Recognizing the potential to improve the lending process, Price transitioned from being a real estate agent to an assistant in the mortgage industry. In 2017, he started his own brokerage. “We opened up Price Mortgage so that I could do things how I wanted to and have an ideal place as an originator,” Price said. … [Read more…]
In the past year, PrimeLending has been recognized as one of the Best Workplaces for Women, Millennials, and Parents, and the Best Workplace in Texas by Great Place to Work® and Fortune magazine. “What truly makes us shine is our people-first culture built on values of teamwork, mutual respect, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to … [Read more…]
Jamie Bordelon said he didn’t think he’d ever own a home. Until recently, that goal felt out of reach.
A former general contractor, Jamie’s home remodeling work dwindled during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading him to apply for Alaska Housing Rent Relief and unemployment benefits. Though it wasn’t an easy decision to make, he said it provided him valuable assistance.
“I had a big problem accepting help, but sometimes you have to swallow your pride and ask for it,” he said. “It’s there.”
Ultimately, Jamie and his family benefited from 12 months of rent relief during the height of the pandemic, giving him the breathing room necessary to consider different possibilities for his future.
Jamie’s job search led him to Alaska Housing, where he was hired as a maintenance mechanic in September 2021. He now supports AHFC’s mission by helping to keep the organization’s facilities in Anchorage running smoothly, in addition to traveling across the state to assist the Alaska Housing maintenance teams in 16 communities.
“I see a future here and hope to stay here 20 years and retire,” Jamie said. “Hopefully one day I’ll be a project manager or a lead.”
Making a Dream Reality
Having found stability in a new career, Jamie and his wife began considering a goal that had previously felt unattainable – homeownership. Jamie credits AHFC’s no-cost homebuyer education class with helping make their dream a reality.
“We searched for a house for about seven months, andtaking the HomeChoice™ class was the most helpful thing we did,” Jamie said.
“We learned so much from that class. We didn’t think it was possible to own a home until we took the class and then we thought, ‘Oh, we can do this.’ I tell everyone I know about it.”
Responses like Jamie’s are why AHFC Outreach SpecialistMaude Morse, a long-time HomeChoice™ instructor, describes the class as powerful.
“We help participants see what is possible, that an investment can be empowering,” she said.
Coming Home
In February 2023, less than a year-and-a-half after benefiting from emergency rental assistance, Jamie’s family moved into their own home along with their cat, two dogs and 10 birds, many of them rescue animals.
“The birds have the whole upstairs living room to themselves,” Jamie laughed.
Jamie said he plans to make a few updates to their home over time, but for now his family is simply enjoying settling into their own space. The realization thatthe home is really theirs is sinking in slowly.
“We’re still in shock,” he said. “It wasvery surreal, walking through our door with our own keys. We still don’t believe it…we haven’t even unpacked, that’s how much we don’t believe it!”
AHFC Resources for Homebuyers
Thinking of buying a home but not sure where to get started? Here are some valuable resources from Alaska Housing.
Homebuyer Education Courses
In-person HomeChoice™ classes will be regularly available starting in July and webinar sessions are still offered for those who cannot join an in-person class or who prefer to complete the course from the comfort of home. For a full class schedule and to register, visit ahfc.us/events.
AHFC Home Loans
Alaska Housing offers a variety of home loans that can meet the unique needs of Alaskans. Contact an AHFC approved lender to determine if you qualify for an Alaska Housing loan.
Our experts answer readers’ home-buying questions and write unbiased product reviews (here’s how we assess mortgages). In some cases, we receive a commission from our partners; however, our opinions are our own.
best home equity loan lenders, and its low rates and zero closing costs make it incredibly affordable. But it doesn’t offer any other types of mortgages.
Discover Home Loans
4/5
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Discover Home Loans
4/5
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Minimum Credit Score
620
Types of Loans Offered
Conventional refinance, home equity loan
Discover Home Loans
Insider’s Take
If you’re looking to refinance your mortgage or get a home equity loan, Discover is a strong option. It’s one of the best home equity loan lenders, and its low rates and no closing costs make it incredibly affordable. But it doesn’t offer any other types of mortgages.
