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Renting a Home vs. Owning a Home: An Overview Buying a home is a huge part of the American Dream. Choosing to buy or rent, though, is a major decision that affects your financial health, lifestyle, and personal goals. Whichever option you choose depends entirely on your lifestyle and financial situation. Both require a regular income (so you can afford the payments and associated costs) and may also require a certain degree of effort to maintain.

As the U.S. economy slows down, those at the bottom of the economic food chain are being hit the hardest. Homelessness is surging, the number of Americans living in poverty is rising, and more Americans are considered to be among “the working poor” than ever before. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a historic economic shift right now, and economic conditions are only going to get even more harsh during the months ahead. Needless to say, that is really bad news for all of us. According to a report from Harvard University, approximately 650,000 Americans were homeless at some point last year....

Vermont Business Magazine Champlain Housing Trust announced an expansion of its program that provides a $25,000 forgivable loan to buyers who are Black, Indigenous or people of color and who are buying a permanently affordable home through the trust or its partner agencies across the state. Originally operating in the northwest part of the state, the Homeownership Equity Program (HEP) Downpayment Assistance will now be available through nine partner organizations covering every county of the State. The program was created with a three-year grant from the New England Federal Credit Union in 2021. The expansion of the program is funded...

Security guards patrolling the Big Apple’s public housing for seniors could get axed due to budget cuts — and some politicians worry that replacing them with cops could send the wrong message. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is considering firing the unarmed guards at 34 of the authority’s 55 senior housing facilities as the authority contends with a $35.3 million shortfall in its 2024 budget, officials said at a budget hearing Tuesday. But some city council members complained that it would be a bad move to try to replace the guards with uniformed NYPD cops and security cameras,...

Biden and Bidenomics is disastrous for the middle class and low wage workers. Food and housing prices through the roof, and now we have mortgage purchase demand declining -57% under Biden. Mortgage applications increased 2.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending May 3, 2024. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 2.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 3 percent compared with the previous week. The seasonally adjusted...

A nonprofit that provides services to homeless people in San Francisco has been accused of $100,000 fraud and nepotism. The industry built on supposedly helping the homelessness in San Francisco means that those raking in money from donations want to keep the crisis going.

A popular hotel in New York City’s Broadway District has been converted into a migrant shelter as the city continues to face an unprecedented influx of migrants from the U.S. border. The hotel wrote on its Facebook page: “To our valued guests: it is with great sadness that we announce the Square Hotel will be closed for the foreseeable future. We appreciate your patronage and hope to welcome you back someday soon.”

San Francisco's well-publicized homelessness crisis is emblematic of the problems facing many of America's big cities as they struggle to provide affordable housing against the backdrop of high interest rates and low inventory. This has led the city to employ a variety of methods to tackle the problem, but a recent plan to provide tiny houses for San Francisco's homeless population has residents furious over the cost. The units would cost a reported $113,000 each to construct. Considering that the average home in San Francisco costs nearly $1 million the $113,000-per-unit cost for the tiny houses seems in line with...

A chic hotel in the heart of Broadway has been quietly operating as a migrant shelter — the latest sign of the growing Big Apple crisis. The 141-room Square Hotel at 226 West 50th Street between Eighth Avenue and Broadway is just across from Gershwin Theatre, where the musical “Wicked” is playing, The Post has learned.“To our valued guests: it is with great sadness that we announce the Square Hotel will be closed for the foreseeable future. We appreciate your patronage and hope to welcome you back someday soon,” the Square Hotel says on its Facebook page.A chic hotel in...

Surprise! Just in time for the November election, this is a negative surprise that Biden doesn’t want to hear. The Citi Economic Surprise index crashed to -7.30, the lowest since January 2023. Under Biden’s leadership (hell, he and his family already own several mansions … on a Senator’s pay), home prices are up 32% under Biden and mortgage rates are up a staggering 160%. Getting young households who rent to buy a home in this environment will require magic.

Baby boomers are refusing to downsize in their golden years, according to a Redfin study, which found that the generation born between 1946 and 1964 owns nearly three in 10 (28.2 percent) large homes in the nation—nearly twice as many as millennial households with kids (14 percent). This is happening despite boomers' kids having long left the nest and their households having shrunk to one or two people. Instead of selling their large properties and moving to a smaller place, boomers are turning the extra bedrooms into hobby rooms and guest rooms for visiting family members. Read more: What Is...

