Is it better to own or rent a home in America?

February 4,2021 | By Erickson Ocasio

As the purchase market heats up and buying a house gets more competitive, many borrowers may be asking why they’re going through the stress, anxiety and headaches of the homebuying process. Single family rental developments have taken off, and it might be easier or even more financially sensible to rent in the suburbs rather than buy. While the emotional resonance of property ownership and the American Dream are certainly compelling, sometimes you need to make the brass-tacks case that buying a home makes more financial sense than renting. To see if such a case might be made, Odeta Kushi (pictured), deputy chief economist at First American, looked at 50 housing markets across America to see if renting or buying made more financial sense. In all but two of those markets (San Jose and San Francisco), owning made more sense than renting. Even in locations wh

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MBA: more than six million renters and homeowners missed their September payments

October 19,2020 | By Erickson Ocasio

On Friday, a day after the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the number of jobless claims for the previous week hit its highest level since August 22, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Research Institute for Housing America released worrying third quarter data that says more than six million renters and homeowners missed their September payments. According to RIHA, the percentage of homeowners and renters behind on their payments fell compared to Q2, when 11 percent (5.9 million) of renters missed, delayed, or reduced payments and eight percent (5.1 million) homeowners missed or deferred at least one mortgage payment. By September, 8.5 percent of renters and 7.1 percent of homeowners were behind on their payments. The improving numbers, while a welcome sign of stability, haven’t been enough to quell concerns around the country’s stubbornly elevated unemployment levels. “There is growing con

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Rent payments down, fraud up, say multifamily landlords

October 15,2020 | By Erickson Ocasio

Landlords say that more than half of their tenants are having trouble making rent, according to new data from real estate tech company Snappt. According to Snappt’s 2020 Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Residential Rentals survey, 53% of residential tenants are struggling to pay their housing costs, mostly due to the economic fallout from the pandemic. A quarter of people are paying late, while 17% now pay less than full rent, and 11% have stopped paying at all. This is also driving a 75% increase in evictions, with a current eviction rate of 21%. “Many of these evictions are awaiting the expiration of moratoriums, with the typical building having 15 evictions stacked up,” Snappt said in an email to MPA. Twenty-five percent of these evictions are associated with application fraud, which has increased dramatically in the wake of COVID-19, according to Snappt. “The survey sh

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