Details
Types of Loans Offered
Conventional refinance, home equity loan
Editor’s Rating
4/5
Pros & Cons
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No closing costs
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Easy online application
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Low advertised rates
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Only offers mortgage refinancing and home equity loans
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Fixed-rate loans only
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More Information
Available everywhere in the US except Iowa and Maryland
Loan amounts from $35,000 to $300,000
Offers 10, 15, 20, and 30-year terms on its loans
Additional Reading
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Read our review
Read Our Review
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About Discover Home Loans
Discover only offers conventional mortgage refinancing and home equity loans. Its home loans are available everywhere in the US except Iowa and Maryland.
Discover makes it quick and easy to submit an online application. You can also get started over the phone Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to midnight ET, or 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Is Discover Trustworthy?
Discover has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. The BBB evaluates companies by looking at responses to customer complaints, honesty in advertising, and transparency about business practices. Discover has no recent public scandals.
Discover Home Loans Interest Rates and Fees
Discover says its rates start at 6.24% and go up to 13.99% for its refinances and home equity loans. To get a better idea of what rate you might get based on your finances, you’ll need to start an application or talk to a loan officer over the phone.
Discover doesn’t charge any origination fees on its mortgages, and you won’t need to bring any cash to closing, since the lender will also pay any third-party costs you incur. The data backs up this claim: according to Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, conventional borrowers getting a mortgage from Discover paid $0 in origination charges in 2022.
Discover Home Loans: Overall Lender Rating
Discover Home Loans: Pros and Cons
Discover Home Loans FAQs
You’ll need at least a 620 credit score and a CLTV of 90% to qualify for a Discover home equity loan (this means all of the loans on your property combined can’t exceed 90% of the property value). This actually makes Discover relatively easy to qualify with, since many home equity loan lenders require higher credit scores.
According to the Discover website, it could take as little as 30 days for you to get your home equity loan funds. But it says the average time it takes to close is 55 days.
Discover’s home equity loans are a good option if you’re looking to keep your costs down, since Discover doesn’t charge any closing costs and pays for any third-party fees you incur.
If you pay off your Discover home equity loan within 36 months of closing, you’ll need to reimburse Discover for the third-party fees it paid on your behalf, up to $500. Residents of Connecticut, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, or Texas won’t have to repay these costs.
How Discover Home Loans Compare
Discover Home Loans vs. U.S. Bank Home Loans
U.S. Bank Mortgage is a strong lender overall, and like Discover, it’s one of our favorite home equity loan lenders.
U.S. Bank offers home equity loans in amounts from $15,000 to $750,000, so you might prefer it if you need a larger loan amount, since Discover only lends up to $300,000.
U.S. Bank also offers conforming, jumbo, FHA, VA, and construction mortgages, as well as HELOCs. You can use its mortgages for either a purchase or refinance, while Discover currently only offers a mortgage refinance.
Discover Home Loans vs. Bank of America Home Loans
If you’re looking for a HELOC rather than a home equity loan, you might like Bank of America Mortgage, which is one of the best HELOC lenders out there. A HELOC is a line of credit that borrows from your equity and may be a better option if you’re not exactly sure how much you need to borrow (like if you’re doing a home improvement project that will have ongoing costs).
Bank of America also offers conforming, jumbo, FHA, and VA mortgages, plus its Community Affordable Loan Solution. The Community Affordable Loan Solution is a zero-down, zero-closing-cost mortgage aimed at first-time homebuyers in certain areas.
Though its competitors generally have many more mortgage options, Discover still stands out thanks to its affordability.
Why You Should Trust Us: How We Reviewed Discover Home Loans
To review Discover Home Loans, we used our methodology for reviewing mortgage lenders.
We look at four factors — loan types, affordability, customer satisfaction, and trustworthiness — and give each a rating between 1 and 5, then average these individual ratings for the overall lender rating. Lenders get higher ratings if they offer a high number of loan types with affordable features, have positive customer reviews, and don’t have any recent public controversies.
