NJ Holds 3 Out of the Top 10 US Suburbs

     Onboard Informatics, a Real Estate data collecting company, together with Caldwell Banker Real Estate ranked the top ten Suburbs in the US. There were 11,000 suburbs included in the study with the focal points of the study being proximity to good schools, amenities, safety, and commutes. Three out of those ten suburbs are located in New Jersey (only state with more than two suburbs ranked). The top suburb on the list, Cherry Hills Village, comes from Colorado with almost a 100% home ownership rating. Cherry Hills Village is approximately ten miles from downtown Denver and provides residents with a short average commute time of 20 minutes for those who work in the downtown area.

     “Suburban communities continue to appeal to people of all ages, especially as many suburbs are seeing more diversity and re-energized downtown communities,” says Budge Huskey, president and COO of Coldwell Banker Real Estate. “Residents can have it all in many of these suburbs: Great access to recreation centers, schools, and a feeling of community, while only being a short distance to the city.”

The top ten list is as follows:

1. Cherry Hills Village, Colorado
2. Clyde Hill, Washington
3. Haworth, New Jersey
4. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
5. Wolf Trap, Virginia
6. Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey
7. Indian Hills, Kentucky
8. East Grand Rapids, Michigan
9. Rossmoor, California
10. Huntington Woods, Michigan

Source:Realtormag

Stay Real ~ Fact Time

Horse racing is one of the most dangerous sports. Between 2 and 3 jockeys are killed each year. That's about how many baseball players have died in baseball's entire professional history.

Could the Name of Your Street Get You More Money?

     The well known real estate search engine Trulia has come out with a survey providing information that shows the endings of the street names, such as "park", "place", "road", etc., have an affect on the home prices. According to the survey, address located on a street suffix of boulevard, place, and road accumulated a higher average price per square foot than homes located on a street suffix of drive, avenue, or street. Trulia found that the street suffix boulevard is the most popular (in terms of generating the highest price per square foot) coming in at an average of $117 per sqft, while the suffixes lane and street generated average price per sq ft of $101 and $86 respectively. Although there are many more significant components when coming to an asking price, this is definitely an interesting bit of information.

New Customers for US Real Estate

Hey Everyone, hope the weekend was good to all of you!


     As we are all aware of this, our housing market in the United States has taken quite a big hit these past years; led by the burst of the housing bubble, as I have explained previously in my posts. Overall, the US economy has not been fairing too well either creating a loss of jobs and less money to be spent. This has opened up a huge opportunity for foreign buyers in US real estate. “Foreigners purchase for a variety of reasons: trophy homes, desire to put money in the U.S. for safety, desire to have a place to visit for vacation, desire for a rental unit,” Jed Smith, an NAR economist, told NBC News. “These
factors … tend to dampen the effects of changes in total overall cost." Opportunity coupled with financial ability and desire is creating an influx of foreign buyers. 

     Now that I have explained the "why" it is time to find out the "who" question. There are two main countries pursuing US real estate right now, both holding their own amidst the worldwide economic problems, and both dealing with the US frequently; these countries are China and Canada. Canada for obvious geographic reasons and China because they own most of the US debt due to the fact that their economy is currently being supported a lot by the US economy; that is until they become economically independent (but that's another story all in itself). These countries currently have strong economies and have found "gold" in US real estate.  Canada and China are the main foreign powers that are capitalizing on the low real estate prices in the US, while mexico and the UK are also in the mix. Foreign purchases in the US have increased 24 percent since 2011. From March 2011 to March 2012 the Canadians captured the largest US real estate market share in terms of foreign purchasers, being responsible for 24 percent of all foreign purchases in the US. According to realtor.com the Canadians are focusing on Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Orlando (all vacation spots). On the other hand, the Chinese account for 11 percent of foreign purchases, but they are targeting the opposite side of the US; mainly Los Angeles and San Francisco. The targeted homes for UK consumers have a median size of 2,342 sqft (American median home size 1,854 sqft) so they may perhaps be coming to the US real estate market because of their interest in McMansions and larger homes, which the US has plenty of. “The rest of the world might make fun of Americans for our big portions, big homes, but it turns out that most foreigners look at bigger homes than what most Americans look at,” Jed Kolko, Trulia chief economist, wrote in a blog last week.

source: nbcnews