Grace Townsley
January 21, 2022
Introducing…. Q&A!
Want to ask a question directly to yours truly, James and David? We're harnessing the mighty power of the Internet to allow you to submit a question that we'll answer right here in this newsletter.
(Just keep it to real estate. We can't give you relationship advice or instructions on how to fix your kitchen faucet.)
Let's kick off this brand-new section with our inaugural question!
- Greg from Alabama
Don’t be shy! Drop your own question here.
- James and David
After raising $65M in Series B funding, Curbio has announced itself as a major new home improvement platform. Their major selling point is their delayed-payment model. Here’s how it works:
The biggest perk? Curbio doesn’t charge homeowners for the project until the home sells.
We’ve seen other companies try this model, but they’ve missed the mark. To hear of a new company with a fresh approach to pre-sale renovations? That’s VERY interesting to us. A well-done renovation just prior to hitting the market could add serious value to your client's property. We’re definitely keeping our eyes on how this plays out.
Over the next two years, Blackstone (an investor management company) will be rolling out a new renter assistance program. Across 13 markets, the company will be offering a 10% rent discount to those who earn 80% or less than the average local income. In most of their trial markets, this comes out to about $55K or less a year. At the end of each rental term, the occupant can also choose to buy the property outright at below market value.
Blackstone recently spent $6B on 17,000 homes when they purchased Home Partners. The company has announced it will pour $1B more into this program over the coming months. That translates to about 4,000 new rental properties with affordable rates.
That purchase, plus their move to invest heavily in these units, shows the confidence they have in not just the rental market, but also the single-family home market. We’re watching this story closely, because when this amount of money gets poured into the market by big funds, it can have a sizable impact on the everyday broker.
The latest signs show that all this nausea-inducing inflation might finally be easing up. Though inflation rose 7% last year—the fastest rise since the '80s—there are signs pointing to a possible drop. New data shows that retail spending went down last month. Plus, supply chain bottlenecks finally started to ease and it got a little cheaper for manufacturers to make our favorite goods.
The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates three times this year, starting in March. That move should further slow inflation and return our economy to the pre-pandemic norm.
No one has a crystal ball, but these factors do lower the chance that the Fed will step in with multiple interest rate hikes this year. If inflation is beginning to drop on its own and the Fed raises rates in March, we might be back in healthy territory by summer. We’ll keep an eye on this developing story!
The news that just missed the cut
Advice from James and David to win the day
Even after months of following the virtual real estate trend…. sometimes the Metaverse still makes our heads spin. We thought it would be easier to put together a few simple definitions for the top buzzwords in this industry.
Keep the latest industry data in your back pocket with today’s mortgage rates:
Thanks to all the new subscribers that joined us this week. We are creating this community because as brokers getting started in real estate 15 years ago, we really felt like there wasn't a good, reliable resource for us that we could count on. Our goal is to turn The Blueprint into that!
Have a great weekend and we'll see you next week.
- James and David
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