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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Some homebuyers are sidestepping 6% and 7% mortgage rates by tapping into assumable mortgages. These allow buyers to take over a sellers existing loan, often locked in at ultralow rates, potentially saving hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month. While most conventional loans arent assumable, loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), or U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) areif certain conditions are met. Fewer than one in six outstanding mortgages are potentially assumable. Though they still represent a small share of total transactions, assumable sales are slowly gaining traction. This week, ResiClub heard back from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which provided us the number of FHA-insured mortgages assumed, broken down by fiscal year: 2021 > 2,549 2022 > 2,578 2023 > 4,060 2024 > 5,861 That’s a 127% increase over the past two years and a 44% increase over the past year. Based on preliminary data we viewed, ResiClub expects the number of assumed mortgages to climb even higher in 2025. Of course, there are some real challenges with assumable mortgages: Not many assumable mortgages occur because they require buy-in from both the buyer and the seller. Many folks in the industry dont exactly understand the process. The buyer must cover the difference between the outstanding mortgage balance and the purchase price of the home. This often requires a substantial down payment. For example, if a seller has a $200,000 mortgage on a home selling for $300,000, the buyer will need to bring $100,000 to the table, on top of assuming the seller’s loan. However, there are options for those who cant afford such a large up-front payment. Buyers may take on additional debt and get a blended rate, which often comes out around 5%. To help make assuming mortgages easier, back in September 2023 Raunaq Singh launched Roam, a real estate portal that resembles Zillow.com or Realtor.com. Only Roam exclusively showcases homes currently for sale with loans eligible to be assumable. Most people are shocked by this but there are actually millions of [potentially] assumable loans, meaning the buyer can take over the mortgage and transfer from the seller, Singh previously told ResiClub. As we started to look at the problem we realized there would be three key issues. The first was discovery: being able to help consumers find those homes. The second was the transparency throughout the process. And the third problem was coordination: Nobody in the entire transaction experience had experience doing the assumption. If youre the buyer and you want to assume the mortgage, you have to coordinate with your buyers agent, seller, sellers agent, lender, title, escrow, and closing officer. New York-based Roamwhich recently raised $11.5 million in a Series A round led by Opendoor cofounder Keith Raboisnot only finds properties with assumable mortgages but also is effectively your quarterback through that process and coordinating you through the closing, Singh says. Roam CEO Raunaq Singh [Photo: Roam] As of today, Roam’s listing website exclusively showcases homes currently for sale with assumable loans in 18 states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. When a seller in those states lists their home for sale, Roam then cross-checks it with proprietary mortgage data. If that mortgage is eligible to be assumed, it’s listed on Roams site. On Roams site, youre asked to fill out a simple questionnaire. Then youre taken to a portal for your selected market. I tried it out this week and selected the Atlanta metro market. The site then showed me 385 Atlanta homes for sale right now that have loans eligible to be assumable. [Screenshot: Roam] How does Roam make money? Singh tells ResiClub that Roam is free for sellers; the company collects a fee of 1% of the purchase price from the buyer through closing costs. In Singhs view, homeowners who hold an assumable mortgage have an advantage if they plan to sell. They [the homeowner with an assumable mortgage] dont know they hold an asset, or a benefit, that can unlock that sale. Early on when we started the company, Id pull out a list of sellers who had the benefit [a mortgage that could be assumable] but didnt know and Id call them and say, Hey, your home has been on the market for 60, 70 days. Did you know youre burying the lede on being able to sell your home? Youre not advertising the No. 1 benefit you have, Singh tells ResiClub. Its a $1,500 monthly payment as opposed to a $3,000 monthly payment. Where Roam is seeing the most site demand for assumable mortgages [Screenshot: Roam] As active housing inventory for sale continues to rise, and many pockets of the Sun Belt become neutral or buyers markets, more sellers are willing to work with buyers to do an assumable sale, Singh says. We’re seeing agents advertising Roam on their listings now because they want to differentiate their listing vis--vis every other home in the neighborhood because it is the only home that buyers can afford. This usually pulls in an additional three to four buyers per listing, and the median agent who does this goes under contract in 14 to 21 days after advertising their low-rate in their listing, Singh tells ResiClub. Singh adds: An independent group of economists also studied Roam and found that sellers who include their low rate in their home sale netted an additional 5% on their home sales price, which can be a strong negotiating factor for listing agents when they go out to market their home and defend their price point amidst price cuts.
