Top 5 REALTOR® Updates | Week of September 28th

September 30, 2015

Check out these five real estate updates to help you stay in-the-know with the latest happenings in our industry.

Agent safety is too often overlooked or dismissed. In light of the recent and highly publicized Beverly Carter case, agent safety is finally becoming a more talked about issue. And rightfully so. To help protect our members, we are launching the Safety Series. Each week, we will be sharing safety-related articles to remind members about the importance of taking certain safety precautions and sharing resources, tools, and information about agent and broker safety. Read More...

2. Housing's 20 Top Performers This Month (Denver in the top 5!)

The Golden State’s housing market is proving to be golden so far heading into the fall buying season. Several Californian cities dominate realtor.com®’s list of the top-performing housing markets in the country, with San Francisco taking the No 1 spot. Realtor.com® has singled out 20 of the nation’s 300 largest markets, identifying the “hottest markets” in terms of housing supply (measured by days on the market) and demand (measured by listing views on its site). Read More...

3. The Baby Boomers Are Driving Growth

Baby boomers are the “driving force” of household formation, which is critical for real estate demand, according to a new blog post at the National Association of REALTORS® Economists’ Outlook blog. The highest gains in household formation have been by 65- to 74-year-olds, who accounted for 860,000 new households alone from the first half of 2014 to first half of 2015, according to Census Bureau data. Read More...

4. Closing Process Changes: What To Expect

New mortgage disclosure rules will take effect Oct. 3, and lenders and real estate brokerages are quickly preparing for what has been predicted to be big changes to home closings. Mortgage lenders will be required to begin using new consumer disclosure forms on Oct. 3. The changes will merge the HUD-1 Settlement Statement, the Good Faith Estimate, and the Truth-in-Lending disclosure form into two new closing forms: a Loan Estimate and a Closing Disclosure. Read More...

5. 6 Ways Agents Say They Stay Safe

Real estate professionals say they’re making their personal day-to-day safety more of a priority in their business, according to a new RISMedia. As REALTOR® Safety Month draws to a close, RISMedia polled its readers to determine how real estate professionals are staying safe. Forty-seven percent of agents polled say they’ve felt scared when showing a home. Real estate professionals revealed their go-to strategies for staying safe on the job. Read More...