During their presentation last Wednesday, Oscar Gonzales of the Gonzales Group and Scott Caballero of the San Antonio Board of Realtors cited many statistics to paint a picture of an increasingly Hispanic domestic real estate market. Caballero referred to a recent Harvard University housing report that claimed 40 percent of all new minority households created within the next 10 years will be Hispanic.
Builders, real estate brokers and mortgage lenders will all have to adjust to this demographic. Gonzales said new homes will increasingly be tailored to Hispanic wants and needs, which include open floor plans and second master bedrooms for live-in grandparents. Both speakers addressed lending practices being developed to enable undocumented workers to obtain financing for home purchases.
The speakers also spoke to the phenomenon of foreign buyers from nations with troubled currencies or unstable societies, such as Mexico and Venezuela, buying U.S. real estate to move away from violence in their home countries or as investments. They highlighted Texas, Los Angeles and Miami as hot markets for these international buyers.
This accords with a recent report from Trulia, which said that based on its website traffic, Florida is currently the most popular state for international real estate shoppers. The Miami market in particular has seen a boom in home sales. It was one of only five U.S. metro areas to experience more sales in May 2011 than May 2010, according to the RE/MAX May 2011 National Housing Report.
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