Tag: Housing Affordability
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Facing a Troubled Economy—How Race and the Generations Intersect
The housing gap is getting more extreme as time goes on. Which means young people are having a harder time of it. Racial identity continues to be an overlapping factor.
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Deeds Reserved for Affordability: Incentives for Home Buyers to Live in Hawaii
Hawaii continues to grapple with its housing crisis. Hawaii’s Hale Kamaaina Mortgage Program is a state-based initiative to connect first-time home buyers with cut-rate mortgages. And this year, it made an extra $3,000 available to its first 35 buyers. Hale Kamaaina offers first-time Hawaii home purchasers: The funding comes from tax-exempt mortgage bonds. Hawaii administers…
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What’s All the Fuss About Home Buyers Tapping Their Retirement Accounts?
“I’m not a huge fan. Other people like it,” Trump told reporters. The topic? Home buyers raiding their 401(k) savings to come up with down payments. The remark created a stir. A Trump adviser had just appeared on the Fox Business channel, saying that a new federal plan would give people better access to their…
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First-Time Home Buying? How and Where to Buy a Home You’ll Enjoy for Under $250K
Aspiring deed holders are backing off from the market in droves. Prices are high. Mortgage approvals aren’t easily had. The economic outlook is still uncertain. And most would-be buyers (one new survey says three-fourths of renters!) think they’ll never be able to get their own deeds. All of that is very much real. But yes,…
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Leave Some Deeds for the Rest of Us! Will the White House Lower the Boom on Corporate Buyers?
You may have heard about the Trump executive order on real estate investment companies. The idea is about keeping large companies from buying homes that ordinary deed seekers would want to buy. It comes in the midst of poll results showing voters upset with high prices, and profit-seekers buying up homes. Does this depend on…
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U.S. Housing Affordability Politics: What Is Still Possible?
Is it possible to offer real relief to people struggling with our housing affordability challenge? If so, then how? What do you think? Many of us have very good ideas. Can our law and policy makers hear us? The need for affordable U.S. housing has been left hanging way too long. So let’s look at…
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More Deed Holders Slip Under Water. Lost Equity Risk Varies by Region.
The average deed holder is doing OK—sitting on $299K. But as high as home values are, across-the-board homeowner equity is down from its 2024 highs. Home equity belonging to the average U.S. deed holder went down by about $13K last year. In 32 states, people have been losing equity. Most strikingly, the number of mortgage…
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Sign of the Times: Companies Emerge to Help Friends Acquire Deeds Together
A form of co-ownership called the tenancy in common is picking up steam across the country. Four years ago, a Los Angeles company started turning single-home properties into townhome associations where co-buyers could share living spaces. Then we saw “upzoning” laws take shape. California’s Senate Bill 9 allowed single-unit property owners to split their parcels into multiple housing units.…
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A New Century’s American Dream: Holding a Deed, or Retiring Early?
The world has changed. Work is increasingly automated, and jobs aren’t guaranteed. Property values are high. Could early retirement be taking homeownership’s place at the core of the American Dream? In previous generations, secure careers underpinned the dream of holding a deed. Financial independence was not as urgent when a career and retirement were predictable.…
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Throwing in the Towel? Redfin Looks at Who’s Leaving “Flood-Prone” Counties
Redfin recently took a look at the twists and turns in deed transfer trends since 2019, before the pandemic began. The company found some striking geography stats. Water is moving people. Flood-Prone America Is Seeing More People Move Out Than In, Redfin has announced.
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Hopeful Buyers Running Away From Their Home Purchase Deals? Why?
It’s no longer a seller’s market. Why, then, in most areas across the country, has home buyer demand wilted? Even when they do sign purchase agreements, many buyers are “ghosting” their sellers. Brokers, agents, and lenders are beginning to notice the trend. New Redfin research finds 53,000 September 2025 purchase contracts were broken — by…
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“Warped”: Since 2010, Average Home Buyer Goes From Age 39 to 59. Typical First-Time Buyer Turns 40.
The numbers don’t lie. First-timers have never dealt with harsher circumstances in U.S. homebuying history. The typical age for first-time home buyers is now 40, according to the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR). Fortune magazine points to the observation of Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok: on average, all buyers have aged. Using NAR’s data, Slok…
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Look Who’s Back in the Real Estate Market: Investment Firms Sense Opportunity
Home prices? They’re high. Mortgage rates? Not exactly low. Current deed holders with lower mortgage rates still don’t want to move if they can help it. And hopeful buyers keep renting, biding their time. Investors are “seizing the opening and ramping up” their activity, according to the financial data analytics firm Cotality. Market watchers such…
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Breaking Down the Debate on 50-Year Mortgages
So, the federal government is going to bring 50-year mortgages back? Yes, the idea has been tried before. Some lenders marketed 50-year mortgages back in the lead-up to the 2008 mortgage crisis — although those loans weren’t government-backed. We can’t tell how the federal government would try to make them work this time, but there’s…
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Real Estate Is Still Key to Wealth—But It’s Taking Longer.
This year, the National Association of REALTORS® came out with an article titled The 5-Year Rule Is No More. It was all about how long a buyer needs to stay in a home to “truly break even.” That old drop of wisdom about holding onto a home five years to recoup the cost of closing…