Category:
E-Commerce
In June, Google released its newest smartphone operating system, Android 16. The same month, Apple previewed its next smartphone operating system, iOS 26. The new OSes are packed with exciting features, yet each still fails to address a particular pain point that their users have had for years concerning two of the platforms most-used apps: Apple Maps and Google Maps. Specifically, there is still no easy way to transfer saved map data from one app to another. This ends up locking users into one mapping platform, which is good for the two tech giants involved, but bad for individuals who want more control over their data. However, all is not lost, and if you do wish to transfer your data between Apple Maps and Google Maps, there is a (time-consuming) way to do it. Heres what you need to know. It’s absurd that Apple Maps and Google Maps dont play nice together Im a big fan of both Apple Maps and Google Maps. Apple Maps has made significant progress in recent years to rise to the level of Google Maps, the current king. Google Maps still has better point-of-interest data (i.e., business information, such as live foot traffic data) and considerably more contextual data about a location, thanks to its crowd-sourced reviews and photos, but Apple Maps has surpassed Google Maps in several areas. Its strengths include a less cluttered interface and a more visually appealing map design than Google Maps’s. The fact that each mapping app has different strengths is the reason that I, like many others, switch between them. However, unlike other competing apps the two companies makeemail clients, photo apps, address books, and web browsersI can’t easily transfer the data Ive created in Apple or Google Maps (in this case, hundreds of saved locations Ive bookmarked over the years) to the competing app. I see no good reason for this lack of functionality, other than to bind a user to a specific mapping platform. After all, when you save a location in Apple Maps or Google Maps, youre simply telling the app to remember a locationan address. This address can be easily processed by any mapping platform. Indeed, its what these platforms are designed to do. That’s why it’s so ridiculous that neither mapping app has the simple transfer your saved locations feature that allows the porting of data from one to the other. Still, at least there is a workaround. Heres how to transfer your saved locations between Apple Maps and Google Maps If you do want to transfer your saved locations from Apple Maps to Google Maps, or vice versa, you can. It will just require some tedious manual labor on your part. Here’s the best way Ive found to transfer my saved locations from one mapping app to another. (Note: as always, before performing any kind of data transfer, you should always back up a copy of that data first for safekeeping.) From Google Maps to Apple Maps: Go to takeout.google.com. This is the Google tool that lets you download your Google data. Select Maps (your places), then click Next Step, and then Create Export. Google will email you a link when your saved places are ready to download. Open the downloaded takeout ZIP file. Now, open the Saved Places.json file inside. Clicking on it should open the file in a web browser. Every saved location you created in Google Maps will appear in the JSON file, in a slightly unusual format. Each entry will list the coordinates, Google Map URL, address, country code, and name of the establishment. Now comes the tedious part. Open up Apple Maps and either copy the name of the establishment or its address into the search field in the Apple Maps app. Now, click the + button in the address or business listing in Apple Maps to save the location in the app. Repeat this process for every saved listing in the JSON file. Be aware that it could take hours, or even days, depending on the number of saved places you have. From Apple Maps to Google Maps: Unfortunately, porting your saved locations from Apple Maps to Google Maps is a bit harder because there is no way that I’ve found to generate a list of all your saved places. That means you’re facing even more manual work if you want to move your data from Apple Maps to Google Maps. Open Apple Maps. Tap your profile photo. Tap Library. Tap Places. Tap on a saved location. On the locations information sheet, scroll down and copy the locations address. Alternately, copy down the location’s name. Now open the Google Maps app and paste the copied address or the location’s name in the search field. When you find the location in Google Maps, tap on its listing and then tap the Save button. Tedious, right? Pro tip: After completing either one of these manual saved location transfers, its probably a good idea to get in the habit of bookmarking a saved location in the other mapping app when you save it in one. Why cant I easily swap my data between Apple and Google Maps? I asked both Google and Apple why they dont allow users to easily export their saved locations from their respective mapping apps into a competitor’s, and why they dont permit users to import a list of saved locations into their mapping apps. Neither provided an answer. Apple simply confirmed that users cannot export their saved places in Apple Maps, and mentioned that users can share individual saved locations with others. Google directed me to its Takeout feature and explained that users can import locations saved from other apps into a “Google My Maps layer, which isnt part of the main Google Maps app that users see when they open the app. In other words, Google allows users to import saved locations into a new layer, but those locations wont appear on the default map they use every day. It’s absurd in 2025 that there’s still no simple way to share saved locations between the worlds two biggest mapping platforms. Switching from one mapping service to another should be as straightforward as changing web browsers. Just like I can easily export bookmarks from Safari and import them into Chrome, I should be able to do the same with my saved maps data. Hopefully, both Apple and Google will fix this issue in the future. Until then, adventurous users with time on their hands can try the manual steps outlined above.
