Free Republic

The process of buying a home comes with many, many decisions. This barrage of choices starts immediately with deciding which online platform to use to search for potential homes. While the choice was once primarily between online real estate giants Zillow and Realtor.com, there's now a new number-two competitor in town: Homes.com. You may have seen their ads — especially during Superbowl LVIII — featuring big-name celebrities like Jeff Goldblum, Dan Levy, and Heidi Gardner. But does Homes.com's rapid growth mean that it's a better platform? Not necessarily. It all depends on what you're looking for. Meanwhile, Zillow's name continues...

The dreams of homeownership in the United States are moving further out of reach for middle-class Americans. Affording even the down payment for a typical US home can be a burden, as home prices rise, interest rates remain high, and inventory lags demand. Now imagine what it’s like in metro Boston. A median-income household needs to put down 35.4 percent to afford the typical monthly mortgage payments in the United States, according to a June 20 analysis by Zillow. In Boston, that number soars to 61.7 percent, since the typical home value here is $701,349, according to the real estate...

Since its founding nearly two decades ago, Zillow has revolutionized the way Americans buy, rent, sell — and fantasize — about housing in the US. But a settlement that breaks the grip of powerful real estate agents could trigger a range of problems for the platform already suffering from declining traffic in an increasingly competitive housing market. The company’s stock has dropped nearly 13% since Friday’s $418 million settlement between the National Association of Realtors and groups of home sellers which ended the standard 6% commission for Realtors. It’s a sign that investors fear the settlement could have seismic effects...

High home prices and even higher mortgage rates; that’s how most people would describe last year’s housing market—one that by some estimates was the least affordable since the 1980s.It’s simple: Home prices skyrocketed during the pandemic and rose steadily last year despite mortgage rates more than doubling. Those high mortgage rates, having risen from historic lows, kept homeowners from selling, which further exacerbated already tight supply and kept home prices up—all while chilling the housing market. The situation was so dire, and still may be aside from slight improvements in affordability, that Zillow’s chief economist, Skylar Olsen, released her own...

Everyone knows buying a house in Los Angeles is expensive, but the numbers just released Zillow are likely still jaw-dropping to many. In a report released Tuesday, Zillow estimated the total value of the housing market in the L.A. metro area — the sum of Zillow’s estimates for every home — is up $202 billion in the last year alone. The area’s total value, $3.7 trillion, has seen a rapid increase since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, rising 38% over the past three years, Zillow said. In August 2023 alone, the median price in Los Angeles County...

Zillow set the record straight Friday and said its listing of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property being sold for $422 million was “incorrect,” Newsweek reports. The outlet – which published the headline “Donald Trump Sold Mar-a-Lago Before Arrest, Listing Reveals,” earlier Friday – reported the Palm Beach estate had been sold on August 4, based on the listing. The headline has since been updated as has the Zillow listing. “A lot of media outlets should be embarrassed with themselves for running such a phony story, but we all know that most of them won’t even retract their reports because...

Donald Trump transferred the ownership of his Mar-a-Lago resort to his son just days before the ex-president was arrested in Georgia, RadarOnline.com can report. According to online property records, the former president “sold” his Palm Beach, Florida property for $422,000,000 on August 4. However, a deeper investigation into the Mar-a-Lago sale found that the 1100 S Ocean Blvd, Palm Beach property was sold to a company called Mar-a-Lago, Inc. The Express reported that the owner of Mar-a-Lago, Inc. – and its registered agent – is none other than 45-year-old Donald Trump Jr. Zillow – the online real estate marketplace that...

CLEVELAND — It is no secret that Cleveland rocks. Just ask anyone who lives here. But our hometown is in the national spotlight earning top marks when it comes to the real estate market and people looking to buy a home. Real estate website "Zillow" just named the CLE one of the hottest housing markets in the United States. Cleveland ranked number 2 in the top 10. Charlotte nabbed the number 1 spot. Pittsburgh took third place (Check out the full list here: https://www.zillow.com/research/2023-hottest-market-31982/). According to Zillow, the factors behind the rankings include expected home value growth, projected change in...

There is a hidden housing crash happening right now as you watch this video. While many seem to be ignoring the obvious, the real estate market has entered into crisis mode and what awaits us in 2023, is a disaster that could be worse than what we saw in 2008. While many remain skeptical due to some conflicting reports, fresh new data is pointing to a troubling future.

In a normal housing market, a relatively quick and painless home sale is by no means a given. It's not unheard of for homes to sit on the housing market for months on end without a buyer -- especially if they're not priced or marketed well. Today's housing market is different, though. Right now, real estate inventory is down, and buyer demand is strong. That puts sellers in a strong position to not just move their homes off the market quickly, but command strong sale prices. If you're thinking of selling your home, there are certain items you should tackle...

