April 17 is the tax deadline, and tax advisers still can’t agree on whether prepaid 2018 property taxes can be deducted in full. Congress passed a tax reform bill late last year, capping write-offs for state and local taxes at $10,000 per return for single filers and married couples.The move set off a rush of homeowners at the end of the year to prepay their property taxes for 2018 ahead of the tax bill taking effect this year.The overhaul “
The median list price for homes nationwide this March have now topped a record high set in 2017. The median list price was $280,000, up 8 percent year over year in March, topping last July’s record of $275,000, realtor.com® reports.Not only are home prices higher but homes are also selling faster this year. Days on the market dropped 7 percent compared to last year, reaching a median of 63 days in March. There are also fewer homes for sale, wi
Many homeowners faced higher property tax bills in 2017. Property taxes levied on single-family homes in 2017 totaled $293.4 billion, up 6 percent from 2016.The average property tax on a single-family home in 2017 was $3,399 per home at an effective tax rate of 1.17 percent, according to ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate data firm, from its analysis of more than 86 million U.S. single-family homes.But some places saw much higher rates than that
A shift in consumer shopping patterns toward online marketplaces continues to hit the retail sector and its real estate market hard. The vacancy rate for large U.S. shopping malls rose to 8.4 percent in the first quarter of 2018, the highest since the fourth quarter of 2012, according to new study from real estate data firm Reis Inc. For neighborhood and community shopping centers, Reis found that 41 of the 77 areas they examined saw vacancy incr
The rising cost of purchasing a home is finally sinking in for home buyers and changing their house hunt, particularly for millennials.Seventy-nine percent of all consumer age groups recently surveyed say that rising interest rates will impact their home search, while 83 percent say that increasing home prices will impact theirs, according to a new online survey released by realtor.com® of more than 1,000 active buyers. But those percentages r
A recent survey found that buyers are spending more on their home purchase than they intended. A third of homeowners recently surveyed say that they blew through the upper limit of their home purchase budget by an average of $16,510, according to a new survey released by Owners.com of 1,214 Americans who purchased a home in the last four years.A big part of the problem is the increasing costs of buying, particularly for starter homes. “Clearly
Homeowners are getting richer, thanks to rising home values. The amount of equity that homeowners can tap into is now at the highest level on record, according to Black Knight Financial Services, a mortgage and finance industry solution provider.The amount a borrower can take out of a home—while still leaving 20 percent in it—increased by a collective $735 billion during 2017. That is the largest annual increase by dollar value on record, acc
U.S. bank regulators said on Monday that more commercial real estate deals can proceed without an independent appraisal of the property’s value.The regulators raised the threshold for commercial real estate transactions that require an appraisal from $250,000 to $500,000. Commercial transactions that are valued at more than $500,000 must still have an independent third-party check on the property value before the bank will process a loan; tr
Seven of the top 10 cities to sell a home in 2018 are in California, according to new rankings by SmartAsset, a personal financial website. Many markets in the state are breaking records for home prices, which means sellers are seeing hefty profits. High buyer demand and low inventory also are leading to quicker sales.SmartAsset ranked the best places to sell a house by looking at several factors, including change in home values, average days on
The Federal Housing Administration insured about $1.9 billion worth of mortgages in 2016 that it never should have, according to a new report from a federal watchdog. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Inspector General found that in 2016, the FHA insured about 9,507 borrowers who were barred from receiving FHA loans under federal requirements, either because they had delinquent federal debt or were subject to fede
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