Real estate pros touring homes with buyers may find another person in the mix. Some home buyers are bringing an interior designer on home tours, seeking their feedback on how properties may be renovated to fit their design tastes.

As home prices surge, buyers may consider homes whose conditions bring a lower listing price but carry the potential to be overhauled into the property they desire.

In many cases, interior designers go beyond recommendations on furnishings and wall colors to give the buyer a bigger picture for renovating spaces, such as moving walls and windows or enhancing the home’s function and flow. They can evaluate whether the home has good bones for reasonably priced renovations that will fit within their client’s budgets, look for features that can be easily altered to make the property fit the buyers’ wish lists, and point out what can’t easily be changed without a significant investment, such as low ceiling heights.

“A designer’s expertise goes far beyond the selection of furnishings and accessories,” Allen Saunders, an interior and architectural designer in Miami, told Forbes.com. “Designers develop functional space plans, select appropriate finishes and products, plan natural and artificial lighting effects, and coordinate with the construction team. All [are] invaluable during the process of renovating a home. Retaining an interior design professional prior to the start of a renovation will provide a homeowner with the best prospect for success.”

Jennifer Bunsa, an interior designer and owner of Bunsa Studios in Miami, told Forbes.com that she’s been joining house hunters to view lower-cost houses for sale to help determine if the home can be remade to their liking within their budget. Bunsa may identify easy fixes like changing door positions on walls, replacing flooring, or repurposing certain areas.

“Being involved from the very beginning allows us to identify the best opportunities for designing to fit a client’s needs and to create value in the property,” Bunsa told Forbes.com. “Going with them on home tours helps us offer the full idea of what is required in a renovation or design, and offer an estimate of what it would cost to make the home fit their needs and become their dream home.”

Homeowners struggling financially during the COVID-19 pandemic have received another extension for their mortgage payments. The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced Thursday it is providing an additional three months of forbearance to borrowers with loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, bringing forbearance up to 18 months total.

To qualify, borrowers must be enrolled in a COVID-19 forbearance plan as of Feb. 28.

The FHFA also announced a moratorium on foreclosures and real estate evictions for single-family mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through June 30. The moratorium had been set to expire March 31.

“Borrowers and the housing finance market alike can benefit during the pandemic from the consistent treatment of mortgages regardless of who owns or backs them,” says FHFA Director Mark Calabria. “From the start of the pandemic, FHFA has worked to keep families safe and in their home, while ensuring the mortgage market functions as efficiently as possible. [The] extensions of the COVID-19 forbearance period to 18 months and foreclosure and eviction moratoriums through the end of June will help align mortgage policies across the federal government.”

The extensions are similar to those announced last week by the Biden administration for loans backed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Agriculture. The announcement comes about three weeks after the FHFA had extended its total forbearance period to 15 months.

Home maintenance affects value over the long run. Yet, homeowners admit they know very little when it comes to how to properly maintain a lot of the appliances and systems in their home.

Sears Home Services recently surveyed more than 1,000 homeowners nationwide on home maintenance. The survey found that the microwave is the most neglected appliance in the home with only 33% of respondents performing routine maintenance on it. About one in four homeowners admit they have no knowledge of the maintenance required for water softeners and water heaters.

As for water softeners, they work to remove calcium and magnesium and prevent hard water from forming. “Water softener malfunctions can wreak havoc on everything from your pipes to your hair and skin,” Sears Home Services notes in the study. They can cost $150 to $735 to fix.

Read more: Improvements First-Time Homeowners Should Tackle First

But air conditioning can be much more costly to fix, upwards to $1,900 for repairs. Regular maintenance for air conditioners includes changing the filters, which younger adults admitted they were the least likely to do, the survey finds.

Washing machines and dryers are among the faultiest appliances in the home, according to the survey. The following chart breaks down the most common malfunctions in home appliances.

“Maintaining a home is no easy task,” the report notes. “There’s actually a lot to consider even beyond the structural integrity of the house. Maintenance of everything from dishwashers to ovens and air conditioners is required to keep things running smoothly, though many of our respondents shared a general lack of knowledge about how to do so.”

Learn more about home maintenance bad habits.

Sales of newly built, single-family homes in January moved 19% higher than a year ago, as home buyers sought more options under a lean number of existing homes for sale.

Newly built single-family home sales increased 4.3% last month over December 2020, reaching a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 923,000, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday.

“Historically low mortgage rates and solid demand spurred an increase in new home sales in January,” says Chuck Fowke, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders. “However, rising affordability issues are looming this year, particularly increasing building material costs, including lumber, which is adding $24,000 to the price of a typical newly built home. Builders also cite rising regulatory issues as a potential concern.”

As existing-home inventory remains at all-time lows, more buyers are considering new home construction, says Robert Dietz, chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders. “Though rising building and development costs, combined with recent increases in mortgage interest rates, threaten to exacerbate existing affordability conditions,” he says. “Builders are exercising discipline to ensure home prices do not outpace buyer budgets.”

