May 14
Demand Grows for Big-Screen Phones Bigger is becoming better with smartphones. Shipments worldwide of smartphones with screens 5 inches or larger have grown 369 percent in the first quarter compared to just a year earlier, according to Canalys, a market research firm. Big-screen smartphones comprised 34 percent of worldwide smartphone shipments in the first quarter. …
May 13
Builders See Growth in Master Communities Houston boasted the most housing starts in the nation last year, and one-third of those starts were in master planned communities (MPC), a growing sector for the homebuilding industry. In the U.S., the top 50 master planned communities captured 5.4 percent of new-home sales in 2013 – a 12 …
May 12
30-Year Mortgage Rate Reaches New Low for the Year The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.21 percent this week, the lowest since November 2013, Freddie Mac reports in its weekly mortgage market survey. “Mortgage rates continued moving down following the decline in 10-year Treasury yields after a dismal report on real GDP growth in the first …
May 09
Mortgage Delinquencies Drop by Double Digits The mortgage delinquency rate nationwide stood at 3.61 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2014, down more than 24 percent compared to the same time a year ago, according to the latest mortgage report from TransUnion. That marked the ninth consecutive quarter that the delinquency …
May 08
Buyers Prefer New, But Aren’t Willing to Pay Forty-one percent of Americans say they prefer a new home compared to 21 percent who say they prefer an existing home, according to a new survey of more than 2,000 adults conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Trulia. The cost and availability of new homes are …
May 07
Luxury Home Sales Soar Affluent buyers are feeling bullish about housing, as luxury home sales skyrocket, Bloomberg reports. Million-dollar homes in the U.S. are selling at double their historical average, according to data released by the National Association of REALTORS®. Sales of homes that cost $1 million or more increased 7.8 percent in March compared …
May 06
Historic Low for Young Adult Home Ownership Young Americans are putting off home buying at unprecedented levels. The home ownership rate for the Millennial generation age group has fallen to its lowest level since the U.S. Census Bureau started tracking home ownership by age in 1982. The home ownership rate in the first quarter of …
May 05
Markets Poised for Biggest Price Gains Veros Real Estate Solutions is softening its housing price forecast for this year to 3.4 percent appreciation for the 12-month period ending March 31, 2015 for the top 100 metro areas. Last quarter, Veros had forecasted a 5.1 percent for the following 12 months. “The wave of appreciation may …
May 02
Biggest Regrets About the Purchase of a new home Though buyer’s remorse is never fun, there’s usually something we’d change if we could go back and make a big purchasing decision again. In a new survey, Chase Bank found out what some of the most common things are that recent home buyers would change about …
May 01
Marriage Delays Behind Falling Home Ownership Rates More Americans are choosing to postpone marriage and families, and that’s one of the main culprits behind the falling home ownership rate, suggests Sam Zell, chairman of landlord Equity Residential, the largest U.S. apartment landlord. “The deferral of marriage has such a staggering impact on real estate, and …
Apr 30
Survey: Real Estate Is Fastest-Growing Industry Twelve of the 20 fastest-growing industries in the U.S. over the past year are related to real estate and construction, according to data from Sageworks, a financial information company. What’s more, all of the industries on the list that are related to construction saw sales growth at 2 …
Apr 29
Job Growth in 2014 Booming employment centers usually lead to booming housing markets. Forbes recently ranked the 66 largest metros that have more than 450,000 jobs to find out which cities are likely to have the largest growth in employment this year. Forbes crunched employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics from November 2002 …
