Tag: US Real Estate

Despite Falling Sales, Home Prices Keep Rising: What Is Going On?

Today’s U.S. housing market is a study in contradictions. After a stretch of strong and often frenetic activity by buyers during the pandemic period, sales have been in a slump. Housing inventory, which was in acutely short supply before the pandemic, is slowly starting to become a bit more bountiful. But home prices have continued…


Death of the First-Time Homebuyer

You might have learned that supply and demand dictates price before you graduated high school. There’s a less-discussed variable within—the capacity to pay. Say that you and I are crawling through the hot desert, penniless and dying of thirst. We have a high demand for a drink of water. Next, we’re lucky enough to find…


Mortgage Rates Remain High as Big Banks Anticipate Recession

News Analysis Canada’s big banks dominate the mortgage market and aren’t helping homebuyers and housing affordability with lower mortgage rates for the time being. Analysts point to the banking oligopoly in Canada as a major factor in the lack of competitive options for consumers as compared with the United States.  Like other industries, the big…


Real Estate Investors Scoop Up Almost 10 Percent of US Home Sales

A new report just released from Realtor.com reveals that investor home purchases comprised 9.5 percent of home sales nationally, with Charlotte, North Carolina, leading the pack as the fastest-growing investor market. In the 12 months ended in April 2022, 20 percent of properties sold in the greater Charlotte metropolitan area were bought by both institutional and individual…


Foreign Homebuyers, Led by China, Spend $59 Billion in the US

Commentary Foreign buyers poured $59 billion into the U.S. housing market from April 2021 through March 2022, snapping up nearly 100,000 homes across the country amid a severe housing shortage and record-high prices. Despite the huge dollar amount, non-U.S. citizens accounted for a modest 2.6 percent of the total volume of existing-home sales during that…


US Home Prices Cooled at a Record Pace in June

Skyrocketing mortgage rates and inflation in the United States have caused the housing market to tumble in June, allowing historically high home prices to stabilize and unit stock to grow, according to a report from mortgage data analytics firm Black Knight. The rise in housing prices rapidly slowed in June, according to the report, though…


Climbing Rates, Halt in Refinancing Blamed for Mortgage Industry Nosedive

Headlines across the nation continue to trumpet the recent slump in the mortgage industry, as thousands of loan professionals now find themselves furloughed for the time being. Industry giants like JP Morgan Chase and Loan Depot are planning to slash thousands of jobs, while published reports indicate layoffs have been in the hundreds at Wells…


Sales of New US Homes Drop to Lowest Level in Two Years as Consumer Demand Subsides

Sales of new single-family homes in the United States dropped by more than eight percentage points in the last month, their lowest levels in just over two years, signaling that increased mortgage rates and soaring prices are decreasing consumer demand for housing. New home sales declined 8.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 590,000…


Houses for Sale Are Staying on the Market Longer as Bidding Wars Fizzle, Demand Sinks

Houses in the United States are taking longer to sell as bidding wars have decreased and demand has dipped, according to real estate brokerage firm Redfin. For the four weeks ending July 17, the typical home was on the market for 19 days before being sold, one day more than the same period in 2021,…


Rents Are at a Record High, but Cheaper Than Buying a Starter Home

Higher mortgage rates are pushing many homebuyers into the rental market, despite rising rents, transforming the real estate field across the United States. The U.S. median rental price still lags behind average starter homeownership costs, more so than at the start of 2022. Despite higher rents, it is now more affordable to rent than to…