Free Republic

President Joe Biden’s climate proposals will substantially increase average Americans’ home expenses for purchases like appliances, according to data from the Alliance For Consumers (AFC). The financial burden of the Biden administration’s policies targeting household appliances totals $9,166 in new costs for average Americans per home, according to the AFC. The Biden administration has set its sights on a number of appliances to regulate as a part of its green agenda, including gas furnaces, water heaters, air conditioners and more, in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. “Any government-imposed efficiency mandate creates a burden for American families and businesses for...

The US housing market faces a potential 19.5% correction, and more rate hikes from the central bank could make a crash even worse, Dallas Federal Reserve economists warned in a Tuesday research report. The global housing market has become frothy since 2020 as a result of the pandemic boom, according to authors Lauren Black and Enrique Martínez-García, and there's still a risk of a deep housing slide despite signs of easing home-price growth. Drawing parallels between the US and Germany, the economists added that some of the housing market froth can be attributed to the affordability crisis, though house-price-to-rent ratios...

Home prices have started to correct as interest rates rose sharply in 2022. However, the real problem for home prices is still coming in 2023 as the standoff between sellers and buyers comes to a head. However, before we get there, let’s review how we got here. Since the turn of the century, there have been two housing bubbles, with home prices reaching levels of unaffordability not previously seen in the United States. Such was, of course, due to lax lending policies and artificially low-interest rates luring financially unstable individuals into buying homes they could not afford. Such is easily...

The US housing market remains in “free fall” after a survey showed a “disastrous” decline in homebuilder confidence, a prominent economist warned on Tuesday. Homebuilder confidence plunged for the 10th consecutive month in October, falling to its lowest level since 2012, according to the National Association of Home Builders’ monthly survey. The latest downtick came as mortgage rates spiked to levels not seen since the Great Recession. The survey’s results were “disastrous” and indicated there is “no bottom yet” for the housing market’s current slump, according to Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “The plunge in the NAHB index...

Real estate investors have largely done well for the past few years. But with higher interest rates, things could be about to change. The U.S. Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rates by 0.75 basis points on Wednesday, marking the third such hike in a row. Higher interest rates translate to bigger mortgage payments — not good news for the housing market. But cooling down housing prices is part of what needs to be done to bring inflation under control. “For the longer term what we need is supply and demand to get better aligned, so that housing prices go...

The US housing market is in the midst of a “deep recession” that could put pressure on the Federal Reserve to ease up on interest rate hikes, a prominent economist warned on Monday. Homebuilder confidence declined for the ninth straight month in September as surging mortgage rates and steep prices pushed many buyers out of the market, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Builder confidence fell to its lowest level since 2014 when excluding the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the index showed. The prolonged downturn in confidence shows the housing market has been “in a tailspin...

Real estate firms Redfin and Compass are laying off workers, as mortgage rates rise sharply and home sales drop. In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Compass announced a 10% cut to its workforce, and Redfin announced an 8% cut. Shares of both companies fell Tuesday. Redfin’s stock touched a new 52-week low. Mortgage demand has fallen to its lowest level in over two decades. Rates have taken off since the start of this year, rising from 3.29% in early January to 6.28% now, according to Mortgage News Daily. Rates shot up more than half a percentage point in...

“2000 showed you can just about skate through a stock market event, but Japan and 2008 showed you can’t skate through a housing crisis,” Grantham says. Wall Street titan Jeremy Grantham has been warning of a “superbubble” in the U.S. since last year, arguing the S&P 500 is set to be cut in half as an era marked by exceedingly risky investor behavior begins to fade. Now, the cofounder and chief investment strategist of the Boston-based asset management firm Grantham, Mayo, and van Otterloo (GMO) is warning the U.S. may be headed toward a housing crisis as mortgage rates soar,...

After briefly falling below 6% last Friday, the average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped up to 6.875%, increasing by more than one percentage point. The rate is nearly two percentage points higher than the average rate just one month ago. Rates for most other loan categories increased as well, although not quite so dramatically. The average rate on a 15-year fixed-rate loan, however, moved lower. The latest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is 6.875%. ⇑ The latest rate on a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage is 5.143%. ⇓ The latest rate on a 5/1 ARM is 4.258%. ⇑ The...

Roughly two-thirds of the country owns a home in the United States: For those in this group who have owned their home for the past year or more, they’re sitting on some pretty nice gains. When you combine rising home prices with ultra-low mortgage rates1, you could argue homeowners have never had it better. A fixed rate mortgage with housing prices rising 20% over the past year has been the best inflation hedge you could ask for in the current environment. You could make the case the current housing environment has benefitted the bottom 50% of households more than even...

