Consumer

The model homes dotting Austin’s northern suburbs come with rate buy-downs, closing cost credits, and move-in-ready kitchens. But the purchase price often hides at least three costs that can push a household toward financial distress within the first two years of ownership. None of these costs show up on a listing sheet or during a ...

In some of the most desirable neighborhoods in Concord and Salisbury, North Carolina, homes are sitting on the market, not because they’re overpriced, but because the buyers who want them can’t afford what comes after closing. Standard seller strategies, including aggressive price reductions, aren’t solving the problem. The issue isn’t the mortgage. It’s the renovation ...

Short-term rental income sounds like a straightforward way to offset a vacation home’s carrying costs. In Palm Desert’s private golf communities, the reality is more layered, shaped by permission, timing, and upkeep in ways that aren’t obvious from a listing price alone. One Palm Desert golf community allows short-term rentals, including Airbnb and VRBO. In ...

In a market where well-maintained homes attract offers within days of listing, a different category of property is quietly stacking up unsold in Ocean County, New Jersey: houses that need work. The pattern agents describe is not subtle. Move-in-ready homes fly. Homes needing renovation linger – sometimes for weeks, sometimes longer. The reason is that ...

Las Vegas looks like a short-term rental goldmine on paper. Millions of visitors, a 24/7 entertainment economy, no state income tax. But investors who show up expecting to buy a property and list it on Airbnb are running into a wall of regulations that most outsiders never see coming. The city’s investor-friendly reputation masks a ...

Homeowners who purchased in Central Texas near the market’s mid-2022 peak are now sitting on roughly 20 percent less value than what they paid. That is not a rounding error; it is a meaningful loss on paper, and local brokers say many of these owners are effectively stuck. They cannot sell without bringing money to ...

The classic house-flip playbook – buy cheap, renovate fast, sell high – depends on a market where buyers are plentiful and willing to pay premiums for move-in-ready homes. In the Santa Clarita Valley right now, that condition does not exist. With buyer traffic thin and homes sitting longer than they have in years, some local ...

A growing number of mortgage lenders are using artificial intelligence to read, extract, and enter data from loan application documents. If that makes you nervous, if you wonder whether a machine might misread your pay stub or transpose a number on your tax return, experts in the space say that concern is both valid and ...

A growing number of Canadian homeowners over 55 are making a choice that would have seemed counterintuitive a generation ago: selling the family home and renting an apartment instead of buying a condo. For long-time homeowners who want flexibility and less maintenance, renting in a secondary market may now be the smarter financial and lifestyle ...

If you are an investor eyeing Miami real estate, the property tax reduction that Florida’s governor is pushing would not help you at all. And if you are a buyer planning to live in the home, it could lower your monthly costs while simultaneously driving up the price you pay to get in. Luxury market ...

If you own a vacation rental property on Florida’s 30A and manage it yourself from out of state, the regulatory environment in 2026 may be working against you more than you realize. Property managers operating in Walton County describe a compliance landscape designed to rein in bad actors, but one that functionally penalizes any owner ...

A mortgage rate is refinanceable. A purchase price is not. That asymmetry is the core argument agents in declining-price markets are making to buyers who have spent two years waiting for rates to drop – and it cuts against the logic that has kept many on the sidelines since 2024. According to Audrey Ethridge, Founder ...

Not every property type benefits equally from a tight housing market. In Bergen and Hudson Counties, two of the most supply-constrained corridors in the New York metro area, single-family homes and small multifamily buildings are drawing multiple offers and selling briskly. But condos and townhouses are falling behind, weighed down by a double cost squeeze ...

The Mississippi Gulf Coast housing market is not slow. It is split. Homes in good condition priced below $250,000 are still attracting multiple offers and selling within weeks. But properties priced above that threshold, particularly those where sellers are anchoring to pandemic-era valuations, are sitting for months. The agents working this market say the problem ...

Two years ago, a lakefront home in the right private community near New York City would sell before most buyers had a chance to schedule a showing. Today, well-priced properties in those same communities are sitting, and the slowdown is catching sellers off guard. What agents on the ground are finding is that ultra-low inventory, ...