To draw more attention to a languishing listing, a Houston real estate professional hired two fitness models to pose half-nude in the property photos, depicting everyday household tasks such as cooking or changing a light bulb. But even though the marketing ploy exponentially increased buyer interest, public complaints about the risqué listing prompted a local real estate portal to remove it.“After 40 days on the market and several open hou
The rise of housing affordability concerns is sparking a slowdown in new-home construction. Single-family housing starts fell 1.8 percent in October compared to the previous month, the U.S. Commerce Department reported Tuesday."This month's decrease in single-family starts isn't a surprise given the drop in our builder confidence index," says Randy Noel, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders. "Builders are showing caution as mount
Homeowners are getting older. Provo and Ogden, Utah, are the only two metros of 100 analyzed that had an average homeowner age below 50 years old, finds a new study by LendingTree, an online loan marketplace. LendingTree sought to find out which metro areas had the oldest and youngest homeowners.The average age of a homeowner across the 100 largest metros in the U.S. is 54.Florida homeowners are older than homeowners in most other states, accordi
Seventy percent of prospective home buyers say they expect house hunting to get harder or stay about the same in the months ahead. It’s a sentiment shared among buyers of all ages, according to new findings from the National Association of Home Builders’ Housing Trends Report for the third quarter of this year.Housing costs are also higher and could price out some prospective buyers. Mortgage rates are on the rise and, combined with higher ho
Young adults who are given financial help from their parents to live independently instead of living rent-free at their parents’ home tend to do better professionally, according to a study published in August in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.Sociologist Anna Manzoni, the study’s author and an associate professor at North Carolina State University, studied about 7,500 young adults between the ages of 18 to 28. College graduates who rec
Inflated home appraisals are partly responsible for what the Federal Housing Administration expects to be a $14.4 billion loss in mortgage insurance over the next few years—a cost that likely will be passed on to borrowers, according to an agency analysis. If the losses continue, the FHA may be forced to raise insurance premiums on its mortgages, The Wall Street Journal reports. The FHA insures about 11 percent of single-family residential mo
Millennials who put off homeownership may be severely curtailing their ability to build wealth over their lifetimes, warns a new report from the Urban Institute. Buying a home at an early age offers a “big bang for their housing buck,” concludes the report’s authors, Hyun Choi and Laurie Goodman.Researchers tracked individuals since 1968 to identify those who reached age 60 between 2003 and 2015 and how homeownership has affected their fina
Amazon’s decision to create new headquarters in Crystal City, Va., and Long Island City, N.Y., is expected to bring a boom to both cities’ housing markets and fuel rising home prices. The choice to split the retail giant’s second headquarters between two cities will not slow down the economic climb, housing analysts say.Amazon will bring a 4-million-square-foot office to Long Island City in Queens, N.Y., and another headquarters of the s
In the first year of ownership, 44 percent of homeowners say they experienced an unexpected home repair. And 12 percent said they experienced a surprise repair within their first month of moving in, according to a new NerdWallet survey of about 2,000 U.S. adults.Nearly half—or 48 percent—of surveyed American homeowners say unexpected home repair costs have caused them anxiety. Thirty-one percent of homeowners say they do not have money set as
Real estate auctions have largely been considered an option for unloading foreclosures and distressed homes, but it’s becoming a growing option in the luxury market. The number of multimillion-dollar homes that have sold at auctions in the past year has nearly doubled, CNBC reports.What is the most expensive home on record to have hit the auction block? CNBC reports that Playa Vista Isle, an estate that stretches more than 58,000 square feet i
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