Testimonials for Blog

Home prices took a nosedive during the Great Recession that started in 2008. Prices fell in all local markets, but much more in some than others. And afterwards some had a better recovery than others. Why? And, more important, could we have predicted that? Job growth is part of the story, but not a very useful one because nobody can predict which markets will have more jobs in the future. Furthermore, how come San Francisco and Denver had the same job loss in the recession, but home prices fell 20 percent in the former and only 5 percent in the latter?

The tight just keep on getting tighter. In the last, briefest month of winter (yay!) supplies were scarcer than ever in the residential real estate market, according to a preliminary analysis of our data here at realtor.com®. Factoring in strong buyer demand, sales remained strong in February after a January in which the pace of existing-home sales was at a 10-year high. And early birds were scrambling to get the worms … er, homes, which are moving off the market 5% more quickly this February than a year ago, and five days faster than in January. That’s even as prices remain at

Analyzing real estate is all about the cycles. Evaluating real estate investments, including real estate investment trusts (REIT), depends on evaluating three cycles: the economic cycle (primarily jobs), the building cycle, and the interest rate cycle. We believe we are in a good spot in the economic cycle for attractive U.S. real estate returns, with steady job gains and an improving domestic economic growth outlook. The building cycle for real estate shows little sign of the type of overbuilding that has ended previous cycles. Finally, although we expect interest rates to rise, we expect increases to be modest, and for

Bay Area home sales sagged in December from a year earlier, but — continuing a nearly five-year trend — the median price of a single-family house continued to climb. For the nine-county region, the median price was $680,000 in December, up 3 percent from December 2015, according to CoreLogic, the real estate information service. Discounting a single month — March 2016, when the price remained flat — it was the 57th consecutive month of year-over-year gains. For 2016 as a whole, the median price paid for a single-family house rose 4.5 percent to $700,000 from $670,000 in 2015. As Bay Area home prices

The state’s biggest reservoirs are swelling. The Sierra Nevada have seen as much snow, sleet, hail and rain as during the wettest years on record. Rainy Los Angeles feels more like London than Southern California. So is the great California drought finally calling it quits? Yes. Or at least maybe. If the storm systems keep coming, state and regional water managers say, 2017 could be the end of a dry spell that has, for more than five years, caused crops to wither, reservoirs to run dry and homeowners to rip out their lawns and plant cactus. “You’ve seen jumps in snowpack and precipitation amounts.

Mortgage rates are now sitting solidly at the highest level in two years and could move even higher in the coming weeks. Granted, January  is not exactly the hottest season for the housing market — homes don’t top the holiday gift list — but in February, all eyes move to the all-important spring season. Even before a Fed move, the average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage shot up from record lows immediately after the presidential election, as investors piled into the stock market and sold out of the bond market [mortgage rates loosely follow the yield of the U.S. 10-year

In so many ways 2016 was an unprecedented, volatile and, for some, excruciating 12 months. And the housing market was not immune to the year’s whims. At the start experts anticipated a pick up in building activity, instead builders are still not producing enough homes. Meanwhile, home prices appreciated beyond expectations and mortgage rates toyed with record lows before crossing 4% for the first time in two years. “If the expectation was that the market would transition smoothly from deep red hot recovery to normal–that certainly didn’t happen,” says Svenja Gudell, chief economist at real estate data firm Zillow. Nevertheless, Gudell and

Forget a tale of two cities: Extreme housing market fragmentation is now creating different experiences for home buyers and sellers in a wide range of locations and segments. Nationally, home prices are expected to keep rising, albeit more slowly— 3.5% in 2017, vs. 4.5% in 2016, per Moody’s Analytics projections. But even more so than in recent years, your position is now going to hinge on what and where you’re buying or selling. Hoping to escape a downtown condo for the suburbs? Your equity should go far: Small homes have seen much sharper price growth than larger ones, urban areas

We’ve predicted a slight slowdown for the US Real Estate market next year, but the realtor.com economic team is forecasting that most of the nation’s hottest markets are going to keep blazing in 2017. And where will it be hottest? Head west! According to our forecasts, the western U.S. will continue to lead the nation in prices and sales. “The top 10 markets all benefit from strong growth dynamics: population, jobs, and households,” says Jonathan Smoke, realtor.com’s chief economist, who analyzed the country’s 100 largest metropolitan markets for their growth potential. “They all have low unemployment that’s heading lower, which buoys consumer confidence.” Western cities

We won’t pretend to know everything that 2017 will bring—heck, 2016 sure surprised us—but we’re pretty certain there will be changes. A lot of them. And while the surprise triumph of Donald Trump in the presidential election won’t alter the fundamentals shaping the 2017 real estate market, its impact is already being felt. We’ve seen interest rates jump since the election, a movement that’s likely to affect the youngest generation of home buyers. Just like last year, realtor.com®‘s economic data team analyzed our market data and economic indicators to come up with a picture of the key housing trends for 2017. As we prepare to bid farewell to