When Merete Muenter tells people that she pays $623 a month for her studio in an affordable housing complex in New York City, many assume the worst: a run-down dump in a crime-ridden neighborhood. The reality is that her subsidized rental is far nicer than any of the market-rate places she’s lived in previously. “People … don’t realize that my affordable housing apartment is in a luxury building that has all the amenities that I never dreamed of having, living in midtown Manhattan,” says Muenter. “I have a doorman, elevators, gym, roof terrace, courtyard, even a washer and dryer in...

Janet Yellen, world class propagandist (US version of Baghdad Bob) and US Treasury Secretary under Biden, was so wrong about inflation. Instead of being “transitory”, turns out to be seemingly permanent. Today’s Case-Shiller home price report was released for February. The National Home Price index was up 6.4% year-over-year. But look at the explosion of M2 Money and home prices. Hmm. If we look at home prices and M2 Money on a year-over-year (YoY) basis, we can see the surge in money printing with COVID and the corresponding surge in home prices. As M2 Money growth slowed, the Case-Shiller National...

Sanctuary states are planning to dish out billions in American taxpayer dollars to migrants in 2024, offering housing, food, and health care, among other things, to the new arrivals that have entered the United States on President Joe Biden’s watch. In New York, legislators approved a $237 billion budget, expected to be signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), that includes about $2.4 billion to provide housing, health care, and legal services to newly arrived migrants. New York State Senate Republican Leader Rob Ortt has warned that such funding for migrants will only entice more illegal immigration to the sanctuary state....

It is every homeowner’s nightmare: Leave your property unattended and come back to a squatter infestation. It’s even impacted celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey, who recently saw his London restaurant overrun by intruders. These real estate pros fought back and won. Here’s how they got rid of squatters: Mohammed Choudhary, a 61-year-old Pakistani immigrant who works in construction, and his business partner Boysin Lorick, 76, originally from Trinidad, were chasing the American dream. In 2020, the men used large portions of their life savings to purchase a trio of one- and two-family houses on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island for $1.3...

Nonprofit on boards in the city of Seattle are facing huge bosses because tenants in the city are not paying rent. Following the pandemic eviction moratorium, a lot of tenants became used to someone else paying their bills for them and continue to not pay to this day. This has hurt the revenue of the nonprofits

The already insane cost of purchasing a home has hit a new high, thanks to the ongoing horror show that is Bidenomics. Fox News: Findings from Redfin show the combination of steep mortgage rates and elevated home prices has pushed the median monthly housing payment to a record $2,775 – an 11% increase from the same time last year. … There are a number of driving forces behind the affordability crisis. Years of underbuilding fueled a shortage of homes in the country, a problem that was later exacerbated by the rapid rise in mortgage rates and expensive construction materials. And...

(Colorado Newsline) Colorado landlords will now need a specific reason to evict or not offer a lease renewal to a tenant under a new law signed by Democratic Governor Jared Polis on Friday. It is a victory for tenants-rights organizers and progressive legislators who seek to include renters in the conversation about how to address the state’s housing and affordability issues. Colorado is the sixth state to enact such a policy. “Everybody here wants to prevent unnecessary evictions and save families money. And House Bill 1098 does these things while placing no financial burdens on landlords. This is the right...

Home sales saw their biggest month-on-month decline since November 2022 in March, dropping by 4.3 percent compared to February. Meanwhile, the average 30-year fixed mortgage surged to 7.1 percent — its highest since the end of last year. Average monthly new mortgage payments are 38 percent higher than average apartment rent, with this double-digit disparity persisting for a two-year period. This is discouraging Americans from buying their own homes, with sales down 3.7 percent year-on-year.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The most significant case in decades on homelessness has reached the Supreme Court as record numbers of people in America are without a permanent place to live. The justices on Monday will consider a challenge to rulings from a California-based appeals court that found punishing people for sleeping outside when shelter space is lacking amounts to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. A political cross section of officials in the West and California, home to nearly one-third of the nation’s homeless population, argue those decisions have restricted them from “common sense” measures intended to keep homeless encampments from...