Real Estate, Updates, News & Tips - Willy Olsen - iPro Real Estate

Brad Pitt’s tiny home and other affordable space-saving miracles

3 housing solutions that could impact global problemsHomelessness, lack of affordable housing, natural disaster damage — these are all global problems that can be alleviated through creative housing solutions.Three types of homes that problem-solvers such as Brad Pitt and Patrick Kennedy are employing to help are tiny houses, micro-units and shipping container homes.Brad Pitt’s NOLA tiny home In 2007, Brad Pitt founded the Make It Right Foun

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What do buyers want more — a bigger house or a bigger yard?

Turns out a big yard gives homeowners the extra 'breathing room' they wantKey Takeaways Fifty-six percent of buyers would sacrifice square footage for more outdoor space.Smaller homes with more outdoor space seem to be all the rage lately as homebuyers are abandoning the motto “bigger is better” when it comes to square footage.According to a consumer survey by Wakefield Research commissioned by residential construction company Taylor Morris

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Home prices hit new peak in ‘extremely competitive buying season’

National family median income rose to $71,529, but it's still not enough to keep up with rising home pricesKey Takeaways Home prices rose 6.2 percent quarter-over-quarter to $255,600 -- a new peak.The housing market saw a series of ups and downs in Q2 2017, the majority of which were largely driven by low inventory unable to meet the demand of would-be buyers. This imbalance drove home prices to rise 6.2 percent, easily eclipsing the previous Q3

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Site Matching Sellers, Agents Raises $40M

HomeLight.com, which matches consumers with real estate professionals, is rapidly growing and nabbed $40 million this week to further enhance its process for locating agents based on performance metrics. The site, founded in 2012, connects sellers with real estate agents based on the practitioners’ sales performance data.HomeLight culls data from more than 100 different sources and evaluates nearly 30 million transactions across the country. It

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4 Ways to Cut Kitchen Remodeling Costs

Kitchen remodels don’t come cheap. The average cost to update a 200-square-foot kitchen—including installing new flooring, semicustom wood cabinets, and standard appliances—is a whopping $62,000, according to Remodeling Magazine. Homeowners who want to add in more luxurious touches, such as stone countertops, a commercial-grade cooktop, designer faucets, and top-of-the-line custom cabinets, may pay as much as $123,000.Before your clients

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Why You Won’t See Many New Starter Homes

Starter homes are harder to come by as builders struggle to offer more entry-level real estate options amid higher construction costs, a new study shows. Just 16 percent of new homes are selling for under $200,000, down from 44 percent in 2010, according to an analysis by research firm John Burns Real Estate Consulting.The share of new homes priced between $200,000 and $400,000 has increased to 55 percent from 43 percent in 2010, and the share ab

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Top Destinations Where Renters Want to Move

Nearly two-thirds of renters—about 64 percent—say they plan to move to a different city before settling down, according to rental website ApartmentList.com. So where are they leaving from and going to?Apartment List surveyed about 24,000 renters and analyzed data from 50 of the largest metros across the country. Renters in the priciest cities, such as New York, San Francisco, Denver, and Austin, Texas, indicated the most eagerness to move. Th

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Price Hikes in 87% of Markets; New Record Set

Median home prices in the second quarter eclipsed a record high set in 2016, jumping 6.2 percent year over year as the inventory crunch continues to push property values higher, according to the National Association of REALTORS®.The national median price for an existing single-family home was $255,600, up from $240,700—the previous high—in the second quarter of 2016, NAR reported Wednesday. Prices for single-family homes rose in 87 percent o

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5 Lessons From a Major Flooding Disaster

It’s been a year since Baton Rouge, La., experienced catastrophic flooding due to heavy rains. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 83,000 homes damaged by the flooding were eligible for disaster assistance, with each household receiving an average of $13,100 to make repairs and $3,800 to replace essential household items.Some residents are still recovering, says John Dickson, president of flood insurance provider NFS Edge. He

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REALTORS: 10 things you should know about millennials to reach more prospects

How to connect with the largest group of first-time homebuyersKey Takeaways Millennials are the future of real estate, and they are tech-savvy. Real estate agents should connect with millennials where they can be reached -- social media.It seems that the housing market is experiencing a major shift that is sure to impact the future of real estate for at least another 10 years.As of 2016, millennial first-time buyers have surpassed Gen Xers and

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