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E-Commerce
Julia Austin has spent her career as a startup operator, executive coach, educator, investor, and board member. She is on the faculty at Harvard Business School and is faculty cochair of the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship. Whats the big idea? After the Idea is a field manual to help you see around corners when founding or joining a startup: to understand whats coming up next and not feel alone when things get hard. Startup life is messy, beautiful, overwhelming, and oftentimes rewarding. This guide provides a tool kit for navigating the complex reality of moving from a great idea to a functioning business with clarity and confidence. Below, Julia shares five key insights from her new book, After the Idea: What It Really Takes to Create and Scale a Startup. Listen to the audio versionread by Julia herselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. The real work starts after the idea. The journey from idea to company is rarely linearand almost never glamorous. Most founders have an OMG moment early on in which they realize that they are not just building a product, fundraising, and selling: they are building a company. In the early stages of a startup, focus tends to be on the immediate needs around creating a product rather than on a more holistic view of what the business may look like months or years from now. It can be easier to focus on whats right in front of you when the big picture can be a daunting, or even paralyzing, concept. Founders are often portrayed to the outside world as crushing it, but internally, they may be filled with doubt, imposter syndrome, and fear. They can be plagued by thoughts like, Does my idea suck and no one is telling me? Do I know anything about running a business or leading a team? If every company founder could go back in time and rethink their startup plan, most would say they wished they had been more intentional about the operations of their business. It is never too early to be thoughtful about team culture and hiring, brand image, finances, legal considerations, and everything else beyond the product or service on offer. Most teams fail to get these tactics right at the start of a new venture, and not everyone has a coach or professor to show them the way. After the Idea is about the nuts and bolts of startups beyond just the product. Its about building something that works after the excitement fades and the real challenges kick in. 2. Move slow to go fast. Everyone loves the myth of overnight success. In startup culture, were told to move fast, break things, and launch quickly. But moving too fast before you understand the problems can waste months (potentially years) and a lot of money. I teach my students and clients to move slow to go fast. That means taking time early on to understand the customerwho they are, what they need, what they struggle with, and how they make decisionsthrough proper discovery work. Discovery goes beyond customer interviews. Thorough discovery involves observing your target audience in their natural environments and conducting experiments to better understand the problem you are solving. These techniques allow you to validate and invalidate assumptions to become more confident about what to buildand what to ignore. Discovery goes beyond customer interviews. In 2018, the founding team of Brij began with an idea to help consumers track valuable itemslike laptops or jacketsusing QR codes. The concept was a kind of digital insurance, helping lost items find their way back to their owners. Before building anything, they conducted real-world experiments by leaving tagged items in public places to observe how passersby responded. Through this, they learned what people valued and how likely others were to return certain itemsa water bottle, not so much; a laptop, yes. More importantly, they realized the real opportunity wasnt in lost-and-found services, but in using QR codes as a marketing tool for consumer brands. That insight led them to pivot before hiring a team or building infrastructure for a business they didnt want to run. Their discovery work clarified the business they truly wanted to build. Just like checking the weather before a hike, discovery work doesnt give you every detail, but it helps you get oriented before heading into the unknown. What you learn wont just shape your product, it will influence the business you build, the roles you hire for, how you sell, and how you operate. Discovery is the foundation. Its one of the smartest investments to make at the start of a startup journey. 