While the COVID-19 outbreak is expected to slow spring homebuying activity, many real estate professionals are hopeful that the market will rebound later in the year. The majority of respondents to a survey by the National Association of Realtors said they believed that buyers and sellers would return to the market as

Source: newsletterproonline

UPDATED: May 6, 2020

Sheltering in place could have an unexpected benefit to the housing market. “Now more than ever you realize what your house is like, some of the things are great and some of the things are not so great,” said Jeff Kottmeier, a market research adviser for John Burns Real Estate Consulting. “People are spending a lot more time

Source: newsletterproonline

UPDATED: April 29, 2020

As more people shift to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, real estate professionals predict that a home office will become a hot amenity for the long term. Fifty-five percent of homeowners and practitioners recently surveyed by remodeling website Houzz say they have a home office. A quarter of respondents say they

Source: newsletterproonline

UPDATED: April 22, 2020

More people are working from home, and that is having a big effect on their real estate needs, The New York Times reports. About 24% of employed people in the U.S. worked at least part of the time at home last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among those with advanced degrees, 42% worked from home part of the time.

Source: newsletterproonline

UPDATED: April 15, 2020

In market machinations the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Great Recession, federal agencies loosened some key rules on mortgage underwriting standards and committed to siphoning up unlimited amounts of related securities to inject liquidity into a wavering homebuying industry. Fannie Mae and Freddie

Source: newsletterproonline

UPDATED: April 8, 2020

The average FICO score in the United States hit an all-time high of 703 last year, according to the 2019 Consumer Credit Review by credit reporting company Experian. That’s up from 701 in 2018 and up 14 points since 2010. Fifty-nine percent of Americans in 2019 had a credit score of 700 or more, the largest percentage ever above that

Source: newsletterproonline

UPDATED: April 1, 2020