Down payments

Recent home buyers found it easier getting a mortgage compared with last year's purchasers, but first-timers are being held back by a lack of inventory and student debt, according to a National Association of Realtors survey.

Nearly half of all Memphis renters are "cost burdened,'' meaning they spend more than 35% of their household income on housing.

With the housing crisis and the Great Recession well in the rear-view mirror, more and more credit unions are offering mortgage options with low or no down payment requirements.

Rising home prices, wages that haven't kept pace with those increases and high levels of student debt are forcing first-time home buyers on Long Island, N.Y., to find creative ways to afford the biggest purchase of their lives.

Building off the success of policy changes in 2016, there are now even more ways for mortgage lenders to help student loan borrowers become homeowners.

CMG Financial is trying out a platform that gives borrowers the ability to raise funds for down payments in conjunction with Fannie Mae loans.

While millennials were the largest group of home buyers in the past 12 months, many had problems with affordability and the down payment.

The plight of Orlando-area renters sheds light on a new set of post-Irma realities — rent payments on uninhabitable homes and apartments, challenges getting rent deposits refunded and few housing options in a tight rental market.

Fed economists are suggesting a new mortgage product that would allow home buyers to build equity faster and give banks incentive to profitably hold the loans in portfolio.

A decade after the financial crisis and housing collapse, more consumers seem in the mood to buy a new home before they sell their existing home.