First is fundamentally changing the real estate industry. We believe that operational excellence will be key to our success and will be driven by constant improvement as well as bold game changing innovations.
As one of our early engineers, you’ll help guide key design, architecture, and technology decisions. You will be a part of our platform team, helping us to build a platform to support our customer-facing and internal applications. You will help us to scale the system to meet the needs of our expanding userbase. This includes driving the product roadmap, bringing “design thinking” on product features, coordinating development efforts across the team, and working with the front-end team to ensure that our efforts are aligned.
What you bring to the table
* 5+ years of developing Rails applications in production :
* SQL and relational database experience (not just using a database through an ORM)
* Experience in building APIs (REST at least, GraphQL a plus)
* Passion for startups and building products that will be used to change the face of real estate
* Generalist mindset, excited to jump into many parts of the stack to ship working software
* You can develop features without hand-holding in Rails, diving down into the database level as needed
* Clear, effective communication skills, both written and verbal
* Experience with agile practices, including TDD/BDD, continuous delivery, object oriented design, etc
* Comfort with asynchronous development: pull requests, chat, email, etc
Extra bonus points for
* Sidekiq (or another background job system integrated with Rails)
* GraphQL experience
* DevOps skills (Ansible and/or AWS cloud a plus)
* Front-end experience (especially React)
* Mobile development experience
* Proficiency in GitHub flow
* Experience with pair programming (remote or in-person)
* Open source contributions, side projects and gems (edited)
Now is your chance to become part of a world-class, industry leading organization that touts the #1 real estate brand in the world! RE/MAX is a business that builds businesses. We, alongside booj, our award-winning technology company, specialize in providing the tools, training and tech to our real estate network, which includes RE/MAX and Motto Mortgage franchises, agents, brokers and consumers. Join us and build a career where your contribution is heard, your innovative ideas are valued, and hard work and collaboration truly makes a difference.
RE/MAX LLC, Motto Mortgage and booj are an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion, as well as non-discrimination in employment. All qualified applicants receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, veteran status, disability unrelated to performing the essential task of the job or other legally protected categories. All persons shall be afforded equal employment opportunity.
During the past two years, regulators and lawmakers have introduced and adopted new rules and guidelines aimed at curbing the impacts of racial bias on home valuations. But some appraisers and researchers insist these efforts have been based on faulty data.
Conflicting findings from a pair of non-profit research groups call into question whether or not recent actions will improve financial outcomes for minority homeowners without leading to banks and other mortgage lenders taking on undue risks.
The debate centers on a 2018 report from the Brookings Institution, which found that homes in majority-Black neighborhoods are routinely discounted relative to equivalent properties in areas with little or no Black population, a trend that has exacerbated the country’s racial wealth gap. The study, which adjusts for various home and neighborhood characteristics, found that homes in Black neighborhoods were valued 23% less than homes in other areas.
“We believe anti-Black bias is the reason this undervaluation happens,” the report concludes, “and we hope to better understand the precise beliefs and behaviors that drive this process in future research.”
The study, titled “Devaluation of assets in Black neighborhoods,” has been cited by subsequent reports published by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, academics and White House’s Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity, or PAVE, task force, which used the data to inform its March 2022 action plan to address racial bias in home appraisal.
Meanwhile, as the Brookings’ findings proliferated, another set of research — based on the same models and data — has largely gone untouched by policymakers. In 2021, the American Enterprise Institute replicated the Brookings study but applied additional proxies for the socioeconomic status of borrowers.
By simply adding a control for the Equifax credit risk score for borrowers, the AEI research asserts, the average property devaluation for properties in Black neighborhoods falls to 0.3%. The researchers also examined valuation differences between low socioeconomic borrowers and high socioeconomic borrowers in areas that were effectively all white and found that the level of devaluation was equal to and, in some cases, greater than that observed between Black-majority and Black-minority neighborhoods.
“That, to us, really suggests that it cannot be race but it has to be due to other factors — socioeconomic status, in particular — that is driving these differences in home valuation,” said Tobias Peter, one of the two researchers at the AEI Housing Center who critiqued the Brookings study.
