Three years ago, buying a home in Citrus County, Florida, meant competing for scarce inventory in a market where sellers had no reason to negotiate. That dynamic has reversed. For buyers, the shift in leverage may matter more than any change in prices. Bruce Brunk, an agent with The Citrus County Dream Team at Keller ...
In a market where mortgage rates have squeezed monthly budgets, buyers on Chicago’s West Side are making a trade that would have seemed unlikely a few years ago. They are choosing homes that need work over homes that are move-in ready. A lower purchase price means a lower mortgage payment. For many buyers, picking up ...
The biggest financial mistake many first-time home buyers in the Pittsburgh area make has nothing to do with interest rates, bidding wars, or neighborhood choice, according to Janette Schafer, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Realty. Schafer, who works extensively with first-time buyers in the greater Pittsburgh market, says too many buyers are still ...
Year-over-year home price declines near 20 percent in Austin, Texas, have made national news, painting a picture of a market in retreat. But that number blends two very different markets, according to Nitin Kumar, a residential agent and investor with eXp Realty in Austin. One is the established suburbs near Austin’s job centers. The other ...
In Warminster, a middle Bucks County township where many homes date to the 1950s and 1960s, a split has opened between properties that are move-in ready and those that need work. According to Tracey Hill, a 20-year real estate veteran who recently opened an office for Innovate Real Estate in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 54% of homes ...
The math on a fix-and-flip in metro Atlanta looks straightforward on paper: buy a distressed property at a discount, renovate it, sell it at market value, pocket the spread. In practice, the spread is shrinking from both directions. Sellers of distressed properties are asking prices that reflect peak-market expectations rather than current conditions, while construction ...
A homebuyer comparing two nearly identical four-bedroom houses on either side of the Butler-Allegheny County line in western Pennsylvania could face a property tax bill roughly double on the Allegheny side – $8,000 or $9,000 a year versus around $4,200 in Butler County. In a rate environment where monthly payment calculations dominate every purchasing decision, ...
In most markets, resale homes and new builds compete on roughly even footing. In Austin and Central Texas, the balance has tipped decisively. Builders sitting on completed inventory are discounting prices and offering financing incentives that resale sellers cannot match – and the result is a market where the sub-million-dollar segment is stalling while homes ...
Listing high and reducing later has long been a default strategy for sellers testing the market. In Pierce County, Washington, that approach is backfiring. Inventory has climbed to roughly 3.36 months; homes that sold in days during 2020 and 2021 now sit for 30, 60, or 90 days, and prices have eased year over year. ...
Every FHA and VA mortgage issued in the United States is legally assumable. A buyer can take over the seller’s existing loan – rate, terms, and all – through a federally regulated process that fully transfers both the mortgage and the property rights. With roughly six million of these loans carrying rates below 5%, the ...
The most competitive segment of the Twin Cities housing market isn’t where most people assume. In the south metro – an area spanning Burnsville, Lakeville, Prior Lake, and surrounding communities – the lower end moves quickly and the upper end has been surprisingly active. The middle of the market is stuck, squeezed by a dynamic ...
Inventory in the Austin, Texas metro has loosened considerably since the pandemic-era frenzy. Buyers browsing online listings could reasonably conclude they have time to deliberate, compare, and negotiate. In the northwest suburbs – communities along the Highway 183 corridor running through Cedar Park, Leander, and Round Rock – that conclusion holds for most of the ...
Most housing markets along the California coast have loosened over the past two years as interest rates climbed and buyer urgency faded. Santa Barbara’s south coast – stretching from Carpinteria through Goleta – has loosened too, but from a starting point so tight that the current inventory level still registers as a seller’s market. With ...
A town of fewer than a thousand people would not normally register on an investor’s radar. But in Paw Paw, Illinois – roughly an hour south of Rockford and a couple hours west of Chicago – residential listings are moving under contract within weeks, prices have climbed from the $50,000–$70,000 range to the mid-$200s in ...
Move-in-ready homes on Chicago’s Northwest Side haven’t disappeared. They’ve just moved to the top of most buyers’ price range. With mortgage rates hovering near 7 percent and purchasing power compressed, a growing number of buyers in neighborhoods like Edison Park, Norwood Park, and Edgebrook are shifting their search toward homes that need work – a ...
