the financial sector, according to the report. "Banking instability could dampen homebuying demand in the area as finance workers worry about their industry," the report added.

☆ JFK and Jackie Kennedy's first home as a married couple is going up for sale in DC. The listing includes candid photos of the couple.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-26 | by ( Katie Balevic | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: 1 min

The home was the Kennedy's first as a newlywed couple. John F. Kennedy says goodbye to his wife, Jackie, who is on her way to classes at Georgetown University's Foreign Service School. One of the old homes of former President John F. Kennedy is about to be listed publicly for sale in Washington, DC, and the listing includes candid photos of his life with Jackie Kennedy early in their marriage. The home at 3321 Dent Place NW, where the Kennedys "signed their first lease as a newly married couple," will be listed this week for $2 million, according to Redfin. The broker, Michael Brennan, did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.

☆ The Fed is about to deliver a momentous policy decision. It'll be a choice between keeping the focus on inflation or stemming the banking chaos.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Max Adams | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Powell and the Fed may acknowledge that monetary policy has caused some pain, and even add that more may be coming. What's your prediction for today's Fed decision and what Powell might say about the recent banking tumult? A market analyst says investors need to have some key questions answered by the Fed today. Market watchers should pay attention over whether the central bank sees the SVB collapse and resulting crisis as deflationary. The governor of Florida has proposed legislation to ban a central bank digital currency and has called on like-minded states to do the same.

☆ Looking to buy a house? Follow these 7 tips to ensure you get the best deal, according to economists at Redfin
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( William Edwards | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Some tips include asking for concessions, buying new, waiting, and buying in cash. In a recent post, Redfin economists shared their top tips for homebuyers right now. 7 tips for homebuyersThe first tip from Chen Zhao, Redfin's economics research team lead, is to wait if you can. Considering how high mortgage rates are, a rate buydown is a concession that could help shoppers buy themselves some time for rates to fall. One counterpoint to this is that home values just about everywhere have also climbed since the start of the pandemic.

☆ Home prices fell annually for the first time since 2012, but the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is bringing more buyers to the housing market
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Filip De Mott | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

But March has seen a shift in the market with the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank. More homebuyers came into the market as mortgage rates dropped. "It's worth noting that the housing market shifted in March following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank," Redfin said in its report. That caused mortgage rates to drop, which brought more homebuyers back to the market." The National Association of Realtors has also come to a similar conclusion on mortgage rates and the banking crisis.

☆ Lightning Round: I'm not recommending any companies that are losing money, says Cramer
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

In this videoShare Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailLightning Round: I'm not recommending any companies that are losing money, says CramerMad Money host Jim Cramer weighs in on all manner of stocks, including SoFi, Geron, Phillips 66, FREYR Battery, Redfin, Steel Dynamics and Walgreens Boots Alliance.

☆ The typical home for sale in the US has had its price cut, been on the market for months, and comes with at least one sweetener for buyers
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Alcynna Lloyd | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

This year's home buyers still have to dig deep to afford the typical home for sale in the US. With the median home-sale price at $352,750 and mortgage rates hovering above 6%, housing affordability is at an all-time low. But that doesn't mean prospective buyers have to throw in the towel. There are more homes available for sale, and many home sellers are taking additional and unusual steps to sell their properties. In short, housing market dynamics are shifting, giving some buyers a better shot at achieving homeownership.

☆ A tiny-home village with $1,000-a-month rents will allow teachers and firefighters to afford to live in the community they serve
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Kelsey Neubauer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

A lack of homes in Dover, New Hampshire has pushed prices up and made housing unaffordable for many. They are building 44 tiny homes that will cost between $1,000 and $1,200 a month to rent. They shouldn't have to live an hour away and then come serve you every day and then drive home." "A lot of affordable-housing projects are killed because of overhead costs," Maggie Randolph told the Concord Monitor. In Colorado, for example, ski towns like Breckenridge — where the ultrawealthy flocked to amid the pandemic — have gotten so expensive that the government is building housing that its snowplow workers can actually afford.