Contrasting conclusions
Peter and his co-author, Edward Pinto, who leads the AEI Housing Center, acknowledge that there could be bad actors in the appraisal space who, either intentionally or through negligence, improperly undervalue homes in Black neighborhoods. But, they argue, the issue is not systemic and therefore does not call for the time of sweeping changes that the PAVE task force has requested.
Brookings researchers have refuted the AEI findings, arguing that, among other things, their controls sufficiently rule out socioeconomic differences between borrowers as the cause of valuation differences. They also attribute the different outcomes in the AEI tests to the omission of the very richest and very poorest neighborhoods.
Jonathan Rothwell, one of the three Brookings researchers along with Andre Perry and David Harshbarger, said the conclusion reached by AEI’s researchers ignored the well documented history of racial bias in housing.
“No matter how nuanced and compelling the research is, no one can publish anything about racial bias in housing markets, without our friends Peter and Pinto insisting there is no racial bias in housing markets,” Rothwell said. “Everyone agrees that there used to be racial bias in housing markets. I don’t know when it expired.”
Mark A. Willis, a senior policy fellow at New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, said the source of the two sets of findings might have contributed to the response each has seen. While both organizations are non-partisan, AEI, which leans more conservative, is seen as having a defined agenda, while the centrist Brookings enjoys a more neutral reputation.
Still, Willis — who is familiar with both studies but has not tested their findings — said while the Brookings report notes legitimate disparities between communities, the AEI findings demonstrate that such differences cannot solely be attributed to racial discrimination.
“The real issue here is there are differences across neighborhoods in the value of buildings that visibly look alike, maybe even technically the neighborhood characteristics look alike, but aren’t valued the same way in the market,” Willis said. “Whatever that variable is, Brookings hasn’t necessarily found that there’s bias in addition to all of the other real differences between neighborhoods.”
Setting the course or getting off track?
The two sets of findings have become endemic to the competing views of home appraisers that have emerged in recent years. On one side, those in favor of reforming the home buying process — including fair housing and racial justice advocates, along with emerging disruptors from the tech world — point to the Brookings report as a seminal moment in the current push to root out discriminatory practices on a broad scale.
“It’s been really helpful in driving the conversation forward, to help us better define what is bias and be specific about how we communicate about it, because there’s a number of different types of bias potentially in the housing process,” Kenon Chen, executive vice president of strategy and growth for the tech-focused appraisal management company Clear Capital, said. “That report really … did a good job of highlighting systemic concerns and how, as an industry, we can start to take a look at some of the things that are historical.”
Appraisers, meanwhile, say the Brookings findings made them a scapegoat for issues that extend beyond their remit and set them on course for enhanced regulatory scrutiny.
“What’s causing the racial wealth gap is not 80,000 rogue appraisers who are a bunch of racists and are going out and undervaluing homes based on the race of the homeowner or the buyer, but rather it’s a deeply rooted socioeconomic issue and it has everything to do with buying power and and socioeconomic status,” Jeremy Bagott, a California-based appraiser, said. “It’s not a problem that appraisers are responsible for; we’re just providing the message about the reality in the market.”
Responses to the Brookings study and other related findings include supervisory guidelines around the handling of algorithmic appraisal tools, efforts to reduce barriers to entry into the appraisal profession and greater data transparency around home valuation across census tracts.
But appraisers say other initiatives — including what some see as a lowering of the threshold for challenging an appraisal — will make it harder for them to perform their key duty of ensuring banks do not overextend themselves based on inflated asset prices.
Even those who favor reform within the profession have taken issue with the Brookings’ findings. Jonathan Miller, a New York-based appraiser who has deep concerns about the lack of diversity with the field — which is more than 90% white, mostly male and aging rapidly — said using the study as a basis for policy change put the government on the wrong track.
“There’s something wrong in the appraisal profession, and it’s that minorities are not even close to being fairly represented, but the Brookings study doesn’t connect to the appraisal industry at all,” Miller said. “Yet, that is the linchpin that began this movement. … I’m in favor of more diversity, but the Brookings’ findings are extremely misleading.”
