This week will witness the 90th anniversary of the unveiling of New York City’s famed Waldorf Astoria Hotel on October 1, 1931. Following an unprecedented restoration, the structure for the first time is offering the opportunity to own one of 375 residences within The Towers of the Waldorf Astoria, starting from $1.8 million.

Buyers can savor the cache of living in a structure graced by guests from Frank Sinatra and Cole Porter to every president from Hoover to Obama. In addition, they’ll enjoy 50,000 square feet of private residential amenities focused on health and wellness, entertaining and business. Residences range from urbane studios to sumptuous four-bedroom homes and deluxe penthouses, many offering outdoor spaces.

Notes Andrew Miller, CEO of Dajia US, the owner-developer of Waldorf Astoria New York, “We have assembled a world-class team to return the Waldorf to glory as one of the world’s most beloved hotels and New York’s most prestigious residential address.”

 

With history on the minds of Manhattanites, this could be the ideal moment to explore some other rare present-day residential structures in the heart of New York that are — or include — buildings with even longer histories. They are The Woolworth Tower Residences, The Belnord and 111 West 57th Street. These properties are dream addresses for anyone who not only appreciates the borough’s long and storied history, but seeks to inhabit a piece of that time-honored legacy.

The Woolworth Tower Residences

Once the tallest building in the world, the Woolworth Building was designed in 1913 by Cass Gilbert as a commission from retail industry tycoon F.W. Woolworth. Today, the recently-completed Alchemy Properties-designed Woolworth Tower Residences fills floors 29 through 58 with 32 loft-like condos. A $22 million restoration of the tower’s arresting terra cotta façade was among ways Alchemy saluted the Woolworth legacy by resurrecting original details of the building. 

Another was the incorporation of a coffered ceiling reclaimed, restored and relocated from the private office of Frank W. Woolworth himself. Residences offer design details from Thierry Despont, who contributed to the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. Amenities include the Gilbert Lounge and entertaining area, wine cellar and tasting room, fitness center and fifty-foot lap pool.

Topping the tower at floors 50 through 58, 727 feet above Manhattan, is The Pinnacle, the residential conversion of the building’s famous crown. In addition to 9,680 square feet of interior residential space, The Pinnacle hosts a 408-foot observatory terrace. 

The Woolworth Building has been an important part of the skyline since its construction, says Alchemy Properties’ Kenneth Horn. 

“There was this great responsibility that we took on as a firm when we bought the upper portion to ensure that it lived up to its potential in this next iteration where people can call the building home for the first time,” he adds. “Now that construction is complete, residents are living in the building, and it is over 80% sold, we can say that we’ve achieved our goal of a perfect blend of old and new by emphasizing the historic elements of the building that are fully unique to Woolworth, while at the same time creating a contemporary design with modern-day conveniences.”

The Belnord

Among Manhattan’s turn-of-the-century residential buildings, few offer the grandeur of The Belnord, at 225 W. 86th Street. Filling a complete block, the 1908 jewel was designed by acclaimed architectural firm Hiss & Weekes. Those passing through the building’s arched 86th Street gated entrance into the massive 22,000-square-foot private courtyard might be forgiven for assuming a time tunnel had whisked them back to early 20thCentury New York City. 

Once, horses and buggies slowly moved through the gated entryway. Thanks to the renovation of the 113-year-old property, that entry has been widened to permit modern vehicles to park temporarily within the courtyard, placing residents nearer their homes. This is an example of how The Belnord is being renovated to combine its traditional grandeur with contemporary conveniences.

Renovation rather than rebuilding is necessary, because many of the building’s original features would be cost-prohibitive to build in contemporary New York City. The interiors by Robert A.M. Stern Architects deliver a number of very substantially-sized residences. The most notable is likely Residence 1012, priced at nearly $11.45 million, which features both a formal entry foyer as well as an entry art gallery.  

111 West 57th Street

This residential tower incorporates the venerable Steinway Hall, which opened on 57th Street in 1925. 

Steinway Hall was the creation of architectural firm Warren & Welmore, the architects who graced Manhattan with landmarks Grand Central Station, the New York Biltmore Hotel and the Commodore Hotel, now Grand Hyatt New York. SHoP Architects and Studio Sofield have reimagined the historic building, creating a selection of large, light-filled pre-war residences that pay tribute to Midtown’s gilded heritage. The reborn Steinway Hall is incorporated within 111 West 57thStreet, which tops out at 1,428 feet as the second tallest residential skyscraper on the face of the planet.