3. The universal challenges founders face. There are many types of founder stories. Founders come from all walks of lifewomen and men, people of color, from around the globebuilding everything from enterprise software to food products to mission-driven consumer brands. No matter how different their businesses were, their challenges were strikingly similar. Every founder must wrestle with hiring the right peopleoften while competing with better-funded companies or trying to convince others to join something that barely exists. Building a team isnt just about finding talent; its about aligning on values, communicating clearly, and building trust under pressure. Then, theres managing cashsomething that can make or break a startup. Founders have to make tough trade-offs: Do we invest in growth or extend runway? Can we afford this hire now, or do we wait? Raising capital, budgeting, forecasting, and understanding burn rate become daily concerns. Building a team isnt just about finding talent; its about aligning on values, communicating clearly, and building trust under pressure. Legal complexity is another constant. Early decisionslike how to incorporate, how to split equity, or whether your IP should be protectedcan have ripple effects years down the line. Many founders dont realize theyre setting the foundation for future funding rounds, partnerships, or even exit scenarios. Through it all, there are difficult conversations. With cofounders when visions diverge. With investors when goals arent being met. With customers when promises fall short. Add to that the emotional rollercoaster of building something from nothing and its no surprise founders often feel isolated or overwhelmed. For anyone trying to turn an idea into a real, functioning business, while the industries may differ, the patternsthe messy, high-stakes, emotional work of building something from scratchare surprisingly universal. 4. The emotional side of startups. Founders are constantly managing pressurefrom investors, from customers, from themselves. If you have cofounders, the interpersonal dynamics can get intense fast. Ive seen many startups unravel, not because of product issues, but because the huan side wasnt managed well, resulting in burnout, resentment, misalignment, or a lack of trust. The number one statement my coaching clients say when we start a session is, I am so overwhelmed. Starting or joining a new venture can be an exhilarating experience, but it can also be incredibly demanding and stressful. When jumping onto this rollercoaster, its crucial to be aware of the potential impact on your mental health and take proactive steps to safeguard your well-being. The first step is to be honest with yourself and acknowledge the stress. Admitting to yourself and your cofounder, partner, or coach that you are stressed is a step in the right direction. Once you acknowledge the stress, take steps to manage it. Whether youre a founder, early team member, or investor, its essential to accept imperfection and embrace uncertainty because both are constants in startup life. Prioritize self-care, set clear boundaries, and protect your personal time (because a startup will take all of it if you let it). Find a supportive community of objective, empathetic ears that you can turn to in times of stress. And consider working with a coach who understands the realities of startup life and can help you navigate and normalize the inevitable challenges. Building a company isnt just about strategy; its about resilience, relationships, and emotional endurance. The average founder journey for a business that gets off the ground is 710 years. The more intentional you are about managing all the feels, the stronger your company will be. 5. Defining success. Alignment around a shared vision for success and desired outcomes is tantamount to the long-term success of any startup. While everyone wants to jump into product discovery and solution building, alignment on where your startup is heading and what success looks like is pretty darn important. Early in his startup journey, my student Sam and his cofounder aligned on what they each wanted in terms of financial achievements of the business within a certain time frame, but they didnt get into their personal outcome scenarios. This is common for many founders. Its easier to center the success conversation on product growth, types of customers, and revenue. It can be daunting to have vulnerable conversations and tie the success of the business to your personal goals and aspirations. It wasnt until an acquisition opportunity came up that Sam and his cofounder were faced with the reality that they were not, in fact, aligned. Sam was excited about the financial upside and the opportunity to start working on a new idea; his cofounder, on the other hand, was perfectly happy maintaining a modest business that he had full control over, rather than becoming an employee at someone elses company. Whether you are a founder or a joiner, I encourage you to consider why you are entering Startup Land. Getting clarity on why you want to start a new venture is important. Every aspiring entrepreneur or startup joiner I chat with has a different reason for why they want to get on this crazy ride. Some want the autonomy and control that comes from being their own boss (a myth if you take outside capital) or the ability to innovate quickly. Some want to prove themselves to their family and friends, or want to make an impact on the world. However, its hard to imagine what that path will look or feel like once a business is off and running or when its time to pursue an exit or, for some, throw in the towel because they just cant get there for any number of reasons. Whether you are a founder or a joiner, I encourage you to consider why you are entering Startup Land and what success means to you beyond the potential for a big financial outcome. Record your thoughts in some way so you can reflect on this over time, because what success might look like today can change as you mature throughout the journey. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Category:
E-Commerce
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