Thread: U.S. Needs 4.6 MILLION New Apartments by 2030

Apocalypse for retail: 3,500 stores closing in 2017

Billion-Dollar Landlords: Rental home giant is under fire from tenants, critics

Thousands of new 55-plus homes go on sale as aging population boosts demand


11 COMMENTS By JEFF COLLINS | JeffCollins@scng.com | Orange County Register
PUBLISHED: November 17, 2017 at 2:26 pm | UPDATED: November 17, 2017 at 2:29 pm


The Irvine Company had a 31-acre parcel near the Orange County Great Park that was ideal for new homes, but it was outside the coveted Irvine Unified School District.

Homebuilder CalAtlantic had a perfect solution: Build homes for seniors — folks whose children are no longer in school.

The new 55-plus Travata development officially opens Saturday, Nov. 18, in the Irvine Co.’s Cypress Village development next to the Great Park’s southern boundary.

The 243-home development has three home types and 13 different floor plans, all of them either one story or with major living areas on the bottom floor. They include second-story “flats,” each with their own private elevator. There also are townhomes and houses.

The grand opening is planned for 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 18-19.

But longtime Irvine residents Jack and Maureen Khaw couldn’t wait until then to find out about the new project. The couple turned up at Travata’s construction site on Wednesday to peep at the new homes.

The Khaws lived since 1981 in Northwood, three miles to the west, raising two daughters who now live on their own nearby.

Since then, they’ve seen the value of their home quintuple, from $181,000 to $1 million. But they’re attracted to a 1,900-square-foot, single-story floor plan in Travata.

“It’s newer homes, and it’s all for 55-plus,” said Maureen Khaw, 63.

Demand for age-restricted housing has been soaring as baby boomers enter retirement, prompting more and more homebuilders to build 55-plus communities.

Housing starts on 55-plus homes jumped to 53,000 single- and multi-family units in 2016 from 30,000 in 2012, figures from the National Association of Home Builders show.

“What’s driving the demand is that cohort of the population,” said Idaho homebuilder Dennis Cunningham, chair of the NAHB’s 55-plus Housing Industry Council. “Right now, 10,000 people every day turn 65.”

That number is expected to increase to 15,000 a day by 2020, he added.

There are 78 million baby boomers, plus 32 million people between 72 and 88 — more than 100 million Americans older than 55 but not yet in managed care.

And people are living longer.

The proportion of 55-plus families is projected to rise to 44.5 percent of all U.S. households in 2024, up from 42 percent in 2014, NAHB figures show.

“The data show that close to 50 percent to 60 percent (of senior homeowners) will do some type of relocation, maybe in their same town, maybe from a two-story home, maybe to downsize,” Cunningham said.

A smaller yard, lower property taxes and less maintenance all are incentives for senior homeowners to downsize. “Lifestyle amenities” like walking clubs, gardening areas and a clubhouse also can be a draw.

“You have a lot of the larger builders either in that market segment or getting into it,” Cunningham said.

CalAtlantic has been expanding its focus on active adult developments, with age-restricted projects making up about a fourth of its developments in Los Angeles and Orange counties, the company said. The firm is building 55-plus homes in 10 states.

Rancho Mission Viejo has focused on the senior homebuyer since launching its Sendero project east of San Juan Capistrano in 2013, with 40 percent of the 940 new homes in its Gavilan neighborhood. It has since included Gavilan homes for seniors in all three phases of its Esencia development nearby. In addition to CalAtlantic, Gavilan developers include Shea, William Lyon and Del Webb Homes. Del Webb also is building two 55-plus projects in Brea’s La Floresta development.

“Our Gavilan neighborhoods continue to draw high demand,” said Rancho Mission Viejo Vice President Dan Kelly. “They’ve become such a vital part of Rancho Mission Viejo.”

Travata and other Orange County 55-plus developments give seniors the opportunity to downsize while continuing to maintain their local network of family, friends, medical providers and shops, said Elliott Mann, CalAtlantic’s Southern California Coastal Division president.

Others are “trailing parents,” who have children and grandchildren living in Orange County and they want a place of their own nearby.

The Travata homes include one-, two- and three-bedroom units ranging from 1,417 to 2,567 square feet apiece. The one-bedroom units also have dens, and all units have attached garages.

All are designed for aging residents, with wider, wheelchair-accessible doorways, no-step showers and blocking behind drywall for shower grab bars. There’s also a community clubhouse, a lap pool, a gym, pickleball and bocce ball courts and access to Great Park trails.

