Menu
According to Zillow analysis for the month of October, home values in the U.S. grew 4.3% year-over-year, while rents appreciated 4.5 % – down from 5.3% the previous year. This article from Svenja Gudell, Zillow’s Chief Economist, looks into the details of the October Zillow Real Estate Market Report.
As the U.S. housing market enters the fourth quarter of 2015, the dominant trends from the first quarter have reversed. Annual home value appreciation, previously slowing down, has accelerated; while growth in rents, previously accelerating, has begun to slow down.
In each of the first three months of 2015, annual home value growth was slower than the month prior. U.S. median home values grew 3.1% year-over-year in January (down from 3.7% in December 2014), 2.9% in February and 2.8% in March. The annual pace of rental appreciation over the same period was consistently speeding up. Median U.S. rents grew 3.6% year-over-year in January (up from 3.2% in December 2014), rising to 4% in February and 4.7% in March.
But beginning in April, annual home value appreciation has increased every month when compared to the prior month. The annual pace of rental appreciation has slowed in each month since July.
The main reason for the reversal likely hinges on the supply of homes for sale and rent. After years under construction, more rental units are beginning to come online in many cities nationwide, helping to ease rental appreciation in some areas. At the same time, the number of homes available for sale nationwide has fallen in each of the past two months, keeping some upward pressure on home values.
Still, rents continue to grow at a rapid clip, and are growing faster annually than home values overall: 4.5% year-over-year growth for rents, compared to 4.3% year-over-year growth for home values.
As rents have grown and rental affordability continues to suffer, the stability and relative affordability of homeownership may be pushing some qualified renters to make the jump to homeownership. A widely expected December rate hike from the Federal Reserve could be an additional incentive for buyers to enter the market while mortgage interest rates remain low. Reflecting this, home values are growing at their fastest pace since November 2014.
In October, the median U.S. home was worth $182,800, according to the Zillow Home Value Index, up 4.3 percent from October 2014.
Among the 35 largest metro areas in the country, 24 experienced annual home value growth that was faster than the nation’s 4.3 percent yearly pace of appreciation. Home values grew by more than 10 percent per year in six of those large metro markets: Denver (16.2%), Dallas (15.2%), San Jose (13.3%), San Francisco (12.2%), Portland (11.4%) and Miami (10.3%).
Of the largest metro areas covered by Zillow, Las Vegas, Dallas, Seattle and Sacramento, Denver, Riverside and Portland are expected to have home values grow by 5 percent or greater over the next year.
Congratulations, America! Our credit scores are continuing to improve, according to Experian’s recently released 2015 State of Credit study, which shows the average U.S. consumer credit score is 669. That’s three points higher than a year ago, and five points higher than our average credit score in 2013 – and it points to a healthier credit and lending landscape. In this article from The Street, Brian O’Connell highlights some of the details from the study.
Americans are, on average, in pretty good shape when it comes to their credit score and improving all the while. The U.S. consumer credit score, based on the cumulative averages of American adults, is 669, according to Experian’s 2015 State of Credit study, released this week. Anything over 700 is considered by credit experts to be a good number.
“If I were to give a grade to the overall picture of credit in the United States, I would give it an A-,” notes Michele Raneri, vice president of analytics and new business development, Experian. “I’m optimistic about the state of credit as we are seeing more loans being extended, late payments are decreasing and consumers are continuing to gain more confidence in originating loans.”
“There definitely is growth and momentum – we’re back to pre-recession levels in nearly every category, which means lenders are in a prime position to capitalize on this market and foster business growth,” she says.
Experian also notes that bankcards, retail cards and mortgage lending showed significant growth this year, giving the U.S. consumer credit landscape a firmer platform for growth.
The family room’s going glam, desks are coming back, and bedsheets are getting all snazzy and pizzazzy. Here are some of the interior design trends that are sure to be popular in the coming year, predicted by the editors at House Beautiful.
Will redecorating be one of your New Year’s resolutions this time around? Start here – we’ve scoured all of our best design resources to predict what you’ll want in your home in 2016.
