Real Estate

One in eight owner-occupied homes in the U.S., or roughly nine million residences, are set to hit the market from 2017 through 2027 as the baby boomers start to die in larger numbers, according to an analysis by Issi Romem conducted while he was a senior director of housing and urban economics at Zillow. That is up from roughly 7 million homes in the prior decade.

By 2037, one quarter of the U.S. for-sale housing stock, or roughly 21 million homes will be vacated by seniors. That is more than twice the number of new properties built during a 10-year period that spanned the last housing bubble.

Uri Rafaeli, who lost his property and all the equity associated with it, is just one of thousands of people to be victimized by Michigan’s uniquely aggressive property tax statute. The law, passed in 1999 in an attempt to accelerate the rehabilitation of abandoned properties, empowers county treasurers to act as debt collectors. In the process, it creates a perverse incentive by allowing treasurers’ offices to retain excess revenue raised by seizing and selling properties with delinquent taxes—even when the amount owed is miniscule, and even when the homes aren’t abandoned or blighted at all. 

Organizations representing property owners like Rafaeli say the practice is unconstitutional, inequitable, and unreasonably harsh. They call it “home equity theft”—a process that’s a close relative to the civil asset forfeiture laws that have been used by police departments to similarly deprive innocent Americans of their property without due process. They are now asking the state Supreme Court to restrict the practice. 

“Michigan is currently stealing from people across the state,” says Christina Martin, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm now representing Rafaeli and other homeowners in a class-action lawsuit that will go before the Michigan Supreme Court in early November.

“Counties have been authorized to take not just what they are owed, but to take people’s life savings.”

On Monday, the company announced a $2.5 billion plan to alleviate the issue by investing in affordable housing and helping Californians — especially first-time home buyers and low-income families — buy a home.

“Affordable housing means stability and dignity, opportunity and pride. When these things fall out of reach for too many, we know the course we are on is unsustainable, and Apple is committed to being part of the solution,” Tim Cook said in a statement.

The $2.5 billion plan includes a $1 billion affordable housing investment fund, which will provide the state of California and other entities with an “open line of credit to develop and build additional new, very low- to moderate-income housing faster and at a lower cost.”

Another $1 billion will go towards a first-time homebuyer mortgage assistance fund, which should help homeowners with financing, with a focus on increasing access to first-time homeownership for “essential service personnel, school employees and veterans.”

Additionally, Apple will commit $300 million towards building affordable housing in Apple-owned and available land, a $150 million towards a Bay Area housing fund, and $50 million towards supporting vulnerable populations.

The home is about a half-mile south of President Donald Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago. Schonfeld already owns a $90 million mansion in Old Westbury, which has his own personal chef and a private nine-hole golf course.

The Palm Beach estate, which is on the ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway, is currently owned by philanthropist Sydell Miller, who co-founded Matrix Essentials, a hair and beauty line, with her late husband, Arnold.

Schonfeld, 60, was the 18th-highest-earning hedge fund manager this year, according to Forbes. 

The space went for HK$7.6 million ($970,000), making it the most expensive place to park an automobile in the city, and perhaps anywhere in the world. The seller was Johnny Cheung Shun-yee, a businessman with a reputation for flipping property. He made around HK$900 million last year in about nine months by buying and selling floors in an office building.

The car-parking spot is actually in the same building — The Center in Central, which also happens to be the priciest office tower in the world. For the cost of the parking space, you could buy a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.

“A lot of those owners in The Center are in finance or in other high-growth businesses,” said Stanley Poon, a managing director at Centaline Commercial. “To these tycoons, it’s not a significant purchase if you compare it to the value of the office floors they own.”

Only 24% of renters said it was “extremely likely” that they would ever own a home, 11 percentage points lower than four years ago, according to the survey set to be released Thursday by mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac . Of the renters surveyed, 82% said renting was more affordable than buying, 15 percentage points higher than February of 2018.

Meanwhile, rising rents also are creating hardships. Of the renters who moved in the last two years, 44% said they did so because they could no longer afford their rent, according to the survey…

The biggest obstacle preventing renters from buying was the difficulty in saving for down payments and closing costs, according to the Freddie Mac survey. The crunch is being felt by about 80% of millennials and members of Generation X—people born between 1965 and 1980—and 71% of baby boomers who rent.

Student loan debt is making it especially hard for millennials to afford down payments, the survey found. Of renters 23 to 29 years old, 51% said they made different housing choices than they otherwise would have because of student loans.

Home insurance is one of those things that can just seem like an added monthly bill that is completely unnecessary but should there ever be a time when you require that insurance, it could quickly pay for itself many times over. No-one likes to think about emergency situations happening, damage to their home, and other issues that can require some rather costly repairs, but the reality is that life happens.

If you’ve decided it’s time to start looking into homeowners insurance and at least consider some basic coverage, then you are probably curious as to how your rate is determined. The amount you pay for home insurance is actually determined by a number of factors, some of which will be under your control whereas others won’t. Let’s take a closer look.

The Home Itself

Insurance Land, an insurance company located in Florida says the biggest factor in determining your insurance premium is the house itself. Any insurance company is going to look at such things as the type of structure, the size of the home, the age of the home, and even what kind of material has been used to build the home.
Insurance Land also points out that if you happen to have an older home, sometimes your rate can be higher, but that can depend on the building materials used. This is exactly why they offer free quotes, which can be done online so that you can get an idea of what your rate may be.

What is Your Claims History?

Another big determining factor is your claims history. Perhaps you have owned other houses in the past, and maybe you’ve had to make an insurance claim. That will remain in your history and can sometimes act as a red flag for an insurance company. At the very least it can push you into the higher premium category.

If you’ve had a number of claims in the past, it may not only mean you will pay more for insurance, but you could find it difficult to be insured at all.