May 12
Eric Belsky, the Managing Director of the Joint Center of Housing Studies at Harvard University expanded on the top 5 financial benefits of home ownership in his paper - The Dream Lives On: the Future of Home ownership in America. Here are the five reasons, each followed by an excerpt from the study: 1) Housing is typically …
Apr 08
It’s more affordable to buy a home now in most U.S. metros than it was 15 years ago, even for millennials putting down less money on a home, according to a Zillow analysis of third-quarter income and home value data. Renters, however, continue to pay an increasing share of their income to their landlords as …
Mar 27
March 23, 2015 Freddie Mac is scheduled to start buying mortgages with down payments of only three percent – the first time down payments have been this low on Freddie Mac loans in nearly five years. The program is called Freddie Mac Home Possible AdvantageSM. In a recent Executive Perspectives, Dave Lowman EVP, Single-Family Business …
Mar 03
Surge in January home sales creates a ‘frenzy’ in Seattle area King County has become “a pressure cooker” for residential real estate and most homes are selling fewer than 30 days after they’re listed reports the Puget Sound Business Journal. According to a leading local broker, “Thanks to positive job growth and historically low interest rates, we …
Mar 01
Kirkland, Bellevue among nation’s priciest for high-end homes Kirkland’s average luxury home sold for $2.5 million ranking it sixth among the nation’s top 10 luxury markets, while Bellevue’s came in next at just over $2.4 million. Those price levels have been driven up in recent years, in part by demand from wealthy foreign buyers. Over the year, the …
Feb 28
Not waiting for the tulips this year! Spring has sprung! For all practical purposes, the prime home buying/selling season of Spring, has already sprung. Traffic is increasing at open houses with more buyers out looking at our limited inventory. Northwest MLS director Frank Wilson says: “It’s almost the perfect storm: low interest rates, low inventory, …
Feb 15
So how accurate is the Zestimate? Shoppers, sellers and buyers routinely quote Zestimates to real-estate agents — and to one another — as gauges of market value. Sometimes, if either the buyer or the seller won’t budge off Zillow’s estimated value, a home sale will die. So, if they’re off the mark, how far off? Zillow …
Feb 08
From the Seattle Times, 2/5/2015 Expect to see housing prices to go up “We’re a fast-growing area with not enough houses and condominiums on the market,” said Alon Bassok, a researcher at the University of Washington’s Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies. “We can expect to see housing prices go up.” King County Residential Last month’s …
Jan 13
Over the course of last year, many people debated purchasing a home, but ultimately did not. Let’s look at whether the decision to wait to buy made sense financially. What happened in 2014? The 30 year fixed rate on January 2, 2014 was 4.53% as reported by Freddie Mac. Looking at the chart below, the monthly mortgage …
Jan 08
FHA Mortgage Insurance Premium (MIP) to drop President Obama will be formally announcing that he will direct the Federal Housing Administration to reduce annual mortgage insurance premiums by 50 basis points, from 1.35% to 0.85%. Zillow’s Allison Paoli ran the numbers on what this could mean for first-time buyers, saying: “On a $175,000 home loan with less than 5% …
