Sam Zell, a well known Chicago real estate investor who earned himself a multibillion-dollar fortune through investing and remodeling properties otherwise seen as unrepairable, passed away last week at 81-years-old.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
A group of real estate professionals recently spoke to the media to discuss the signs prospective home-buyers should look for when determining if a home is worth the money or not.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Tom Steyer, co-executive chair of Galvanize Climate Solutions and 2020 presidential candidate, recently discussed his plans to launch a new sustainable real estate investment strategy.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Decentraland is known as one of the most prominent virtual real estate platforms in the metaverse. While it was once valued at $1 billion, revenues have been on a major decline within the past year, according to reports from The Block.
Only a handful of users have reportedly been trading virtual real estate in Decentraland. The real estate traded can be transacted in the form of NFTs for users.
According to the reports from The Block, only about 20 to 30 people are actively buying and selling property weekley on the platform; valued at about $50,000. This marks a massive decline when compared to the millions of trades being made between 2021 and 2022.
This decline shows a major lack of interest in owning virtual real estate, and the metaverse in general.
While Decentraland had a billion-dollar market cap originally, reports from data collector DappRadar showed that only 38 active users were present over a 24 hour period on the platform. Other platforms within the metaverse have had the same level of struggles within the past year.
According to The Block, Decentraland also saw a decline in their Fashion Week event. Last year, over 60 brands sponsored the virtual fashion event with over 100,000 users showing up. This year, however, only about 26,000 users attended the event.
According to a gaming report from Jay Peters, “the world didn’t feel very alive. While walking around, I’d usually only see one or two other people in my vicinity.”
Hunter Swihart, a metaverse architect, told The Block that he wouldn’t be surprised if Decentraland would completely go under as a business in the near future.
“Everybody saw prices skyrocketing with big businesses buying land for millions of dollars, which now in retrospect was a terrible mistake.”
This decline in interest in virtual real estate shows that users are losing interest in spending their money within a virtual world, and the metaverse in general is losing hold of its audience.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Economists are currently worried about the state of the $20 trillion commercial real estate industry. Ever since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, office and retail property values have fallen due to lower occupancy rates, and the shift to working from home and rise in online retail.
According to Goldman Sachs economists, about 80% of all bank loans for commercial properties are coming from regional banks; smaller banks have had more pressure to liquidate properties as time goes on and the properties don’t show a lot of interest.
“I do think you will see banks pull back on commercial real estate commitments more rapidly in a world [where] they’re more focused on liquidity, and I do think that is going to be something that will be important to watch over the coming months and quarters,” wrote Goldman Sachs Research’s Richard Ramsden, reported by CNN.
Xander Snyder is a senior commercial real estate economist at First American who recently spoke to the media about the current state of the commercial real estate market and its potential threats to the economy.
“Price growth is slowing and for some asset classes it’s starting to decline. Office properties have been more challenged than others for obvious reasons.”
“Now private lending to the industry is starting to slow as well — bank lending was beginning to dry up over a month before the Silicon Valley Bank failure even happened. Credit was getting scarce for all commercial real estate and a fresh bank failure on top of that only exacerbates that trend,” Snyder explained.
“A lot of people hear commercial real estate and they think it’s all the same thing and the trends are they’re all the same but they’re not. The underlying fundamentals of multifamily and industrial assets remain relatively stable on a national level.”
Snyder then explained exactly why commercial real estate ended up in the position it’s in today after the trends it saw within the past few years:
“As credit becomes scarcer and more expensive, it’s hard to know exactly what buildings are worth. You get this gap opening up between sellers and buyers: Sellers want to get late 2021 prices and buyers are saying ‘we don’t know what things are worth so we’ll give you this lowball offer.’ That was already happening and the result of that price differential was bringing deal activity down.
It’s different for office and retail properties. There’s been a fundamental shift in how we use office space and that has changed demand. That’s something you should have your eye on, especially as low-interest office loans come due.
We’re running into a situation where office-owners have to refinance at a higher rate and only 50% of the building is being used. That doesn’t translate to good cash flow metrics for the lender,” he explained.
According to The National Association for Business Economists’ (NABE) most recent survey, published this Monday, a majority of economists are predicting a recession to occur this year as inflation rates will likely remain above 4%.
