Pending home sales were back on track last month, reversing course after last month’s drop. Three of the four major regions saw an uptick in contract signs in March, the National Association of REALTORS® reported Tuesday.NAR’s Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, rose 3.8 percent last month over February, and contract signings reached a reading of 105.8. Still, contract signings are down 1.2
Newbie home buyers are more likely to shop around for a better mortgage loan term than repeat buyers, a new study from LendingTree shows. Studies have shown that shopping around for a mortgage can be a smart move, too: Home buyers could see a median lifetime savings of $40,959 in interest on a $300,000 loan by comparison shopping.LendingTree researchers recently compared first-time buyers with repeat mortgage borrowers to see who is the more
More young adults are living with their parents, particularly in the South and Northeast regions of the United States. MagnifyMoney, a brand within LendingTree, analyzed the 50 largest metros in the U.S. to pinpoint the largest portion of adults aged 25 to 40 who are still living with their parents.“Moving out of your parents’ home has long been considered the ultimate rite of passage into full-fledged adulthood,” MagnifyMoney notes in its
Tighter underwriting that the Federal Housing Administration announced March 14 for higher-risk loans doesn’t mean applications for those loans won’t get approved, just that they’ll be subject to more intensive manual review, and that’s an understandable move for the agency, NAR says.“We recognize it’s something the agency has to do to protect its insurance fund,” says Megan Booth, director of housing policy for NAR.About
The growing complaints over the condition of privatized housing among U.S. military members have prompted lawmakers to respond. The U.S. House and Senate have introduced bipartisan legislation to add greater safeguards for those in the military who face inadequate housing conditions.More than half of 16,000 military respondents recently surveyed by the Military Family Advisory Network say they’ve had a negative experience with privatized h
What is the key to happiness? It may be living in a city known for having happier residents.WalletHub, a personal finance website, analyzed more than 180 of the largest U.S. cities to find the happiest cities of all. They examined 31 key indicators they culled from positive psychology to rate happiness, including the depression rate, income growth, average leisure time per day, life expectancy, job satisfaction, unemployment, commute time, d
Fewer homes were flipped in 2018, but investors are still on the hunt and have not shied away from quick resales, according to a new report from ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate data firm.Single-family homes and condos that were flipped fell 4 percent in 2018, reaching 207,957 homes, according to ATTOM’s 2018 U.S. Home Flipping Report, released this week. Home flips comprised 5.6 percent of all single-family home and condo sales last year, t
Laundry rooms and Energy Star–compliant windows topped the list of what buyers considered the most “essential” or “desirable” features in a home, according to the National Association of Home Builders’ 2019 “What Home Buyers Really Want” report, released at the NAHB International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas this week. Most of the features that new homeowners or aspiring buyers ranked highest related to helping them save in
Seniors choosing to age in place—staying put in their current homes—are creating a barrier to young adults buying their first homes, according to Freddie Mac’s February Insight. About 1.6 million existing homes are being held off the market due to seniors’ decision to age in place and remain in their current home, the report notes.Researchers note that those 1.6 million units are roughly the same as the number of new single-family an
Homeowners should have felt richer in 2018. Equity rich properties comprised 25.6 percent of U.S. properties with a mortgage in 2018, according to a newly released report from ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate research firm.In the fourth quarter, more than 14.5 million U.S. properties were considered equity rich, where the combined estimated amount of loans secured by the property was 50 percent or less of the property’s estimated market valu
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