Purchase

As Seattle tops the country for home price growth for the seventh straight month, the local real estate market has gotten so competitive that it's now nearly impossible to avoid a bidding war.

Homes in Sacramento have been selling in an average of 34 days — six days faster than they were at this time last year, and 28 days faster than the U.S. overall.

Democrats and Republicans, who have agreed on little this year, have found common ground on plans to give private insurers greater access to the $5 billion flood insurance program and to offer more buyouts for homeowners in areas likely to be repeatedly submerged.

Real estate site Zillow is launching a $1 million competition among data scientists to improve its "Zestimate" home valuations, but said the crowdsourcing initiative is unrelated to recent lawsuits filed in Chicago against the company.

Rising prices are holding back some potential sellers from listing their properties because they fear they won't find an affordable replacement, according to First American Financial Corp.

The median price reported to the Realtors Association of New Mexico for the month of April was $192,000, which is nearly 4% higher than the March 2017 median and more than 6% higher than the April 2016 median.

Home values increased by 7.3% in April, the strongest rate of year-over-year appreciation in more than 10 years, according to Zillow.

A drop in home sales in Porter County in April led to a year-over-year decline in Northwest Indiana, with total existing home sales of 898 in the seven-county area.

Sales of homes in the Chicago area dropped in April as potential homebuyers looked at houses but then turned away after finding disappointing choices, the Illinois Realtors reported.

Refinance mortgage volume hit a 10-year low during the first quarter, while a tepid market for purchase lending put total origination activity at its lowest level since 2014.

HLP has received a $20,000 grant award from the CBC Mortgage Agency, a government housing agency owned by a Native American tribe.

A larger-than-projected decline in April sales of previously owned homes from a 10-year high indicates the residential real estate market remains constrained by a lack of inventory.

Here's a look at the top cities where out-of-town house hunters are looking to buy. Mortgage lenders can capitalize on these trends with targeted marketing and specialized customer service to cater to these consumers.

Application volume increased 4.4% from one week earlier as rates hit their lowest level in seven months, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The San Diego County median home price hit $525,000 in April, passing the region's previous peak reached in 2005.

Homeowners insurance agencies are embedding their policy-underwriting technology into mortgage companies' origination and servicing systems in a bid to chase the same customers together.

Bank of the West is using alternative data and the international expertise of its parent company to tap into the lucrative but difficult to underwrite market of middle- and upper-class immigrant mortgage borrowers.

A larger-than-forecast decline in new-home purchases in April from the strongest pace in almost a decade indicates a pause in demand in the midst of the busy spring selling season.

Maine's residential mortgage lending industry bears little resemblance to its prerecession version as changing conditions have shuffled the deck of top lenders and created new choices for borrowers.

April sales of existing homes fell almost 11% in Wisconsin, a drop-off industry professionals say is the result of a short supply of houses on the market.