The “Glamily” Room. What’s an immaculate aesthete to do with a dog around – or a Doritos-loving tween? Let her living room go? Hardly! Turn to hardworking-yet-fabulous fabrics paired with sexy silhouettes.
Monthly Clubs. It’s decor at your door! And will make you count the hours ’til mail drop.
Bed Linens With Pizzazz. This year, we’re taking a hiatus from plain white sheets thanks to Bailey McCarthy’s Biscuit, which puts dozens of covetable patterns in play – all made in the U.S. of A.
Perky Pedestals. Another star, ideal for your sparest corners: The tall, handsome pedestal, primed to exhibit a sculpture, a plant, or even the house cat (who likely considers himself worthy of it anyway).
The Return of the Desk. The honeymoon period for working on your laptop in bed is officially over. In 2016, we’re reserving the bedroom for more important things, like new styles of the once-humble desk. We’ve previewed dozens of high-gloss, high-power versions, all ready to help you make this year your most productive yet.
Traditional Tableware. Consider this a doting note to grandmothers everywhere: You were right. Gravy boats and footed bowls are necessary members of the tablescape – especially now, with their au courant edge.
Mixed Metals. Platinum, gold, copper, steel – as long as they’ve got metallic sheen, they go together in our book. It’s bling like you’ve never seen before.
Better Sleep. Blackout curtains and lavender sachets get you only so far. To maximize your zzzs, opt for pillows technologically designed to do the best possible job. Because the future is now, and it’s making us tired.
The Dallas housing market is no stranger to the top of housing market lists, commonly placing as one of the best, most affordable paces to live.
In the most recent housing report from realtor.com, Dallas was ranked as the fourth-hottest housing market in America.
RentRange also recently ranked Dallas as the third best area for getting a return on your home rental investment.
SpareFoot created an infographic to show the reasons everyone is flocking to the metroplex.
For many, one of the most important reasons to choose a new home over an older one is the environmental advantages a new home provides. Today, more and more consumers are ranking green building and the energy efficiency it provides as their top requirement for their dream homes. This article from Builder and the Hanley Wood Data Studio highlights new home builders’ increasing commitment to green building, according to the most recent findings from McGraw Hill Construction’s Dodge Construction Market Forecast.
The 2015 Smart Market Report, taking both quantitative and qualitative approaches, surveyed a total of 249 builders, remodelers, multifamily firms, and conducted nine in-depth interviews with homebuyers who purchased a home within the last year.
Nearly one-third (31%) of builders report that over 60% of home projects they’ve built this year featured green technology. By 2020, more than half (51%) of builders project that they’ll reach that same level of green work.
“Our studies demonstrate that home builders still think of green homes as an important trend,” said Dr. Donna Laquidara-Carr, industry insights research director at Dodge Data & Analytics, during a Wednesday presentation at the 2015 Greenbuild conference in Washington, D.C.
Builders are driven by multiple factors to build greener homes, including customer demand (68%), energy cost increases (66%), green product availability and affordability (66%), greater valued recognized appraisers (66%), and code, ordinance, and regulation changes (65%).
One thing worth noting this year is that builders are considering those top five triggers almost equally important, instead of one or two triggers being dominant. According to Laquidara-Carr, this is a sign of a maturing green market.
The use of renewable technology has also grown over time. This year, 76% of surveyed builders report offering renewable energy on their projects, compared to 65% two years ago. By the year 2018, 85% of builders will offer renewable energy on their products.
If you’re planning to celebrate this holiday season with family and friends in your home, here are some helpful maintenance tips from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Remodelers to keep your home safe and accessible for visitors.
“Welcoming loved ones to your home is a cherished holiday tradition,” says NAHB Remodelers Chair Robert Criner, GMR, GMB, CAPS, a remodeler from Newport News, Va. “By making some simple home modifications, you can ensure that family and friends will enjoy a comfortable visit and be able to maneuver around your house without trouble this year.”
These tips will help eliminate situations that could cause stress for visitors with age-related balance and vision issues, and at the same time create a safer, more comfortable environment for all your guests:
When you have a special relationship with someone, it can be challenging to communicate your true feelings by speaking with them. Sometimes it takes a letter – the actual process of sitting in front of a blank page, and letting your emotions guide you into writing down what that relationship really means to you. The same can be said about your relationship with your hometown – whether it’s the place you grew up, the place you call home now, or the place you’d like to retire someday. This CityLab article from Melody Warnick highlights fascinating projects that are inspiring people to share what they love about the cities they call home.