Willis, who previously led JPMorgan Chase’s community development program, said appraisers are justified in their concerns over new policies, noting this is not the first time the profession has shouldered a heavy blame for systemic failures. The government rolled out new reforms for appraisers following both the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and the subprime lending crisis of 2007 and 2008.
But, ultimately, Willis added, appraisers have left themselves open to such attacks by allowing bad — either malicious or incompetent — actors to enter their field and failing to diversify their ranks.
“It seems clear that the burden is on the industry to ensure that everybody is up to the same quality level,” he said. “Unless the industry polices itself better and is more diverse, it is going to remain very vulnerable to criticism.”
At this point “high rates” are old news. We were already close to hitting the highest levels in more than 20 years last week, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to achieve that dubious distinction this Thursday. Some sources see the record-breaking rate at 7.09% for a 30yr fixed while others are over 7.5%. Both are accurate and we’ll explain why.
To understand why, we first need to remember that a mortgage rate quote is not as simple as the rate itself. The rate that almost everyone refers to (officially the “note rate”) is only part of the equation. While the note rate dictates the amount of interest paid with each mortgage payment, it doesn’t account for all the interest the average borrower pays.
For instance, several of the closing costs seen on almost every mortgage are considered “prepaid finance charges.” Essentially, that’s just interest paid upfront.
But what if the mortgage in question has “lender paid closing costs.” Or what if a builder offers a closing cost credit? You’ve heard that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and the same is true here. Whether it’s coming out of your pocket, or from the lender, the same amount of money will be paid to the same parties.
So what’s the difference then? Wouldn’t it always be better to get those upfront costs paid by someone else? The catch here is that the money that a lender can pay toward your closing costs is determined by your interest rate. The higher your rate, the more of your upfront costs a lender could pay. This is the first key reason that a rate of 7.09% could be the same as a rate of 7.5% if one of them includes upfront costs and the other one doesn’t.
The following chart shows 30yr fixed rate indices from various sources. All three agree that this week’s rates broke the long term ceiling despite all being at slightly different outright levels.
That brings us to the topic of how higher rates are changing mortgage quotes. In a stable rate environment, there is a fairly linear trade-off between higher rates and a lender’s ability to pay more of your upfront costs. The current environment isn’t exactly stable. In fact, over the past few years, there have been times when a higher note rate would actually DECREASE the amount of upfront costs a lender could pay.
WARNING: The following is fairly technical, but it will explain why a higher mortgage rate could be worth less to a mortgage lender.
Whether a mortgage lender sells your loan or not, the loan still has a value that it could be sold for. In general, a higher interest rate makes a loan worth more because more interest will be collected over time. Because of this, a hypothetical $400k loan at 7.5% could be worth about $5000 more than the same loan at 7.0%.
As outlined above, that means a lender could pay $5000 of your upfront costs at 7.5%, or they could offer you a rate of 7.0% if you pay your own $5000 in upfront costs. Some individual lenders have restrictions as to what they’re able to do with these options, but this is the general phenomenon that exists in the secondary mortgage market where mortgage rates are determined.
One key assumption behind a 7.5% rate being more valuable is that the mortgage has to last long enough for the extra interest to be collected. Otherwise, the lender (or whoever buys the loan from the lender) is coughing up money they won’t recoup. An extreme but simple example would be the same scenario above where a lender pays $5000 for a 7.5% mortgage, but then rates magically fall to 6.5% two weeks later and you refinance. The lender no longer collects the extra interest and they are out their $5k.
While it was a bit of a bigger issue when rates were initially surging toward long-term highs, it’s still the case that lenders are afraid to pay much of a premium for higher mortgage rates because they are afraid that any decent recovery will lead to premature refinancing.
There are already more upfront costs on the average mortgage than there have been in years. Many of these are unavoidable as they are imposed by Fannie and Freddie for certain loan characteristics (credit score, equity, occupancy). That means that certain loans with a certain amount of upfront costs will simply leave your lender unable to offer you a higher rate with lower closing costs.
