THE BYTE

Welcome to the BYTE, where we serve up the latest home and tech news from the last week for you to sink your teeth into.

This week we’re taking a BYTE out of what home buyers are looking for, how they are paying for homes, city noise, social media, and a new take on an old material. Dig in!

Generally

Tell Me What You Want
According to two new studies people are: more interested in new homes and more interested in real estate sustainability issues and practices.

What You Really Really Want
According to a new report from NewHomeSource.com, 59% of active home shoppers strongly consider a brand-new home offered by a builder. This is a 20% increase from only 3 years ago. The biggest factor people cared about with new homes was the quality of construction. Gen X and Boomers are the generations most interested in a new home purchase.

According to the NAR (National Association of Realtors) more than half of Realtors find consumers are interested in sustainability factors in listings. 71% Realtors around the country have found that promotion of energy efficiency is very or somewhat valuable. Realtors are shifting to match buyers’ interests on green and sustainable living in local markets and are working to bump up the 61% of Realtors that are comfortable answering clients’ questions about home performance.

Up, Up, And Away

It’s Sure Not The 90’s Anymore
The Mortgage Bankers Association put out some new data this week showing that average mortgage size is the largest it’s ever been. The data goes back to 1990 and the growth is being attributed to a number of things. The average down payment was only 10% last year and higher priced homes are being listed around the country. With this info it is no surprise that cash sales accounted for 32.1% of sales last year, which was the lowest since 2007.

Take Notes

A New Sounding Board
If you’re looking for some peace and quiet in your new home you may want to check this new Noise Map first. The Noise Map was released by the U.S. Department of Transportation and is basically a heat map for the noise level around the U.S. This is a great tool for being able to plan a new purchase or a new community and was developed to help cities better plan based off sounds from highways, planes, and everything else.

What Would You Do With 5 More Years?
According to a new study about social media, people spend 5 years and 4 months of their life on social media. YouTube takes up the largest portion of your life with 1 year, 10 months, followed by Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. Comparatively, TV still dominates people’s time taking 7 years, 8 months of our lives on average. Maybe it’s time to listen to Netflix when it asks if you’re still watching…

Wood It Work
Shanghai University found that transparent wood windows are better at keeping homes cool than glass windows. The researchers removed the light absorbing part of wood and filled it with a transparent resin to create the windows. They also say the transparent wood is lighter, will be cheaper, and are a renewable resource. If all of this is true, it doesn’t seem like this wood be hard to sell.

Totally Unrelated

We Got Jokes
April Fool’s Day wasn’t long ago, so if you haven’t had time to catch up on all the best pranks from this year, look no further.