Prices start above $600,000 for the cheapest units and range up to more than $1 million for the houses.

“They don’t need the homes they stayed in any longer, and they want to stay near family and friends,” Mann said.
Travata is southwest of the intersection of Ridge Valley and Floral View.

http://www.ocregister.com/2017/11/17...boosts-demand/

We need more 55+ affordable homes and more 55+ RV resorts all across the USA.

There are plenty of Family neighborhoods and plenty of Family RV parks!

Build more Senior living communities.

Will millennials give housing shares a boost?

Published November 18, 2017 Personal Finance Dow Jones Newswires

Where are the top investment opportunities in housing?

PwC Partner Mitch Roschelle on where the investment opportunities are in real estate.

Millennials are no longer snubbing homeownership, and some market observers argue that could offer a tailwind for housing-related shares and the broader stock market.

A September study by Zillow Group is getting a lot of attention. It found that people aged 18 to 34 now make up 42% of home buyers in the U.S., making them the largest group.

The phenomenon is being cited as proof that millennials don't hate the idea of homeownership after all, and that a long decline in homeownership that started in the middle of the last decade had more to do with the financial crisis and its aftermath.

Analysts at Pavilion, in a recent note, argued that the underlying trends offer further encouragement. In a note, they contend rising rents and the prospect of higher interest rates may have convinced many young Americans that now is the time to buy. At the same time, rental vacancies are rising. That's potentially bad news for residential real-estate investment trusts, they said.

Meanwhile, a recovery in income growth for persons aged 25-34--a cohort that had lagged behind other age groups--is also encouraging, they said. All in all, that should be good news for U.S. home builders, they said, though they noted that tight labor conditions are pushing up construction industry wages and have left home builder profit margins flat in recent years.

Home builders have outperformed the broader stock market so far in 2017. The SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB) is up nearly 23% year-to-date, versus a 15.2% rise for the S&P 500 .The iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF (ITB) is up nearly 49%.

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Barry Ritholtz, chairman of Ritholtz Wealth Management, in a Bloomberg View column also cited rising rents and a strengthening economy, as well as a delayed pickup in household formation, as factors behind the renewed millennial interest in homeownership.

The reversal of the phenomenon, he said, is an important contributor to the momentum behind the economic recovery from the credit crisis and is also a "potentially significant for the next leg up in U.S. equity markets." He cautioned, however, that proposals in tax legislation to reduce the mortgage deduction could dent the recovery.

Kristina Hooper, global market strategist at Invesco, isn't convinced millennials are the key to the housing recovery.

While millennial attitudes toward homeownership do appear to be changing in a positive way, "the reality is that they are saddled with so much student loan debt," she said, in a phone interview. She cited a September report from the National Association of Realtors and American Student Assistance (https://www.nar.realtor/research-and...housing-report) showing a U.S. student debt load of $1.4 trillion, accounting for 10% of all outstanding debt and 35% of all non-housing debt.

Moreover, the survey of persons born between 1980 and 1998 found that among non-homeowners, 83% cited student loan debt as the factor delaying them from buying a home.

Add in the potential elimination of the mortgage deduction and the deduction for state and local taxes, it's difficult to get too excited about a millennial resurgence driving the housing market, she said.

Hooper argued that a focus on home improvement rather than home buying could be good news for home furnishing and renovation-related stocks. Even in a worst-case scenario in which the mortgage interest deduction is eliminated, current mortgage holders would be grandfathered in, giving them incentive to focus on renovation rather than seeking new homes, she said.

For that matter, the Pavilion strategists see home furnishings as the better way to play an improving real estate trend, arguing that a larger share of first-time buyers in overall sales suggests better sales growth.

Meanwhile, the sector's price-to-earnings ratios are recovering and, while not cheap, are far off the postcrisis highs, they said.

Data on Friday showed U.S. October housing starts jumped 13.7%, attributed in part to a recovery from hurricanes that ravaged Texas and Florida. Meanwhile, sentiment among home builders has been running strong all year.

The week ahead sees earnings from retail home improvement chain Lowe's Companies Inc. (LOW) on Tuesday, as well as results from farm-equipment maker Deere & Co. (DE)(DE) on Wednesday.

It will be a holiday-shortened week for U.S. markets, with exchanges closed for Thanksgiving Day on Thursday and abbreviated hours in store on Friday.