Says Bill Sofield: “The complex shapes, patterns and materiality of Studio Sofield’s designs reflect the distinctive profile of the tower, while collaborative works by local artists preserve and expand the historical importance of Steinway Hall.”

Origination: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffsteele/2021/09/29/new-yorkers-gain-opportunity-to-reside-within-pieces-of-history/?ss=real-estate&sh=5723442f371a 

 

We know that this is something we have been talking about a lot here in our blog. On the other hand, we want you as a buyer to have the best experience when buying your dream home. Since we have beautiful houses on the market now in Cinnaminson, NJ, we understand the needs and worries the buyers have. Keep reading to learn more about 5 topics to add to your list when you’re buying a home.   

1. Keep a six-month savings strategy 

When you plan for a six-month savings, you will feel way more comfortable and without anxiety when you purchase your home. Having an extra budget for if something unexpected happens, like sickness, or you lose your job, or even the pandemic that affected many people around the world, will make you not afraid to take this huge step in life. Therefore, the best solution is to plan and be very organized financially.    

2. Get pre-approved and stick with a fixed-rate mortgage 

The advantages of getting pre-approved are that you will already know what you can afford and how much your down payment can be. There are a variety of mortgages, and in this phase, it is crucial to see what fits best for you. In consequence, you are not tempted to buy what you cannot afford. 

3. Compare to get the best mortgage 

Most homebuyers don’t shop around to find the best mortgages. However, here it’s important to evaluate the one that best meets your needs, not just looks good for you. 

4. Don’t spend more than one-third of your taxable income

It is better to regret spending less money on the house than spend too much and not having anything to work with after. So, be as conservative as you can here, but we know it’s not always possible. 

5. You can walk away 

This is a tough decision when you finally find the home you want but the price is not something you can afford. Our tip is to always try to negotiate, and if your budget allows for it, offer more. On the contrary, you know what you can afford, so don’t be afraid to walk away if you can not get the offer that meets your budget. 

For sure, you will find the perfect house some day, so take your time. You will have your happily ever after! 

 

Cape Advisors and Pioneer Group has released a new rendering (top) and construction update for Astoria West, a 534-unit rental development rising at 30-77 Vernon Boulevard.

Already topped out, construction of Astoria West continues to progress at a rapid clip with leasing slated to commence in early 2022.

“There are very few remaining opportunities to develop along the water in New York City, which is one of several reasons we’re so excited about Astoria West and why we feel this project presented the perfect moment to enter the Queens market,” said Craig Wood, Founder of Cape Advisors. 

“The scale of the site has enabled us to introduce an entirely new product to the neighborhood with a thoughtful and robust amenity offering unlike anything else in the area. This property, when paired with the unbeatable location, will transform the living experience in Astoria.”

Fogarty Finger is the architect for the development, which features studios to three-bedroom apartments with views of the Manhattan skyline over the East River and the Hell Gate Bridge as well as a landscaped courtyard.

The amenity package spans over 40,000 s/f and includes a rooftop with resident pool club, lounge area, and a waterfront deck with BBQs, landscaped private inner courtyard and gardens as well as an on-site parking garage.

“We couldn’t be more excited about the progression of Astoria West and this latest milestone,” added George Scharenatz of the Pioneer Group. “All of the project collaborators continue to devote an incredible level of effort and attention to detail, and we look forward to seeing the project continue to come to life.”

Corcoran New Development is the exclusive marketing and leasing agent for Astoria West.

origination: https://rew-online.com/cape-pioneer-release-new-renderings-of-astoria-west/

In the global real estate industry, the largest and oldest asset class in the world, investment decisions have always been and will always be driven by people with information. Today, investors and service providers have access and need to effectively utilize an ever-increasing amount of data to create and capture value in a complex and competitive marketplace.

Secure access to this information — particularly key, proprietary data — is the critical pathway to operate at scale with speed and precision. Yet with increasing and expanding use of data assets, there are corresponding data liabilities. This is the new balance sheet as the real estate business is digitized.

Firms are responding with dedicated leadership in data security empowered with budgets, new processes, controls and oversight. Cybersecurity and data protection have quickly become the foundation of building and protecting enterprise value in the commercial real estate industry. To be clear, expertly managing information security risks is now expected of institutional investors and fiduciaries. The stakes are high and require new and evolving skills that every boardroom now has its full attention on.