☆ A 24-year-old Black tattoo artist explains why she and many others are fleeing Austin: 'The soul of the city has changed'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-12 | by ( Alcynna Lloyd | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Imani Tatum is leaving Austin after living there for the past three years. "I wanted to create a place where specifically marginalized people could be tattooed, while being safe and enjoying themselves," Tatum told Insider. Tatum said she's done: she's closing Nana's Prayers, packing her bags and heading to a new city in May. But affordable housing remains scarce in the city, and that's driving out many minority residents, like Tatum. While price growth has slowed in Austin, the city's median home price still sits at a staggering $525,000, $140,000 above the US median sale price, according to real estate brokerage Redfin.

☆ Luxury home sales plunge 45%, with Miami and the Hamptons hit hardest
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Diana Olick | In Dianaolick | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The U.S. housing market is taking a hard hit from higher mortgage rates, and luxury home sales are seeing the worst of it. Sales of luxury homes dropped 45% during the three months ended Jan. 31 compared with the same period the year before, according to Redfin, a real estate brokerage. Redfin defines luxury homes as those estimated to be in the top 5% based on the estimated market value. Miami, which had seen a massive influx of wealthy buyers migrating from the Northeast in the earlier days of the Covid pandemic, saw sales drop nearly 69%. While not all luxury buyers use mortgages, they are affected by the broader economy, and more specifically the stock market.

☆ A housing downturn is causing a reckoning in the once-hot cluster of proptech startups that let homebuyers pay all cash and win bidding wars
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

In that market, all-cash offers were king to sellers because they ensured quicker, stress-free closings. According to Redfin, all-cash offers quadrupled the chances that a homebuyer would win a bidding war. Ribbon has since paused its all-cash offering, but some of the other firms that Insider featured last year are still making all-cash offers. FlyhomesFlyhomes is a real-estate brokerage that featured all-cash-offer services for years and distinguished itself in December 2021 with a free all-cash-offer product. "The value to the buyer is different than in a seller's market," Garg said in the email.

☆ FTX might not have been the only crypto exchange using customer money for other things
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

As if the universe knew that I hadn't written a crypto newsletter in some time, here we go: Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, has been under some scrutiny this week. The world's largest crypto exchange reportedly transferred nearly $1.8 billion in stablecoin collateral to hedge funds, the report said. Any move by Binance to shuffle customer money around isn't exactly illegal, but the risks are apparent in the wake of the FTX disaster, part of which involved the exchange using customer money for making big bets via its affiliated trading arm. That account, Reuters reported, was used to send $400 million to a trading firm managed by Zhao. In other news:Traders work on the main trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange March 21, 2007.

☆ People are fleeing Arizona's heat for upstate New York and Florida's flooding for North Carolina. Have you moved over climate concerns?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Dan Latu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Nearly 40% of Americans moving say climate concerns have influenced their decision, said Redfin. Have you moved states over concerns about the climate crisis? We want to hear from you: Have you moved over concerns about the climate crisis? Tell us in this form how the climate crisis is affecting you and where you live. An estimated 30 million Americans moved between March 2021 and March 2022, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of the latest available US Census Bureau data.

☆ The problem with home-flipping giants
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Aj Latrace | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Meanwhile, the corporate scalpers of the housing market — companies that buy and relist homes by the thousands without doing much, if any, work on them to make a profit — are struggling. Last week, two of the biggest remaining corporate home-flipping companies, Opendoor and Offerpad, reported dismal earnings, another sign that their business model is incredibly risky. Kelman also said one "problem is that iBuying is a staggering amount of money and risk for a now-uncertain benefit. At its core, the main business model of home-flipping firms doesn't create a ton of immediate value. Opendoor, Offerpad, and other companies that rushed to purchase homes are now discounting the asking prices of those homes to get them off their books.

