Even as home prices rapidly escalate, many first-time home buyers—a group economists long feared would be priced out of the market—are finding they actually have advantages over repeat buyers: more flexibility in the transaction and access to a greater variety of financing options. Flexibility is particularly helpful when shopping for a home in today’s competitive market, characterized by commonplace bidding wars.Many repeat buyers require
The McMansion, which was popular in the 1980s and ’90s, is having a renaissance as demand surges during the pandemic for larger properties with expansive yards. Homes that are 4,000 square feet or more sold 70% faster than smaller homes nationwide in February, according to realtor.com®.Realtor.com®’s research team evaluated the 150 largest metros for the highest percentage of single-family listings that are 4,000 square feet or more. They t
Lifestyle improvement has emerged as the main motivator for renters looking for new spaces a year after the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to a new survey from RentCafé. Back in March 2020, the top renter preference centered around pricing.In the latest survey, 41% of renters chose “open-air amenities” and “more space” as their most essential apartment features, outranking work-from-home amenities like a home office (5%) or a “good
About John I have over 20 years of experience selling, acquiring, listing and rehabbing both residential and commercial properties, as a licensed Realtor in California and as an investor and recent licensed Realtor in the state of Texas. In Southern California, for many years I owned and managed many properties throughout southern California and assisted both investors and residential home buyers acquire properties negotiating to the best possibl
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage continued to move higher this week, now averaging 3.05%, Freddie Mac reports.“It looks like rates in the 2% range are over while current mortgage rates will likely be the lowest,” Nadia Evangelou, senior economist and director of forecasting at the National Association of REALTORS®, writes on the association’s Economists’ Outlook blog. “Since the pandemic struck our country one year earlier, year-over-ye
Cash-out refinances are on the upswing, to the likes of numbers that haven’t been seen since the financial crisis. But economists say they aren’t concerned—at least yet. After all, home prices are still rising. During the financial crisis, home prices started to drop.Cash-out refis surged 42% year over year in 2020, according to Freddie Mac’s data. Homeowners cashed out $152.7 billion in home equity last year, the highest level since 2007
Single women have long been a powerful force within the first-time buyer segment. Now, one lender's analysis of recent U.S. Census Bureau data shows that, in the largest markets, single women far outpace single men when it comes to homeownership in most of the country.Single women own about 5.2 million homes in the U.S., 44% more than the 3.6 million homes owned by single men in the nation’s 50 largest metros, according to a
Home prices have surged to double-digit percentage gains over the past year, which means home buyers are having to either bring more to the closing table or borrow more. They’re doing both.Down payments are at record highs, according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ fourth quarter 2020 U.S. Residential Property Mortgage Origination Report. The median down payment on a single-family home and condo purchased with financing in the fourth quarter of 2020
Commercial real estate has faced plenty of challenges since the pandemic, but several markets are bouncing back and expected to see large improvements in 2021. In particular, real estate investment trusts as well as multifamily and industrial real estate are expected to be among some of the strongest sectors within the commercial industry this year.The National Association of REALTORS® unveiled its picks for the top commercial real estate market
Many Americans who are part of Generation X—those born between 1965 and 1980—are in their peak earning years. They’re increasingly turning to real estate, and they often make up more than a quarter of home buyers in the nation’s largest metros, just behind millennials, according to a new analysis from LendingTree.LendingTree researchers analyzed 2020 mortgage purchase requests in the nation’s 50 largest metros to identify the leading ma
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