Category: housing

Housing Beat: Mortgage Rates Hit 5 Percent Level While Property Taxes Inch Higher

The week in housing was one of great challenges, with mortgage rates cracking the 5 percent level while homeowners faced an uptick in property taxes and state attorneys general demanded that mortgage services drop their convenience fees charged to borrowers. High-Five Freddie Mac reported the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5 percent on April 14, up…


Local Governments Need to Upgrade to Improve Housing Process: Finance Minister

Canada’s finance minister says it’s not the federal government’s job to build all the houses Canadians need, but it will try to remove roadblocks with a $4-billion fund earmarked to help boost housing construction announced in the budget. Chrystia Freeland told the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade on Wednesday that some of the funding will…


Multiple-Property Holders Own Upwards of 41% of Housing in Some Provinces: StatCan

New data from Statistics Canada shows multiple-property owners held between 29 and 41 percent of the housing stock in Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in 2019 and 2020. The data from the Canadian Housing Statistics Program, which includes both residential and recreational holdings, reveals multiple-property ownership accounted for 41 percent of Nova…


Housing Beat: Mortgage Rates Keep Climbing; Disney’s Affordable Housing Project

Mortgage rates are continuing their upward motion while potential homebuyers and sellers face a shifting housing market and the affordable housing sector welcomes a well-known new participant. The Home Loan Situation Freddie Mac reported the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage average 4.72 percent for the week ending April 7, up from last week when it averaged 4.67 percent. The 15-year…


The Crisis in Housing, Part 1: A Lopsided Market

The Japanese novelist Kobo Abe once wrote, “There is always order in the distant view. No matter how strange the happening, it can never project from the frame, from the order which this distant view possesses.” For the past several years, the U.S. housing market has been seen through the spectrum of a distant view,…


The Longest Housing Crash in History

What would you think if you walked into your favorite grocery store and saw that the shelves were 80 percent bare? It echoes in there. The store is only one-fifth stocked. It’s eerie. Let’s call it “shelf awareness”. What kind of feelings does this evoke inside of you? These store shelves represent the available supply…


Housing Starts Climb in February

Construction of new houses increased by 6.8 percent in February in the United States, reversing a decline from the previous month and bringing the seasonally-adjusted annual rate of housing starts to 1.769 million. This rebound in housing starts is the most drastic since 2006, and the magnitude of growth surpassed the monthly predictions of most experts…


Los Angeles City Council Mulls New Social Equity Housing Rules

The Los Angeles City Council has introduced a package of new social justice rules that supporters say would make it easier for homeless and underprivileged residents to find housing. The “Fair Access for Renters” legislation proposed March 9 by city councilors Mike Bonin, Nithya Raman, and Marqueece Harris-Dawson would restrict landlords from asking certain information…


Why Los Angeles’s Homeless Policy Is Failing | James Breslo

The city of Los Angeles is looking to build permanent shelters for the homeless as their numbers continue to grow. My guest is James Breslo, an attorney with McAfee and Taft. He explains Los Angeles’s approach to the homeless crisis and why he thinks there are better solutions.   Follow Epoch TV on social media:…


Will Higher Mortgage Rates Kill Housing?

Commentary  Recent home mortgage rate hikes have created concerns over the outlook for the housing market as well as the economy.  Housing sales are highly sensitive to interest rates.  A downturn in housing starts is among the earliest and most reliable indications of a downturn in the overall economy. Adding to this concern for homebuilding…