Airbnb is moving beyond helping people rent out space in their homes. Now it wants to start providing the actual houses, too. The company has announced plans for a new venture that will design and build homes, called “Backyard.” Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia describes it as “an endeavor to design and prototype new ways of building and sharing homes.”Airbnb officials say they want to combine the use of smart-home tech and sophisticated man
Are you getting few showings for your listing, or do visitors want to leave quickly? Here are a few items that could be turning off potential buyers.Vague property descriptions. Online descriptions of just a few words—or none at all—create a missed opportunity to provide buyers with more details on why they should visit a property. Pictures aren’t always enough. Use the listing description to add details that pictures aren’t able to sh
Making sure a listing is clean when the owners have a dog or cat can be tough. Pets can leave behind messes, scratch marks, fur, dander, and odors. Home improvement website HouseLogic offers some of the following tips on how to tidy a house with pets while it’s on the market:Steam clean all fabrics.Steam clean carpets, rugs, upholstered furniture, and the drapes. “Job number one is to take care of [the soft surfaces in your house],” Mel
To draw more attention to a languishing listing, a Houston real estate professional hired two fitness models to pose half-nude in the property photos, depicting everyday household tasks such as cooking or changing a light bulb. But even though the marketing ploy exponentially increased buyer interest, public complaints about the risqué listing prompted a local real estate portal to remove it.“After 40 days on the market and several open hou
Sales of newly built homes dropped for the fourth consecutive month, while new construction inventory reached the highest level in years, the U.S. Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Sales of new single-family homes dropped 5.5 percent last month, the slowest pace since December 2016.“New-home sales activity has slowed this summer as housing affordability remains a serious issue,” says Randy Noel, chairman of the National Association of H
The surge in off-market “pocket listings”—those held off the MLS in favor of secret channels and networks between agents or within a brokerage—is a growing issue in the real estate industry. In markets starved for inventory, real estate professionals are struggling with being kept out of these secret dealings for homes that their buyers could potentially want.In markets such as Los Angeles, for example, reports say that up to 30 percent
The number of homes for sale in the country is starting to flatten, which realtor.com® researchers say is signaling a “crucial inflection point for the inventory crisis.” Inventory has decreased slightly by 0.2 percent from a year ago, but is poised for an increase in the months ahead due to an 8 percent increase in new listings. This marks the largest annual jump since 2013, according to a new report from realtor.com®.“After years of rec
Some home sellers are looking for a good, reliable home stager that can magically transform their listings into the price point their hoping to achieve. The trouble and confusion sometimes come when the real estate professional asks a few home stagers to “bid” or present a proposal on their vacant home.BEFORE AFTERPhoto credit: HSR Certified Helen Bartlett of Refined Interior Staging Solutions in Kansas CityThe vacant staging proposal
An empty parcel in Los Angeles could potentially become the most expensive piece of real estate ever sold, CBS News reports. Labeled “The Mountain,” the 157-acre lot in Beverly Hills is the highest point in the 90210 ZIP code and offers up 360-degree views of Los Angeles County.The plot contains 17 parcels of land; six are zoned for homes. The land also comes with permission to build 1.5 million square feet of living space. Bloomberg estimate
Ongoing inventory shortages helped to push the median sale price for existing homes to another all-time high in June, the National Association of REALTORS® reports. The median price for all housing types was $276,900, surpassing a previous record set in May. Home prices have surged 5.2 percent since a year ago.The mix of low inventory and high home prices may have had an influence on existing-home sales in June, which fell for the third consecut
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