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Spokane’s residential market has settled into a pattern that rewards discipline and punishes nostalgia. Sellers who list based on what they remember from a few years ago – when homes drew multiple offers within days – are finding that the market has moved on without them, according to Kim Hagel-Barkley of The Barkley Group in ...
The gap between Houston’s residential market and its coastal neighbor shows what happens when short-term rental speculation meets a correction. Harris County, Texas, currently has roughly six months of housing inventory – enough to classify it as a balanced-to-soft market where sellers need to price carefully and present homes in strong condition. But the sharper ...
The U.S. rental market built aggressively during the pandemic era, particularly in Sunbelt cities like Nashville, Austin, and Dallas. Now much of that new inventory, especially high-end apartments, is sitting partially empty, competing for renters whose budgets have tightened considerably since construction began. The disconnect is straightforward: developers built expensive Class A apartments in markets ...
In most American markets, holding a property for ten or twelve years builds a cushion of equity. In Manhattan, that assumption no longer holds across large segments of the market, according to Nikolay Afanasyev, Founder & CEO of CITY SPHERE Property Group, a boutique brokerage covering Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. Rising building carrying costs, ...
For buyers waiting on the largest purchase of their lives, the appraisal process is one of the last black boxes in a home purchase. Turnaround time isn’t a single number; it’s the sum of scheduling, inspection, report production, quality review, and any revision cycles that follow, and thin appraiser panels and uncontrolled revision cycles are ...
Most home-search platforms filter by round numbers, such as $200,000, $250,000, and $300,000. A home listed at $249,900 shows up for buyers searching up to $250,000. It disappears for buyers searching from $250,000 and up. On paper, the seller saves the buyer $100. In practice, the seller loses an entire bracket of potential offers. In ...
For years, luxury buyers in the hills around Los Angeles prioritized views, acreage, and privacy. Insurance was a line item, not a deciding factor. That era appears to be ending. In the West Valley and surrounding fire-prone areas, insurance costs have climbed so steeply – and coverage has become so difficult to secure – that ...
In most Texas housing markets right now, buyers have leverage they have not enjoyed in years. Inventory is up, prices are softening, and seller concessions – credits toward closing costs or interest-rate buydowns – have become a common negotiating tool. But in the luxury corridors west of Dallas, that playbook stops working above a certain ...
In parts of the Midwest where the housing market still favors sellers, a split is emerging that has less to do with location than with condition. Two houses can sit side by side in the same neighborhood, built around the same time, and sell at noticeably different prices. The difference, according to Jean Lewis, who ...
The biggest risk in a fix-and-flip project is not picking the wrong house. It is running out of money halfway through the renovation. The issue is not the down payment. It is everything that comes after it. Scott Ward, owner of Lakewood Ranch Lending and the parent Ward Company in Bradenton, Florida, has closed more ...
When sellers in the South Bay beach cities need new paint, fresh flooring, or updated landscaping before listing, many resist. They would rather offer the buyer a credit at closing and skip the hassle. It feels logical: give the buyer money to do the work themselves and avoid spending cash on a home you are ...
National headlines have labeled Phoenix “the price cut capital” of the country, but the reality on the ground is more fragmented than that label suggests. Depending on the city, the zip code, and the price, sellers in Maricopa and Pinal counties are living in entirely different markets – some still competitive, others flooded with inventory ...
Most vacation-home markets draw a narrow buyer profile – retirees, weekenders, or investors chasing rental yield. The Pocono Mountains region of northeastern Pennsylvania pulls all three at once, plus a growing number of full-time commuters. That breadth is reshaping what buyers want from a property and what sellers need to offer. Suzanne Kasperski, a real ...
For a region where sellers have historically held the advantage, the Asheville, North Carolina metro area is experiencing something unfamiliar: a buyer’s market. Inventory in Buncombe and Henderson County is now more than 60 percent higher than it was a year ago, according to Debbie Hrncir, an agent with Howard Hanna who has worked the ...