From global syndicates of organized crime with malicious interests to unknowing oversights and mistakes by busy or distracted co-workers, there is a wide range of exposure to protect against, all while the related systems and use cases are fluid. The following framework with five core elements are essential to have thoughtful coverage across platforms and tools that your firm deploys:

1. Visibility and controlled access: Your internal processes should allow users to easily access and manage data and share policies that effectively govern your data, all while minimizing the risk of data loss through full visibility and central management of content, security, policy and provisioning. Your accounts should be authenticated with single sign-on. In addition, customer administrators should have the ability to enforce the use of strong passwords by their user accounts and have granular access controls on the accounts with the ability to revoke access at any time. All search engines and web crawlers should be blocked from customer data.
2. Comprehensive activity tracking and audit log: Your systems should include the ability to record and maintain every action performed in a detailed and structured activity log, while archiving a complete history so that you have complete visibility into their activity for total transparency.
3. Secure data and digital content services: All content on your systems should be delivered and accessible exclusively with strong encryption. Data should be transported over HTTPS using transport layer security (TLS) 1.3 in transit and stored with AES-256 encryption at rest. All systems should have multi-region redundancy and be under constant monitoring and threat detection.
4. Third-party verification and compliance: You should require and ensure the systems you utilize have and maintain rigorous third-party certifications with annual audits, including: SOC 2 Type 2 certification under SSAE 16, CyberGRX Tier 1 Assessment protocols, and penetration and vulnerability tests.
5. Availability and resilience: Your systems should deliver a secure, resilient and highly available service at scale for the world’s largest and most sophisticated investment management firms. Your systems should also utilize multiple data centers with reliable power sources and backup systems to deliver redundancy and reliable availability along with robust disaster recovery and business continuity plans that are made available to review upon your request and tested annually.

Accessing and processing increasing amounts of data are critical for creating new opportunities and efficiencies in the commercial real estate business. In the modern age, data protection is as important as physical security, requiring proper due diligence for proptech systems when evaluating and utilizing them. Partners, investors and clients will migrate to firms whose data and systems are most trustworthy. Investing robustly in cybersecurity not only protects your data but also gives confidence to your partners and clients that their data is safe.

There’s an old saying that if you encounter a bear in the woods, you just need to be faster than the person who you’re with. Today, the digital bears clone themselves in real time, and the firm next to you is on an Olympic training regimen for data security. Don’t lose a step and get eaten alive.

Origination: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesrealestatecouncil/2021/09/15/commercial-real-estates-new-foundation-cybersecurity-and-data-protection/?ss=real-estate&sh=64c928f8114a 

The median cost of owning or renting a home is unaffordable to minimum wage workers in all 50 of the country’s states, finds a new analysis from LendingTree. Rising home prices and rent costs are putting housing costs out of reach to more low-income earners.

The study finds that the affordable housing payment for minimum wage workers across the country is $1,074 less than the median monthly housing costs paid by homeowners. Renting was also found to be unaffordable. The difference between an affordable monthly housing payment and the median gross rent averages at $533.

LendingTree researchers studied whether owning or renting a home is affordable to a person working a full-time minimum job. They factored in 30% of a monthly gross income on housing to weigh affordability. They calculated how much a person could afford in monthly housing costs if working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year at their state’s minimum wage.

The states where owning is most affordable for workers earning minimum wage are Arkansas, West Virginia, and New Mexico. Check out the chart below for a full breakdown.

Origination: https://magazine.realtor/daily-news/2021/09/15/study-minimum-wage-workers-struggle-to-afford-ownership-rent 

Plans include a Japanese restaurant led by Michelin Star chef Shinichi Inoue

A zero-carbon-emitting luxury hotel and condo building that is partnering with a Michelin Star chef and a former Zaha Hadid senior architect sounds like a new development in Chelsea or Tribeca.

But Richard Xia’s Fleet Financial Group is seeking to bring the concept to Corona, Queens, just two miles from LaGuardia Airport.

The group plans to break ground on the 25-story project, known as Eastern Emerald, at the end of the month. Totaling 350,000 square feet, it will have 256 hotel units and 196 condominium residences. The project will also include a conference and performing arts center, along with a bar and restaurant led by chef Shinichi Inoue, formerly of Michelin-starred restaurants Sushi Azabu and Sushi Inoue.