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors has shared a story blasting the 'white supremacy' of the housing market just weeks after her own $3 million property portfolio was revealed. Cullors made the remark while sharing an NPR story about black home ownership levels on her Instagram account. She wrote: 'Thank you @npr for highlighting the history of racism inside of the housing market and why Black homeownership has always been a way to disrupt white supremacy.'

Soaring lumber prices are holding back a U.S. housing market. The number of building permits issued in March rose 2.7% month over month to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 1.766 million. The uptick is a mere blip on the radar compared with the 19.4% increase in housing starts, which grew at their fastest pace in nearly 16 years. Typically, building begins within two months of issuance, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Some developers have "held back on projects on the expectation that prices will soon fall back," wrote Matthew Pointon, senior property economist at the research...

7 U.S. Markets Lost Value Year-Over-Year On a ‘real’ (inflation-adjusted) basis, home prices declined Year-over-Year (YoY) in ONLY 7 of the 405 largest real estate markets nationwide. That’s the strongest overall U.S. real estate market performance since just before the last real estate crash!All the declining markets are in California or Texas.(We’ve been warning you about many of the California markets for several years now even though other nearby states and regions had been looking strong.)In the previous quarter, 17 markets had annual home price declines.(See the entire list of declining markets below.) In addition to the list of declining...

Media-types like CNBC’s Jim Cramer aren't buying the “V-shaped” recovery, but recent news in the housing market continues to support that perspective. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that “[e]xisting-home sales continued on a strong, upward trajectory in July, marking two consecutive months of significant sales gains.” Sales increased a whopping 24.7 percent, “the strongest monthly gain in the history of the survey, going back to 1968, and the highest sales pace since December 2006,” according to CNBC. Sales were also 8.7 percent higher from July 2019. Fox Business’s Charles Payne proclaimed the news on Twitter: “This is a...

Rarely has a word been subject to so much misuse in recent years as “stimulus.” The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES), overwhelmingly passed by Congress and signed by President Trump on March 27, represents an apex of this language malpractice. The stated purpose of this $2.2 trillion “stimulus plan” is to boost our economy in the wake of virus-induced mass layoffs and business closings. But the implicit purpose is paying people not to work. Section 4022, a residential landlord bailout, effectively does that. And it may prove very expensive. Fear of COVID-19 has triggered an economic downturn...

Trust the late Anthony Bourdain, the Kerouac of cooking, to blurt out the truth when nobody else would. Following his Jack Kerouac wanderlust, Bourdain had arrived in Seattle to spotlight the manner in which high-tech was changing the city, draining it of its character and of the many quirky characters that made Seattle what it was.“Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Expedia, and Amazon are the big dogs in town,” mused  Bourdain. “A flood of them—tech industry workers … derisively referred to as tech boys or tech bros—is rapidly changing the DNA of the city, rewiring it to satisfy their own newly-empowered nerdly appetites.”That the “tech...

WASHINGTON — Amazon has yet to break ground in Northern Virginia for its second headquarters, but residents are already turning away persistent speculators, recalculating budgets for down payments on homes and fighting rent increases. Amazon announced in November that its second headquarters would be in National Landing, which includes parts of Crystal City, Pentagon City and Alexandria, all suburbs of Washington. The company will hire 25,000 people over the next 10 to 12 years. “That day in November, I got more Zillow calls, inquiries and leads off of Zillow than I did the entire month of October,” said Michelle Doherty,...

I'm seeing a significant increase of late in stories which suggest that the housing market has peaked and could be in trouble. Not everything is rosy, to be sure, but from what I can see, the worst that can be said about the housing market is that it is cooling off. The following charts tell the story: Chart #1 As Chart #1 shows, an index of the prices of homebuilders' stocks is down about 25% since last January. That's a big correction that could easily be the start of a major decline, much as we saw happen in 2006-2009....

The California Legislature passed many bills this past session that were signed into law which gave the government greater control of the housing market. This is a perfect example of invasive government creating a problem, blaming others for the problem and then creating even more rules to destroy the market even further. The cost of housing in California is certainly a problem. The Business Insider identified that 18 of the top 25 most-costly housing markets in the U.S. are in California, with all of the top 10 being in the state. In a recent study by UC Berkeley, 56% of...

Rate Up in 53 Percent of Local Markets Led by Metros in Louisiana, New York, Alabama;Dollar Volume of Flipper Financing Rises to Nearly 10-Year High of $4.4 BillionIRVINE, Calif. – Sept. 14, 2017 — ATTOM Data Solutions, curator of the nation’s largest multi-sourced property database, today released its Q2 2017 U.S. Home Flipping Report, which shows that 53,638 single family homes and condos were flipped nationwide in the second quarter of 2017, a home flipping rate of 5.6 percent of all home sales during the quarter. The home flipping rate of 5.6 percent in Q2 2017 was down from 6.9...