Homes are selling faster in July, and many markets are hotter today than they were a year ago, realtor.com® notes in its newly released housing report. California markets continue to see some of the most traction from home shoppers.“We normally see the housing market begin to slow down in midsummer, but this year has been a different story,” says Javier Vivas, realtor.com®’s manager of economic research. “Mid- to lower-tier homes are fl
After Dallas-area real estate pro Laura Barnett put a listing on the market three weeks ago, it quickly received 22 offers. But Barnett didn’t take the highest bid.Instead, she took the cash offer because she wanted to ensure that there were no hang-ups along the way toward closing, she told CNBC. Appraisals, she says, are not keeping up with the sales prices. If the appraisal doesn’t match the contracted price, buyers usually can’t get
Consumers voted for real estate as their top long-term investment choice for a third year in a row, according to the latest Bankrate.com survey. No-risk cash investments came in second, and stocks came in third.“If you have a long time horizon, you will win in real estate,” Abhi Golhar, a real estate investor in Atlanta, told Bankrate. The housing market has bounced back from its bottom in 2011, and during the last 12 months ending in May, ho
Some buyers are willing to accept an “extreme commute”—a minimum of two hours each way between work and home—in return for the tranquility of the outer ’burbs, a larger property, and more land at a lower price than the city. As The New York Times puts it, these buyers are following an old real estate adage: “Drive until you qualify.”“Technological changes have made it more possible to redefine the workplace,” says Mitchell L.
Low inventory slowed down home sales last month, as buyers faced fewer options and record-high real estate prices, the National Association of REALTORS® reported Monday.Total existing-home sales, which include completed transactions for single-family homes, townhomes, condos, and co-ops, fell 1.8 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.52 million. Nevertheless, the pace of sales rose a modest 0.7 percent compared to a year ago.
Following two weeks of rate increases, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage settled back below a 4 percent average this week.“Continued economic uncertainty and weak inflation data pushed rates lower this week,” says Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “The 10-year Treasury yield fell 5 basis points this week. The 30-year mortgage rate moved with Treasury yields, dropping 7 basis points to 3.96 percent.”Freddie Mac reported the fo
Foreclosure filings, which include default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions, are down 20 percent from the same period a year ago, according to the Midyear 2017 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report from ATTOM Data Solutions.“With a few local market exceptions, foreclosures have become the unicorns of the housing market: hard to find but highly sought after,” says Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions.Forec
The most important specific easing will be an expansion of the maximum debt-to-income ratio (DTI) from 45 percent to 50 percentKey Takeaways To get 50 percent DTI you must have very high credit scores and cash reserves after closing.On July 29, Fannie Mae will activate an update to “Desktop Underwriter,” the software that analyzes borrower applications and grants approval — “DU” in shorthand spoken with reverence or disgust throughout t
Poverty is increasingly striking the nation’s suburbs and exurbs (farther out suburbs on the edges of metros). High-poverty neighborhoods have risen 76 percent in the suburbs and 123 percent in the exurbs from 2000 to 2015, according to an analysis from Apartment List, which culled data from a recent report out of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. A high-poverty neighborhood is an area with a poverty rate that is 20 pe
Housing affordability is the talk of the town in the current real estate climate. Home prices surpassed their peak at the end of the last housing boom. Since 2012, prices have increased, on average, 6 percent per year. However, per capita incomes have risen only 2.4 percent, on average, per year, according to Freddie Mac’s latest Insight report for July.In areas like Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties, the median-income household is
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