Real Estate

Sales of newly built homes dropped 16.6% in April from March, far more than expected, and were down 26.9% from April 2021, according to the U.S. Census.The annualized rate came in at 591,000 units, seasonally adjusted. Analysts had been expecting 750,000. March's read was also revised lower.That is the slowest sales pace since April 2020, when everything shut down at the start of the Covid pandemic. Sales surged quickly after that, as Americans sought bigger homes with outdoor spaces for quarantining.These numbers are…

Sales of newly built homes in April posted their biggest drop in nine years, the latest sign that higher interest rates are reducing buyer demand. New-home sales fell 16.6% in April from March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000, the lowest level since April 2020, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Rising mortgage-interest rates have made homeownership more expensive for buyers. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 5.25% last week, up from…

Ozgurcankaya | E+ | Getty ImagesBiggest warning signThe biggest red flag that a listing is a scam is when you are asked to leave a listing platform such as Vrbo or Airbnb in order to provide a payment, Couch-Friedman said.A fake real estate owner will ask a consumer to send $500, for example, via an online payment platform such as Zelle. Those transfers are instant and cannot be reversed, Couch-Friedman said."The best payment method for any kind of vacation rental would be credit cards, because then you have protection…

When the Federal Reserve set out to cool the economy and slow inflation in the past, it counted on the housing market to do much of the work. By raising interest rates, the central bank made mortgages more expensive and trimmed the number of buyers.This time, America’s red-hot housing market threatens to make the Fed’s job tougher. With so many buyers competing for so few available properties, home prices in the U.S. rose 18.8% last year, according to a home-price index maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices and…

Many renters believe that a cost-of-living crisis is brewing in America's major cities.New York City is showing up as a hotspot of rent inflation. The average rent for 1-bedroom apartments in Manhattan rose to $3,995 a month in May 2022 — a 41% increase from one year ago, according to Zumper.Sudden, double-digit rent spikes are hitting other hubs, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas. Zumper data shows that growth is particularly strong in Sun Belt cities such as Miami, where rents have risen to $2,700 a…

Investors who bid up apartment-building prices to record levels over the past year are starting to come under pressure as rapidly rising interest rates squeeze their profits.Steeper borrowing rates make it harder for apartment landlords to pay back their loans. That could also be bad news for tenants, if it encourages building owners to raise rents higher than they might otherwise because that is their primary tool for generating more income. Sales of apartment buildings have been strong for years, but they broke records…

Chinese conglomerate HNA Group Co. must pay its former business partner SL Green Realty Corp. about $185 million in a dispute over a bankrupt Manhattan skyscraper, an arbitrator said. The arbitrator, former judge L. Priscilla Hall, found that real-estate investment trust SL Green was entitled to a $184.6 million payment over an investment that it made in HNA Group’s 245 Park Ave., according to documents made public in a New York state court Friday. SL Green should also be reimbursed for $856,000 in…

Soon after Lizbeth Martinez set out to buy a house near her hometown of Cactus, Texas, she encountered a situation familiar to millions of Zillow-browsing Americans: few decent options.“There is nothing for sale,” Ms. Martinez said. “And, if it is, it is way out of my price range.” After months of searching, Ms. Martinez found an unlikely partner—her employer. The 21-year-old is an accounting clerk at a beef-processing plant in Cactus run by JBS USA Holdings Inc. She expects to close this summer on the…

Many people have bought and sold cryptocurrencies as an investment, yet trying to live on a salary paid in crypto is tricky. Alyssa Howell spent much of her career in the gold-mining industry before joining a crypto-wallet company last fall that pays all of its employees in bitcoin. The Denver-area resident said learning the ins and outs of the crypto industry — different types of virtual wallets, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and browser extensions — has been quite an education."It has been a very steep learning curve for…

Americans moved around a lot over the past two years, and those destinations also now happen to have the highest inflation rates in the U.S."We saw right away that inflation was highest in Phoenix and lowest in San Francisco," Redfin deputy chief economist Taylor Marr told CNBC.The relationship between migration and inflation has strengthened significantly as more people relocate from expensive coastal cities to more affordable metro areas, according to an analysis released by Redfin, the real estate broker.Phoenix is one…