Jul 28
Get Home Buyers Moving? What’s finally getting some home buyers off the sidelines? A recent poll of more than 1,000 prospective home buyers conducted by Discover Home Loans asked what changed to finally move them into the home buying process. Here were their top 10 most common responses: “I needed a bigger home”: 25% “I …
Jul 25
Fastest-Moving Real Estate Markets Austin is hot, and we’re not talking temperature. The Austin, Texas, metro area has the fastest moving real estate market in the U.S., according to ZipRealty’s second quarter report, with properties spending a median of 10 days on the market. ZipRealty analyzed housing market trends in 23 metro areas across the …
Jul 24
How to Turn Home Owners Into Sellers Now that the economy is improving, some home owners feel hemmed in to the houses because they don’t want to give up the rock-bottom interest rate they procured in recent years. Essentially, they’re being locked in by the low interest rates — as low as 3.3 percent …
Jul 23
What Consumers Want Smart Homes to Do When it comes to smart homes, consumers are more interested in their security features than the gadgets that control the homes’ appliances. New research by Icontrol Networks, a home technology company, shows that 90 percent of 932 respondents recently surveyed say that security is one of the …
Jul 22
Language Skills Boost Agents Real estate agents across the country are leveraging their second-language skills to get ahead in their local markets, particularly as the number of international home buyers grows in the U.S. About 15 percent of real estate professionals report speaking a second language, according to the National Association of REALTORS®. According to …
Jul 21
New Effort to Reduce Impact of Windstorms On Monday, the U.S. House passed the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Act (H.R. 1786) to reauthorize funding for three years to study windstorms and how to reduce their impact. “When a family loses their home in a windstorm, they don’t just have to rebuild their house — …
Jul 18
Decline in Foreclosures Reaches ‘Important Milestone’ Foreclosure activity in June was down 16 percent from a year prior, marking the lowest level since July 2006 — before the housing bubble burst — according to RealtyTrac’s Midyear 2014 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. The report showed a much-improved picture: Foreclosure filings, which include default notices, scheduled auctions, …
Jul 17
Housing Affordability Continues to Soften as Prices Rise Rising home prices pushed housing affordability down in May compared with last year, making homes a little less affordable to the average family, according to the National Association of REALTORS®’ latest Housing Affordability Index. The median price for a single-family home rose to $213,600 in May, up …
Jul 16
Baby Boomers Aren’t Downsizing Yet Baby boomers aren’t showing any signs of leaving the single-family home market that has defined their generation’s real estate habits, despite many predictions that they would by now. As boomers hit age 65 and become empty nesters, many housing analysts forecasted that a huge wave of them would downsize and …
Jul 15
LeBron James’ Return: A Win for Cleveland’s Housing Market? NBA star LeBron James announced last Friday that he is heading home to Cleveland to rejoin the Cavaliers next year, after playing for the Miami Heat for the past four years. But he says his return to his hometown is about much more than just basketball. …
Jul 14
Return of the First-Time Home Buyer? Young people are starting to leave their parent’s home and move out on their own. The Current Population Survey for 2013 showed a drop in the percentage of 20-somethings living with parents, marking the first decline since 2005. As of now, the percentage drop appears minimal: Those aged …
Jul 11
Amenities Buyers Will Make Sacrifices For Home buyers are showing some willingness to pay more for certain amenities in a home, according to the latest PulteGroup Home Index Survey of more than 1,000 adults ages 25 to 65. What’s surprising is that buyers say they’d give up some pretty alluring draws about a property for …
