DFW: Area sales rose 5% in August, the second month in a row that agents sold more than last year. The 10,911 total was a record for August, using NTREIS and Real Estate Center data. Preliminary data shows September as a strong month. For the first eight months, North Texas home sales are 1% ahead of last year. Pending sales were up 4%. Median price was up 4% to $269,000. Average days on market was 46. Even with 26,754 listings (+4%) there is an under supply of houses on the market.
DFW: DFW needs to build 19,000 apartments every year to meet demand, according to a new study from the National Apartment Association and the National Multifamily Housing Council. DFW is the nation’s biggest apartment market, with 43,000 units under construction.The report says apartment construction in DFW contributes $8.4 billion to the local economy and creates 36,000 jobs. Combined, DFW apartments and their residents put about $98.5 billion of expenditures in the local economy, supporting roughly 428,000 jobs. Apartment rehabilitation and renovation projects push about $2 billion into the economy, creating up to 7,000 jobs yearly. Of all DFW units, 28% were built after 2000 and 43% between 1980-1999. Plenty of rehab opportunities exist with about 29% of the area’s stock built before 1980. More than 1.3 million DFW residents live in apartments.
Alexandria: Homeowners ready to downsize or move out of the area are putting their plans on hold for a couple of years, waiting for stronger demand from early tech workers. There are zip codes in Northern Virginia with zero houses on the market. Local residents who are renting, planning to buy, are rushing to buy before the Amazon employees arrive in force over the next few years with average salaries of $150,000. Amazon says it plans to hire 400 this year and 1,000-1,500 in each subsequent year. New home buyers, armed with a 3.5% FHA loan, seeking help from the seller with closing costs can’t compete with investors making all-cash offers with no contingencies and quick closes.
NYC: Big tech firms are hounding landlords looking to lease millions of square feet of premier office, retail and warehouse space. Facebook is considering 1.8 million square feet at Hudson Yards, Apple is searching for 750,000 square feet in the city and has nearly a dozen stores in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Tech firms leased 15% of the nearly 15 million square feet of office leases in Manhattan in the first half of 2019, up 10% from the full year in 2018.
Palm Beach: Hedge fund titan, Ken Griffin, has paid
$99.1 million for a 27,000-square foot beachfront house adjacent to
his existing estate, which is the largest in Palm Beach. He owns 19
acres of oceanfront property. This
is the second-largest sale for
Palm Beach. He has the largest New York City sale with a $238 million
penthouse at 220 Central Park South. That same week he paid $122
million for a 200-year-old mansion overlooking St. James Park in
London, near Buckingham Palace. Before that, he bought two floors of
the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Chicago. His residential real estate
holdings now total around $700 million.
Seattle: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has acquired about 420,000 acres of land over the last 20 years, putting him among the top 100 U.S.landowners who own the highest share of state land in Maine, New Mexico, Texas, Florida and Oregon. The largest owner is media mogul, John Malone, with 2.2 million acres, followed by Ted Turner at 2 million. Among the top ten is the King Ranch in Texas, with 900,000 acres. NFL Rams owner, Stan Kroenke, has 865,000 acres, 4.5 times the size of New York City. The top 100 own roughly 40 million acres, about 2% of the nation’s total land.
Kathy VandeMotter Carney 