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The Money Overview

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

Buying & Selling

Fannie Mae now requires an appraiser using the UAD 3.6 form to find a home’s highest and best use is residential, effective immediately

Fannie Mae now requires an appraiser using the UAD 3.6 form to conclude that a property’s highest and best use, as improved or as proposed,...

Renting & Leasing

The Justice Department and ten states filed a proposed judgment with landlord Pinnacle in the RealPage case, which alleges about 3 million units run on RealPage pricing products

The Justice Department and ten states filed a proposed final judgment with Pinnacle Property Management Services in the RealPage antitrust case, and the Federal Register...

Market Trends

Housing starts ran at 1.28 million in August, with 589,000 single-family homes building

The Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported on September 17 that privately-owned housing starts in August ran at a seasonally...

Mortgages & Rates

FHA borrowers who turn down a trial payment plan three times in one default episode are treated as having failed it under rules mandatory since September 21

HUD’s Mortgagee Letter 2026-08, issued June 23, 2026 and mandatory for servicers no later than September 21, 2026, adds a counting rule to FHA trial...

Mortgages & Rates

Fannie Mae rewrites how rental income counts toward a mortgage for any application dated December 1 or later

Fannie Mae has rewritten how rental income counts when a borrower applies for a conventional mortgage, and the new rules become mandatory for every loan...

Market Trends

Census counts 483,000 new houses for sale, an 8.5-month supply

At the August sales pace, it would take 8.5 months to sell the 483,000 new single-family houses that were for sale at the end of...

Mortgages & Rates

FHA’s 2026 one-unit loan limits run from a $541,287 floor to a $1,249,125 ceiling

For FHA case numbers assigned on or after January 1, 2026, the Federal Housing Administration’s one-unit loan limits start at $541,287 in low-cost areas and...

Mortgages & Rates

HUD’s paperwork filing puts an estimated 990,284 respondents and 3,431,820 filings a year through FHA loss mitigation

HUD estimates that 990,284 respondents will make 3,431,820 filings a year under the paperwork that governs FHA loss mitigation, according to a Federal Register notice...

Market Trends

FHFA’s July index has Middle Atlantic house prices up 6.3 percent over 12 months while the Mountain states slipped 0.8 percent in the month

Middle Atlantic house prices are 6.3 percent above their July 2025 level, the strongest 12-month reading among the census divisions in the Federal Housing Finance...

Buying & Selling

Fannie Mae gave lenders a temporary exception to its November 2 appraisal-form mandate

Fannie Mae’s Lender Letter LL-2026-08, issued September 30, 2026, lets sellers that cannot meet the November 2 mandate for UAD 3.6 appraisal reporting request a...

Mortgages & Rates

Two lenders have settled on $847,440 as next year’s conforming loan limit, a figure none of 22 other tracked lenders is using

Two lenders, United Wholesale Mortgage and Neighborhood Loans, have published $847,440 as their 2027 conforming loan limit for a one-unit home, and none of the...

Renting & Leasing

Single-room-occupancy rent ceilings are set at 75% of an efficiency rent

Federal rent ceilings for single-room-occupancy units are set for fiscal year 2027 at 75% of the efficiency rent, which is the zero-bedroom Fair Market Rent...

Renting & Leasing

HUD grantees must now leave VA service-connected disability pay out of income tests

A veteran’s VA service-connected disability compensation can no longer be counted when a HUD grantee decides whether a household is low- or moderate-income. The change...

Mortgages & Rates

FHA has set January 1, 2027 as the implementation date for VantageScore 4.0 and FICO Score 10T, with lender office hours in November and January

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has put a date on a change that HUD and the Federal Housing Finance Agency first announced in April: January...

Buying & Selling

Home buyers whose purchase was listed on an MLS have until October 27 to claim from a $120,334,500 commission settlement, and sellers are expressly excluded

Buyers of homes that were listed on a Multiple Listing Service (MLS) have until October 27 to file a claim against a $120,334,500 commission settlement,...

Mortgages & Rates

If federal flood insurance lapses December 11, the National Association of Realtors says most lending regulators suspend the purchase requirement, leaving each lender to decide

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is scheduled to lose its authority at midnight on December 11, 2026, and borrowers closing on homes in flood...

Mortgages & Rates

HUD’s reverse-mortgage sale, due to be awarded October 30, covers only homes where every borrower has died, no non-borrowing spouse survives and no heir came forward

A reverse-mortgage loan sale due to be awarded on or about October 30, 2026 is defined less by its size than by who is missing...

Market Trends

HUD is selling the mortgages on 11 nursing and assisted-living homes in nine unnamed states without FHA insurance, and its notice says nothing about the residents

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is selling the mortgages on 11 nursing and assisted-living homes in nine unnamed states without FHA insurance,...

Market Trends

Apartment completions fell 35.7% in a year

Completions of homes in buildings with five or more units ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 302,000 in August 2026, against 470,000 in...

Mortgages & Rates

A new law adds in-law units to what an FHA home-improvement loan can cover

Congress has added in-law units to the list of things a federal home-improvement loan is meant to cover, but no homeowner can use the change...

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