Without credit, buying a house becomes much more difficult. After all, not many of us have enough money in the bank to be able to write a check for a couple hundred thousand dollars. And, if you can't pay cash, you'll need a loan. Which is why your credit score is so important. It's one of the ways a lender gets a feel for your financial habits and how responsible you are with your money. In short, your credit score will affect, not only the terms of the loan and your interest rate, but whether or not you even … [Read more...]

If you want to know how the housing market is doing, ask a home builder. Their livelihood depends on knowing what, where, and when people are ready to buy a home. So they're generally a pretty good indicator of where things are headed. That's why the National Association of Home Builders conducts a monthly survey asking builders to score the market on a scale where any number above 50 indicates more builders view conditions as good than poor. In June, their Housing Market Index surged 21 points to 58. Robert Dietz, … [Read more...]

A new weekly measure of housing market health from the National Association of Realtors' consumer website compares current traffic, price, new listing, and time on market trends to where they were in January, before the coronavirus' impact. According to the most recent results, the index improved 1 point last week and is now at 88.8, 11.2 points below the baseline of 100. The index shows home prices are continuing to increase while time on market is beginning to fall. In short, home buyers are returning faster than … [Read more...]

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association's Weekly Applications Survey, purchase activity continued to climb last week, rising 5 percent from the week before. The improvement marks eight consecutive weeks of increases and puts demand for loans to buy homes 13 percent higher than they were last year at the same time. Joel Kan, MBA's associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting, says low mortgage rates and pent-up demand are the driving forces behind the rebound. “Fueled again by low mortgage … [Read more...]

Despite the economic shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic, home prices have remained firm. Mostly that's because there were already too few homes for sale in many markets and the pandemic only made it worse. In other words, there were more buyers than homes for sale before the coronavirus hit in mid-March and there still are. But despite the market imbalance – which puts upward pressure on prices – many home sellers are listing their homes at a discount. In fact, according to a new analysis from Weiss … [Read more...]

Before you start looking at homes, you have to make some decisions. Where you'd like to live should be among the first. After all, you can't begin to calculate the costs and whether or not you can afford them without knowing what areas you'll be targeting. For example, would you prefer a place in the city or a house in the suburbs? Well, if new home construction is any indicator, many Americans are making the decision to move further away from city centers and into the inner and outer suburbs. According to a new … [Read more...]

The number of homes for sale has been lagging for years. It's been among the housing market's main challenges. That's because a lack of available homes combined with rising buyer demand leads to steady price increases and declining affordability. But while that can be good for homeowner equity, it's bad for buyers – especially first-time buyers who don't have the benefit of cashing in their equity to help fund a home purchase. This continuing imbalance only got worse when the coronavirus led to stay-at-home orders … [Read more...]

Coronavirus-related lockdowns began in mid-March and affected most of the country by April. So, naturally, expectations were that sales of new homes would tumble even further in April than the nearly 14 percent drop they posted in March. But surprisingly, new numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development show sales actually increased month-over-month. In fact, sales of newly built single-family homes rose 0.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 623,000 units – … [Read more...]

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association's Weekly Applications Survey, demand for loans to buy homes rose another 6 percent last week and is now just 1.5 percent below where it was during the same week one year ago. That represents a dramatic turnaround from where it was six weeks ago, when it was down 35 percent year-over-year. Joel Kan, MBA's associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting, says the rebound is an encouraging sign for the housing market. “Applications for home purchases continue … [Read more...]

The coronavirus hasn't just changed the way we shop for homes. It's also changed where we shop for homes. In fact, according to new data from one consumer real estate portal, prospective home buyers have been showing increasing interest in moving away from city centers and into less densely populated areas. For example, views of homes in small towns were up 105 percent year-over-year during the week ending May 1. In rural counties, page views climbed 76 percent. The surge in interest is even more impressive when … [Read more...]