Real Estate
Housing market coverage, home buying and selling, mortgages, rentals, and property investment. From market trends to the practical decisions involved in owning or renting.
Latest in Real Estate
You may be able to take over the seller’s old sub-4% mortgage — FHA, VA, and USDA loans are assumable, saving a buyer hundreds a month
When Sarah Nguyen started house-hunting in suburban Denver in early 2026, she assumed a $350,000 purchase meant a monthly principal-and-interest payment north of $2,200 at...
FHA mortgage insurance now sticks for the life of the loan — but refinancing into a conventional mortgage at 20% equity drops it for good
A homeowner who took out a $350,000 FHA loan in 2020 with 3.5 percent down is paying roughly $160 a month in mortgage insurance right...
Many states knock thousands off a primary home’s taxable value through a homestead exemption — but you usually have to file for it, and millions never do
A homeowner in Texas with a $350,000 house could be paying roughly $1,000 more in school-district property taxes every year than an identical neighbor, not...
Putting a lump sum toward your mortgage and asking for a recast lowers your monthly payment for good — without the cost or paperwork of refinancing
Say you inherit $50,000 and send it straight to your mortgage company. You might expect next month’s bill to shrink. It won’t. On a standard...
Once you owe less than 80% of your home’s value, you can demand your lender drop private mortgage insurance — often $100 or more off every monthly payment
Every month, millions of homeowners write a check that includes a line item most of them would rather not think about: private mortgage insurance. PMI...
The typical first-time homebuyer is now a record 40 years old — and first-timers make up just one in five buyers, the smallest share ever recorded
Not long ago, buying a first home was a milestone most Americans hit before their mid-30s. According to the latest data from the National Association...
A record 2,600 programs now offer first-time buyers an average $18,000 toward a down payment — and most of that money goes unclaimed every year
A first-time buyer in Texas puts 6% down on a $340,000 house. That is $20,400 out of pocket before closing costs. A state housing finance...
Property-tax bills have hit record highs across most of the country — and rising escrow payments are quietly pushing “fixed” mortgage payments up by hundreds a month
When Maria Gonzalez closed on a three-bedroom house outside Houston in 2021, her monthly mortgage payment was $1,640. By spring 2026, it had climbed to...
Rents are falling fastest across the Sun Belt, down nearly 6% in Austin — while Midwest and Northeast tenants are paying about 5% more than a year ago
A one-bedroom apartment in Austin, Texas, rented for an estimated median of about $1,100 per month as of the Apartment List May 2026 report, according...
Buying the typical home now costs over $1,000 more a month than renting it — the widest gap on record, and it’s keeping a generation stuck as tenants
Run the numbers on a median-priced home in Phoenix today and the result is blunt: buying costs roughly $1,200 more per month than renewing a...
Silver hit $121 an ounce this year, near a record — AI data centers and solar panels are devouring more than miners can dig out of the ground
When silver futures on the COMEX settled above $121 an ounce in the opening weeks of 2026, the price had more than doubled in barely...
Mortgage rates are stuck near 6.6%, so buyers are winning concessions instead — sellers covered closing costs or bought down the rate on 1 in 4 sales last quarter
The listing price on a townhouse outside Raleigh, North Carolina, never budged from $420,000. But at closing, the seller wrote a $12,000 check that covered...
Homeowners are sitting on $35 trillion in equity they can’t touch — tapping a HELOC now costs 8.5%, and trading a 3% mortgage for 6.5% adds $900 a month
More than 50 million American households are collectively sitting on a mountain of housing wealth larger than the GDP of every country on Earth except...
For the first time in 2026, more homes are hitting the market than selling — handing buyers the most negotiating power they’ve had since the pandemic
For most of the past five years, house hunting in America felt like showing up to an auction with nothing but a bidder number and...
Foreclosure filings jumped 28% in a year to the highest level since 2020 — and rising insurance and tax bills, not bad mortgages, are driving them
When Maria Gonzalez bought her three-bedroom stucco house in Hillsborough County, Florida, in 2020, her total monthly payment was $1,480. She locked in a 3.1%...
Zillow cut its 2026 home-price forecast from 4-5% growth to flat — JPMorgan and NAR are following, and 36% of sellers are already cutting list prices
A year ago, Zillow’s economists were telling the housing market to brace for another 4% to 5% jump in home prices. That projection is dead....
The Trump administration ordered Fannie and Freddie to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds — the most direct rate-pressure move since the 2008 crisis
A homebuyer taking out a $400,000 mortgage today pays roughly $500 more each month than someone who locked in a rate in early 2021. That...
Home Depot reports Tuesday morning — the CEO already warned there’s “no catalyst” for housing, and 6.36% mortgages are about to be the only number that matters
Home Depot reports fiscal first-quarter earnings before the opening bell on Tuesday, May 20, 2026, and the nation’s largest home improvement retailer walks into the...
Home prices are now projected to be flat in 2026 — Zillow cut its forecast from 4-5% growth to 0% because 6.5% mortgages killed buyer demand
Spring 2026 was supposed to rescue the housing market. Fresh listings, warmer weather, motivated sellers ready to test the waters. Instead, the season opened with...
The 30-year fixed mortgage isn’t really fixed — escrow shortfalls just added $179 a month to the average homeowner’s bill
You signed the papers, locked in your rate, and built a budget around a mortgage payment that was supposed to stay the same for 30...