While they comprise only a small share of home buyers in the U.S., more and more foreign buyers are coming to America for the homeownership piece of the dream. Twenty-eight percent of Realtors® reported working with at least one international client in the past year, up from 23% during the Previous Profile of International Home Buying Activity. The recently released 2010 study, which queried Realtors® for a year ending in March 2010, found that 18% were estimated to have completed at least one international sale, compared to 12% last year. Foreigners invested $41 billion in homes in the U.S. during the period, 4% of the total $907 billion market. Adding recent immigrants, or temporary visa holders, pushed the total to $66 billion, or 7% of the market, according to the report. A stronger dollar, desirable U.S. property and the slow, but emerging economic recovery are seen as factors in the growing demand for an American home. The survey found foreigners buying property in 39 states, but a bit more than half were in just four states — Arizona, California, Florida and Texas. More than one in three foreign buyers didn’t close. Thirty-four percent had financing problems, often because tight-fisted lenders were not willing to lend to those without Social Security numbers. Among those who did close, 55% paid cash, compared to only 8% of U.S. buyers. (www.realtytimes.com)
Realty Times (9/30/10); Broderick Perkins

Sekisui House Ltd., one of Japan’s largest home builders and developers, is stepping into the U.S. housing market, an indication that land prices have fallen low enough to catch the eyes of foreign investors. Sekisui teamed up with Newland Real Estate Group LLC, of San Diego, to acquire nearly 500 acres outside Houston, on which more than 1,200 homes could eventually be built, expanding the 19-year-old Cinco Ranch master-planned community. Sekisui officials are touring housing markets nationwide with Newland, and more deals could be announced soon. Sekisui isn’t the only foreign company circling bargain-priced land. Multiple investor groups from Australia and Canada have visited NAHB’s headquarters in recent months, asking about markets poised to recover first. “For the first time since World War II, I think foreign people are more optimistic about the U.S. housing market than Americans,” said Stephen Melman, NAHB’s director of economics. “Eventually, the glut will disappear and there will be a demand again.” (www.wsj.com)
Wall Street Journal (9/29/10) Dawn Wotapka

Internet tools are gaining ground, but face-to-face encounters and phone calls rule as the most common methods of interaction with neighbors. Pew Internet’s recent “Neighbors Online” study found that many neighbors haven’t made the transition to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and other social networking tools. In a telephone poll of more than 2,250 adults Pew found that in the preceding 12 months: 22% of all adults (and 28% of Internet users) signed up to receive alerts about local issues (such as traffic, school events, weather warnings or crime alerts) via e-mail or text messaging; 22% of all adults (27% of Internet users) used digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues; and 46% talked face-to-face with neighbors about community issues. “Having face-to-face interactions with neighbors about community developments is tightly linked with factors such as age, socio-economic status and race,” Pew reported. “Latinos, 18-19 year olds, those without a high school diploma and those with a household income of less than $30,000 per year are among the groups that are least likely to speak to neighbors in person about community issues. Parents (52%) are more likely than non-parents (43%) to meet with neighbors face-to-face to discuss community issues. Urban, suburban and rural adults are equally likely to have face-to-face discussions. Also, Internet users are no less likely than non-users to discuss community issues with their neighbors — 50% have done so, compared with 35% of non-users. (www.realtytimes.com)
Realty Times (9/9/10); Broderick Perkins

There currently are not enough rental units in multifamily buildings to meet the number of renters that the U.S. will have once sales of single-family homes get back to normal levels, according to NAHB’s Multifamily Market Indices. A recent study by the Pew Research Center finds that 13% of parents with grown children say that one of their adult sons or daughters has moved back home in the past year. Many people are staying put, especially young adults and seniors who would traditionally be renting right now. And some young families have opted to rent single-family homes from strapped home owners turned accidental landlords, who have been unable to sell their homes. When the economy improves, more young adults, such as recent high school or college graduates, will branch out on their own, says NAHB Chief Economics David Crowe, and there just will not be enough multifamily rentals to house them all. “Lenders have been unwilling to fund multifamily development,” he says, because so many renters have turned to single-family homes. But lately, more renters have been seeking out traditional apartments, says an August study from Rent.com. According to the survey, real estate markets across the country are just beginning to see an uptick in renters, with 42% of property owners experiencing lower vacancy rates compared to just one year ago. In addition, three in five (59%) property owners managing a total of one million units, said that tenants moved out in order to save money on rent or because they could no longer afford the rent (due to employment factors). However, while job losses played a significant role in the vacancy rates, so too did job improvement. Nearly 22% of property managers said that job improvement was impacting vacancy rates. And a whopping 54% said that vacancy rates were impacted by home buying. (www.aolnews.com)
AOL News (9/17/10); Sheree R. Curry

Nearly a dozen condominium projects recently opened or nearing completion in and around New York City offer perks like a celebrity chef, maid service and spas. The hotel services don’t come cheap: the developers of condo-hotels plan to charge as much as 20% more per square foot than high-end competitors that don’t have hotel partners. And along with room service can come hotel-like bills and higher monthly maintenance fees. Financing can also be more difficult to secure because banks are leery of lending money for what could appear to be strictly investment property. Jonathan J. Miller, the president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, said, “The key factor to remember is that these properties were conceived in a different market. There was a lot of creativity because there was essentially free capital. Developers needed to be aggressive to get higher and higher prices per square foot. The question now is if the math still works.” That is an open question, and one that hinges as much on the hotel business as the broader real estate market. Hotel occupancy has been steadily increasing in recent months, with 89% occupancy in August and an average room rate of $227, according to NYC & Company, the city’s official marketing, tourism and partnership organization. But that is far from the more than $300 a night commanded by hotels before the economy faltered. There is also more competition now. In 2010, 21 hotels have opened, or will, across the city, adding more than 6,700 rooms. (www.nytimes.com)
New York Times (9/17/10); Marc Santora

Lots of middle-aged people daydream with friends about selling their homes that have become too large and underwriting a shared house featuring small apartments, gardens, common areas for cooking and schmoozing and a room for hired caregivers, according to Craig Ragland, director of the 15-year-old Cohousing Association of the United States. And a few determined people actually have created what’s called senior cohousing — small developments and neighborhoods that combine private homes with community connections and obligations and spaces. Most of the 120 or so cohousing communities that the association knows of, with another 80 to 100 under development, are multigenerational, Ragland said. But Silver Sage in Boulder, Colo.; Glacier Circle in Davis, Calif.; ElderSpirit in Abingdon, Va.; and soon Wolf Creek Lodge in Grass River, Calif., are among those built or retrofitted specifically for older people. “Any of us who’ve looked at the options for senior housing know that they’re not all that attractive,” Ragland said. Senior cohousing, though, promises the blend of privacy and kinship, plus the support for aging in place, that assisted living or continuing care retirement communities try to provide — but with the residents themselves firmly in charge from hiring architects to setting pet policies. Caveats abound. Not everyone is suited to consensus decision-making, potluck dinners or the responsibilities of community life. If aging members become more than temporarily frail or disabled, it doesn’t provide long-term care the way a continuing-care retirement community might. Perhaps the biggest obstacle, though, is the amount of time and work it takes to establish such communities. The movement’s bible, “The Senior Cohousing Handbook,” by Charles Durrett, acknowledges, “The sheer number of details alone can cause some groups to stumble.” But with models now in place, a community can rise in as little as two to three years, Durrett says. (www.nytimes.com)
New York Times (9/9/10); Paula Span