Toronto native Lindsay Zier-Vogel wants you to write a love letter to your city. Maybe something like this:
“Dear Toronto, You’re a big ol’ city but I love that I still have small world encounters on your streets.”
Or this:
“Dear Toronto, Sometimes I pretend your tall buildings are a pop-up book when I look at them from balconies. It’s beautiful.”
If Zier-Vogel happens to catch you walking by a table she’s set up for The Love Lettering Project, her homegrown effort to get people to praise their place, she’ll supply the paper, markers, and airmail envelopes. You just have to come up with the sentiment, in the form of a specific bit of praise for an event, a neighborhood, a restaurant, a store, a park, a tree, a building, or anything else that makes you feel more in love with where you live. For instance:
“I love how each of your neighbourhoods is like visiting a new world. It’s magic.”
Writing a love letter to your place is arguably easier than writing one to the object of your affection. Your city won’t reject you. It won’t analyze your letter for unintended insults.
Yet for most of us, complaining about where we live becomes as unconscious and automatic as breathing. Sometimes, says Zier-Vogel, a 35-year-old who’s lived in Toronto her entire life, passersby who see her Love Lettering Project booth propose to write a hate letter instead. They’ll rant for a few minutes about what they despise about Toronto, then storm off when they’re told that only love letters are allowed.
Eighty-five percent of the time, “those same people end up turning around and beelining back and saying, ‘I thought of something,'” she says. That’s the moment Zier-Vogel waits for, and really the whole point of the Love Lettering Project.
Writing an ode to your place forces you to reflect on and appreciate its assets, which makes you feel more place attached – which, in turn, makes you happier. “Once you start thinking about things that work in your city, you see the things that work in your city. It’s that inevitable lens shift,” she says.
Originally, the Love Lettering Project started as a whimsical personal exercise. Beginning in 2004, Zier-Vogel would periodically write love poems to the city, slip them into airmail envelopes, and hide them where strangers would stumble across them. One year she wrote 500 letters, secreting them all over town – on car windshields, inside library books. She loved the thrill of hiding the envelopes, the way it made the city exciting again.
Eventually, her friends who knew about the project were begging to join in. So in 2012, Zier-Vogel expanded her letter writing campaign into a broader initiative to get people to share their fond feelings for where they lived. Mostly she works in Ontario, but recently she’s taken her Love Lettering Project to cities in the Northwest Territories and the United Kingdom.
Okay, so maybe the older home you’re considering buying isn’t THAT old. A hundred years is a really long time. But we can give you several reasons why a new home is better than an old one. In this U.S. News article, Geoff Williams highlights some of the issues buyers of old homes might want to consider before purchasing.
If you like old homes, you may have aspirations of living in a century-old farmhouse or perhaps a row house constructed in the 1800s. It’s not for everyone, but for some people there’s something charming and almost whimsical about living in a house that’s been around longer than your grandparents. It’s the history, it’s the look and it’s certainly the construction. They just don’t build them like they used to.
That’s meant as a compliment, but it’s possible to purchase a century-old house and eventually long to live in a cookie-cutter home that looks like every other residence on the block. As Kent Owen, an insurance agent from Silverhill, Alabama, puts it: “Older homes may look nice at first glance, but think of them like a person who has been divorced a few times. You might be able to make it work, but you’ll be finding problems from the past in there somewhere.”
That might be fine with you, especially if you enjoy do-it-yourself projects. But if you’re thinking of buying a century-old house, you want to know what you might be in for and then get out your wallet. These are some issues century-old homes tend to have in common.
Faulty, dangerous or old wiring. Well, here’s the good news. If you’re buying a house that is 100 years old, the wiring has probably been replaced, says Welmoed Sisson, a home inspector with Inspections by Bob, headquartered in Boyds, Maryland.
Sometimes, Sisson says, she and her husband will find houses with the original wiring, “and it’s almost never in good working order.”
