Existing-home sales continued to trend upward in March for the second straight month, the National Association of Realtors reported on Monday. Existing-home sales jumped 1.1 percent, climbing to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.6 million. In spite of low inventory challenges that have persisted into 2018 and...
After spending a few fraught months searching for a home, Mary Thornton, 30, and her partner found a cute, two-bedroom house in Tacoma, WA, in February. The smartly laid-out 800-square feet home was about an hour's train ride away from Thornton's job as a sign language interpreter in Seattle...
Average homeowner paid $3,400 in property taxes last year, but that amount varies wildly from state to state depending on housing costs and taxes levied. Owners of single-family homes in the U.S. paid an average of nearly $3,400 in property taxes in 2017, an increase of 3 percent...
Time once again to deal with the rigged, ridiculous, unfair, idiotic, defective, faulty and broken state property tax system. Tell us how you really feel, Watchdog. Property Tax Central 2018 is open for business. Each year, I look for a new way to fight an unfair system...
Being in the middle is notoriously tough. The middle child. Middle age. Middle films in trilogies (we're giving you a pass, "The Godfather, Part II"). And then perhaps the most challenged group of all: the middle class. Because the American dream sure ain't cheap these days, or easy to achieve. Politicians...
The economy is booming. Interest rates are still affordable. Unemployment is at the lowest level in more than 15 years. So why is the percentage of folks who think it's a good time to buy a house at the lowest point in two years? In a first-quarter...
On average, sellers are paying more than $18,000 to get their home off the market. In a housing market with steadily rising home prices, the real estate industry has become focused on how much it takes buyers to become owners — a total cost that includes the...
By now you may have heard that the sky is falling on the Dallas housing market. Tens of thousands of folks have read my report about Wall Street firm Fitch Ratings' warning about Dallas-area home prices being overvalued. It's not the first time out-of-state analysts have raised...
Last month, builders completed the most newly constructed homes in a decade, says a recent report. Buyers can finally exhale. About 1,319,000 homes were finished in February—the most that were completed since 2008, according to the seasonally adjusted numbers in the latest residential sales report jointly released by the U.S. Census...
Dallas-Fort Worth is one of most overvalued home markets in the country, a top Wall Street analyst warns. In it most dire warning yet about the rate of North Texas home price gains, Fitch Ratings says that home prices in the D-FW area are as much...