Finance - Real Estate, Updates, News & Tips

Homes Appreciate Faster in Disaster-Prone Areas

Median home prices in cities with the highest risk of natural hazards have increased an average of 40 percent over the last 10 years, according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ 2018 Natural Hazard Housing Risk Index. That compares to an average increase of 24 percent in home values nationwide over the same time period. ATTOM Data Solutions tracked the risk of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, hail, hurricane storm surges, tornadoes, and w

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Rising Mortgage Costs Remain Below 2006-07 Peak

With home prices mostly holding to an upward trend, more owners are facing rising mortgage costs. But even so, homeowners are still paying less in mortgage payments than they did in 2006 and 2007, when mortgage costs peaked, according to research from real estate data firm CoreLogic.The typical mortgage payment nationwide in June rose 15.1 percent year over year, according to the report. On a metro level, increases in mortgage payments ranged fro

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Where Agents Find High-Quality Leads

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

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Consumers Can Now Request Credit Freezes for Free

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

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30-Year Mortgage Rates Reach Highest Level Since May

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

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Homeowners Seeing Richer Annual Equity Gains

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

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When Is it OK to Tap Home Equity?

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

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Luxury Sees Uptick in Sales, Prices

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

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Property Managers Cut Down on Late Rents with ACH

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

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Top 6 Places to Live in America This Year

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

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