Consumer

The agent a chatbot surfaces when someone types “best real estate agent near me” into ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overview is not necessarily the most experienced or the most active in that zip code. That agent may simply have a website built to be readable by a large language model. The gap between “AI-recommended” ...

Most people shopping for a home start with a mortgage calculator. They plug in a price, a down payment, and an interest rate, and out comes a monthly payment. In Texas, that number is often wrong, sometimes by hundreds of dollars a month, and buyers don’t find out until they’re already deep into a transaction. ...

It is tempting, when a listing has sat for a few weeks with no offers, to assume the price is wrong. In many markets, that instinct is correct. But in military-dependent markets like Hampton Roads, Virginia, a stale late-summer listing may not be a pricing problem – it may be a calendar problem, according to ...

In the western suburbs of Chicago, homeowners who list above market value, banking on the idea that a motivated buyer will negotiate down, are not just sitting on stale listings. According to Michael Berg, a broker covering DuPage County and parts of Cook County, those overpriced homes function as unpaid marketing for every competitively priced ...

Most first-time buyers in the outskirts of Los Angeles County assume they should wait for mortgage rates to drop before purchasing. But if home prices keep climbing while they wait, the savings on interest get erased by a higher purchase price, and the higher principal balance stays for the life of the loan. Gabriella Godde, ...

Scroll through listings in North Orange County, California, this fall and the market looks like it is softening: price reductions dotting the inventory, homes sitting longer than they did a year ago, sellers pulling back from their original ask. For buyers, it is tempting to read those cuts as a signal that values are falling ...

The common narrative around Joshua Tree is that the market is drowning in vacation rentals, too many Airbnbs chasing too few guests. But in a market that still draws over three million visitors a year, the vacancy problem may have less to do with how many rentals exist and more to do with what owners ...

Selling a home is supposed to be the exit strategy. But for a growing number of homeowners in Las Vegas, the math on a sale does not work right now, and the result is a wave of reluctant landlords entering a rental market that punishes inexperience. Corinne Gordon, a Realtor and co-owner of Hive Real ...

In the Chicago suburbs, single-family homes in desirable locations are drawing multiple offers and selling fast. Condos are moving in the opposite direction: inventory is climbing, financing is getting harder to secure, and sellers are increasingly offering concessions. The gap between the two segments is widening, and the forces driving it apart show no sign ...

The homes moving quickest in Houston right now are not the ones buyers pin to their vision boards. They are modest starter properties: three bedrooms, two bathrooms, located in the suburbs. Larger, more expensive homes are sitting longer. For first-time buyers holding out for the house they actually want to live in long term, that ...

New-construction homes in the greater Pittsburgh area are selling rapidly, even as buyers openly complain about the build quality of some of the region’s largest homebuilders. That disconnect between persistent demand and known concerns raises a practical question for anyone shopping for a new build: if the market will not punish builders for cutting corners, ...

In most housing markets, buyers settle on a strategy and stick with it. Bid aggressively, or negotiate patiently. Move fast, or take your time. In the Washington, D.C., metro area right now, that single-strategy approach can cost you a home or cost you thousands in overpayment, because conditions on opposite sides of the Potomac are ...

A signed contract used to mark the point where Philadelphia home sellers could exhale. That assumption is breaking down. Buyers who have already signed agreements and put down deposits are backing out before closing, and Alona Richardson, a Realtor with OCF Realty LLC, the largest independent brokerage in Philadelphia, says economic anxiety is driving the ...

When insurance premiums double and the budget is already tight, some homeowners make a choice that would alarm any financial planner: they cancel their coverage and hope nothing goes wrong before the house sells. That is happening in parts of North Houston, according to Roze Swartz, a Redfin agent with 10 years of experience and ...

Buyers relocating to Pittsburgh from San Francisco, Austin, or New York tend to arrive with a mental picture of urban condo living that does not match what the city actually offers, and that mismatch, according to Racheallee Lacek of the Lacek Group at Piatt Sotheby’s International Realty, is the single biggest source of friction in ...