Article originally posted on homelight.com on March 21st, 2022
1. House Flippers 
Housee flippers are real estate investors that purchase properties at a discount with the intention of remodeling to add value, then resell those properties quickly for a profit. House flippers look for specific improvements to boost equity, such as cosmetic updates, mechanical repairs, an addition, or a change to the layout. Doug Van Soest, who owns a house flipping business in Southern California, purchases an average of 40 to 50 homes per year and says he typically aims for at least a 10% return on his investment.
Example house flipping companies:

HomeVestors / We Buy Ugly Houses

Certain investors on HomeLight’s Simple Sale platform
WeBuyHouses.com
2. Buy-and-hold companies
Buy-and-hold companies purchase houses with the intention of renting them to tenants for a profit. “Similar to flippers, they will look to acquire properties that offer enough potential eq ...

Article originally posted on zillow.com on April 27th, 2022

Considering residential solar installation for your home? Ask these questions to help avoid common pitfalls.
Solar power can be an attractive prospect for homeowners and shoppers. Home solar technology offers resilience, electricity bill savings and more energy independence. For the environmentally conscious, it provides an eco-friendly alternative to existing electricity sources. What’s more, Zillow research indicates listings that highlight eco-friendly features sell up to 10 days faster, and homes with solar panels can sell for 1.4% more.
But shopping or even researching home solar installation services can often feel daunting. Aggressive, misleading advertising and predatory practices abound, some of which even bear official-sounding names and exploit government programs meant to incentivize green home improvements.'
1. Is my home suitable for home solar?
While excek ...

Article originally posted on azbigmedia.com on April 28th, 2022
The economy gained 431,000 jobs in March, and the national unemployment rate is now 3.6%, which is 76% below the peak of 14.7% during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. To provide more context at the city level, WalletHub today released its report on the Cities Whose Unemployment Rates Are Bouncing Back Most, as a follow-up to our report on the States Whose Unemployment Claims Are Recovering the Quickest. The good news for Arizona is that the state in home to eight of the 10 most recovered cities.
The COVID-19 pandemic was disastrous for U.S. employment, but the job market has healed a lot due to the distribution of the vaccine and the loosening of most restrictions. The national unemployment rate is currently at 3.6%, which is 76% lower than the peak of 14.7% during the height of the pandemic, but still slightly above the historic low it experienced prior to the coronavirus crisis. Some cities&rsqu ...

Article originally posted on azbigmedia.com on December 10th, 2021

2022 will fall just short of record-breaking
2021 marked the hottest housing market in U.S. history by some measures, including Zillow’s Home Value Index. While we may not see those records broken in 2022, Zillow economists expect incredibly strong price growth and sales volume to continue. Zillow’s forecast calls for 11% home value growth in 2022. That’s down from a projected 19.5% in 2021, a record year-end pace of home value appreciation, but would rank among the strongest years Zillow has tracked. Existing home sales are predicted to total 6.35 million, compared to an estimated 6.12 million this year. That would be the highest number of home sales in any year since 2006.

More Gen Zers and millennials will buy a ‘second home’ before a primary residence
Americans are taking advantage of remote work flexibility to move to larger homes in more-affordable mar ...

Article originally posted on azbigmedia.com on December 4th, 2021

Eight of the top 10 states where the equity-rich share of mortgaged homes rose most from the second quarter of 2021 to the third quarter of 2021 were in the West and South. States with the biggest increases were Utah, where the portion of mortgaged homes considered equity-rich rose from 45.5 percent in the second quarter of 2021 to 60.9 percent in the third quarter, Arizona (up from 39.7 percent to 53.2 percent), Idaho (up from 54.2 percent to 65.1 percent), North Carolina (up from 28.4 percent to 38.6 percent) and Nevada (up from 34.9 percent to 44.9 percent).
The states where the equity-rich share of mortgaged homes decreased most from the second to the third quarter of this year were Kansas (down from 31.4 percent to 27.1 percent), Wyoming (down from 29.5 percent to 25.8 percent), Mississippi (down from 26.6 percent to 23 percent), Montana (down from 40.8 percent to 38.5 percent) and California (down fro ...