To design the facade, Fleet Financial tapped SASI Studio, whose co-founder, Mattia Santi, was formerly a senior architect at Zaha Hadid. The design appears to mimic some of the style of the late Hadid’s use of curves.

Xia said the project already has funding in place using existing money from private investors as well as money from the federal cash-for-visas EB-5 program.

He said the project could also qualify for C-PACE financing, which allows developers and landlords to obtain cheap loans if they make certain energy improvements. The site was home to a car repair facility and gas station that Fleet Financial remediated. It received Track-1 remedial certification, which allows for unrestricted future use.

The luxury building is expected to be completed in about three to four years, according to Xia.

The Eastern Emerald would be an outlier for Corona, which isn’t known for luxury development. The average rent in the neighborhood is $2,110 per month compared with $3,217 in Long Island City, according to RentCafe, which tracks apartment rents. The area is close to Citi Field and Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

origination: https://therealdeal.com/2021/09/16/fleet-financial-to-bring-luxury-hotel-and-condo-project-to-corona-queens/

​​The forecast for the coming months is lower temperatures—and a cooler real estate market, if only by a few degrees.

The housing market is expected to shift to something closer to normal this fall, real estate experts say. They anticipate more homes will go up for sale, helping to slow down the unparalleled price increases and bidding wars of the past year.

But the market is likely to remain highly competitive, as there will still be many more buyers than homes to go around.

“We’re going to exhaust the pool of buyers who are still sitting on a lot of cash looking to buy their next home,” says Realtor.com® Senior Economist George Ratiu. “The market does not have a magical way of sustaining this pace [of price growth], because you’re going to run out of people who can afford it.”

However, that doesn’t mean that home prices, whose national median hit an all-time high of $385,000 in the week ending Aug. 14, will fall. In fact, prices increased 8.6% year over year that week. But that’s significantly less than the 17.2% annual rise in April. Going into the end of the year, prices may rise a more modest 5% to 6%, says Ratiu.

“The shift in the housing market will make shopping for a home a lot more tolerable than it has been, because consumers will actually have time to properly think through their decision and won’t be in as fierce of bidding wars,” says Ali Wolf, chief economist of building consultancy Zonda. “Going into fall, buyers may not need to pull out all the stops to win a house, like removing the inspection contingency or waiving the appraisal contingency.”

More homes are expected to go up for sale in the second half of the year. The influx won’t be nearly enough to put a dent in the dire housing shortage that’s the main reason for the record prices, but it may help curb the wild price growth.

“It’s still going to be a very strong housing market. Demand is still going to be well in excess of supply,” says Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com. “It just won’t be as frenetic as what had been experienced earlier in the year.”

In June, there were 2.6 months of housing inventory for sale, according to the National Association of Realtors®. That’s an improvement from 1.9 months in January. However, a balanced real estate market has between 5.5 months and six months of homes for sale.

“We’re seeing the gap narrowing between demand and supply,” says NAR’s director of housing and commercial research, Gay Cororaton. But it isn’t going to even out anytime soon. “There’s still a huge, huge gap.”

The fall homebuying season is likely to be busier than usual

One thing that won’t return to usual is the pace of sales. Usually, the market begins slowing down and prices even dip in the fall; families typically prefer to get settled before the school year begins. But this year, the COVID-19 pandemic threw off the normal timing, and activity is expected to stay brisk after summer’s end.

“I expect an unusually busy fall season,” says Ratiu. After all, more homeowners are vaccinated and feel comfortable holding open houses, although the delta variant of the coronavirus could change this, or they just can’t delay their move. “Sellers are putting homes on the market. Normally this activity happens early in the spring.”

Demand is likely to stay strong as well—even though many buyers are frustrated or simply priced out. More millennials are hitting their prime homebuying years, and builders have been unable to ramp up construction to keep up with the growing population. With rental prices also hitting new heights, many people are seeing that it’s cheaper to buy than to continue to lease a home.

Plus, mortgage interest rates are still hovering around record lows. The fear of missing out on what could be a once-in-a-lifetime deal will likely entice additional buyers. (Rates averaged 2.87% for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages in the week ending Aug. 12, according to Freddie Mac data.)

And not every home will be affected by a slowdown.

“Don’t expect deals in the fall if you are house hunting in the most desirable part of a market or competing for a particularly nice house,” says Zonda’s Wolf. “Homes that stand out for one reason or another are still flying off the shelf.”

