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April housing numbers released by the National Association of Realtors were, wait for it … good. Spring is traditionally a busy season for home sales, but the real estate market has been in such a slump for the past couple of years that “ordinary” good news comes as something of a surprise.
A useful new government website has just gone live, offering easy teaching points for parents who want to help their kids grow up knowing a thing or two about compound interest and 19 other key financial concepts.
Bank of America announced it has begun mailing letters to the first wave of up to 200,000 homeowners who are eligible for mortgage principal reductions, part of a settlement the bank worked out with the federal government and 49 state attorneys general. In a statement, the bank says homeowners who qualify will see an average [...]
Buyers snatched up houses as investment properties and second homes at an especially fast clip last year. The number of homes purchased for investment purposes rose a whopping 65% in 2011, from 749,000 to 1.23 million properties—which was more than one-fourth of all homes sold last year.
As the cost of renting rises and home values keep dropping, it gets easier and easier to figure out whether it’s smarter to buy or rent. A new study indicates that in 98 out of 100 U.S. housing markets, buying is the more affordable option.
Five years after the market first began to stumble, property taxes seem to be declining in parts of the country.
Guess what happens when you stop paying the mortgage? For quite some time, the answer is: Nothing much. In many states, while the foreclosure process drags on for years, homeowners who have stopped paying their bills can live in the property in a situation that amounts to “free rent,” as it’s been called. One couple [...]
You could wait for the government to fix the housing crisis, or you could simply wait for the housing market to rebound. In either case, though, you might be waiting a long time for anything to happen. Instead of just hoping for a solution to magically appear, why not actually do something about it?
Despite signs that some housing markets are improving, the overall trend is for home prices (and values) to keep dropping—and dropping. As values shrink, more and more homeowners find themselves underwater, the unfortunate scenario in which one owes more on the mortgage than the home is worth.
The data on housing costs isn’t pretty. Most experts recommend spending no more than one-third of your income on housing, and yet, in a new study, nearly one in four American households now spends more than half of its income on housing. Renters are experiencing especially tough times of late: At the same time that [...]
While experts continue to warn that housing has not yet hit bottom, a slew of indicators suggest otherwise. The latest is a stellar quarterly earnings report from Home Depot, which is benefitting from hopeful owners sprucing up for the spring selling season.
