Are home buyers favoring the Midwest? Home buyer activity is shifting from pricey California to affordable markets across the country. Nearly a third of the markets on realtor.com®’s latest hottest housing market list were in the Midwest, known for its affordable housing compared with many other parts of the country.“With the median home list price hovering at a record level, affordable markets are very attractive for buyers, which is contri
Borrowers had slightly more relief with mortgage rates again this week. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate dipped again, averaging 4.53 percent, Freddie Mac reports.“The stability in borrowing costs comes despite the highest core inflation rates since 2008 and turbulence in the currency markets,” says Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “Unfortunately, this pause in rates is not leading to increasing home sales.”Last week, mort
Homebuilding eked out a slight increase in July, but economists say it’s still not nearly enough to catch up with home buyer demand or to help cool rising home prices. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that total housing starts for both single-family homes and multifamily building rose 0.9 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.17 million units. This was following a nine-month low in June of 1.16 million.Homebuildi
Airbnb has unveiled big plans to turn at least 14 apartment buildings into home-sharing units by the end of next year. But some tenants of two newly branded Airbnb complexes aren’t completely happy about their buildings changing into a “hotel-like” atmosphere.Airbnb has teamed with Niido, a real estate development company, to form “Niido Powered by Airbnb” to brand buildings across the country. Their first project was a 324-unit complex
The highest share of homeowners are likely to move in the third quarter to Chicago, Washington, D.C., Orlando, Tampa, and Atlanta, according to a new study by ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate data firm. Researchers culled data from purchase loan applications on residential transactions among metro areas with at least 500,000 single-family homes and condos for ATTOM’s Pre-Mover Housing Index.“A higher pre-mover index bodes well for local r
An overhaul in how several major credit reporting agencies factor in negative credit information is prompting millions of consumers’ credit scores to rise. Collection events were struck from 8 million consumers’ credit reports in the 12 months ending in June. The New York Federal Reserve reported Tuesday that consumers who had at least one collections account removed from their credit reports are seeing an 11-point increase to their scores.Cr
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is taking steps to scale back a fair housing rule that had sought to combat housing segregation. HUD Secretary Ben Carson says the 2015 rule is standing in the way of efforts to add more affordable housing.The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule required cities and towns to examine historic patterns of segregation, and then create plans to combat them. Those who didn’t comply risked l
House hunters who are actively seeking a home to buy are spending significant amounts of time looking for that perfect space, according to a new poll by the National Association of Home Builders. More than half of prospective buyers surveyed in the second quarter said they’d been trying to find the right home for three months or longer.The two chief reasons why home buyers said their search was taking so long was not being able to find a home
Unemployment is low and the economy is growing—at a clip of more than 4 percent in the last quarter—but home sales are going down for many real estate professionals. The typical agent in the last year worked on 11 transaction sides, down from 12 sides the previous year.What’s happening? For starters, the inventory crunch is holding markets back. Particularly in the lower price points, there just aren’t many homes for sale. But there are a
The Big Apple pushes out San Francisco as the priciest place to live when you look at what buyers are paying per square foot, according to a new report released by NeighborhoodX, a real estate and data analytics firm. In Manhattan, the priciest property is fetching $10,054 per square foot.New York’s central area is more than twice as expensive as any other city in the U.S. on a per-square-foot basis, according to the report. Manhattan real esta
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