In a time when nearly two-thirds of home buyers made an offer on a home without ever seeing it in person, a new survey shows that home staging has perhaps never been more important.
If there's been one constant theme in housing over the last several months, it's been how the lack of available inventory is impacting the market. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a light at the end of the inventory tunnel right now.
If one was looking for the hottest housing markets over the next year, one simply needs to follow the old adage: Go west, young man.
Over the last few months, home prices have been rising faster than they have in decades. But it appears that prices may be beginning to calm down a bit. That's not to say that prices aren't still rising, because they are, but the speed at which home prices are increasing seems to be slowing down.
Spring is usually the time of the year when the housing market is the hottest, but that may not be the case this year. Instead of home sales heating up, it's beginning to look like sales will be cooling off as the weather begins to warm up.
In recent years, the health of the Federal Housing Administration's flagship insurance fund has continually improved, leading to speculation that the FHA could reduce its mortgage insurance premiums to ease the costs for borrowers with an FHA loan. But it appears no such cut is coming…at least not any time soon.
Rising lumber costs have already been at fault for slowing down the construction of new homes. Now, those costs appear to be slowing down new home sales as well. Read about how home sales dropped to lowest level since May 2020.
Earlier this month, pending home sales data from the National Association of Realtors showed that existing home sales could be set to slow down due to 'inventory constraints.' The actual sales data for February is out now, and it is just as expected: a slowdown. Read about how the lack of inventory is slowing existing home sales.
There's nothing the housing market needs more right now than more available homes hitting the market. Unfortunately, it appears that construction of new homes is slowing down at just the wrong time.
For many years, the common refrain among housing observers was, 'When are Millennials going to start buying homes?' As it turns out, they've been buying homes for quite a while now. More homes than any other age group, in fact.
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