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The history of urbanization, 3700 BC - 2000 AD
Watch as the world's cities appear one-by-one over 6,000 years
Fascinating!! Take a break from appraising and check this out!!
By 2030, 75 percent of the world's population is expected to be living in cities. Today, about 54 percent of us do. In 1960, only 34 percent of the world lived in cities.
Urbanization didn't begin in the 1960's. But until recently, tracking its history much further back than that was a challenging task. The most comprehensive collection of urban population data available, U.N. World urbanization prospects, goes back only to 1950. But thanks to a report released last week by a Yale-led team of researchers, it's now possible to analyze the history of cities over a much longer time frame.
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419.99 Mile Marker
Just For Fun
When zealous marijuana enthusiasts kept stealing the "Mile 420" highway marker, the State of Colorado got creative.
Another obscure factoid from atlasobscura.com ;>
Since the recreational use of marijuana was made legal in Colorado in 2012, the "Mile 420" post became a hot commodity. So hot, it kept disappearing - and the Colorado Department of Transportation got tired of replacing it.
Check out the photos (and try not to click on too many of the other weird stuff) at:
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Refis skyrocketing per Zillow - Brexit
Excerpt:
According to Zillow's report, in the first week after the Brexit decision, which came down on June 24, refinance mortgage requests on Zillow rose 132% when compared to pre-vote activity in the previous week.
During that same week, purchase applications increased 24%, as some prospective borrowers took advantage of falling mortgage rates, which are nearing the all-time low, according to the latest data from Freddie Mac.
And even after the initial panic surrounding the Brexit began to subside, the refinance wave continued on Zillow.
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Some left behind on refi boom - Home owners in negative equity still at high levels
Excerpt:
About 425,000 borrowers regained equity in the first quarter, bringing the rate down to 5.6%. At the end of 2012, borrowers who were underwater made up 29% of the market.
"As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the pre-crisis peak in U.S. housing prices, we're just under 3% off that June 2006 peak nationally, and 23 states have already passed their 2006 peaks," said Ben Graboske, Black Knight Data & Analytics executive vice president. "The result is that equity levels are rising nationwide for the most part."
The good news is, the number of homeowners in negative equity will likely continue to decrease. Home prices in May increased both monthly and annually, according to the Home Price Index and HPI Forecast released by CoreLogic.
On the other hand, about 2.8 million borrowers are still in negative equity, the report showed. While this is down 13% from last year, it is five times greater than it was in 2004.
About 38 million borrowers now have at least 20% equity.
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Record low interest rates? Ha! It's still getting harder to get a mortgage
Excerpt:
Mortgage interest rates are nearing all-time record lows and mortgage applications are up dramatically, all thanks to the Brexit, but it looks like those figures may not lead to a huge jump in actual mortgages being taken out, because it's still getting harder to get a mortgage.
The wet blanket news for prospective homebuyers comes courtesy of a new report from the Mortgage Bankers Association, which showed that mortgage credit availability fell during the month of June.
That marks the fourth straight month that credit availability decreased.
According to the MBA's report, its Mortgage Credit Availability Index fell by 1.3% to 119.8 in June.
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