Tag: affordable housing
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New Jersey Enacts a Raft of Reforms Impacting Deed Holders
To take action on the racial wealth gap, New Jersey’s lieutenant governor Tahesha Way signed an update to the Real Estate Appraisal Act, explicitly meant to stop race-based bias from influencing appraisals. As our readers know, appraisals often occur when a home seller transfers a deed to a home buyer. A 2022 study from the…
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Workforce Deed Restrictions: How Are They Monitored?
With housing costs up (and wages not so much), some cities need to give working people a hand. As financial barriers to homeownership continue to frustrate so many wage earners, workforce housing is one way to make deeds attainable. It’s for households earning too much to qualify for standard government subsidies, but who can’t pay…
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Real Estate, Meet the Bots. Not Everyone’s Amused.
Digs, a purveyor of software for home builders and managers, is doing what many companies are doing these days. It’s revving up the artificial intelligence (AI) tools on its platform. With Digs, home builders and deed holders collaborate and store information. They make digital twins to simulate touring or working in the actual homes. Builders,…
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NIMBY or YIMBY? Here’s Where People Stand on Rezoning for More Housing.
The United States sorely needs to make homes affordable for more people. Millions of households are financially fenced out from acquiring their own deeds. Local and state policy makers are under pressure to allow higher density in residential neighborhoods, in order to ease the housing shortage that takes a particular toll on working people,…
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Builders Meet Buyers Where They Are—With Smaller Homes
At Elm Trails, a subdivision of San Antonio, the giant developer Lennar sells compact homes for just $150K or so. The houses themselves take up less than 700 square feet. They’re placed on 20-foot lots with little backyards and no garages. The least expensive offering is a new, 350-square-foot house for $130K. So far, 55…
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Deed Restrictions as Affordability Tools
Vacation Town Residents Get Paid to Live in Their Homes Park City, Utah is a tourist mecca. It’s known for the Sundance Resort, with its famous Sundance Film Festival. Need we say it’s a town full of vacation rentals? Two-thirds of Park City’s homes have no one living in them. The supply of homes for…
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Dreaming of Homeownership: Is a Duplex Worth Considering?
Got homeownership dreams? A duplex could be a way to break into today’s housing market. A duplex, of course, is a home property made up of two units. Typically, the two units share a wall but have separate entrances. So a duplex is essentially a house, divided into two homes. With home prices as high…
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It’s Election Year. How Will This Affect Sellers and Buyers?
As we enter an election year the current administration points to how strong the economy is. But there’s a disconnect between these regular public assurances and people’s life experiences. So many are either locked into their current mortgages or just completely sidelined from the market. This is no joke: High mortgage rates. Wages lagging while…
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State of the Home Buyer: White House Promotes New Set of Tax Credits
Housing affordability remains out of reach for many in the U.S. population today. What’s the matter? Joe Biden’s March 2024 State of the Union address laid out the latest plan to help. Here’s an update on the issue, and how the administration intends to deal with it.
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Affordability Update: Costa Mesa’s Epic Struggle
The commissioners of Costa Mesa, California have agreed to a new affordable housing law. The city of Irvine, also in Orange County, passed one more than two decades ago. And nearby Santa Ana is a serious supporter of affordability. Now, Costa Mesa is trying to follow suit. Friction is inevitable. Regulating for affordability means pitting…
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Affordability Rx: U.S. Government Is Now Funding Office-to-Home Conversions
As our readers know, the pandemic changed the way we work and live. Remote and hybrid working are now common ways of earning a living. We’ve also noted how repurposing empty offices could ease the housing crisis. Commercial areas contain more and more vacant space, more of the time. This fact holds true across the…
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KeyBank Talks Fair Housing—Putting Its Money Where Its Mouth Is
KeyBank® is putting $400,000 into NeighborWorks Western Pennsylvania. Why? To make housing accessible to Black communities — as they have been disproportionately left out of homeownership. Sure, $400,000 is a modest sum these days. But it’s part of a bigger picture. In recent years, KeyBank has contributed close to half a billion dollars to Greater…
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Zoning It Up: “Downtowns Have to Evolve”
Since the pandemic unfolded, one of the most-used keywords for the way we live is flexibility. Now, towns across the United States are asking if the old, rigid approach to zoning meets our evolving needs. Take Seattle. There, the City Council has just decided to let condo and rental towers replace a string of struggling…