Stocks ended the past week on a down note, leaving the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average with weekly declines of 0.1% and 0.3%, respectively, but still not far off all-time highs. The Nasdaq Composite closed at a record Thursday and ended the week with a 0.5% rise.

The economic calendar will see existing home sales data for October released on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Eastern. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch look for annualized rate of sales to come in unchanged from September at 5.39 million.

Wednesday will see weekly jobless claims as well as October durable goods orders, which are forecast to see a 0.5% rise, November consumer sentiment figures, and the release of the minutes of the Fed's November policy meeting.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2...res-boost.html

Population Growth Affects all 50 States

REAL ESTATE Nov. 17, 2017
Otay Ranch low-income housing opens. Already has a 10-year waiting list

Phillip Molnar
The demand is so high to get into Otay Ranch’s new low-income housing complexes that the waiting list is now more than a decade. Both projects in the Millenia development — Duetta and Volta — officially opened this week and have rent as low as $759 a month for some residents. In total, there were...

Top 50 Master-Planned Communities

Together, the top 50 masterplans sold 27,580 new homes in 2017

As rental prices rise, Texas company snatches up hundreds of Tucson homes

• By Gabriela Rico Arizona Daily Star
• Jan 13, 2018 Updated Jan 13, 2018

Tucson’s rental market has been on a hot streak.
ablokhin

A tightening rental market, fueled by insufficient multifamily developments in the works, has placed upward pressure on rent prices in the Tucson area and piqued investor interest.

An Austin investment group recently bought about 200 single-family rental homes in the Tucson area for more than $19 million.

It was the first venture into the local market for Amherst Holdings and part of a larger purchase of 1,532 rental homes for more than $153 million around the country.

“This acquisition will further enable us to grow our presence, enhance scale in existing markets, and expand into new markets where we see significant value,” Keith Ramsden, chief investment officer of Amherst Single Family Residential said in a prepared statement.

“We expect that there will be several other portfolio acquisition opportunities in the coming quarters that should serve as further catalysts to continue to grow our footprint in key markets.”

Amherst Holdings did not respond to a request from the Star for an interview about the company’s interest in Tucson.

The Tucson homes it bought are located throughout the city with sale prices ranging from $80,000 to $170,000.

The company’s portfolio states that the Amherst Single Family Residential platform acquired 6,000 single-family homes in 2017, bringing its inventory to 17,000 rental homes in 18 states.

“Usually when we see institutional investor groups it is an indicator that the market is moving up,” said Ginny Huffman, president of the Tucson Association of Realtors. “We are on the radar because we’re starting to pick up some corporate interest. … The Caterpillar acquisition was huge and other companies are seriously looking at Tucson.”

Rental rates across all properties rose in 2017 with single-family home rents increasing from an average of $1,228 a month in January 2017 to $1,366 in December, data from the Tucson Association of Realtors show.

“Tucson remains a strong choice for housing investment opportunities,” said housing analyst Ginger Kneup, owner of Bright Future Real Estate. “We haven’t seen large portfolios of rental properties that were accumulated during the recession come back to market, indicating that demand for single-family rental homes remains strong.”

DEMAND FOR RENTALS

The overall rental market in the Tucson area has been on a hot streak for the past couple of years. Investors have been buying complexes around town as rents rise and new workers move in.

Only a handful of new apartment complexes are in the works, which increases the demand for single-family home rentals, said Art Wadlund, a senior managing director at Berkadia.

He predicts rents will continue to rise in 2018.

“Demand for rental housing of all types is presently exceeding new demand,” he said.

Huffman, with the Realtors association, owns rental management company Imagine Realty Services Ltd. and works with landlords and tenants.

“Rents have been rising during what is traditionally a slow period,” she said of fall and winter months. “It’s pretty amazing and once we get into February, March and April we’re going to see even higher rents as more people move in.”

Renting is not always an affordability issue, Huffman said.

Many of her tenants want the flexibility to move to other job opportunities, and retirees may want to pursue extended travel.

“Tenants want to be loose and fancy-free,” she said. “There’s always going to be a demand for rentals.”

http://tucson.com/business/as-rental...a0baea939.html

San Bernardino County News: Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
https://www.dailybulletin.com/location/california/san-bernardino-county/
In 2018's first three months, permits were filed for 10,253 new residential units in the four counties in Southern California . . .