Happy Friday, friends! As is tradition with the turn of a new year, I am (mostly) off the carb train and back on track with where I left off before Thanksgiving. I spent a lot of the last year working on myself, cleaning up my diet, educating myself on what my body needs, and I feel great as a result. Personal health and wellness has always been a focus of mine, but after two kids and a crazy market during the pandemic, I got away from it. Scott has been really supportive by adjusting his recipes to include less oil replaced with more love, Mavy loves power squatting my 3 lb dumbbell (complete with grunts) and Maven has some amazing yoga poses. It’s a family affair over here, and I couldn’t and would’t want to do it without them.
Nearly every day, Compass’s Leonard Steinberg puts together a handful of real estate news bits that are always so interesting I have to share some of my favorites of the week. To receive these every day from Leonard, please click here and include your full name and email address to get on his mailing list.
* Assumable mortgages are rare compared with the trillions of dollars in new mortgages issued each year, though they have been growing in popularity. The FHA and VA together handled about 6,400 assumptions in 2023, more than double the amount in 2022. (WSJ)
* VAIL…..northeast? Yup, Vail Resorts has bought up numerous ski resorts in the Northeast (15!) and elsewhere. Vail’s EPIC PASS Costing around $700-1,000 allows skiers to ski in multiple resorts in Colorado, Rockies, West, Canada, Australia, Europe and the Northeast, now with over 2 million subscribers. Traditionally, real estate prices at ski resorts have soared over time. (Bloomberg)
* A group of lawsuits accuse large landlords of price-fixing the market rate of rent in the US. A complaint filed by Washington D.C.’s Attorney General alleges 14 landlords in the district are sharing competitively sensitive data through RealPage, a real estate software provider that recommends prices for roughly 4.5 million housing units in the US. RealPage says its landlord customers are under no obligation to take their price suggestions. Do homeowners feel the same way about Zestimates? Just when we were being told that tech can replace agents to reduce consumer costs …… hmmm …..? Is there an entity similar to a REALPAGE tech for-(big)-profit entity possibly driving the attack on real estate agent fees? Maybe consumers can see here what happens to ‘cost-savings’ when tech takes over? (CNBC)
* Nearly 300 gigawatts of new power plants are needed over the next 5 years and 500 gigawatts over the next decade to meet the need. Solar demand is expected to grow 26% per year compounded over the next 5 years as the economics of generating solar power become increasingly attractive. Contrary to (well-funded) narratives, utility-scale solar costs anywhere from $24- 96 per megawatt hour without subsidies, about 56% cheaper than nuclear and gas peaking and 42% less expensive than coal at the top end of the cost estimate range. (CNBC)
