Media coverage about what’s happening with home prices can be confusing. A large part of that is due to the type of data being used and what they’re choosing to draw attention to. For home prices, there are two different methods used to compare home prices over different time periods: year-over-year (Y-O-Y) and month-over-month (M-O-M). […]

Improvements in affordability expectations have led to an increase in the share of prospective buyers who have moved beyond just the planning phase of their home search: 56% report being actively engaged in the purchase process in the first quarter of 2023, up from 46% a quarter earlier. The share of prospective buyers actively searching […]

Per the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) survey through the week ending April 7th, total mortgage activity increased 5.3% from the previous week and the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) rate fell ten basis points to 6.30%. The FRM rate has fallen 41 basis points over the past month. The Market Composite Index, a measure of […]

The U.S. housing market isn’t heading to a crash, and signals suggest that a home price recovery is underway. According to real estate data company Altos Research, March 2023 begins with just 429,000 single-family homes for sale, marking the tightest home inventory since last June. The National Association of REALTORS® also reports low home inventory. […]

A modest drop in interest rates helped to end a string of 12 straight monthly declines in builder confidence levels, although sentiment remains in bearish territory as builders continue to grapple with elevated construction costs, building material supply chain disruptions and challenging affordability conditions. Builder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes in […]

Going from a volatile rate environment in the latter half of 2022 to a market with lower, more stabilized rates, there’s optimism spreading across the industry that buyers will come back. Just two weeks into 2023, Guaranteed Rate‘s top LO and managing director Ben Cohen has also seen an increase in inbound calls from buyers […]

Midwestern markets will heat up, and more friends and family members will pool their money to buy homes together in 2023, as people look for new ways to overcome the housing affordability crisis. However, that crisis will stabilize — if not improve — from its pandemic-era apex, Zillow economists predict. New construction will be focused on rental […]