Most housing markets are shaped by job growth, commute patterns, and local wages. North Carolina’s High Country – anchored by Boone, Blowing Rock, and Banner Elk in the state’s northwestern mountains – operates on a different set of drivers. Roughly 75% of homes sold in the region are second or third homes, purchased by buyers ...
Most housing markets expand outward when demand rises. Central Oregon cannot. Oregon’s land-use framework defines where developers can build neighborhoods, and those boundaries do not move just because more people want to live in Bend. On one side of a street sits a subdivision; on the other, a five-acre parcel that no developer can turn ...
The U.S. rental market has loosened. The Census Bureau put the national rental vacancy rate at 7.3% in the second quarter of 2026, which works out to roughly 3.5 million vacant units across a rental stock of about 48 million. This spring, two in five Zillow listings offered concessions such as free rent or waived ...
Houston’s housing inventory has reached its highest level since 2012. That much supply usually gives buyers more bargaining power and opens doors for investors. But according to Kelvin Louie of KL Integrity Group, many Houston-area sellers bought during the pandemic and paid too much. Values in some areas have since dropped, and these sellers have ...
Houston’s fix-and-flip model thrived after the pandemic, but the numbers no longer add up. Investors want to buy distressed properties, meaning homes that need major repairs, and then renovate and resell them. But they are offering prices so far below what sellers will accept that deals rarely close. According to Tilah Spruel, founder of Lux ...
When relocation buyers compare housing costs in the North Austin suburbs to what they paid in California, Seattle, or Houston, they typically focus on purchase price and mortgage payment. Many miss that Texas property taxes do not follow a single statewide rate. Rates vary between communities, driven in part by a financing tool called municipal ...
Building a new concrete home in the Florida Keys now costs $700 to $1,200 per square foot, according to Lisa Ferringo, who leads the Lisa Ferringo Group, a six-person real estate team in the Keys. Ferringo says those prices reflect a shortage of labor and the difficulty of getting materials to the islands. Homes must ...
State disclosure laws vary widely. Some states require sellers to complete detailed property condition forms. Others require sellers to volunteer almost nothing. But in most states, those laws alone don’t decide whether an agent is liable. Liability usually comes from negligence and misrepresentation rules, which are legal standards built through court decisions rather than statutes. ...
For decades, construction and trades businesses have operated on a simple model: complete a job, collect payment, find the next one. Revenue arrived in irregular bursts tied to project timelines. That model now works against owners at the moment they most need to show value: when they try to sell. Industry transaction data supports this ...
The biggest risk in a fix-and-flip project is not picking the wrong house. It is running out of money halfway through the renovation. The issue is not the down payment. It is everything that comes after it. Scott Ward, owner of Lakewood Ranch Lending and the parent Ward Company in Bradenton, Florida, has closed more ...
Houston’s housing inventory has reached its highest level since 2012. That much supply usually gives buyers more bargaining power and opens doors for investors. But according to Kelvin Louie of KL Integrity Group, many Houston-area sellers bought during the pandemic and paid too much. Values in some areas have since dropped, and these sellers have ...
Houston’s fix-and-flip model thrived after the pandemic, but the numbers no longer add up. Investors want to buy distressed properties, meaning homes that need major repairs, and then renovate and resell them. But they are offering prices so far below what sellers will accept that deals rarely close. According to Tilah Spruel, founder of Lux ...
For decades, construction and trades businesses have operated on a simple model: complete a job, collect payment, find the next one. Revenue arrived in irregular bursts tied to project timelines. That model now works against owners at the moment they most need to show value: when they try to sell. Industry transaction data supports this ...
In Long Beach, California, most homes were not built as tract housing, where a builder puts up many similar homes at once. Instead, homes vary block by block in age, layout, and lot size. That variation makes price per square foot, a metric many investors rely on, a poor guide to whether a deal actually ...
Some small investors in Illinois are moving away from long-term rentals. The reason isn’t weak numbers. It’s the legal risk of renting to tenants in the state. In Chicago’s far northwest suburbs, cities like Elgin and McHenry look like strong rental markets on paper. Home prices are affordable, many residents rent rather than own, and ...
