Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its latest Employment Situation Summary. Going into the release, the expert consensus was for 1.58 million jobs to be added in July, and for the unemployment rate to fall to 10.5%.

When the official report came out, it revealed that 1.8 million jobs were added, and the unemployment rate fell to 10.2% (from 11.1% last month). Once again, this is excellent news as this was the third consecutive month the unemployment rate decreased.The Latest Unemployment Report: Slow and Steady Improvement | MyKCM

There is, however, still a long way to go before the job market fully recovers. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) put a potential date on that recovery:

“July’s payroll growth, at 1.8 million, still leaves total payrolls 12.9 million lower than in February. And…

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Hey, it's Andy with the Mandel Team at RE/MAX, and I'm here to bring to you your July 2020 housing market update. For the purposes of this video, we're gonna be going over Boca, Parkland, and Coral Springs. Those are the cities that our team predominantly does most of our business. In Boca, we are not gonna be discussing the country clubs or any 55 and over community, so all ages, no country clubs for the purposes of this video.

Now, when we do these videos, we wanna bring you the leading indicators to show you where the housing market is headed, not where it's going. When you watch these videos from the mainstream media, they're gonna talk about closed sales price. That's really indicative of what sold 30, 60, sometimes even 90 days ago. So…

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So you're thinking about moving to Boca Raton. Well, in this video we're gonna go over the eight things that you need to know before moving to Boca Raton, so let's get after it.

Number one is housing. We have a lot of country clubs here in Boca Raton, and in some of the surrounding cities. So if you're looking on websites like Zillow, realtor.com, stuff like that, you're gonna see a lotta properties that look like they're very inexpensive and it's a really good value for the money, but it turns out they're in these country clubs.

View Homes For Sale In Boca Raton >>>

So how that works is most of the country clubs have an initial one-time payment of about $60,000. Now that is money you have to pay in cash, in full, prior to closing. You…

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Last Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released their May Employment Situation Summary. Leading up to the release, most experts predicted the unemployment rate would jump up to approximately 20% from the 14.7% rate announced last month.

The experts were shocked.

The Wall Street Journal put it this way:

“The May U.S. jobless rate fell to 13.3% and employers added 2.5 million jobs, blowing Wall Street expectations out of the water: Economists had forecast a loss of 8.3 million jobs and a 19.5% unemployment rate.”

In addition, CNBC revealed:

“The May gain was by far the biggest one-month jobs surge in U.S. history since at least 1939.”

Here are some of the job gains by sector:

  • Food Service and Bartenders –…

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What does contingent mean in real estate?

This is a question that we get all the time from our home buyer and seller clients, especially those trying to buy a home, so I wanted to answer it for you. So the short answer is that it means that the seller has accepted an offer and property is moved to pending status - it is under contract to be sold to someone else.

A lot of times our buyers and sellers will be looking on the online portal sites like Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, things like that, and they'll see a house that they love and it says contingent or backup - something like that. So what does that mean?

There are two statuses that a realtor can put a property in when it goes under contract. The first is called pending sale. So what that…

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One of the biggest questions we all seem to be asking these days is: When are we going to start to see an economic recovery? As the country begins to slowly reopen, moving forward in strategic phases, business activity will help bring our nation back to life. Many economists indicate a recovery should begin to happen in the second half of this year. Here’s a look at what some of the experts have to say.

Jerome Powell, Federal Reserve Chairman

“I think there’s a good chance that there’ll be positive growth in the third quarter. And I think it’s a reasonable expectation that there’ll be growth in the second half of the year…

So, in the long run, I would say the U.S. economy will recover. We’ll get back to the place we were in February; we’ll…

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Hey, it's Andy with the Mandel team at RE/MAX and I'm here to bring you your March 2021 Housing Market Update. As always, for the purposes of these videos, we're giving you the leading indicators to show you where the real estate market is headed.

We're gonna talk about Boca, Parkland, and Coral Springs. Those are the areas where our team does the predominant amount of our business. And we're talking about single-family houses only. No condos, no townhouses, no country clubs, and no 55-and-over communities. So, let's get into it!

The first stat we like to look at is the number of new homes hitting the market. That is down on average 25% compared to this time last year. So, we're seeing fewer homes hit the market. At the same time, the number…

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We’re currently experiencing historically low mortgage rates. Over the last fifty years, the average on a Freddie Mac 30-year fixed-rate mortgage has been 7.76%. Today, that rate is 2.81%. Flocks of homebuyers have been taking advantage of these remarkably low rates over the last twelve months. However, there’s no guarantee rates will remain this low much longer.

Whenever we try to forecast mortgage rates, we should consider the advice of Mark Fleming, Chief Economist at First American:

“You know, the fallacy of economic forecasting is don’t ever try and forecast interest rates and/or, more specifically, if you’re a real estate economist mortgage rates, because you will always invariably be wrong.”

Many things…

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There has been some discussion recently on home prices in relation to mortgage rates. Some believe if there is a rapid rise of mortgage rates, home prices should decrease. Logically it makes the most sense for the price of the house to drop when interest rates are rising, but this is not always the case.

This theory of home prices decreasing is typically discussed by future home buyers. As a buyer you would like to think if you are paying higher rates on your mortgage, you should be able to see a decrease in cost somewhere else. Unfortunately, these rates are rising because the economy is in better shape. As the economy succeeds, incomes rise, rates go up, as well as the price of the home.

A recent study by the John Burns Real Estate Consulting…

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The season you sell your home can have an impact on how much you get for your home and how quickly it sells. The season that has the most success in selling homes is spring. This is a good time of year for families moving to new school districts and is also more convenient weather for moving. Because of this trend, most people will recommend waiting to list your home until after the winter is over. Avoiding the winter is a huge misconception in the housing industry and can cause homeowners to miss out on opportunities.

Selling in the winter can give you a few advantages. There will be fewer houses on the market since most people assume winter is a bad time to sell. This gives your home more attention. Potential buyers are always looking no matter…

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