Home Buying Gets Easier as Down Payments Dip

Home Buying Gets Easier as Down Payments Dip

FILE PHOTO: A real estate sign advertising a new home for sale is pictured in Vienna, Virginia, U.S. October 20, 2014.  REUTERS/Larry Downing/File Photo
Larry Downing
By Beth Braverman

One hurdle to first-time homebuyers is starting to get a little lower: The average down payment for a home fell to less than 15 percent in the first quarter of 2015 to its lowest level since early 2012. The average down payment for the quarter was $57,710, according to RealtyTrac.

The lower down payments reflect new loan programs recently introduced by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and lower insurance premiums for Federal Housing Authority Loans. The market is also adjusting as large, institutional investors who had been buying starter homes as rental investments dial back.

Related: U.S. Homeownership Dips, But Household Formation Rises

“Down payment trends in the first quarter indicate that first-time homebuyers are finally starting to come out of the woodwork, albeit gradually,” RealtyTrac vice president Daren Blomquist said in a statement.

Broken down by type of loan, the average down payment for conventional loans was 18.4 percent ($72,590), and the average down payment for FHA loans was just 2.9 percent ($7,609). FHA loans as a share of all mortgages increased from 21 percent in January to 25 percent in March.

Among the country’s largest counties, Wayne County in Detroit, Mich., had the lowest average down payment (12 percent), and New York had the highest (37 percent).

While lower down payments are good news for first-time homebuyers, they also are a reminder of practices that led to the housing bubble that began to burst in late 2006 and contributed to the financial crisis. During the height of the boom, buyers were able to purchase homes that they couldn’t really afford by putting little or no money down on the property.

Here’s How Much Boomers Are Giving Their Kids

By Beth Braverman

Money has always tended to flow from parents or grandparents to children and grandchildren, whether it’s as outright gifts, help with living expenses or paying for things like school. But the pace of that inter-generational transfer of wealth has picked up in recent years — and it could be threatening the retirement prospects of some baby boomers, according to a new report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

The report finds that the number of cash transfers going from older households to younger family members increased from 1998 to 2010. High-income households are more likely to provide support to their adult children, but middle- and low-income families are also providing cash to younger family members. Overall, from 2008 to 2010, households of adults aged 50 to 64 gave an average of $8,350 to younger family members, and households age 85 and older gave $4,787 to younger family members.

“For older households, cash transfers can reduce their retirement assets, raising concerns about retirement security, particularly for low-income groups,” EBRI research associate Sudipto Banerjee said in a statement.

Related: Sandwich Generation Squeezed Once Again

In just 5 percent of families, wealth is passed from the younger generation to the older, and the amounts are far smaller. During the same period, households age 85 and older received an average of $359 from those in younger generations.

The EBRI numbers confirm a trend highlighted in other recent reports. A 2013 Pew study found that about half of adults ages 40 to 59 have provided some financial support to at least one grown child in the past year, with more than a quarter of them providing the primary support.

Obviously, the economic climate of recent years may be a big reason for the increased cash flowing from parents to their grown children. More than half of parents of millennials think that it is harder for today’s young adults to live within their means than it was for them, according to an April Bank of America survey.

Taylor Swift’s Still Got Bad Blood with Streaming Services — Even Apple’s

By Suelain Moy

When Apple’s new streaming service launches at the end of the month, Taylor Swift’s 1989 will not be on it.

The superstar’s latest release was the best-selling album of 2014, and has sold close to 5 million copies since it first came out in November. It’s not currently available on any subscription streaming service, and it’ll stay that way even after Apple’s new service launches, according to BuzzFeed. Apple Music will just carry the singer’s back catalog, which can already be accessed on competitive streaming services like Rhapsody and Tidal.

Related: Apple Muscles Into Streaming Music Market

For a time, it looked like Taylor Swift was never, ever, ever getting back together with streaming music services again. Last July, Swift wrote passionately on the state of the music business in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, saying “Valuable things should be paid for.”

The singer then removed her entire catalogue from Spotify in November, telling TIME, “I think there should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify. Everybody’s complaining about how music sales are shrinking, but nobody’s changing the way they’re doing things. They keep running towards streaming, which is, for the most part, what has been shrinking the numbers of paid album sales.”

The Waldorf’s Presidential Suite Isn’t Very Presidential Anymore

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
By Suelain Moy

Months after the Waldorf Astoria was sold to a Chinese company, the State Department is abandoning a decades-long tradition of putting up U.S. diplomats at the storied hotel on New York’s Park Avenue.

This fall President Obama and state department officials will not be staying at the Waldorf for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly and will check into the New York Palace Hotel instead.

