As real estate heads into its busy spring season, consumers aren't showing typically large demand for mortgage loans just yet. Total mortgage application volume, which includes refinances and home purchases, dropped 2 percent week over week for the week ending Feb. 17, the Mortgage Bankers Association reports. Total mortgage volume has plunged nearly 21 percent from a year ago.Refinancing applications has shouldered most of the blame for the decr
If your home buyers are looking to buy new, you may want to share the latest list of home building’s “most admired companies” from Fortune.They named these five companies as the top most admired brands in home building: Toll Brothers Lennar D.R. Horton CalAtlantic Group NVRIn the general real estate category, Fortune also named these five companies as most admired: Simon Property Group Host Hotels & Resorts Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) CBRE
Usually it’s existing homeowners who are associated with blocking new lower income construction, due to fears that their property value could be affected, neighborhood aesthetics, or local protectionism. But a new study shows that renters in high-cost cities may hold that same NIMBYism—not-in-my-back-yard—mentality too.Renters in high-rent cities are showing NIMBYism toward market-rate housing at a level that matches homeowners, finds new r
Some of the cleanest cities in the U.S. are usually in agricultural communities that have a natural forest or natural reserve nearby, according to realtor.com®’s data team. On the other hand, the most polluted cities tend to be located in former industrial hubs, such as in the Rust Belt and along the Gulf of Mexico.Pollution in the U.S. has been declining. For instance, in 2015, the nation’s industrial facilities released 25 percent less tox
One of the nation’s largest owners and operators of apartment homes is trying to halt Airbnb listings of its units. Apartment Investment & Management Company (Aimco), a property manager that oversees more than 50,000 properties, has filed a lawsuit in both California and Florida to prevent Airbnb from listing its units, saying that doing so violates its leases.“It is not acceptable to us that Airbnb actively promotes and profits from del
Once a buyer settles on a home, they often show their commitment with an earnest-money deposit. But if they’re not careful, they could lose thousands of dollars.Realtor.com® recently featured some of the biggest mistakes home buyers most often make with earnest-money deposits, including:Failing to understand exactly what an earnest-money deposit is.It is proof that a buyer is committed to completing the sale. Earnest money is used as credit to
The best way to get more search traffic to your website: Blogging. That said, it takes a lot of blogging to see results.HubSpot, an inbound marketing and sales software company, reviewed the blogging frequency and website traffic of 13,500-plus of its customers. They found that you don’t tend to see any significant boost to traffic if you publish just four times a month. Instead, companies had to publish 5-10 blog posts a month to see noticeabl
Home buyers at many income levels likely will see an inadequate amount of homes for sale in their price range in the coming months, according to a new housing affordability model created by the National Association of REALTORS® and realtor.com®.The new Affordability Distribution Curve—which culls data from mortgages, state-level income, and listings on realtor.com®—examines how many listings are affordable to those in a particular income p
Mortgage rates fell slightly for the second consecutive week, taking a path that many economists haven't expected."For the last 46 years, the 30-year mortgage rate has been almost perfectly correlated with the yield on the 10-year Treasury, but not this year," says Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac's chief economist. "From Dec. 29, 2016, through today, the 30-year mortgage rate fell 17 basis points to this week's reading of 4.15 percent. In contrast, th
More than half of lenders last year gave loan estimates to home buyers that later had to be revised before closing, according to a new survey released by ClosingCorp, a provider of data on closing costs and technology related to residential real estate. Fifty-eight percent of recent home buyers say their initial loan estimates changed, citing closing costs, insurance costs, and taxes as the most common fees that needed to be adjusted.The survey,
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