What’s the bottom line?
Whereas lenders have almost always been able to quote you a higher rate in order to keep your closing costs lower, there are certain scenarios where there is simply no market for rates that high. In those cases, the only option is for you to pay much higher closing costs than you may have been expecting. In certain purchase scenarios, realtors and builders can take part in defraying those upfront costs, but the point is that it won’t be the mortgage lender until the secondary market for mortgages gets back to a more stable trend.
What will it take for a return to normalcy? That will be an ongoing conversation, to be sure. We addressed big picture structural issues with rates last week. (Here’s a link to the commentary). Next week, we will discuss the outlook for the rest of the year, and beyond.
It’s pricey to borrow to buy a business, car or home these days. Interest rates are expected to fall in coming years — how much is up for debate.
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Aug. 7, 2023
Dr. Alice Mills was thinking of selling her veterinary practice in Lexington, Ky., this year, but she decided to put the move off because she worried that it would be difficult to sell in an era of rising interest rates.
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“In a year, I think that there’s going to be less anxiety about the interest rates, and I’m hoping that they’re going to go down,” Dr. Mills, 69, said. “I have to put my faith in the fact that the practice will sell.”
Dr. Mills is one of many Americans anxiously wondering what comes next for borrowing costs — and the answer is hard to guess.
up sharply from 2.7 percent at the end of 2020. That is the result of the Federal Reserve’s campaign to cool the economy.
The central bank has lifted its policy interest rate to a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent — the highest level in 22 years — which has trickled out to increase borrowing costs across the economy. The goal is to deter demand and force sellers to stop raising prices so much, slowing inflation.
But nearly a year and a half into the effort, the Fed is at or near the end of its rate increases. Officials have projected just one more in 2023, by a quarter of a point, and the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, John C. Williams, said in an interview that he didn’t see a need for more than that.
“We’re pretty close to what a peak rate would be, and the question will really be — once we have a good understanding of that — how long will we need to keep policy in a restrictive stance, and what does that mean?” Mr. Williams said on Aug. 2.
The economy is approaching a pivot point, one that has many consumers wondering when rates will come back down, how quickly and how much.
several years before rates return to a level between 2 and 3 percent, like their peak in the years before the pandemic. Officials do not forecast a return to near zero, like the setting that allowed mortgage rates to sink so low in 2020.
That’s a sign of optimism: Rock-bottom rates are seen as necessary only when the economy is in bad shape and needs to be resuscitated.
In fact, some economists outside the Fed think that borrowing costs might remain higher than they were in the 2010s. The reason is that what has long been known as the neutral rate — the point at which the economy is not being stimulated or depressed — may have risen. That means today’s economy may be capable of chugging along with a higher interest rate than it could previously handle.
A few big changes could have caused such a shift by increasing the demand for borrowed money, which props up borrowing costs. Among them, the government has piled on more debt in recent years, businesses are shifting toward more domestic manufacturing — potentially increasing demand for factories and other infrastructure — and climate change is spurring a need for green investments.
could hover around 4 percent, while those who expect them to be lower see something more in the range of 2 to 3 percent, said Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
That is because some of the factors that have pushed rates down in recent years persist — and could intensify.
“Several of the explanations for the decline in long-term interest rates before the pandemic are still with us,” explained Lukasz Rachel, an economist at University College London, citing things like an aging population and low birthrates.
Jeanna Smialek writes about the Federal Reserve and the economy for The Times. She previously covered economics at Bloomberg News. More about Jeanna Smialek
A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Puzzling Out When Rates Will Decline. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Real estate is local. We hear that constantly, despite being force-fed national housing statistics all the time. But both serve a unique purpose to give us clues about the direction of the overall economy, or just our local housing market.
A new analysis from Trulia broke down time on market by low-price tier, mid-price tier, and high-price tier.
Nationally, they found that homes in the low-price cohort are moving faster than both the mid-price and high-price tiers, which is pretty standard. It’s typically harder to sell an expensive home (fewer eligible buyers).