But overall, most buyers may not be as willing to pay top dollar and waive inspections and contingencies for less-than-spectacular homes that would have sold for $100,000 less just a year ago. There aren’t many regular people (as opposed to investors) who can pay all cash for a home. And there likely aren’t as many remote workers fleeing expensive cities and heading for cheaper parts of the country at this point in the pandemic as there were in the beginning.

“We are definitely shifting from an extreme excess of demand to a more moderate excess of demand,” says Ken Rosen, chair of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. But “it’s still going to be a seller’s market.”

In addition, many first-time buyers can’t afford to pay over the list price of a home if it doesn’t appraise for that much, says mortgage broker Rocke Andrews, of Lending Arizona in Tucson. They don’t have the extra cash to make up the difference.

The emergence of the delta variant is also spooking some buyers who worry about the stability of their jobs.

This could help to explain why the number of purchase mortgages (which don’t include refinances) dropped 18.7% year over year in the week ending Aug. 13, according to the most recent Mortgage Bankers Association data.

The market “will be nothing like the panic we saw” going into the fall, says Rosen. “It already is more orderly in many, many markets.”

Foreclosures likely won’t play a big part in the cooling market

Many folks have been anticipating a wave of foreclosures to sweep the country as moratoriums to protect struggling homeowners expire. However, it’s not expected to be nearly as severe as what happened during the Great Recession, or lead to an influx of homes going on the market.

Homeowners who haven’t made mortgage payments during the pandemic make up just a fraction of the housing stock—just 3.26% of mortgages were in forbearance as of Aug. 8, according to the most recent data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Many of these folks will resume payments or work something out with their lenders. But at least some of these 1.6 million homes will hit the market.

Those homeowners who can’t resume their monthly payments and have enough equity in their properties can avoid foreclosure by putting their homes on the market. With prices at these levels, they may even walk away with a profit, and it won’t damage their credit.

“The middle-class and the upper-income groups won’t even notice the wave of foreclosures because it won’t be in their neighborhoods,” says Norm Miller, a real estate economics professor at the University of San Diego.

Lower-income homeowners who lost their jobs during the pandemic and don’t have much equity will likely be the ones who go into foreclosure. Their homes are expected to be in the lower-third price tier.

The number of foreclosures and how quickly they go up for sale are expected to vary from state to state. Some states have protections in place for homeowners that can delay proceedings significantly.

Some first-time buyers will scoop up these properties as the previous owners are forced back into the rental market. But the bulk are expected to go to investors, says Miller.

Investors are expected to keep home prices strong. During the pandemic, more institutional investors, such as pension funds and financial firms, have bought up single-family homes to turn them into rentals. Many can buy in bulk and pay in cash. That’s likely to continue.

Origination: https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/housing-market-continues-cooling-fall-season/

 

Back in the 1930s and ’40s, many American homes more resembled Lincoln’s birthplace than today’s McMansions.

In 1936, Barron’s wrote of efforts by General Electric and Westinghouse to persuade thousands of dirt-poor families to electrify their homes and farms and leave the Dark Ages behind.

Clarence Barron himself was born into a home without electricity, back in 1855, though by 1925 our founder lived in one of Boston’s grandest mansions. And he was predicting that “this country is in for an era of upbuilding and expansion never before dreamed of.”

Said Barron: “I have had doubts for some time whether as a nation we were home builders or automobile buyers,” concluding that “we are doing both, which is phenomenal.” Barron was right, but that era of upbuilding and expansion was cut short by the crash of 1929 and Great Depression, which cast millions into poverty.

New Deal initiatives such as the Tennessee Valley Authority lifted many out of impoverishment and into the world of modern conveniences, such as indoor plumbing. But the big change came, as with so much of American life, after World War II.

Bill Levitt’s plan was to build 1,000 rental homes for returning soldiers on the GI Bill. The identical, mass-produced bungalows, with modern kitchens and appliances, constructed on potato fields some 30 miles east of Manhattan, “were snapped up eagerly,” Barron’s wrote in 1952. Then another 1,000 rental units were snapped up, as were many thousands of others for sale.

“Year after year, the sprawling development, straddling and winding around a good many already existing properties, outgrew the builders’ original expectations,” we wrote. Before long, Levittown—as it became known—constituted 17,500 homes and set the template for suburbia and the American Dream.

With Clause 25 of the lease agreement, which barred occupation by anyone not of the “Caucasian race,” Levittown also set a template for government-approved segregated housing.