☆ Austin is the No. 1 fastest-growing U.S city for millionaires—see where else made the list
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Celia Fernandez | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Henley and Partner's 2023 wealth report found that America's fastest growing cities for millionaires all experienced a 70% millionaire growth from 2012 to 2022. According to Henley and Partner's 2023 wealth report, cities like Austin, Texas, and Scottsdale, Arizona, are gaining millionaire residents, while bigger cities like Chicago, and New York City are losing them. 1 city on the list is Austin, Texas. According to the report, the Texas city saw a millionaire growth rate of 102% from 2012 to 2022. Thanks to that influx, Austin has also become a growth market for luxury real estate, according to Henley and Partner's 2023 wealth report.

The case for falling rentSomething strange is happening in the apartment market. More than 971,000 apartment units were under construction across the US at the end of 2022, the second-largest number on record. There's only so much people are willing to pay,'" said Jon Leckie, a researcher for Rent, a platform that helps landlords market their properties. For now, though, the wave of supply that's already underway should keep rents in check over the next couple of years. Now, as landlords shift their focus from jacking up rents to filling up units, renters can once again look ahead to better days.

☆ Here are Monday's biggest analyst calls: Tesla, Alphabet, Apple, Nvidia, Best Buy, Zillow & more
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Michael Bloom | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Goldman Sachs upgrades Nomad Foods to buy from neutral Goldman said it sees an "attractive investment opportunity" to invest in the frozen food company. Goldman Sachs upgrades Willis Towers Watson to buy from neutral Goldman said it sees a robust turnaround for the insurance company. Barclays reiterates Tesla as overweight Barclays said it's standing by its buy rating heading into Tesla's investor event on March 1. Raymond James upgrades Frontier to strong buy from outperform Raymond James upgraded the cable company after its "impressive" earnings report. UBS reiterates Apple as buy UBS said its survey checks show Apple is the preferred brand in both the U.S. and China.

☆ People who moved to Tennessee for cheaper homes and a laid-back life say they're happy — for the most part
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-26 | by ( Jordan Pandy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

The 50-year Florida resident decided to pack up and move to Memphis, Tennessee, for a more manageable mortgage payment while on a fixed income. Foster said clients have recently moved to Tennessee from New York, New Jersey, and California. He traded snowy Buffalo for the ease of southern livingMichael and Danielle Ekstrum moved to Tennessee after becoming empty nesters in 2018. A retiree fed up with California's overcrowding bought a home in Tennessee without thinking twiceMichael and Bonnie Tyler moved from Sacramento, California, to Jonesborough, a historic town in eastern Tennessee. "There's too much traffic, too many people, it's way too expensive, and there's no water," Tyler told Insider.

☆ The mortgage rate you get depends partly on your credit score. Here's what to expect
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-25 | by ( Sarah O'Brien | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Yet the interest rate that any particular buyer is able to qualify for depends at least partly on their credit score — meaning you have some control over whether you're able to get the best available rate, experts say. "The score impacts practically everything: loan approval, interest rate, monthly mortgage insurance premiums … and ultimately their payment," said Al Bingham, a credit expert and mortgage loan officer with Momentum Loans. The higher your score, the lower the interest rate you'll be charged. For illustration only: On a $300,000, fixed-rate 30-year mortgage, the average rate is 6.41% (as of Thursday) if your credit score is in the 760-to-850 range, according to FICO. "Improving your credit score really comes down to the fundamentals," said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst for Bankrate.

☆ Inside California's tiny-home takeover
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Kelsey Neubauer | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

For the state with the most dire housing shortage, the move could be a game changer — eventually. As the US grapples with a massive housing shortage, one possible solution is playing out in California right now — and the state may have struck gold. Oregon, Maine, and Nebraska, as well as cities like Miami, have enacted laws similar to California's. There's been opposition to ADUs from homeowners worried about the density of their neighborhoods and sometimes the aesthetics of the structures. Ultimately, the housing shortage could be alleviated, she said.

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