Foreclosure Nation

The concept of "right to rent" has been floating around Washington for almost four years. Under this proposal, foreclosed homeowners would be allowed to remain in their house as renters paying the market rent, for a substantial period of time (e.g. five years) following a foreclosure. While several ...

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The concept of "right to rent" has been floating around Washington for almost four years. Under this proposal, foreclosed homeowners would be allowed to remain in their house as renters paying the market rent, for a substantial period of time (e.g. five years) following a foreclosure. While several ...

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Recent trends in rental housing are creating a dismal environment for many Americans and if public policy doesn't intervene, things will get worse, according to a study from one Ivy League university. The Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies released a report Tuesday, analyzing condi...

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Of the 50 most populated cities in the United States, New York remains the city where it's better to rent than buy. The Big Apple's competition? Fort Worth, Texas. That's according to the recently released Q2 2011 Rent vs. Buy Index by Trulia, an online real estate resource. The site compares rent...

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In January, first-time home buyers made up 29 percent of the market, the lowest since the National Association of REALTORS® started tracking first-time buyers on a monthly basis in 2008. In a healthy market, first-time buyers generally make up 40 percent to 45 percent of all purchasers. So with ...

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Cities that had been hard-hit by the housing market crash now offer some of the best buys in real estate and where it makes much more sense to buy than rent, according to a new report from Deutsche Bank. The bank’s study measures affordability by the share of income that Americans are paying to own ...

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Bargain prices on housing combined with low interest rates below 5 percent may bring the real estate market its busiest spring season in years, economists say. Distressed sales continue to put downward pressure on home prices, which may lure more buyers off the fence and ready to snag a deal dur...

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Generation X — adults ages 31 to 45 — are expected to lead the recovery in the housing market, according to real estate experts in a recent webinar produced by the National Association of Home Builders. During the event, speakers highlighted results of a survey of 10,000 buyers in 27 metro areas. ...

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The recession and economic woes caused once-booming cities to never reach the potential that some builders had forecast in housing. Overbuilding during the housing boom era and some cities' high unemployment has left several cities across the country facing a high number of vacant homes that are bla...

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WASHINGTON — A new home, the dream of many would-be buyers, makes less and less financial sense in many places. A wave of foreclosures has driven down the cost of previously occupied homes and made them even more of a comparative bargain. By contrast, new homes have become more expensive. The medi...

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Florida v. U.S.: Primary Distinction: Above U.S.supply (5 years) but also demand Supply Side: Credit to boom, higher than U.S. for construction and investors. • Statistical Indicators: Now exceed U.S. in foreclosures, negative equity (45% v. U.S. 27%), adverse feedback and price dec...

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As legislators in Albany debate the future of the city's rent laws, a key provision of the law that has allowed landlords to deregulate at least 100,000 apartments may be up for a change. Since 1993, state law has allowed landlords to convert vacant regulated apartments into market-rate units when ...

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More Reasons to Buy Than Ever Before Usual reasons • Affordability. $1.3 trillion lost means savings to buyers, • Selection. Nicest new places. Example: 21.03% of the homes in Florida are vacant. (2nd worst in U.S.). But construction of new homes is also down (81.37% in Florida – 3rd worst in U...

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How you present a listing online and the words you choose to describe it may be turning off some buyers. Bankrate.com recently asked real estate professionals to weigh in on what listing red flags are turning off their buyers. 1. No photos. "One red flag in many buyers' eyes is the lack of photo...

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Home prices in second home markets are on the rebound, climbing more than 10 percent last year in some places, Barron’s online reports. Barron’s recently released a list of its top picks for second-home markets that are likely to see a big rebound in sales and price soon. 1. Sea Island, Ga.:...

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Deutsche Bank released a study showing that renting a home costs U.S. householdsmore than paying a mortgage for the first time in at least two decades. The rent-buyratio, or rent as a percentage of after-tax mortgage payments, is based on figuresthat Deutsche Bank compiled from NAR and the REIS info...

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Recently Trulia compared the median list price with the median rent on two-bedroomapartments, condominiums, townhouses, lofts and co-ops listed on its website, andcompared that to ownership costs including mortgage payments, property taxes andinsurance. It determined that buying a home is cheaper th...

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Data released Monday by real estate Web site Trulia says even with the current state of the housing and financial market, it is still more affordable to buy a home than rent one. Trulia’s latest Rent vs. Buy Index studied the 50 largest cities in the United States and found that it is more affordab...

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It’s cheaper to buy a home rather than rent one in 72 percent of the 50 largest U.S. cities, according to Trulia’s rent vs. buy index, which compares the total cost of home ownership to the cost of renting. "Since the start of the 'Great Recession,' many former home owners have flooded the renta...

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Thanks to the foreclosure crisis, buying a two-bedroom home is cheaper than renting in most big cities. In its quarterly Rent vs. Buy Index, real estate data firm Trulia found that buying a property -- including the mortgage principal, interest, taxes and insurance -- was cheaper than renting in 72...