Seven more Levittowns were built, and many thousands of housing developments like it sprang up across America, turning the U.S. into a nation of homeowners, with the ownership rate rising to 61.9% in 1960 from 43.6% in 1940.

Along with the attendant sprawl—strip malls, gas stations, fast-food joints—came home prices that seemed to defy gravity.

By 1979, the average house cost about $70,000, compared with a $2,500 Depression low, according to Barron’s. “Price acceleration,” we wrote, had assumed “the characteristics of a full-fledged mania,” comparable to the stock market “mania that led to the 1929 crash.”

For one analyst, the message was clear. “The top of the real estate market is approaching,” wrote Charles D. Kirkpatrick II in 1979, recommending that “investors start liquidating holdings.”

He wasn’t the only doomsayer. In 1988, Stan Salvigsen of Comstock Partners warned of a coming “collapse” in real estate prices due to a “tremendous buildup of credit.” And in 2005, Yale University economist Robert Shiller told Barron’s, “The home-price bubble feels like the stock market mania in the fall of 1999, just before the stock bubble burst in early 2000.”

While each of these warnings was followed by a housing market correction, those who resisted the call to sell and held on to their property were rewarded handsomely. 

For instance, the median sale price for U.S. homes when Schiller warned of a bubble in the second quarter of 2005 was $233,700, according to Federal Reserve data. Prices would peak at $257,400 two years later before bottoming at $208,400 in the first quarter of 2009, in the wake of the subprime-mortgage crisis. 

Yet prices would recover fully by 2013, and as of the second quarter of this year, the median price was $374,900, driven in part by a virus-related flight from cities.

The housing market may “cool a bit after a sizzling summer of sales,” Barron’s wrote in June, but “there’s plenty of pent-up demand from first-time buyers and others aiming to take advantage of historically low rates.” 

In other words, don’t bet against housing just yet.

Origination: https://www.barrons.com/articles/things-to-know-today-51629714452 

 

Sales of existing homes — which include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops — were up 2% in July from the month before, marking two consecutive months of increases, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors. 

The number of available homes for sale also rose a bit in July, relieving some of the pressure on buyers. And while home prices still climbed year-over-year, they did not top recent record levels, the report found.

“There has been a turn in the market from super heated to still very strong,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.

A consistently tight supply of inventory has pushed home prices higher over the past year, but that picture is improving slightly, said Yun. The inventory of unsold homes increased 7.3% from June to July, but it was still down 12% from a year ago, NAR reported. Unsold inventory is at a 2.6-month supply at the current sales pace. A balanced market is about a 6-month supply of homes.

“We see inventory beginning to tick up, which will lessen the intensity of multiple offers,” said Yun. “Much of the home sales growth is still occurring in the upper-end markets, while the mid- to lower-tier areas aren’t seeing as much growth because there are still too few starter homes available.”

The median price for an existing home in July was $359,900, up 17.8% from a year ago and marked 113 straight months of year-over-year gains. But the price jump for July is down from increases of 20% or more that were occurring in the market over the past year.

Cash purchases remained strong however, the report said. All-cash sales accounted for 23% of transactions in July, the same as the month before and up from 16% a year ago.

“Although we shouldn’t expect to see home prices drop in the coming months, there is a chance that they will level off as inventory continues to gradually improve,” said Yun.

But many people remain priced out. First-time buyers are continuing to struggle in this market, and are pushing rental rates higher as they give up on buying, Yun said. The share of first-time buyers in July was 30%, down from 31% in June and 34% in July 2020. 

Low mortgage rates continue to be an important factor helping prospective homebuyers, said Danielle Hale, Realtor.com chief economist.

“Despite the ongoing challenges of today’s housing market, including limited inventory, lightning fast home sales and competition from investors with deep pockets, many buyers are finding ways to persist until they find and close on a home,” said Hale.

Still, she said, plenty of prospective buyers are considering whether to pause their search. But, Hale said, they should be aware that there is usually a seasonal reprieve in the competition heading into the fall. 

“Although we didn’t see this sweet spot last fall as buyers were making up for time lost to lockdowns, there are signs that we’ll see it this year,” she said.

Yun said he has heard anecdotal reports from NAR member agents that fewer homes are being sold for more than the asking price than earlier this year, and there’s less intensity around bidding wars. 

He expects there will be an inflection point this year where inventory will be greater than the year before.

Origination: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/23/homes/us-home-sales-july-feseries/index.html