According to the New York Post, “every U.S. president since Herbert Hoover” has stayed in the presidential suite at the Waldorf when visiting New York, including President Obama. Presidential artifacts in the suite include President Jimmy Carter’s eagle desk set, one of President John F. Kennedy’s rocking chairs, a gold oval mirror from Ronald Reagan, and the personal desk of General Douglas MacArthur. The hotel is the site of Chinese history as well. On his first historic trip to the U.S. in 1974, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping stayed at the Waldorf and attended a banquet given in his honor by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Related: U.S. Reviews Waldorf Astoria Sale to Chinese Firm

The $1.95 billion sale of the 47-story tower to the Beijing-based Anbang Insurance Group first raised eyebrows in Washington last October. Even though the previous owner, Hilton Worldwide Holdings, will continue to manage the hotel for the next 100 years, news of a “major renovation” sparked fears of possible Chinese cyber-espionage and surveillance.

Those fears were further heightened earlier this month when U.S. officials blamed Chinese hackers for a massive cyberattack targeting the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, exposing sensitive information about 4 million current and former federal workers. China has denied any involvement.

Can ‘Project Lightning’ Give Twitter a Fresh Jolt?

The Twitter logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., September 28, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
Brendan McDermid
By Millie Dent

The ubiquitous blue bird associated with Twitter (TWTR) has been incessantly chirping out new announcements this month as the social media phenom tries to pick itself back up after being slammed for weak earnings growth and the underperformance of its stock.

Projections from data firm eMarketer call for the Twitter monthly user base to grow at a measly 14.1 percent this year, compared with more than 30 percent growth two years ago, according to Reuters.

While the news last week that CEO Dick Costolo was relinquishing the corner office was not a shock since he has offered to resign in the past, the appointment of co-founder and former chief executive Jack Dorsey as provisional CEO caused a stir in the business and tech worlds. Not only is Dorsey the CEO of his own mobile payments startup, Square, but he was reportedly removed from his role as CEO of Twitter in 2008.

The shakeup caused a brief spike in the company’s shares, but the stock is now back to where it had been before the announcement — and if it’s going to climb higher, investors may to need to see some other changes, too.

That’s where the slew of product announcements comes in. The latest, revealed yesterday on Buzzfeed, is called Project Lightning. Essentially, if there’s a hot topic that people are tweeting about — either prescheduled events, breaking news or ongoing events — Twitter has created an easy way for users to view the most popular and relevant tweets, images and videos, without having to sift through every tedious comment and retweet. Twitter will have a team of editors select the tweets they think will be most popular on the stories they see as the biggest of the moment.

The goal is to make Twitter easier to use and more engaging for an audience that isn’t necessarily interested in actively tweeting. (Twitter’s stock jumped more than 4 percent Friday in response to the new product announcement, its best day in months.) Similarly, Twitter is trying to bring down other obstacles to using its service. The same day the news was released about Costolo, Twitter also announced the removal of the 140-character limit on the direct messages feature. Getting rid of the limit is a step by the company to keep up with rival social networks and messaging apps, like Facebook and WhatsApp. 

Related: Instagram Takes Steps to Open Platform to Advertisers

At the same time it tries to draw in users, Twitter executives know they must do more to attract advertisers. Six ad executives surveyed recently by Reuters said they spend more money on rival platforms because they have more users, better data to target consumers and create more effective ad content. To combat that perception, Twitter this week announced a push to bring in advertisers by rolling out video ads that will automatically play in a user’s timeline. Though initially muted, if a user clicks on the video it will switch to full-screen mode with sound. Advertisers will only be charged when a user has watched at least three seconds of the video on a full screen.

Both Facebook and Instagram offer an almost identical ad feature.

Nailed a Job Interview? Prepare to Wait for an Offer

iStockphoto
By Beth Braverman

The improving job market may have more people looking for jobs, but the experience of doing so has gotten rougher.

Job seekers last year had to wait an average of 23 days after an initial interview to find out whether they gotten the job or not. That’s nearly twice the 13 days the interview process took in 2010, according to a new report from Glassdoor.com.

It’s also far longer than the global average of just under four days. Part of the reason for the extended process in the United States is an increase in the use of background checks, skills tests, and drug tests.

Related: The Top 10 Hiring Myths

Police officers faced the longest hiring process (128 days), followed by patent examiners (88 days), and assistant professors (58.7) days.

“Right now hiring delays can represent money left on the table both for workers and employers,” Glassdoor Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain said in a statement.

When employers can’t find the right worker, vacancies stay open for an average of two months, according to a separate report last spring by CareerBuilder. A fifth of employers said those vacancies stay open for more than six months, on average.

Those employers said the extended vacancies led to lower morale, a reduction in productivity, and declines in customer service.

Lower-skilled jobs tended to get filled most quickly. Entry-level marketing jobs were filled most quickly (four days), followed by entry-level sales (five days), and servers and bartenders (six days), according to the GlassDoor report.