More than 90 percent of builders say that rising lumber prices are hampering the affordability of new homes, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. Recently surveyed builders say that the higher construction costs are causing more prospective buyers to back out of purchasing a new home as well.Builders are blaming the rising construction costs on the increase in lumber prices over the past year an
Homebuilders report that some of their attempts to add new homes are being blocked by local zoning boards and neighboring owners who are trying to stop new development.“A lot of cities are reaching a crisis of affordability and supply of housing,” Rachel Meltzer, an urban policy professor at The New School in New York, told realtor.com®. “But cities can really use [zoning] to direct how housing is built.”Growing groups of neighborhood ac
More new homes entered the pipeline in May than any other month since the end of the Great Recession. Total housing starts increased 5 percent in May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate pace of 1.35 million units, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. That marks the highest housing starts since July 2007.Broken out, single-family starts rose 3.9 percent to 939,000 units in May—the second-highest reading since the Great Recession. The multi
A growing number of developers believe wellness home features are a big pull for buyers. The wellness real estate boom first sought to make office environments healthier, and now it is focusing more on the residential market, according to a new report released by the Global Wellness Institute. Homes that are designed for wellness usually focus on energy efficiency and sustainable construction first, and then look at wellness programs withi
Millennials aren’t turned off by home improvement projects. They are more likely than any other generation to remodel any part of their home, according to a HomeAdvisor’s 2018 True Cost Survey. Millennials are twice as likely as baby boomers to complete bathroom and kitchen remodeling projects. They are also more likely to build a deck or porch and paint a home’s exterior than other generations too.Millennials, those born between 1980 an
Texas real estate pro Ben Caballero is making headlines again by topping his previous sales record in 2016 with a new world record of $1.9 billion in home sales in 2017, according to an announcement on Monday.Caballero sold 4,799 homes last year, which totaled $1.906 billion. Caballero is a real estate professional with HomesUSA.com in Addison, Texas. In 2016, his $1.444 billion in sales among 3,556 homes landed him the title as real estate’s
The U.S. Post Office has been attempting to reduce or eliminate sidewalk and curbside delivery to single-family homes, and the new construction market is feeling the affects, the National Association of Home Builders reports on its Eye on Housing blog. In a new NAHB survey, 64 percent of single-family builders say they’ve had a local post office require a “cluster mailbox” on one of their developments; 36 percent say they have not encounter
Fannie Mae is seeking to bridge the gap in affordable housing by making manufactured housing a more acceptable alternative to traditional built-on-site housing. It hopes to do that with its MH Advantage program, which is lowering down payment requirements and lender fees on manufactured housing loans.The new MH Advantage loans require a 3 percent down payment, which is down from 5 percent in Fannie’s existing manufactured housing loan. Also, F
Many markets are being saturated with new apartment buildings, and developers in some of the most popular markets are now finding they need to offer incentives to tenants in order to fill growing vacancies.After years of rental hikes, tenants are now finding themselves in the driver’s seat as more landlords look to aggressively court them. Some developers reportedly are offering new residents a month or two of free rent or free parking, accordi
New construction inventory has reached its highest point since the Great Recession, with the number of new single-family homes rising 7.7 percent between 2016 and 2017 to 795,000 units, according to the Census Bureau’s 2017 Characteristics of New Housing report. “It’s good that there’s more construction, but there’s still plenty of room for more building,” says realtor.com® Chief Economist Danielle Hale. “Builders are obviously c
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