NAR released a summary of pending home sales data showing that April’s pending home sales pace was down 1.3 percent last month and fell 2.1 percent from a year ago. Pending sales represent homes that have a signed contract to purchase on them but have yet to close. They tend to lead existing-home sales data… Continue Reading April 2018 Pending Home Sales
Dog whistles are intended to be silent for everyone except for a select few listeners. But in his best-selling book, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (Oxford University Press, 2014), Ian Haney López seeks to transmit a message all real estate professionals should be listening for.… Continue Reading Learning to Hear the Dog Whistle
Volcanic activity, savings, privacy, population, math, How incredibly unlucky was this? This week in Questions We Didn’t Know Had to Be Asked… Phillippe Put/flickr/2014 We are always looking for ways to increase our savings, but there are a lot of ways to save that we miss. Cartwheel, for example. If this service hits Chicago, we can… Continue Reading What We’re Reading: May 28-June 1
After modest increases in February and March, pending home sales dipped in April to their third-lowest level over the past year, according to NAR. The Pending Home Sales Index declined 1.3 percent to 106.4 in April from an upwardly revised 107.8 in March. With a decrease in March, the index is down on an annualized… Continue Reading Pending Home Sales Fall in April, Third Lowest Level Since 2017
The pace of historic change can be at once laborious and swift. The passage of the U.S. Fair Housing Act in 1968 is a case in point. As a response to generations of discriminatory practices condoned by government, business, and societal norms of a different era, legislation protecting buyers, renters, and borrowers from exclusionary treatment… Continue Reading A Deeper Understanding of the Scourge of Racial Inequality
The following is NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun’s reaction to this morning’s S&P/Case-Shiller release on March home prices: “The solid gain home prices of 6.5% in March added roughly $150 billion to housing wealth during the month. But the continuing run-up in home prices above the pace of income growth is simply not sustainable. From the cyclical… Continue Reading Instant Reaction: S&P/Case-Shiller March Home Prices
By Julea Joseph, guest contributor The keys are in your buyer’s hands! They’ve gone through the process … the search, deciding, inspection, stress, closing, and finally, the elation of buying a new home. Now, they have to make it their own. Here’s how. Color – Paint is the least expensive, easiest way to update a space. It can… Continue Reading How to Make a New House Your Own
Differences in household composition and financing options incentivize homebuying demand for veteran and active military, according to the 2018 Veterans & Active Military Home Buyers Profile, which evaluated the differences of recent active-service and veteran home buyers and sellers to those who have never served. Check out this infographic highlighting some of the report’s findings:… Continue Reading Infographic: Home of the Brave – A Look at Active Military and Veteran Homeownership
NAR released a summary of existing-home sales data showing that housing market activity this April fell 2.5 percent from last month and dropped 1.4 percent from last year. April’s existing home sales reached 5.46 million seasonally adjusted annual rate. The national median existing-home price for all housing types was $257,900 in April, up 5.3 percent… Continue Reading April 2018 Existing-Home Sales
Trends, privacy, technology, postage, and policies. You know, it’s kind of Uber meets Meetup, but with houses instead of cars. We have a “Corner of Shame.” How do you deal with messes in your open floor plan? This is a different kind of mess. SparkCBC/flickr/2010 We’ve seen our share of tiny houses, but this is… Continue Reading What We’re Reading: May 21-25