Inventories of new homes also remain tight at just a four-month supply at the current sales pace. New-home inventories are 6.3% lower than January 2020.

The median sales price for a new home was $346,400 in January, up 5.3% from a year earlier.

New-home sales rose by the highest amounts in the Midwest last month, up 12.6% annually. New-home sales also posted a 6.8% increase in the West and a 3% increase in the South. The only region of the U.S. to post a decline in new home sales in January was the Northeast, where new home sales fell 13.9% annually.

Landlords continue to see prices rise for luxury single-family rentals as the pandemic-fueled recession impacts socioeconomic groups unevenly.

Overall, single-family rental growth ended 2020 strong, rising 3.8% in December 2020 compared to a year prior, according to CoreLogic’s Single-Family Rent Index, which measures rent changes in single-family rental homes, including condos.

Rent growth in the low-priced tier (properties with rent prices less than 75% of a region’s median) remains below yearly pre-pandemic levels. The pandemic has disproportionately affected low-wage workers. Rent prices for low-end tier properties were down 3.5% in December 2020 compared to December 2019.

On the other hand, higher-priced rentals (properties with rent prices greater than 125% of a region’s median rent) rose 2.4% year-over-year. Phoenix saw the highest year-over-year rent growth in December, an increase of 10.7% year over year, followed by Tucson, Ariz. (up 9.5%) and Charlotte, N.C. (7.1%). The metro area that posted the largest annual decline in rent prices was Boston, down 7.2%. But researchers note that likely was due to the area’s large number of colleges and students continuing to do virtual learning in their hometowns during the pandemic.

“As states begin managing the administration of vaccines as well as mitigating continuing unemployment concerns, rent prices will likely continue to experience mixed growth rates in metros across the nation,” CoreLogic notes.

Double-digit annual price increases are occurring in housing markets across the country as buyer demand soars. But which housing markets are showing the strongest performance?

U.S. News & World Report examined 96 metro areas to identify the top housing markets for 2021. They factored in year-over-year gains in median home sales prices, the markets with some of the lowest drops in inventory (meaning more supply is available), median days on the market, and more.

The following are the markets that topped its list:

1. Seattle

• Median home price: $565,710
• Year-over-year price growth: 16.19%
• Year-over-year inventory growth: -8.36%
• Median days on market until pending: 21

2. Tucson, Ariz.

• Median home price: $256,980
• Year-over-year price growth: 16.05%
• Year-over-year inventory growth: -20.72%
• Median days on market until pending: 26

3. Sacramento, Calif.

• Median home price: $475,792
• Year-over-year price growth: 14.01%
• Year-over-year inventory growth: -23.94%
• Median days on market until pending: 22

4. Cincinnati

• Median home price: $207,865
• Year-over-year price growth: 13.78%
• Year-over-year inventory growth: -22.21%
• Median days on market until pending: 24

5. Boston

• Median home price: $535,850
• Year-over-year price growth: 14.59%
• Year-over-year inventory growth: -17.33%
• Median days on market until pending: 31

6. San Francisco

• Median home price: $895,760
• Year-over-year price growth: 12.93%
• Year-over-year inventory growth: 18.65%
• Median days on market until pending: 29

7. Wichita, Kan.

• Median home price: $174,430
• Year-over-year price growth: 13.67%
• Year-over-year inventory growth: -18.38%
• Median days on market until pending: 29

The nation’s leading land brokers report both an increase in business and an uptick in land values as rural land grew in demand last year, according to a new survey of more than 100 land brokers nationwide conducted by the National Land Realty, a real estate land brokerage. 2021 is poised to be another strong year for land purchases, the report says.

More than half of the surveyed brokers reported an increase in their business in 2020 over 2019. More than 60% of brokers reported seeing an increase in land values, particularly recreational land and farmland.

“Investors rediscovered a safe haven in land real estate in 2020, which made for a very good year for land sales, with record-breaking volume in the second half of the year,” says Jason Walter, CEO of National Land Realty. “And with all of the traumatic events of 2020, people are looking to not only invest in land outside of the city, but they are also wanting to live on the land they buy, to be able to breathe the fresh COVID-free air and reconnect with the great outdoors.”

Indeed, brokers reported that the majority of the most recent buyers of land are coming from urban or suburban areas.

Nearly 90% of the brokers surveyed believe that land sales will continue to perform strongly over the next year to 18 months, according to the survey. “And more than 75 percent of [land brokers] believe their business will grow at least 5 percent, if not more than 10 percent, in that same time frame,” adds Jason Burbage, president of National Land Realty.

The biggest challenges in 2021 moving forward, land brokers say, will center around geopolitical risk (nearly 24%), followed by financing or interest rate risk (20%) and COVID-related issues (17%).