A mortgage isn’t free — there are fees associated with getting the loan. Those closing costs usually total thousands of dollars.Besides writing a check to pay those fees at the closing table, there’s another way to pay them when you get a mortgage or refinance your existing one: by adding them to the loan amount. The result is called a no-closing-cost mortgage or no-closing-cost refinance.However, you’ll probably have to accept a higher
April 17 is the tax deadline, and tax advisers still can’t agree on whether prepaid 2018 property taxes can be deducted in full. Congress passed a tax reform bill late last year, capping write-offs for state and local taxes at $10,000 per return for single filers and married couples.The move set off a rush of homeowners at the end of the year to prepay their property taxes for 2018 ahead of the tax bill taking effect this year.The overhaul “
The median list price for homes nationwide this March have now topped a record high set in 2017. The median list price was $280,000, up 8 percent year over year in March, topping last July’s record of $275,000, realtor.com® reports.Not only are home prices higher but homes are also selling faster this year. Days on the market dropped 7 percent compared to last year, reaching a median of 63 days in March. There are also fewer homes for sale, wi
Many homeowners faced higher property tax bills in 2017. Property taxes levied on single-family homes in 2017 totaled $293.4 billion, up 6 percent from 2016.The average property tax on a single-family home in 2017 was $3,399 per home at an effective tax rate of 1.17 percent, according to ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate data firm, from its analysis of more than 86 million U.S. single-family homes.But some places saw much higher rates than that
Owners love their homes so much that they are commissioning high-priced miniature versions of them to display. How high-priced? Sometimes they pay thousands for these replicas, Bloomberg reports.The miniature homes are small enough to fit on a tabletop and are known for their attention to detail reproducing the home’s architectural features.Lisa Macpherson, a veteran marketing exec, recalls two years ago giving her boyfriend a miniature versio
The home page of your website serves as a virtual first impression. As a real estate pro, you should craft a successful landing page with a goal of enticing potential clients into wanting to buy or sell with you. Unbounce, a landing page builder and conversion platform for marketers, recently surveyed data and created an infographic from more than 18,600 landing pages to discover which components make visitors click.Pages that featured a singl
Do-it-yourself home improvement jobs are popular, but do most homeowners have the knowledge to confidently handle such chores? A new survey suggests millennials may be the most willing, but they’re most likely to lack the how-to knowledge.Porch.com surveyed respondents from each generation to assess their handiness around the house and what repairs they’ve done. They also quizzed them on basic home maintenance knowledge. They analyzed more
Multiple listing consortium MLS RoundTable announced today that it will move toward creating a consolidated backend, combining feeds, eliminating RETS servers, and other changes.The group counts more than 300,000 real estate professionals under its service umbrella, with Bright MLS on the East Coast, CRMLS in California, CarolinaMLS in the Charlotte area, MLS PIN in Massachusetts, Chicagoland’s MRED, NorthstarMLS representing Minnesota and Wisc
A shift in consumer shopping patterns toward online marketplaces continues to hit the retail sector and its real estate market hard. The vacancy rate for large U.S. shopping malls rose to 8.4 percent in the first quarter of 2018, the highest since the fourth quarter of 2012, according to new study from real estate data firm Reis Inc. For neighborhood and community shopping centers, Reis found that 41 of the 77 areas they examined saw vacancy incr
The rising cost of purchasing a home is finally sinking in for home buyers and changing their house hunt, particularly for millennials.Seventy-nine percent of all consumer age groups recently surveyed say that rising interest rates will impact their home search, while 83 percent say that increasing home prices will impact theirs, according to a new online survey released by realtor.com® of more than 1,000 active buyers. But those percentages r
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