The Real Estate News Brief: $2 Trillion Milestone, Suburban Appeal, Retail Rebirth

In this Real Estate News Brief for the week ending December 4th, 2021... the $2 trillion real estate milestone, the homebuyer's search for suburban homes, and the brick-and-mortar store comeback. Hi, I'm Kathy Fettke and this is Real Estate News for Investors. If you like our podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review. Economic News We begin with economic news from this past week. Pending home sales surged higher in October. The National Association of Realtors says they were up 7.5%. That's substantially higher than the .7% predicted by MarketWatch economists. Contract signings were higher in all four U.S. regions, but the Midwest had the biggest gain of 11.8%. (1) Home price growth has cooled off a bit. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city price index shows a 19.1% year-over-year gain in September. That's a half a percent lower than it was in August, which is not much of a decline. Craig Lazzara of the S&P DJI says that housing prices continue to show remarkable strength. He describes the change of pace as "deceleration." (2) The weekly unemployment report shows that initial claims jumped back above the 200,000 mark. Just two weeks ago, the number of applications hit a 52-year low of 194,000. It could be that some people decided to wait until after Thanksgiving to file for their benefits. (3) The U.S. jobless rate has fallen again, from 4.6% to 4.2%. MarketWatch reports that almost 600,000 people rejoined the workforce in November, and the participation rate of 61.8% is now the highest it's been since the beginning of the pandemic. (4) If we look at job growth for the construction industry, builders added 31,000 positions last month. Specialty contractors created the most with 13,000 new positions. Civil and heavy engineering accounted for the rest. First American economist Odeta Kushi says: "It was a strong month for construction." (5) Mortgage Rates Mortgage rates didn't move much this last week. Freddie Mac says the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was up just 1 basis point, to 3.11%. The 15-year was down 3 basis points, to 2.39%. (6) In other news making headlines… $2 Trillion in Real Estate Deals for 2021? Real estate transactions could hit a huge milestone this year. CoreLogic says they topped $600 billion in the second quarter. That's after $750 billion in transactions for the first quarter. Researchers say if the trend continues, we'll hit the $2 trillion mark by the end of the year. (7) CoreLogic economist, Thomas Malone, says it's a combination of high home prices and the migration to bigger homes in more expensive areas. He says: "The value of transactions has skyrocketed despite sales volumes continuing a relatively normal growth trend." The report also shows that if you look at the last four quarters from the second half of 2020 to the first half of 2021, real estate transactions have already hit the $2 trillion mark. CoreLogic says the total value for that time period was $2.25 trillion. Suburbs Are Not Losing Their Appeal The desire for a home in the suburbs is still going strong, even as many people return to the cities. Realtor.com says that 62% of the online home views in September were for suburban homes while the other 38% were for urban areas. (8) Realtor.com's chief economist, Danielle Hale, says the pre-pandemic suburban vs. city dynamic is changing because of remote work options and high rents in the city. She says: "The price premium is shrinking between notoriously expensive urban housing and suburban for-sale homes, typically known for more bargains." Inventory levels also reveal the difference. They were down 13% annually in September for suburban areas and only 8% for cities. More Stores Opening Than Closing E-commerce may have disrupted the retail environment and put a lot of brick-and-mortar stores out of business. But now, the opposite appears to be happening. According to a new analysis by the IHL Group, there are more store openings than closures for the first time in four years. And many of those new openings are due to e-commerce websites wanting a brick-and-mortar presence. (9) As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Levi Strauss is one example. The clothing company plans to open 100 U.S. stores over the next five years. Dick's Sporting Goods is another example, with plans to open more than 800 stores under several brand names. And of course, there's e-commerce giant Amazon which is planning to open its own department stores. For 2021, IHL expects that 4,361 more stores will have opened than were shut down. That's it for today. Check the show notes for links. And please remember to hit the subscribe button, and leave a review! You can also join RealWealth for free at newsforinvestors.com. As a member, you have access to the Investor Portal where you can view sample property pro-formas and connect with our network of resources, including experienced investment counselors, property teams, lenders, 1031 exchange facilitators, attorneys, CPAs and more. Thanks for listening. I'm Kathy Fettke. Links: 1 -https://www.marketwatch.com/story/pending-home-sales-surge-higher-in-october-will-the-new-covid-variant-trip-up-the-real-estate-market-11638198301?mod=economy-politics 2 -https://www.marketwatch.com/story/home-price-growth-slows-even-as-the-cost-to-buy-continues-to-hit-records-11638281060?mod=economy-politics 3 -https://www.marketwatch.com/story/jobless-claims-climb-28-000-to-222-000-in-thanksgiving-week-11638452207?mod=economy-politics 4 -https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coming-up-u-s-jobs-report-for-november-11638537320?mod=economy-politics 5 -https://www.housingwire.com/articles/residential-construction-jobs-slowly-return/ 6 -http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/ 7 -https://www.corelogic.com/intelligence/2021-is-on-pace-to-be-the-first-multi-trillion-dollar-real-estate-market/ 8 -https://magazine.realtor/daily-news/2021/11/29/suburbs-remain-popular-even-as-cities-stage-comeback 9 -https://magazine.realtor/daily-news/2021/11/29/first-time-in-4-years-more-store-openings-than-closures