BiggerPockets Daily BiggerPockets

Real estate investors accounted for 26.1% of low-priced home purchases in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2023, a record-high share, according to a new report from Redfin. Investors bought only 13.6% of mid-priced homes and 15.9% of high-priced homes sold during the same period. 
Redfin defined low-priced homes as falling into the bottom third of local sales prices. The median price investors paid for homes in the fourth quarter was $453,271, above the national median, according to Redfin data. That may be due to an increase in investor home purchases in several California cities, where many expensive homes fall into the low-priced tier relative to local prices. 
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2024 will be a crucial year for the U.S. economy, particularly around what the Fed will do with interest rates. But for the Fed to lower rates, they have to see signs of slowing growth.
What reliable signs are there that the economy is moving in either the recessionary or the growth direction? There has to be a better way to tell than using the Super Bowl Indicator (it doesn’t work, folks). 
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Disability benefits provide important lifelines to those who are unable to work due to various medical conditions. Although your ability to work while on disability will be limited, you may still be able to earn income from certain passive investments. Whether flipping houses while on disability will affect your benefits depends on your degree of involvement in your properties.
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Investing in forest land can be a great way to diversify your portfolio. Because tree growth doesn’t rely on economic factors, consistent biological growth can create more stable returns than other financial investments.
When you invest in forestry, you invest in a lower-risk asset that provides environmental benefits. This is often opposite what’s true for residential and commercial land, which is more prone to market disruptions and other market risks.

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Yes, many pundits are still warning about a recession in 2024. 
Here’s one example. Richard Duncan did a Macro Watch fourth-quarter update. He pointed out that between 1952 and 2009, all nine times total credit (adjusted for inflation) grew by less than 2%, and the economy went into a recession. 
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Last week, Realtor.com published another version of its ‘‘magic number’’ forecast. The number in question is the mortgage rate number low enough to ‘‘unfreeze’’ the real estate market. 
We know that the market has been in something of a gridlock for over a year now:


Home prices are very high and keep rising.

Mortgage rates are high and aren’t showing much of a downward trend.

There aren’t enough homes to go around, especially those that are remotely affordable.

Something has to give. 
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