Housing markets

Despite limited inventory and rising prices, buying interest appears robust heading into peak season, but lenders are likely to find a more discerning consumer.

Across the nation, over 700,000 Black families are "income mortgage-ready," or able to spend 30% or less of their income on a home loan for the typical house in their local market.

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes rose in January by the most in nearly a year as buyers took advantage of lower mortgage rates at the start of 2024.

The top 3 cities have an average median listing price of $217,967.

Significantly more Americans own a home now than a decade ago, but the disparity between Black homeownership rates and those of other racial and ethnic groups has grown wider, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Each state was rated on a number of factors in five categories, including affordability, overall well-being, quality and cost of healthcare, weather and crime.

The rebuff Tuesday ends months of deliberations over the cases, which had been fully briefed since late September. The court as a whole gave no explanation for either the rejection or the unusually long delay. 

Comparable sales fell 3.5% in its fiscal fourth quarter, Home Depot said Tuesday.

A deal between consumers and a Multiple Listing Service doesn't solve the issue of buyer brokers "steering" clients to listings with higher commissions, lawyers for the government said.

U.S. new-home construction sank at the start of the year by the most since the onset of the pandemic, indicating the recovery in the housing market will be gradual as many buyers await a further decline in mortgage rates.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo gauge of housing market conditions rose by 4 points to 48 this month, according to data released Thursday.

Between a new partnership with REdistribute and two other agreements, the mortgage technology company says it has access to over 90% of property listing data.

An increase in conventional lending products drove the upturn, but the overall reading of the Mortgage Bankers Association index still landed near the longtime low from late 2023.

The year-over-year gain was 1.3 percentage points higher in the most recent period compared with the third quarter last year, the National Association of Realtors found.

The top five states have an average realtor commission rate of 6.04%.

Views on mortgage rates and job security outweigh the pessimism about affordability and the economy, Fannie Mae found.

Americans' decades-long love affair with the U.S. West appears to be souring as high housing costs in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle encourage migration to the South, a new analysis shows.

It's possible that the remaining litigation could be resolved by mid-year, wrote Keefe, Bruyette and Woods analyst Ryan Tomasello

Equity-rich mortgages — those that have a loan-to-value ratio of 50% or lower, meaning the borrower's equity stake is at least half the property's value — decreased to 46.1% from 47.4% the prior quarter, according to the US Home Equity & Underwater Report published by real estate data firm ATTOM. 

The company's building unit saw income slow, but the mortgage banking division number accelerated on both a quarterly and annual basis.