Overall, 55% of homes listed for sale in mid-February were still on the market, generally a bad sign for the home seller who likely faces a price reduction. Still, that’s down from 56% a year ago.
In the low-price tier, only 49% of homes listed for sale two months ago were still on the market, down from 52% a year earlier.
That compares to 62% in the high-price tier, down just one percent from 63% a year ago.
Put another way, the sale of lower priced homes is accelerating while higher-priced home sales are slowing.
Where Homes Are Selling the Fastest
1. Oakland 2. San Jose 3. San Francisco 4. Denver 5. San Diego 6. Seattle 7. Los Angeles 8. Orange County 9. Sacramento 10. Middlesex County
These are your hot markets at the moment. For the record, none of them are cheap, which kind of bucks the national trend of cheaper homes selling faster, though there are probably fewer listings.
Oakland has been the hottest metro, with just 29% of homes still for sale after being listed for at least two months. That number is down from 31% a year ago.
The biggest year-over-year winner has been Denver, where only 38% of homes were still on the market after at least two months, compared to 47% a year ago.
Interestingly, Denver is hitting new all-time highs in the home price department, which makes you wonder if it’s getting bubbly at high altitude.
Despite Orange County, California making the top 10 list, home sales are actually slowing there, with 45% still on the market after at least two months, compared to 38% a year ago. The same trend is visible in Los Angeles.
Home prices aren’t cheap, which might explain some of the slowdown. They may have also overcorrected.
Where Homes Are Selling the Slowest
1. Richmond, VA 2. Hartford, CT 3. Albany, NY 4. New Haven, CT 5. Long Island, NY 6. Knoxville, TN 7. Springfield MA 8. Columbia, SC 9. Birmingham, AL 10. Greenville, SC
The slowest housing market in mid-April was Richmond, Virginia, where a whopping 72% of homes listed at least two months earlier still hadn’t sold.
That’s up 11% from the 61% share a year earlier. It was followed by Hartford with a 71% share, and Albany, New Haven, and Long Island all at 70%. Perhaps the weather could be to blame…
Interestingly, faster moving markets have had bigger price increases, which seems somewhat counterintuitive.
But the rationale is that these hot markets are able to increase asking prices steadily because demand is so strong. And that demand means fewer homes stay on the market, further allowing for price increases.
Of course, there are limits, and those have been tested in fringy spots like Phoenix and the Inland Empire of California.
When it comes to purchasing a new property, homebuyers are often on the lookout for attractive incentives that can enhance their investment. Builders strive to entice potential buyers with various incentives. The most common incentives offered are capped development levies, assignment discounts, and the right to lease during occupancy. Let’s delve into these incentives and understand their benefits for homebuyers.
Capped development levies are one of the most sought-after incentives offered by builders. Development levies are charges imposed by municipal authorities to fund infrastructure projects in the area. However, these levies can significantly impact the final purchase price of a property. To alleviate this burden, some builders opt to cap the development levies, ensuring that homebuyers will not be subjected to any additional increases beyond a predetermined amount.
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By capping the development levies, builders provide homebuyers with cost certainty and protection against escalating fees. This incentive proves advantageous for buyers, allowing them to budget more effectively and avoid unexpected financial strain. Moreover, capped development levies can result in substantial savings, making the overall investment more attractive.
Assignment refers to the transfer of the purchase agreement from the original buyer to a new one before the property’s completion. This incentive provides flexibility for buyers who may have changed their plans or circumstances since entering into the agreement. It is also attractive to investors who purchase pre-construction homes with the sole purpose of assigning it once the value of the property increases.
The right to lease is an appealing incentive offered by builders, particularly for investors looking to generate rental income. This provision permits buyers to lease out their property before they take occupancy. It allows them to start earning rental income immediately upon completion, mitigating any holding costs or mortgage payments.
For investors, the right to lease provides a lucrative opportunity to secure tenants in advance and establish a rental stream. Additionally, it grants flexibility by allowing investors to choose whether to reside in the property themselves or continue renting it out for long-term gains.
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