Over the past 12 months, agents credited social media for bringing them the highest number of quality leads, topping other methods such as their MLS sites, brokerage websites, and listing aggregators, according to the National Association of RELATORS®’ 2018 Technology Survey, a survey of more than 2,500 real estate professionals.Many real estate pros cite social media as offering some of the highest quality leads. But they aren’t quite in
It’s common advice to freeze your credit information when cybersecurity breaches potentially put your personal financial data into the hands of criminals who seek to exploit it. However, the three major credit-reporting agencies have routinely charged a fee to put that credit freeze in place—except in the handful of states that forbid such payments. Now all of that has changed.A federal law signed in May by President Donald Trump requires cre
For the fourth consecutive week, mortgage rates continued to climb as home buyers face higher borrowing costs.“Mortgage rates are drifting upwards again and represent continued affordability challenges for prospective buyers—especially first-time buyers,” says Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “Borrowing costs are moving right now for three main reasons: the very strong economy, higher U.S. government debt issuances, and global
With higher home prices, homeowners keep getting richer. Homeowners with a mortgage have seen the equity in their home rise by 12.3 percent year-over-year, according to CoreLogic’s newly released Home Equity Report for the second quarter. The average homeowner has gained $16,200 in home equity between the second quarter of 2017 and the second quarter of 2018.Home equity rose in nearly every state in the country in the second quarter. Western st
As home prices continue to rise, homeowners are finding they’re sitting on record amounts of home equity. People have mostly been shy about tapping into that wealth—but a new survey Bankrate.com survey of 1,000 consumers shows they have plenty of reasons they may want to take out a loan to unlock it.Consumers’ “growing penchant toward debt might make it tempting to tap into their home’s value,” says Greg McBride, Bankrate’s chief fi
Luxury housing markets continue to climb, as 20 major counties post double-digit gains in home prices, according to realtor.com®’s 2018 Luxury Home Index, released today. The number of sales at or above $1 million climbed 6 percent over the last year. Realtor.com® defines the luxury price tier as the top 5 percent of residential sales.Two-thirds of luxury housing markets are seeing inventory move faster than a year ago, according to the rep
A data-driven analysis of 13,000 property managers and 135,529 tenants by Rentec Direct, property management software company, found that scheduled automatic monthly payments is the most effective way to prevent late fees and save renters money.Of the 10,450 renters who have ACH currently enabled, 3,480 renters with ACH enabled and scheduled monthly rent payments were charged a late fee in 2017 (33%), while 4,932 renters with ACH enabled but did
The suburbs dominated this year’s list of top places to live in the country. Money magazine teamed with realtor.com® to identify its top picks of towns with populations of 50,000 or more. They factored in more than 135,000 data points, including economic health, public school performance, local amenities, housing, cost of living, and more."For someone who’s starting from scratch, this is a list of areas with great quality of life, healthy
Home buyers are putting more money down on a home purchase than ever before. The size of down payments during the second quarter climbed to a median of $19,900, a record high, according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ research, which dates back to the first quarter of 2000. What’s more, this marks a 19 percent jump from $16,750 in this year's first quarter.The median down payment was 7.6 percent of the median sales price of homes purchased with fina
Manufactured homes are seeing the same type of appreciation as traditionally built homes, which is counter to conventional wisdom about mobile homes.The findings come from a new report from the Urban Institute, in which researchers analyzed data from the Federal Housing Finance Agency on manufactured homes (also known as mobile homes) that were financed with loans guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.Researchers found the average annual growt
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