December Existing Home Sales Key Takeaways: Mid-Winter Blues
After seeming to defy gravity over much of the fall – consistently beating expectations despite ever-tightening for-sale inventory and rising mortgage rates – existing home sales seemed to come part of the way back down to earth in December.
Rapid Reaction: December Existing Home Sales
After beating expectations in September, October and November, reality finally caught up with existing homes sales in December. This monthly drop cancelled out any momentum sales had picked up – making the annual gain just shy of 1 percent.
December Home Sales Forecast: Will Buyer Resilience Continue?
Unseasonably cold weather across much of the country along with still-tight inventory and rising mortgage rates weighed on home sales in December according to Zillow’s December home sales forecast. We expect existing home sales, which will be published on Tuesday by the National Association of Realtors, to fall 1.2 percent in December to 5.54 million units at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR)
December 2016 Market Report: What Could Flattening Rents Mean for 2017?
A months-long streak of accelerating home value growth was met with an equally long stretch of flattening rents to end 2016, a trend with interesting implications for the housing market as a whole as attention turns to the busy 2017 home shopping season to come.
Homes in Black Neighborhoods Twice as Likely to be Underwater as Homes in White Neighborhoods
Nationwide and in a number of large metro markets, the negative equity rate in largely black communities is double or more the rate in majority white communities. The disparities reflect the wide gulf that exists between white America and communities of color and their very different experiences throughout the housing boom, bust and recovery.
Rapid Reaction: December Jobs Report
The final jobs report of 2016 was fairly consistent with what we've seen over the past few months, showing decent if not spectacular growth and painting a picture of an economy in overall good shape.
On January 11, I’m headed to Washington, D.C. to participate in the 2017 Zillow Economic Forum, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. This event will focus on the generational, racial, and socio-economic disparities that exist in the housing market. I’m excited to shed light on these disparities and explore ways that we can improve economic opportunity for all Americans.
How to Fix Housing Assistance With the Funds We Already Have
We are doing a lousy job providing housing assistance to the millions of Americans that need and qualify for it, failing to reach three in four eligible households. But with disciplined accounting and a hard look at ineffective programs long past their prime, we can essentially bring that number to 100 percent without spending an extra dime.
How Much is Every Home in America Worth? A Lot.
The combined, total value of every home in the United States is expected to climb to a record high of more than $29.6 trillion in 2016, up 5.7 percent from a year ago. And the total amount collected by landlords from the nation’s renters in 2016, while dwarfed by the value of owned homes nationwide, is also growing and nothing to sneeze at.
Home values in counties that voted for Hillary Clinton had a more exaggerated boom and bust than in those that voted for Donald Trump, and homes in counties that voted for Trump are generally more affordable, according to a Zillow analysis of county-level home values, negative equity and affordability.
