Rent2Buy’s new car-sharing platform goes beyond sharing by facilitating the purchase of the cars that consumers share or rent through the program. This allows you to truly “get to know” a car before you buy and obtain a great price on the vehicle. For individual car owners and dealers, Rent2Buy helps generate rental or sharing income on cars that are waiting to be sold, including hundreds of cars often found sitting on deal lots.

The addition of HiGear will make our service much more valuable, adding a large group of loyal customers and high end inventory. Given the 35 years combined experience of Rent2Buy founders Moti Kahana and Todd Daum, Rent2Buy is clearly positioned to resolve the complexity around peer-to-peer car sharing and make this a valuable, mainstream service.

Starting today, HiGear members will once again be able to use the high end car sharing service as before, following a pause of the service late last year to ensure appropriate consumer protection tools were in place. Rent2Buy will be implementing a new set of best in class procedures to make car sharing easier and more accessible to the average consumer.

So what does Rent2Buy’s acquisition of HiGear mean for you? A bigger and better site with more opportunities to share, rent, and buy the cars you love!

To read more about Rent2Buy’s acquisition, check out the following articles in: TechCrunch or the Auto Rental News

Startup companies vying for a space on the car-sharing stage are trying to change peoples’ perceptions of car ownership. By making groups of cars available for rent, these companies are trying to shift the norm from owning one’s own personal vehicle to making use of a shared network of cars.

How does the peer-to-peer car sharing process work? Both renters and sharers sign up on the web. They either make their car available or express their desire to rent from others. Each car owner comes up with his own hourly rate, and the web company is responsible for covering the insurance.

What makes new car sharing sites such as Getaround and Buzzcar different from already existing car sharing companies such as ZipCar is that they are looking to expand the fleet of cars available to users. By turning every single idle vehicle into a vehicle that’s available for rent, both car owners and car renters get an opportunity to reap the benefits.

According to Buzzcar’s founder, Robin Chase, “People who live in tiny towns or out in rural areas can add their cars into the network. Then, when a neighbor needs a pickup, or their adult children are visiting and they need another car, or their own car in out of commission, they can rent a neighbors car.”

Click here to read more.

Over the last 10 years, vacancies have increased in the area by 26 percent. The increase in vacancies has occurred despite a 3.8 percent decrease in the number of housing units during the same time period, and has caused people to question whether the census data is in fact flawed.

There are relevant questions that must be taken into account that may have affected the census data. Is it possible that people were at their Hampton homes during the time of the survey? Or has the financial crisis forced people to move out of the area and into cheaper zip codes?

According to Jonathan Miller, a well-known real estate appraiser from Miller Samuel Inc., “In some strange way, the high vacancy rate suggests more affluence.” Miller says that despite the reported increase in vacancies, “It doesn’t mean these houses are empty.”

For the purposes of the census, a vacant housing unit is characterized as such “if no one is living in it at the time [of the count] unless its occupants are only temporarily absent.” The census website also notes, “Units temporarily occupied at the time of enumeration entirely by people who have a usual residence elsewhere are also classified as vacant.”

Questions still remain about the accuracy of the census data and what the results of the survey mean for the future of the real estate market in New York’s more affluent neighborhoods.

“The big question is what about the vacancies,” said Andrew Beveridge, professor of sociology and demographic expert at Queens College. “New York was growing, but after Lehman [brothers collapsed] it just stopped,” said Beveridge. “I think the census might have counted properly.”

Read more at DNAInfo.

According to the NAHB report, builders “surveyed expect homes to average 2,152 square feet in 2015, 10 percent smaller than the average size of single-family homes started in the first three quarters of 2010. To save on square footage, the living room is high on the endangered list – 52 percent of builders expect it to be merged with other spaces in the home by 2015 and 30 percent said it will vanish entirely.”

The report notes the increasing importance of green and eco-friendly homes. “In addition to floor plan changes, 68 percent of builders surveyed say that homes in 2015 will also include more green features and technology, including low-E windows; engineered wood beams, joists or tresses; water-efficient features such as dual-flush toilets or low-flow faucets; and an Energy Star rating for the whole house.”

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, home sales have been increasing due to the affordability of existing homes. Despite this good news, the report also noted that the “housing market remains fragile as data through January paint a mixed picture of recovery. Existing home sales ticked upward in January, but remained below levels seen in the first half of 2010. Mortgage delinquencies continued a downward trend compared to early 2010 and foreclosure starts and completions remain below peak.”

If you want to learn more about the results of the NAHB survey, read more from Realty Times.

“Vacation rentals can offer families and groups of travelers significant savings over other accommodation options,” says Hank Hudepohl, TripAdvisor’s director of vacation rentals.

The list:

1. Kissimee, Florida
2. Big Bear Lake, California
3. Gatlinburg, Tennessee
4. Kihei, Hawaii
5. Destin, Florida
6. Palm Springs, California
7. Outer Banks, North Carolina
8. Lahaina, Hawaii
9. Hilton Head, South Carolina
10. Cape Cod, Massachusetts

According to Hudepohl, this year’s list shows off some of the “best vacation rental destinations in the U.S. where travelers can save big.”

Read more about the vacation hot spots that made the cut on RIS Media.

