May 10
Solo Home Buyers Re-emerge. Individual home buyers comprised a quarter of all house purchases last year, according to National Association of REALTORS® data. Single women purchase homes at double the rate of single men, according to the data. However, solo buyers can face particular challenges in qualifying for a mortgage. During and following the …
May 10
10 Cities With the Worst Traffic Congestion The average American spent a total of 28 hours sitting in traffic last year, according to INRIX, a traffic information group. But residents in some of the nation’s most congested cities spent nearly double that—an average of 42 hours a year—sitting in traffic. In its 2012 Traffic …
May 09
Are Underpriced Homes Fueling Bidding Wars? The number of homes for sale is at the lowest point in more than 10 years, but with buyer demand still high, many markets are seeing bidding wars. A TIME magazine article recently asked: “Are buyers being manipulated into overbidding for the relatively few attractive homes on the …
May 09
More Americans Optimistic About Housing Recovery. More than half of Americans — 51 percent — now say they expect home prices to increase within the next year, according to a survey by mortgage giant Fannie Mae of about 1,000 Americans’ attitudes toward housing. “For the first time in the survey’s three-year history, the majority …
May 08
Improving Market List Drops Slightly in May. The Improving Markets Index fell to 258 metros in May from 273 in April, but continues to reflect metros from every state as well as the District of Columbia, according to the National Association of Home Builders and First American. The Improving Markets Index identifies the metro …
May 08
Big Job Boom Expected in Homebuilding. Between 2006 and 2011, residential construction jobs saw a 41 percent drop, as the new-home market faced steep losses. However, a big rebound is expected to be on the horizon in homebuilding. Housing starts are expected to return to normal levels by 2016, and with that prediction residential …
May 07
4 Threats That Remain in Housing Recovery. The housing recovery appears to be on track and growing stronger. Home sales and prices are up after reaching bottom in 2010, foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies are dropping, yet housing affordability still remains high. So why are some analysts and economists concerned? At a recent Milken Institute …
May 07
Squatters Cite Laws to Stay in Homes for Free. With the number of vacant homes dwindling, house squatters are getting bolder. They’re moving into homes and staying for free, citing adverse possession law in some states, which allows a person to claim title to an abandoned property after occupying it for a certain amount …
May 06
Latest Real Estate Scam Has Agents on Alert. Scammers are scraping rental listings off the Internet and using real estate agents’ identity from the listings to dupe would-be clients. Practitioners may not even discover it until the clients confront them, demanding keys for a property they believed they rented and had already mailed a …
May 06
8 Best Markets for Flipping Houses. More investors are rehabilitating homes and looking to sell them for profit, a move known as flipping houses. RealtyTrac recently evaluated more than 600 metro areas to find where flipping single-family homes offers some of the highest returns based on the investor’s gross profit. The top eight metros …
May 03
Loan Demand Rises as Rates Fall Mortgage applications climbed 2 percent last week as several key interest rates dropped, the Mortgage Bankers Association reports. Mortgage applications for refinancings, which make up the biggest bulk of MBA’s index, rose 3 percent for the week ending April 26, reaching its highest level since January. Meanwhile, mortgage …
May 03
Housing Price Surge ‘Simply Supply and Demand’. Home prices are rising at the fastest rate in years, with some areas even seeing double-digit increases. “Nobody that I’m aware of anticipated the kind of price growth that we’ve had,” says Budge Huskey, chief executive of Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. “It’s simple supply and demand.” …