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Data released Monday by real estate Web site Trulia says even with the current state of the housing and financial market, it is still more affordable to buy a home than rent one. Trulia’s latest Rent vs. Buy Index studied the 50 largest cities in the United States and found that it is more affordab...

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• Comments

Thanks to the foreclosure crisis, buying a two-bedroom home is cheaper than renting in most big cities. In its quarterly Rent vs. Buy Index, real estate data firm Trulia found that buying a property -- including the mortgage principal, interest, taxes and insurance -- was cheaper than renting in 72...

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On Wednesday, the New York Times published an op-ed by the former mayor of Greenport, N.Y., David E. Kapell, with a powerful suggestion for helping struggling homeowners and fixing the mortgage crisis. But according to officials at Treasury and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the id...

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Greenport, N.Y. THERE are many factors behind the mortgage crisis, but there is only one simple explanation for why we have failed to solve it. Any effort to help homeowners by forgiving some of their loans is said to create a moral hazard, rendering it politically toxic. But without help, homeown...

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The single biggest problem in the U.S. real estate market is simple: There are very few homebuyers. That seems obvious, but the “buyers’ strike” has caused house prices to drop, along with an epidemic of foreclosures. What’s worse, the long depression in real estate is probably not over. S&P has fo...

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Home prices have dropped, and mortgage rates are low. For anyone with the tens of thousands of dollars now required for a down payment, it's a pretty good time to buy a house. Now, it's even getting easier without that hefty down payment, as governments step in to help out. A growing number of st...

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The nation's apartment market remained robust in the fourth quarter with vacancies falling below 7% for the first time in two years, according to new data. The strong demand, which defied typical winter slowness, pushed the average national rent up for the fourth quarter in a row, a departure fr...

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Past is prologue, they say. And that's certainly true when looking forward to what the housing market will hold for home sellers next year. WalletPop's predictions for sellers in 2011 are: 1. More Distressed Homes Come on Market, but 'Regular' Deals Have Cachet The number of homes reposs...

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For generations now, our national values have placed an emphasis on home ownership. Renters were the people who were rootless or just not being quite ready to "settle down." As home ownership has become less of a financial asset and more of a liability over the last few years, there has been a shift...

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Below is an updated list of rent ratios — the price of a typical home divided by the annual cost of renting that home — for 55 metropolitan areas across the country. We last covered this subject about eight months ago, and you’ll notice that most ratios have not changed much since then. A good ru...

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The National Association of REALTORS® surveys home buyers and sellers annually to gather detailed information about the home buying and selling process. These surveys provide information on buyer and seller demographics, housing characteristics and the experience of consumers in the housing m...

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One of the subjects Larry Kudlow and friends discussed on CNBC today was how rising mortgage loan interest rates, combined with anticipated further declines in home prices and, particularly in light of the recently announced $1.3 trillion home prices are said to have plummeted during 2010 alone, s...

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Reuters News offers these guidelines for anyone who is shopping for a home and a real estate professional to help them clinch the deal. How do you measure up? 1. Ethical. Enough said. 2. Likeable. The practitioner doesn’t have to be the buyer’s best friend, but she has to be someone the buyer ...

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By Danielle Hale, Research Economist • In the past 12 years, the net worth of the typical home owner has ranged between 31 and 46 times that of the net worth of the typical renter. • Home owner equity is a substantial component of home owner wealth. The Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Fin...

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What do you tell a client who asks whether to sell a house now or wait? Steve McLinden, real estate adviser with Bankrate.com, offers these three good reasons not to wait, even though the holidays are approaching: 1. The market is improving. Most markets have either turned or are close to turning...

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Hanley-Wood's ProSalesOnline.com identifies seven trends that the magazine’s editors believe will have the biggest impact on housing in 2011. 1. Big builders are wringing the extras out of construction costs and dropping the national average cost-to-build 36 percent to $52 per square foot. 2. ...

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What do you tell a client who asks whether to sell a house now or wait? Steve McLinden, real estate adviser with Bankrate.com, offers these three good reasons not to wait, even though the holidays are approaching: 1. The market is improving. Most markets have either turned or are close to turni...

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First-time homebuyers purchased half of all homes that were sold from July 2009 to June 2010, according to an annual survey of buyers and sellers conducted by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). That’s up from 47 percent in the previous 12-month period, and the highest share of first-time...

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A survey by American Lives, a consumer research firm in California, conducted a study for the trade magazine Builder to answer that question. Here are their conclusions: • They are young. Most are under 45. Half said they had annual household incomes of $75,000 or less. Two-thirds are married. •...

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10 Reasons to Buy a Home Time magazine is being overly pessimistic in its recent cover piece that called into question the benefits of homeownership. In fact, now is a great time to buy. And, what's more, tomorrow will be a great time to own, because the fundamental strength of homeownership hasn'...

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Some pros and cons: Renting is easy in and easy out. That’s important if you may be changing jobs or having more or less people live in the home. You’ll need to stay put for at least five years in order to re-coup the purchase and sale costs if you plan to own. So factor that into your cost. The...

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