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বৃহস্পতিবার, ১৮ জুলাই, ২০১৩
House flipping makes a comeback, and profits rise
Real estate 
2 hours ago
For the past several years single-family housing investors have been playing the buy and hold game. Strong rental demand and soft home prices made that the best bet. Now, with home prices up more than 12 percent from a year ago, the strategy is suddenly changing.
"It's a perfect storm for flipping right now in many parts of the country because home prices are bouncing off the bottom," said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac. "That is something that flippers can catch on the coattails of and ride that wave as long as it lasts."
Home flipping, defined as buying and selling the same home within six months, came roaring back in the first half of this year. There were 136,184 homes flipped, an increase of 19 percent from a year ago and 74 percent from the first half of 2011, according to a new report to be released Friday by RealtyTrac.
(Read more: Housing starts stall, optimism doesn't)
Those increases, however, are nothing compared with the jump in profit. Investors made an average gross profit of $18,391 per home, or a 9 percent gross return. That is up 246 percent from a year ago.
"Home-flipping business has keyed up quite a bit in the last 6 months," said Steve Jones, founder of Los Angeles-based Better Shelter. Jones has been flipping homes for five years, but the competition now, he said, is really heating up.
"There's not a lot of inventory, and every time a listing comes up it's like piranha in the water."
Jones bought and flipped eight houses in the first half of this year, going in with all-cash and looking for hidden value, like unique architecture or renovation potential. He does quite a bit of work on the homes, always looking at the bottom line, but also imagining who the end buyer is going to be.
(Read more: Corelogic: There is no housing bubble)
"Some homes you do really great, and some homes you kind of do OK. I have to keep my crews busy, so it averages out," said Jones.
The math is looking better and better to investors as prices rise, with one possible hitch: Rising mortgage rates. Investors largely use cash on the front end, but their buyers don't.
"On the flip side, when they are actually flipping the properties to the end-users, interest rates matter because those end-users will not be able to afford as much as interest rates go up." added Blomquist.
Large-scale institutional investors have been swarming the distressed housing market since the height of the housing crash, buying homes in bulk, rehabilitating them and putting them up for rent. Companies like Blackstone, Colony Capital, Waypoint and hedge fund titan John Paulson have been reaping solid rewards on the trade.
Paulson, speaking at CNBC's Delivering Alpha conference, said he is still high on housing.
"It's not too late to get involved. I still think buying a home is the best investment any individual can make. Affordability is still at an all-time high," said Paulson.
Large-scale investors, however, may not be behind the surge in home flipping. They may, in fact, be the cause of it.
"Now that the institutional investors are doing buy and hold, a lot of these guys [individual investors] can't compete with their checkbooks," said Rick Sharga, formerly an executive at Carrington who now works for Auction.com. "In some cases the individual investors are flipping them to the institutional investors."
While many of the large funds have teams that renovate homes, in some cases they would rather pay a premium for a move-in-ready property, rather than waste time and money remodeling.
"So the flippers are kind of the in-between middleman who is getting the property into good rentable condition and then selling to the institutional investors," explained Blomquist.
(Read more: Map: Tracking the US real estate recovery)
The renovation of course takes away from the flipper's profit, begging the question, if a flipper is getting perhaps a 5 percent return on the investment after costs, why not play the stock market instead? Surely they will see a bigger profit faster, but there is larger downside risk.
"You can't control the stock market," remarked Sharga. "You have a little bit more ability to control your success in housing if you know what you're doing and you know your market well."
The potential profit from house flipping varies dramatically market to market.
The top five markets, ranked by RealtyTrac, for gross profit in flipping are Daytona Beach, Fla. (82 percent), Omaha, Neb. (56 percent), Palm Coast, Fla. (34 percent), Pittsburgh (32 percent) and Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla. (23 percent).
Formerly hot investor markets like Phoenix, Las Vegas and much of Southern California are seeing big drops in flipping, as there is very little to buy and what is available is selling at a premium.
?By CNBC's Diana Olick. Follow her on Twitter @Diana_Olick.
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Bernanke: Timetable for bond purchases not preset
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that the Federal Reserve's timetable for reducing its bond purchases is not on a "preset course" and the Fed could increase or decrease the amount based on how the economy performs.
Bernanke is telling lawmakers in prepared testimony that the job market has made some progress since the Fed began buying $85 billion a month in bonds in September. And he repeated his belief that the Fed could slow that pace later this year if the economy strengthens.
But Bernanke cautioned that the Fed wants to see substantial progress in the job market before scaling back the bond purchases. If conditions worsen, the Fed could maintain its current pace or even increase it. The bond purchases are intended to keep long-term interest rates low and encourage borrowing and spending.
Investors reacted positively to Bernanke's remarks. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell from 2.55 percent to 2.50 percent minutes after the text of his comments were released as investors bought government bonds. Dow index futures turned slightly higher.
"Because our asset purchases depend on economic and financial developments, they are by no means on a preset course," he said in his testimony prepared for the House Financial Services Committee.
Bernanke said that a number of factors could influence the Fed's thinking. U.S. economic growth could be restrained further by a weaker global economy or federal spending cuts and tax increases. Inflation could remain well below the Fed's 2 percent target. And the unemployment rate could drop because people are leaving the workforce ? not because they are getting jobs.
Bernanke will give the Fed's mid-year economic report at a 10 a.m. EDT hearing, his first of two appearances before Congress this week. It may end up being his last mid-year report to Congress as many speculate that he will not seek a third term after his current four-year term ends in January.
Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist for Capital Economics, said Bernanke's comments did not alter his view that the Fed would likely start reducing its bond purchases in September and end them completely by the middle of next year. But Dales said this would be contingent on how the economy performs.
"We don't think this forward guidance could be much clearer," Dales said.
Bernanke's remarks expanded on the views he and other Fed officials have made in recent weeks to try and calm turbulent markets.
The Dow Jones industrial average plunged by 560 points in the two days after Bernanke's initial comments at a news conference following the Fed's June meeting. Since then, various Fed officials have tried to assure investors that the Fed's timetable is based on economic performance ? and not a calendar date. That's helped to restore investor confidence and the Dow and other market indicators have climbed to new highs.
Hiring has improved since the Fed's bond buying began. Employers have created an average of 202,000 jobs a month this year, up from 180,000 in the previous six months.
Still, unemployment remains elevated at 7.6 percent, and economic growth has been modest the past three quarters.
In his testimony, Bernanke again said "a highly accommodative monetary policy will remain appropriate for the foreseeable future" because unemployment remains high and inflation is below the Fed's target of 2 percent.
Bernanke also repeated that the Fed plans to keep its benchmark short-term interest rate near zero as long as unemployment is above 6.5 percent. But Bernanke said the Fed could hold the rate lower even after it falls below 6.5 percent, particularly if unemployment falls because more people are leaving the workforce. The government counts people as unemployed only if they are actively looking for a job.
Bernanke said the economy is growing at "moderate pace" despite the adverse effects of tax increases and federal spending cuts. He noted that the housing market is rebounding and the job market has gradually improved.
"Despite these gains, the job situation is far from satisfactory," he said.
The economy grew at a subpar 1.8 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter. Many economists think growth in the April-June quarter weakened to an annual rate of 1 percent or less. That would make the third straight quarter of a growth rate below 2 percent.
Many expect growth will rebound in the second half of this year.
The Fed forecasts that the economy will grow between 2.3 percent and 2.6 percent this year, which is more optimistic than many economists predict. The pickup in economic growth that Fed officials expect is based in part on an assumption that the adverse effects of the tax increases and government spending cuts will diminish over time. And it assumes that the overall risks to the economy are lower now than they were when the central bank began the latest bond-buying program.
But he said threats remained. The federal budget policies could restrain growth for longer than expected. Or a congressional battle later this year over raising the government's borrowing limit could once again rattle investor and consumer confidence.
.
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Canadian Open: Canada, USA begin Women's International play on Tuesday
Softball City graduates this week, as the Canadian Open Fastpitch International Championship hosts its first Women's International games of 2013 ? beginning on Tuesday ? and Softball City continues to be the hottest place in the softball universe.
The Open's first pitch was thrown on Friday, but senior women's games have so far contained only club teams and the Showcase and Futures divisions are well underway at Softball City, Cloverdale Athletic Park, and Sunnyside Park.
On Tuesday, the best players in the world once again take over Surrey's top diamonds. Team Japan and Team Venezuela get it started at 3:30 p.m., and Team Canada makes its 2013 debut against the California A's at 6:30 p.m.
The A's are the only club team playing in the International division, after going 11-0 and dominating the Women's Elite division in 2012.
Team Canada, meanwhile, enters this year's Canadian Open ranked fourth in the world, behind Japan, the USA, and Australia. The team's most proven veteran is Port Dover's Megan Timph, who comes into this year's tournament without past stalwarts like Jenn Yee and Kaleigh Rafter.
The A's were the only team from the International division to play an exhibition game this weekend, going 4-0 against the Quebec Rebelles, Team BC, and the Northwest Lady Sharks.
The hometown White Rock Renegades are 1-1 through the weekend. They lost 7-2 to Team BC on Saturday, but defeated Northwest on Sunday, 3-2. The Rebelles are the only 2-0 team in the Elite division, and have outscored their opponents 13-5.
(*See the full Women's International schedule here.)
Canada plays Australia at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Japan at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, and Venezuela (1 p.m.) and the United States (6:30 p.m.) on Friday.
The Women's International tournament concludes on Monday, July 22, with the gold and bronze medal finals. Playoffs start next Saturday, and all six International teams make it through.
Source: http://www.burnabynewsleader.com/sports/215472181.html
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President Vladimir Putin praised the Russian military's performance Wednesday in...
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Hagel: Top military brass to be cut 20 percent
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) ? Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday he has ordered 20 percent "across the top" budget cuts for his Pentagon staff and that of his top brass.
The reductions, which he did not spell out in detail, are for the 2015-19 period. They will apply to his office, that of the Joint Chief's chairman and also the Pentagon headquarters offices of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.
It is one element of a broader effort by the Pentagon to adjust to forced spending reductions that already have resulted in the furloughing of civilian workers. Hagel said he believed Pentagon headquarters staff must share in the sacrifices.
"That isn't going to fix the problem," he told about 100 Defense Department civilian employees in a question-and-answer session at Jacksonville Naval Air Station on the second day of a tour of four military bases. "But, yes, everybody's got to do their part."
Military spending was slashed by $37 billion this year, forcing job furloughs that began last week for an estimated 650,000 Defense Department civilian employees. The layoffs do not apply to military members, but they, too, are feeling the effects of a budget squeeze that is reducing some training.
The Pentagon faces the prospect of an additional $52 billion budget cut in 2014 unless Congress and the White House come up with a deficit-cutting plan. Hagel told Congress last week that such a large additional cut would have "severe and unacceptable" effects.
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