“Panelists generally agree on the outlook for inflation and the consequences of rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. More than seven in ten panelists believe that growth in the consumer price index (CPI) will remain above 4% through the end of 2023, and more than two-thirds are not confident that the Fed will be able to bring inflation down to its 2% goal within the next two years without inducing a recession,” said NABE Policy Survey Chair Mervin Jebaraj.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Elon Musk has been quietly purchasing properties in a small Texas neighborhood within the past few years with the ultimate goal of building his own village where his employees can live and work from.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
The Covid-19 rocked the housing market in a multitude of ways. Real estate agencies saw an uptick in individuals moving out of cities and investing in homes in more rural/suburban areas.
In 2022, nearly one third of all US homes were purchased using all-cash offers, according to the National Association of Realtors. However, experts are wondering if this trend of all-cash purchases is going to continue, or decline as time goes on.
Lawrence Yun is the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, and recently spoke with the Wall Street Journal regarding this trend and new data in housing trends as reported by Redfin.
“Only the wealthy are essentially buying homes. If this trend was to continue, that means something fundamentally is wrong with society.”
The Wall Street Journal also reported that the trend of all-cash purchases isn’t equal across the entire nation. For example, nearly one fifth of all homes purchased in Washington D.C. and its surrounding cities were made in cash.
On Long Island, almost half of the home purchases between 2020 and now were made using all-cash offers across both Nassau and Suffolk county.
“What we found was those who already were more well-off were able to take advantage of the strong housing market and add to their wealth, while those trying to better their situation were often pushed to the side,” Ali Wolf, chief economist at Zonda, a housing data and consulting firm, said to the Journal.
Wolf explained that the main population of buyers making all cash offers are retired, international, investors, and wealthy individuals in general.
The current rate of all-cash home purchases hasn’t been this high since 2014, when the housing market saw its biggest rebound after the Great Recession.
“FHA loans, which typically allow for lower down payments, have ticked up in popularity in response to the slowdown in housing-market competition,” Redfin noted, detailing government-backed mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration.
“FHA loans, which typically allow for lower down payments, have ticked up in popularity in response to the slowdown in housing-market competition,” Redfin noted, detailing government-backed mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration.
“Americans who sell a home in a pricey place like San Francisco may use equity to pay cash in a more affordable area like Las Vegas,” Redfin concluded.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
In the real estate industry, virtual tours of prospective properties have made it easy for agents and their clients to view and discuss future transactions. Beyond the obvious health and safety benefits of this technology, virtual tours have made it easy for clients located in different states or parts of the country/world to continue their real estate dreams from the comfort of their own home.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Real estate agents across the nation are utilizing ChatGPT, an AI chatbot tool that can generate detailed descriptions based on prompts given by the user.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
According to one of America’s top fire-damage real estate investors, Fire Cash Buyers, there has always been potential profit earnings for investing in properties that have been damaged by fires. While the damage itself will reduce the home’s market value, its potential for flipping can often lead to increased profits.
Joel Efosa works for Fire Cash Buyers, and has written about the potential to take fire-damaged properties and flip them to sell at the same price as new properties.
Real estate investors also often have access to resources and organizations that specialize in the art of rehabbing homes for a large return on their initial investment. While any kind of property repair takes a decent amount of time and money, the potential to increase one’s earnings on the investment is possible with the right strategy.
Efosa stated that real estate investors are actually often looking for damaged rental properties for flipping purposes. This process often involves collaborating with local firefighters who would be the most likely to know of homes damaged by fire.
Firefighters also know the area’s they work in quite well, so they have a particular set of skills when it comes to guiding investors to properties with the best potential, and the ones with owners who are most likely to sell after a fire event.
Investors are also often connected with insurance agencies, adjusters, and other experts in the industry who have access to recent insurance claims and the homeowners who filed them. This can also aid in the process of finding homeowners who are most likely to want to sell their property to investors.
“Working closely with these insurance professionals can provide real estate investors with timely information on potential deals, allowing them to be at the forefront of new opportunities when they arise,” wrote Avi Stern for The Jerusalem Post.
“Ultimately, investing in a fire-damaged house can be an extremely lucrative endeavor for an eager real estate investor – as long as sellers of these damaged homes can be found.”
Real estate agents are generally the best resource for investors to use for this specific type of project. Not only do they have access to their client lists, but access to a large rolodex of properties categorized by their placement in the market; which would include properties damaged by fire.
Real estate agents also have access to property information that’s not often made public for the average investor/buyer to find. So when it comes to finding fire-damaged properties with the intent of flipping the space to resell for a large profit, it’s truly all about the team of individuals you have around you that can better help connect you to all the people you need to make the project happen.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.