Here’s a fun fact: “Old houses with electricity frequently had knob and tube wiring, which relied on exposed wires running through porcelain tubes and around porcelain knobs,” Sisson says.
If you hear a homeowner or realtor refer to K&T wiring, they’re referring to knob and tube wiring. And a not-so fun fact: “Many insurance companies will not issue coverage on homes with K&T,” Sisson says.
Corrosive water pipes. A major problem for city governments around the country is that water lines have to be replaced. They don’t last forever. In fact, the American Water Works Association’s 2015 State of the Water Industry report says that replacing aging water lines is currently the most important item on the industry’s to-do list. Not surprisingly, if you have a house that’s 100 years old or older, and previous homeowners haven’t replaced the pipes, that job will fall to you.
Heather Brewer, who has a public relations firm in Albuquerque, New Mexico, says she owns a beautiful craftsman house built in 1919 (OK, just shy of a 100-year-old house), and water issues have often been a problem from the get go.
“Once, as I was cleaning out my desk, my almost-3-year-old son saw my checkbook, pointed to it and said, ‘That for the plumber.’ Literally, the only time he ever saw me write checks was to the plumbing company,” says Brewer, whose son is now almost 4 and likes to pretend he’s a plumber when he plays with his toys.
Sagging floors. It isn’t an issue you would typically think about, but you’ll find it in a lot of old homes, says Tracy Abriola, a marketing and communications professional who lives in Philadelphia. She and her husband, a real estate agent, are living in her second 100-plus-year-old house.
“A lot of times,” she warns, “you’re spending a great deal of money to refinish the hardwood floors, but then find added expense addressing uneven flooring.”
Lilli Keinaenen agrees. A freelance graphic designer in San Francisco, she owns a house built in 1908, and says that if the floors aren’t always even, something else may not be either.
“It came as a pretty big surprise when we noticed our room ceiling heights aren’t the same,” says Keinaenen, who is still renovating. “But also, the floor height between one side and the other vary, too, due to one part of the house having been a porch at some point. So our master suite will have odd steps, ups and downs. That’s all part of the charm, we hope.”
In a world where more people are looking online for gaming, and more kids are looking down at their smartphones, it’s nice to know that there’s a resurgence of the good old-fashioned Family Game Night happening in American homes these days. In this article from U.S. News, podcaster Joe Saul-Sehy highlights a few fun board games that also offer essential financial lessons the whole family can learn from.
If you haven’t played a board game lately, you might want to reconsider. A board game renaissance is afoot, and mostly because makers have thrown lots of activity into small packages. No more waiting your turn as someone else rolls a die and moves his or her piece. Today’s games keep you in the action. Now it’s easy for families of all ages to have fun learning about money and spend quality time together.
Here are some games that should make your short list if you’re interested in financial topics.
Topic: Basic Math
Game: Monopoly Junior
Teaching children consumer math is simple with Monopoly Junior. This game differs from Monopoly, which can take hours. Instead, players take a fun trip around the board, visiting places kids enjoy like the pet store and the playground. Players purchase attractions, make change and visit each other’s properties. My twins’ first “aha” moment about numbers and recognizing the difference in currency occurred while playing this game.
Topic: Real Estate
Game: For Sale
How about some fun buying and selling property without all the hassle? For Sale is an easy card game about real estate. Players spend the first half of the game acquiring properties and the second half trying to sell those properties to other players for the most profit. No heavy strategy here. Older children will grasp “buy low, sell high,” and adults can springboard this lightweight idea into heavier concepts.
Topic: Mergers and Acquisitions
Game: Acquire
Want to buy stocks and merge companies? Your best bet is Acquire. The board and pieces are reminiscent of Scrabble. Every tile has a specific spot where it fits. If two tiles end up side-by-side, a company is formed. The player who laid the tile gets a founder bonus and then buys more shares. Prices rise as companies grow. When two companies merge, payouts go to the largest shareholders, but everyone in the acquired company receives something. The player with the most money at the end of the game wins. Made by the same designer who created I’m the Boss!, it’s a simple, yet strategic look at how a company grows and its stock follows.
