Afternoon Bite 8/10/2020 (Video)

Every Monday afternoon Amber Kovarik and I talk about what happened this week in our local and national real estate market in 15 minutes or less.

Today’s Takeaways:

Schools:

• Before there are trends there is consumer sentiment. The conversations about “what do we do next?”
  • Private school and move?
  • Quit job and move?
  • What happens to the top performing school districts when the families move away?
• Schools are a big part of location, location, location. If they are closed does the demand for a top-notch school district go down?
• With kids at home, parents cannot go back to work or look for a new job; which will keep the unemployment numbers high.
• Parents that are working from home are now also simultaneously teaching from home.
• 85% of college students want to return to campus. Colleges and universities want to reopen but how? Some economists question whether major universities will be able to weather this storm. What would Tempe look like without ASU? (Chronicles of Higher Education)
• Big 10 voted today to cancel the entire 2020 football season. This will be the first year since 1869 with no college football.

Jobs:

• In July 1.8 million new jobs were created.
• Total filings are 55 million, continuing unemployment is at 16.1 million.
• Nationally week over week filings decreased after 2 weeks of increases, those were the first increases since March. Hopefully we do not see more increases.
• Arizona’s new unemployment filings continues to fall. We have not had any week over week increases since the beginning and Phoenix remains the strongest job market in the country.

Forbearance:

• Mortgages in forbearance declined for the seventh week in a row, down to 7.67% of all mortgages or roughly 3.8 million loans. (MBA)
• With the expiration of the CARES Act, some foreclosure protections have ended and mortgage services are chomping at the bit to get the ball rolling on foreclosures. Remember these services are contractually obligated to make these loans whole, having to pay the difference to the lienholder in the secondary market.
• 77% of loans in forbearance have at least 20% equity.
• Many borrowers have no idea about options. This is a very important conversation to be having with your contacts.

Real Estate:

• Nationwide we are struggling with low inventory. The Phoenix listing market seems to have stabilized, just at an extremely low level. We are 63% below where we should be. Instead of 8,400 active listings we should have at least 24,000! Demand continues to outpace supply pushing prices higher. Right now we are running at an 11% appreciation rate. In years passed we were shocked that we hit 8%! And remember healthy appreciation is 3%.
• 1031 Exchanges may be on the chopping block again. Getting rid of the nearly 100-year-old tax program to fund Joe Biden’s childcare and elder-care proposal. What does that mean for real estate? (Inman)