Home prices aren’t on the rise everywhere. In some cities, buyers have actually seen prices drop in recent months. Though the national median price for an existing single-family home reached a record high in the second quarter, a handful of metros saw the local median price decrease from a year ago, according to the National Association of REALTORS®. The 10 metros to post the largest year-over-year declines in median home prices are:1. Sprin
Lending firm 360 Mortgage Group has announced a new platform it claims will allow customers to receive approval for a loan in just 15 minutes and cuts down the closing process to as few as eight days. The company’s NOLO platform—which stands for No Originating Loan Officer—lets customers complete the mortgage lending process entirely online without ever having to speak to a loan officer. Because the program has advanced data mining capabili
Mortgage giant Freddie Mac has announced a new program allowing some home buyers to skip a traditional appraisal, which could lower the fees the buyers pay and speed up the closing process. Freddie’s Automated Collateral Evaluation (or ACE) will determine a property’s collateral risk by culling data from multiple listing services, public records, and historical home values, and then assess whether a buyer needs a traditional appraisal or an a
The boom in prices will impact middle-class families whose income can't keep paceSince 2014, the U.S. has gained 346 new $1 million neighborhoods, which can be a good thing — or a not-so-good thing, depending on how you look at it.According to Zillow, nearly one in 20 residential ZIP codes fall into this category because 10 percent of the homes in the area are worth $1 million or more.On one hand, the upshot of highly valued homes is due to t
Developers are turning to wood framing as a more affordable building material, but officials are warning of some dangers after reports of several wood-frame buildings catching fire across the country.Wood framing is increasingly being used in apartment construction and is largely considered safe once construction is completed. But wood framing can be vulnerable to fires before the interior wallboard and other safety features—like sprinklers and
Although more homeowners are gaining equity across the country, owners in certain areas are remaining underwater in large numbers. More than 5.4 million U.S. properties remained seriously underwater at the end of the second quarter, according to ATTOM Data Solutions’ Q2 2017 U.S. Home Equity & Underwater report. A property is considered seriously underwater when the combined loan amount secured on the property is at least 25 percent higher
Fixed-rate mortgages continued to drop this week, lowering borrowing costs for home buyers.“Following a mild decline last week, the 10-year Treasury yield rose 1 basis point this week,” says Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “The 30-year mortgage rate similarly remained relatively flat, falling just 1 basis point to 3.89 percent. Mortgage rates are continuing to hold at low levels amidst ongoing economic uncertainty.”Freddie
For-sale-by-owners tend to sell their homes for lower prices than homes sold through traditional agents via the MLS, and in many cases below the average differential represented by the prevailing commission rate, according to a new study by Collateral Analytics.The study examined the price differences between homes sold through traditional agents versus those sold by FSBOs from 2016 to the first half of 2017.Some homeowners may be tempted to tr
Mortgage rates dropped to the lowest averages since November, but that did little to entice home buyers and refinancers last week.The Mortgage Bankers Association reports that total mortgage application volume—including for refinancing and home purchases—eked out just a 0.1 percent week-over-week increase. Volume is nearly 22 percent lower than a year ago.The drop in loan demand is coming at a time when mortgage rates are falling, which usual
Homeowners should be feeling richer. At the end of the second quarter, more than 14 million U.S. properties were considered equity rich. (That means the combined loan amount secured by the property was 50 percent or less of the estimated market value of the property.)Nearly 320,000 properties joined the “equity rich” category during the second quarter over the first quarter. Further, the number of equity rich properties is now up more than 1.
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