Free Republic

Home values are falling for more than half of America — the biggest share since the country was still clawing its way out of the Great Recession.New data from Zillow shows that 53 percent of US homes have lost value over the past year, the highest level since 2012, when the housing crash finally hit bottom.The national market looks flat on paper, but that average masks huge differences between regions, cities and even neighborhoods. Prices have been slipping in much of the South and West as more homes hit the market and buyers stay on the sidelines. Many would-be buyers...

Home Depot's recent earnings report has raised alarms about more than a retail slowdown, signalling stress in the U.S. housing market and financial pressures on homeowners and potential buyers alike. The home improvement giant posted a 0.2% gain in same-store sales for the quarter and lowered its full-year profit forecast, citing persistent challenges in housing and consumer spending. Analysts say the numbers reflect broader concerns about affordability and economic uncertainty in the nation's housing sector. Rising mortgage rates, higher building costs, and inflationary pressures are keeping many prospective homebuyers on the sidelines. Homeowners are also postponing major remodelling projects, opting...

Stephen Miller just shared a shocking statistic. Forty percent of rent controlled housing in New York City occupied by migrants. That affordable housing could be held by American citizens who desperately need a hand up, but too bad. https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1990586187745276040? 40 sec How about helping Americans support their families? ...more

We need a Marshall Plan for housing, a collection of broad initiatives to make homes more affordable and put the American dream back on trackHomeownership has long been part of the American dream, but that dream has been deferred.Households in their 30s have an ownership rate of just 42% — more than 20 points lower than the national average.The median age of all home buyers is a record-breaking 59, and the age of a first-time buyer is 40 — up from 29 in 1981.As a solution, the Trump administration is floating a 50-year mortgage.Though I disagree with that specific idea,...

Vice President JD Vance says that mass immigration under former President Joe Biden significantly skyrocketed the cost of rent and home prices.In an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Vance attributed sky-high home prices to record-setting illegal immigration under Biden — noting that flooding the housing market increases prices on Americans, particularly those first-time home-buyers.“To me [this] is maybe the most important because I care so much about our young people being able to afford a good life, a lot of young people are saying, ‘Housing is way too expensive,'” Vance said: Why is that? Because we flooded the country...

Homeowners vote red. Renters vote blue. Will President Donald Trump's 50-year mortgage make a red voter out of you? That is what the president hoped on Saturday, when he posted the idea of stretching out the customary 30-year repayment terms for home mortgages to 50 years. Turns out, that idea is smoke and mirrors. But at least Trump is recognizing that home affordability is a real crisis, not fake news. "Affordability" is the campaign pledge that produced big wins on election day, and most of the winners were Democrats. Affording a home is increasingly out of reach. The median age...

Vice President J.D. Vance discussed the nation’s affordability crisis and the difficulty for young Americans to purchase homes during an interview with FOX News host Sean Hannity. "A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive," Vance told Hannity. "Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens, and at the same time, we weren't building enough new houses to begin with even for the population that we had, so what we're doing is trying to make it easier to build...

Joe Lavorgna, counselor to Treasury Secretary Bessent, joins 'The Exchange' to discuss the state of the government shutdown, what a reopened government will do to the economy and much more.

The property manager of a troubled South Shore apartment building raided last month by immigration agents helps run a political fund that made campaign contributions to more than a dozen members of the Chicago City Council this year. The recipients include now-former Ald. Walter Burnett (27th), Mayor Brandon Johnson’s choice to run the Chicago Housing Authority. One of Burnett’s campaign funds accepted a $500 contribution this year from the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance PAC. The political action committee’s leaders include Corey Oliver of Strength in Management LLC, which oversees the complex at 7500 S. South Shore Drive that was targeted...

President Trump proposed 50-year mortgages to improve housing affordability by lowering monthly payments. While longer terms reduce payments, they also slow equity buildup and are currently not allowed under the Dodd-Frank Act.

Fake rental applications are proliferating across the country as the U.S. rental market has become increasingly unaffordable and competitive. Greystar, the country’s largest apartment landlord, told FOX Business that it has seen a clear increase in fraudulent applications nationwide. "Fraud in rental applications has become increasingly sophisticated across the industry, with some of the most advanced cases involving AI-generated documents and fabricated payroll systems," Greystar said. Eric Taylor, lead for trust and safety at TurboTenant, a free online property management platform, is also seeing an uptick, telling FOX Business that nearly 75% of apartment owners across the nation reported a...

New York’s new mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has announced plans for a state-run luxury rehabilitation compound for homeless and addicted veterans — turning the relics of capitalist greed into centers of recovery, work, and collective renewal. The project, known as the Veterans’ Rebirth Compound, would combine housing, physical training, and political education to help veterans rebuild their lives through discipline, purpose, and solidarity. Empty hotels and abandoned corporate properties are being considered for conversion.

Why do New York City voters want to repeat this disaster from the 1960s and 1970s? https://reason.org/commentary/rent-control-laws-nearly-destroyed-parts-of-new-york-city-they-could-do-the-same-to-california/

This is my two cents, and the information arrived after some interesting texts with my little brother, Crusader.Some of it, now that last night's results are in, needs to be attended to immediately, as he said.Trump really needs to focus on what can be done for the economy... He needs to light a fire under congresscritters to ratchet down on outsourcing and h1bs; the job market is not getting better and grocery prices aren’t getting better eitherSome grocery prices are better, sure - those damn eggs, for one thing. But the hamburger you feed a family with is still through...

We will never get the cost of housing down until we go back to the levels of per capita construction that we had in the 1960s and 1970s. Current zoning laws make that impossible.

With a 1.4% vacancy rate, the city is in desperate need of housing, and fast. A special panel known as the Charter Revision Commission, established by Mayor Eric Adams, believes they have some solutions to the problem. What You Need To Know Housing-related proposals will appear as questions two through five on the November ballot. Voters will see them when they flip over their ballots Question two would create two new shortened processes for affordable housing: one for publicly financed projects and another for a newly created list of the 12 community districts with the least development Question three would...

Obviously both are important and require a massive shift away from the status-quo, but if you had to pick one, which is more critical for the well-being of America?I'd personally think immigration reform is slightly more important, but understand if that's not as critical to some others.

Rents for single-family residential homes rose just 1.4% in August compared with the year before, according to analytics and data firm Cotality, down from a 2.3% annual gain in July. That’s also much less than the 3% average gain seen last year and is the smallest increase in 15 years. Rent growth weakened across all price points, continuing a trend that has persisted in the second half of this year. Rents had been strengthening in the first half of this year. There were, however, strong variations regionally. Chicago saw the highest annual rent growth at 4.7% in August, followed by...

Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes NEW: Section 8 payments to be PAUSED due to Democrats keeping the government shutdown Landlord has just received a letter from the Housing Authority saying after mid November, payments will be paused “October is funded, partial of November is funded. After that, if the shutdown continues, we will not be getting paid our rent”

Where I work in Austin, I deal with a LOT of Hispanic customers, primarily Mexicans. They have been telling me for some time that there is almost no construction work available. Today, two in a very short space of time said they have no work. Furthermore lemons, avocados, poblano peppers or other produce into the U.S. due to tariffs and are unloading tons of it on the side of rural highways for the locals to pick up for free. We are about to see major economic problems as the Trump Administration attempts to fix YEARS of problems caused by Godless...