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
First-time buyers made up 30 percent of August home sales, up from 29 percent in July
First-time buyers accounted for 30 percent of existing-home sales in August, up from 29 percent in July and from 28 percent a year earlier, according...
Housing supply hit 4.9 months in August, the highest in over ten years
Unsold homes across the country equaled 4.9 months of supply in August, the highest level in over ten years, according to the National Association of...
HUD is auctioning about 4,200 reverse mortgages worth $1.3 billion on homes where every borrower has died
About 4,200 federally insured reverse mortgages, carrying roughly $1.3 billion in unpaid balances, are being sold in bulk by the Department of Housing and Urban...
FHA will accept VantageScore 4.0 and FICO 10T credit scores on mortgages starting January 1, 2027
Starting Jan. 1, 2027, FHA-insured mortgages will accept two additional credit-score models, VantageScore 4.0 and FICO Score 10T, under FHA INFO 2026-21, a notice the...
Builders started single-family homes at a 918,000 pace in August, up 7.6 percent from July
Builders broke ground on single-family homes at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 918,000 in August, the Census Bureau reported Sept. 17, 2026, a 7.6...
Home completions plunged 27.1 percent from a year earlier in August, the Census Bureau says
Privately-owned housing completions fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,128,000 in August, down 27.1 percent from the 1,548,000 pace recorded a year earlier,...
Seagate shareholders can claim about $1.03 a share from a $175 million settlement by October 19
A $175 million securities settlement is now open for claims from investors who held Seagate Technology stock while the company was concealing an export-law problem...
More than 200 renters were denied housing through a Brooklyn tenant-blacklist scheme
A Brooklyn real estate firm turned away 203 rental applicants between 2019 and 2025 based on their housing court histories, a practice New York outlawed...
New York says a Brooklyn landlord must return $150,000 in withheld renter deposits
A Brooklyn real estate firm must return $150,000 in “good faith” deposits it kept from apartment applicants, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on...
Nearly 18 percent of housing-voucher areas see their rent ceiling fall October 1
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on September 1 released the fiscal year 2027 Fair Market Rents that set the payment ceiling for...
New federal rent ceilings take effect the same day the public comment window on them closes
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s fiscal year 2027 Fair Market Rents become effective October 1, 2026, the identical date HUD’s own notice sets...
Home prices are flattening as buyers wait out 7% mortgage rates
U.S. home values rose just 1.1% over the past year, according to Zillow’s July Market Report, the kind of near-flat reading that shows how thoroughly...
Rents are climbing again as steep mortgage rates keep would-be buyers renting
The typical U.S. rent climbed to $1,962 a month in July, up 2.3% from a year earlier, as mortgage rates near a one-year high keep...
New federal rent ceilings take effect October 1, and they fall for more than a third of the country
New federal rent ceilings for the Housing Choice Voucher program take effect October 1, and the two-bedroom limit is falling in more than a third...
The 30-year mortgage rate climbed to 6.95%, its highest in a year, raising the cost of every new loan
The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage climbed to 6.95% for the week ending September 17, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey,...
HUD now builds part of each area’s rent ceiling from a national water, sewer and trash figure
Part of the math behind every area’s fair market rent for fiscal year 2027 now runs through a single national number instead of a local...
A new rule keeps any area’s Section 8 rent ceiling from dropping more than 10 percent for 2027
When HUD calculates a new fair market rent for a metro area or county, a falling local rental market can normally translate into a lower...
HUD gives renters and landlords until October 1 to challenge the new voucher rent ceilings
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development published its fiscal year 2027 fair market rents on September 1, setting a hard deadline for anyone...
New fair-market rents take effect October 1, resetting how far a housing voucher stretches
HUD published new Fair Market Rents for fiscal year 2027 on September 1, 2026, and the figures take effect October 1 unless a local housing...
New Jersey gives property-tax filers until September 15 to change bank details before automatic payments
New Jersey is automatically filing many 2025 ANCHOR property-tax relief applications, but that convenience comes with a short banking-information clock. For recipients who received last...