Sales of million-dollar homes and condos rose last year in all 20 major metro areas. The average jump in high-end home sales in these areas was reportedly 18.6 percent.

What’s the inspiration behind the re-emergence of wealthy buyers in the market? According to Kelman, “When Wall Street goes up, rich people buy homes.” Take a look at the market and you’ll see that stock values have almost doubled from their March 2009 lows.

Greg McBride, chief economist at Bankrate.com, said that “Higher income households are feeling better about their financial security.” The biggest market for million-dollar homes, San Jose, California, saw a 27.4 percent spike in sales last year.

The wealthy have taken advantage of the dip in home prices, and getting mortgages for these homes has become cheaper too. Normally buyers must take out a jumbo loan in order to finance a mortgage above the $417,000 threshold. Loans for homes that fall above the threshold typically have higher interest rates because they are what is technically referred to as non-conforming, or higher risk – not backed by Fannie or Freddie. Whereas interest rates on homes with higher mortgages have typically been significantly higher than average, by 2010 the difference between interest rates for average buyers and buyers of high-end homes had shrunk to just 0.6 percent more.

To read more, visit the CNN Money site.

TwentyFeet

TwentyFeet is a social media tool that allows users to track analytics and aggregate all of their information in one place. Depending on what you want to use TwentyFeet to monitor and how many social media accounts and platforms you use, the cost of membership will vary. A basic account is free, and anything from there on up will come at an additonal charge. An interesting feature of this social media monitoring tool is that they “nudge” you if there is a unique shift or jump in any of the analytics you are measuring. Pretty cool!

Postling

Postling is a social media monitoring site geared towards small businesses and/or personal use. Like most other sites of its kind,  Postling allows users to track various aspects of their accounts on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, etc. Postling also allows users to schedule updates on their various accounts. What we like best about this site is that it allows users to both post updates to social media accounts and monitor these accounts all on one easily navigable platform.

An increase in the required down payment means some individuals who intended to purchase a home are no longer financially able to do so. This shrinks the portion of the population looking to buy a home, and thereby negatively impacts the housing market.

“There’s no question that the tightening of criteria unquestionably prices households out of the market,” says Zillow Stan Humphries, economist at Zillow.com. “The middle ground buyer is the one having to fight to get a conventional mortgage.”

The Obama administration has proposed that the minimum put down for a conventional loan be gradually increased to 10%. Private lenders are also becoming more risk averse, increasing the amount required for a down payment.

What effect will the increasing down payment requirements and the elevated cost of borrowing have on the future of the housing market?

One significant outcome will be the continuing decline of house prices. Another effect will be to push individuals seeking homeownership to consider less traditional means of financing.

The rent to buy or rent to own option will become a viable alternative for those individuals who are no longer able to afford the down payment banks and private lenders require. People with their hearts set on homeownership will most likely keep renting and trying to save up enough money to shell out for a down payment in the future. However, the act of paying rent and the intention of saving money are two conflicting financial situations.

Instead of just renting a property and trying to save money, those looking to achieve the “American Dream” of homeownership should consider renting a place with the option to buy it.

Read the full article in the Wall Street Journal.

Bjarke Ingels Group, also known as BIG, was founded in 2005. Since then, Ingels has headed up the construction of several unique and innovative structures both in Denmark and abroad, including the building of the Copenhagen Harbour Bath and a residential project in Ørestad. BIG currently has offices on two continents and is operating projects on three.

Despite strict building codes and the historically non-creative architectural design of New York City’s apartment complexes, Ingels is setting out to construct an apartment building that will merge feasibility with sustainability and bring new life to architectural innovation in the city.

The apartment building Bjarke Ingels has designed will look like a pyramid but with a hollow opening in the center and a slight curvature in its façade that is arguably very un-pyramid-like. One of the goals of the design is to provide the new building’s residents with a view of the waterfront without interfering with the already spectacular views of the building’s neighbors.

If the project lives up to its vision, it will surely add some life to the New York rental space. And if we’re lucky, we might see some very unique pyramid-esque apartments available for rent to buy.

Read more about Bjarke Ingels’ new project from New York Mag.

Google Docs: If you already have a g-mail account, you don’t have to sign up again or create any kind of account in order to have access to Google Docs. Google Docs is free. Need extra storage? It’ll cost you just 25 cents per GB per year. To use Google Docs, you must manually upload or download files from your hard drive. The lack of a syncing feature is its main drawback. The Google service does offer several useful features for sharing and editing documents including the ability to invite others to view, invite others to edit, email the doc as an attachment, and get a link to the file to share with others.

Dropbox: It’s easy to create a Dropbox account, but it does require that you take the time to do so. With Dropbox you get 2GB free storage. Go beyond that and you have to pay. There are options for upgrading your storage, including a monthly fee of $9.99 for 50GB and $19.99 for 100 GB. What Dropbox does that Google can’t is automatically sync the content of a special folder on your hard drive with the web and any other folders. There is no need to manually upload and download files like with Google Docs. When you start your computer, Dropbox automatically syncs it all.

So, which  service should you use for file storage and sharing? It really depends on how you’ll be using it, how much you think you’ll be using it, and how much money you’re willing to shell out to get the service you desire.

If you’re an agent who has a preference for either of these services, feel free to comment on our blog and share your experience with other readers!