Black and Hispanic Americans are paying extra money to secure rental housing in the U.S. compared with Whites, according to Zillow. In a report this week, the real estate data firm said that, regardless of race, Americans paid an average of $700 in security deposits when renting an apartment. Yet renters of color paid $750 while White renters paid $600. White renters typically paid $50 for a rental application fee while Black Americans paid $65; Hispanic applicants paid $80 and Asian Americans paid $10. People of color also typically must submit more rental applications in order to find a place...

Shares of Zillow Group Inc. took a dive Monday, after KeyBanc analyst Edward Yruma highlighted how most of the homes the real estate services company purchased, with an aim to flip them, were now worth less than what they paid for them. The stock Z, -5.48% shed 5.8% in midday trading. Although the stock was still up 13.6% since closing at a 13-month low of $86.00 on Oct. 18, which was the day Zillow said it would stop buying U.S. homes after building a big backlog, the stock was still down 51.1% since closing at a record $199.90 on Feb....

Sorry to take up space for what is essentially a vanity post. But this is interesting and important enough that I would like other Freepers to weigh in from their various parts of the country.We live in a mature working class neighborhood about an hour's drive ESE of Pittsburgh, PA. We've been here just under 20 years.Most of the homes in the neighborhood, including ours, were built about 50 years ago. It has been a fairly stable neighborhood which includes neighbors who work for the Pennsylvania State Police and leave their cruisers parked in the driveway.Trump signs outnumber Biden signs...

Readers may recall, as early as March, city dwellers in California fled to suburbs and remote areas to isolate from the virus pandemic. The proliferation of remote work arrangements has led this shift to become more permanent. At first, the exodus out of the city was due to virus-related lockdowns, then social unrest, and now it appears a steady flow of folks are leaving the San Francisco Bay Area for rural communities as their flexible work environment (i.e., remote access) allows them to work from anywhere, more specifically, outside city centers where the cost of living is a whole...

Has anyone ever used or tried to use Zillow or Trulia? I went on the Zillow website and listed an apartment for rent. I got a few responses but now the listing has disappeared. Their website said the listing was pending and then said I had no apartment listed for rent. I tried to re-list the apartment but when friends try to respond to the ad it won't connect. There is no phone number for customer service or technical support. Emails are ignored or don't go through. Any ideas?

“Real estate brokers and agents invest resources into obtaining property listings,” wrote NAR, which counts 1.3 million real estate agents as members. As such, NAR said agents have “rights and responsibilities to control the distribution of their listings.” Any “appropriation of a commercial entity’s data, work product, or intellectual property for exploitation by another commercial entity is not justified,” NAR added. But while Zillow argued for the “democratization” of data, NAR said calls for greater access to MLS data are “based on faulty expectations that unrestricted access to listing data will help consumers.” Instead, NAR said, “forcing brokers to provide...

When it comes to negotiating power, it’s better to be a home seller in the Bay Area and a buyer in Philadelphia. Zillow’s spring analysis of buyers’ and sellers’ markets across the U.S. looked at how long homes spend on the market, how likely they are to have had a price cut and how much they sold for in relation to their listing price.The nation’s top sellers’ markets are the big West Coast tech centers in San Jose, San Francisco and Seattle. Less competitive markets where buyers have time to negotiate are in the East and Midwest, including Philadelphia, Chicago...

A new report from Zillow shows that rents across the U.S. are increasing, and not just in the expected regions of New York City, San Francisco and Boston. Overall, rents increased 3.3% year-over-year as of January. But many cities outpaced that, including Kansas City, which saw rent grow more than double the national average, jumping 8.5% year-over-year. St. Louis saw rent increase by 4.5% over the same period. Rents in Detroit grew by 5.0% and rents in Cleveland grew by 4.2%. Nationwide, rental appreciation is still below its peak - 6.3% hit in September 2012 after the housing bust. According...

In a further demonstration of the socially destructive and ever widening gap between the haves and have nots, we see that the affluent are buying second homes at an ever increasing clip (up 30% last year), while first home buyers recede into the abyss as private equity and Chinese buyers make purchasing a home unaffordable for the average American. Specifically, a recent study from Zillow showed that more than half the homes in seven major American cities are unaffordable based on historical standards. Those cities are: Miami, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Denver, San Jose and Portland, Ore. Nationwide,...

Has the United States ever experienced a time when a foreign nation has attempted to buy up so much of our land all at once? As Michael Snyder details below, it appears the Chinese are on a real estate buying spree all over America as they are now the dominat 'buyers' of investment green cards. This is occurring as private equity buyers and hedge funds exit the buy-to-rent business en masse and are, as Mike Krieger explains, are desperate to pitch American property to anyone willing to keep Housing Bubble 2.0 inflated... it seems Zillow is more than happy...