🏠 Rent TSwift's townhouse & Pantone's Color of 2023

What happens when investors making all-cash bids claim all the low-income housing?

Acts Housing, a nonprofit in Milwaukee, is attempting to fight back to keep homeownership attainable — and take properties out of the hands of investment firms, which in 2022 purchased one in five homes across the nation. These homes end up getting converted into rentals, which ultimately keep low-income households in a cycle of renting, never able to buy their own homes and build wealth.

In order to level the playing field, groups like Acts Housing try to beat out investors with competitive cash offers. Then, they flip the properties and sell them to families for close to cost.

SPILLING THE (REAL)TEA

Struggling to make rent? Airbnb wants to help you find an apartment that allows hosting on the platform, so you can rent out a spare bedroom or the whole place when you're out of town. Here are more than 175 Airbnb-friendly apartment buildings in cities like Houston, Phoenix, and Jacksonville.

Meanwhile, if you can drop $45,000 on rent each month, you could live in Taylor Swift's former five-story townhouse on Cornelia Street in NYC, which she named a song after on her 2019 album Lover.

There's a 1.2 million-square-foot facility in LA that will soon become homeless housing. What's the building's history? It's an abandoned hospital that's been closed for more than a decade.

Home prices are dropping — in some cities faster than others. The S&P Case-Shiller Indices revealed that property values are plummeting in San Diego, Dallas, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2023 is (drum roll 🥁)... "Viva Magenta," which is sort of like a moody fuchsia.

LET'S TALK MONEY

How do you build wealth? Sallie L. Krawcheck, CEO of the investing app Ellevest, says there have been two primary ways:

01 — Buy a house: Homeownership is the traditional way to invest, but it involves a hefty upfront payment and typically requires you to take on debt in the form of a mortgage.

02 — Invest in stocks and bonds: With this option, you can start almost immediately — and without taking on any debt.

The takeaway: There are no guarantees when you invest in a house, or in stocks and bonds. So, do it all. Diversifying helps you to reduce risk and build a well-rounded investment portfolio.

WHAT'S BREWING

📚 What we're reading: The New York Times has released the editors' list of the best fiction and nonfiction books from 2022 to cozy up with this winter.

🎧 What we're listening to: Do we have good taste in music, or do we have good taste in music? We've been listening to our Spotify Wrap 2022/Apple Music Replay mix on repeat all week.

👀 What we're watching: If you haven't binged Netflix’s ‘Wednesday,’ where have you been? The show hit a milestone for the streaming service as the most-watched English-language series in a week in Netflix history.

🛒 What we're adding to our shopping cart: We'll be spending the whole holiday season lounging in this Skims velour wrap sleep set. It's so soft you'll never want to take it off.

DREAM HOME

A mountainside home surrounded by a fortress of trees? Sign us up! The annual HGTV Dream Home has been revealed, and this year the property is in Morrison, Colorado. The sweepstakes to win the professionally designed dwelling starts December 23, but you can take a peek inside now.

WOMEN OF THE HOUSE

Featuring Skye Sherman, travel writer and Airbnb host

Skye Sherman — a published travel writer in Travel +Leisure, USA Today, People, and more — brought her experience staying at the world’s best hotels to her own investment property in West Palm Beach, Florida, dubbed “The Palm Penthouse.”

As a travel writer, you’ve stayed at some of the nicest hotels across the globe. How did that play into the design, amenities, etc. when creating your own accommodations?

I've stayed in some of the nicest hotels around the world, and I've stayed in some terrible places, too. I know the amenities I love to see when I check in, what seems great but never gets used, what's practical and functional, what gets in the way, and what would be on my "dream amenity" list. I know what decor is too precious, what feels cheap and tacky, and what feels indulgent, comfortable, and functional. I incorporated all of that insight into creating the kind of Airbnb I'd love to check into.

What amenities did you decide to include?

There's rare amenities like a printer, a monitor to plug into to make "working from home" as easy as actually being at home, and even a variety of coffee-making options, from a Nespresso to a Chemex, plus a full-size washer and dryer, a super-smart Google Nest home automation system, and enough supplies to get you started.

What did this project teach you about yourself/about real estate?

I've always loved good architecture and interior design, but I never realized just how much work goes into it—every tiny detail has to be considered, accounted for, and then executed correctly. It's mind-boggling. I have a whole new appreciation for beautiful spaces and the teams of people who bring them to life.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to get into real estate investing?

Real estate investing should be part of an overall wealth strategy. We invested in real estate to diversify our portfolio; creating another stream of income was an added bonus, but not the sole goal. And don't let anyone tell you that real estate investing is passive income! It requires significant mindshare and involvement, especially at the beginning, unless you hire a project or property manager to handle everything—the costs of which need to be factored into the overall ROI plan.

What freedoms do you hope real estate investing will allow you?

We plan to own places around the world, not only so that we can utilize them as we hop around the globe, but also as a wealth diversification strategy. It's important to us to be diversified into a range of asset classes and locations.