The Federal Reserve has left the door open for two more interest rate hikes this year, but most of the pain could be over for the housing market.
The 10-year Treasury yield, with which mortgage rates often move, was little-changed after the Fed’s decision on June 14 to hold off on a rate hike. Daily mortgage rates measured by Mortgage News Daily ended the week around where they started.
After more than a year of rapid increases in mortgage rates, housing economists say relief is in sight—but it might not come as quickly as prospective buyers hope. Mortgage rates could move higher in the coming weeks, says Robert Dietz, the chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, as long-term bond investors anticipate stronger economic growth or further hikes. Despite the possibility of near-term pressure, Dietz says rates are unlikely to surpass their 2022 peak of 7.08%.
There’s some hope for a significant fall in mortgage rates—though the circumstances needed to bring such a drop are less than ideal for the average buyer. Mike Fratantoni, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s chief economist, says he still expects the U.S. to enter a recession in the second half of the year—a development that would ultimately result in the Fed holding interest rates steady. A softer economy, meanwhile, would bring down mortgage rates. The trade group’s May forecast calls for mortgage rates ending the year at 5.6%.
Consumers have been riding the mortgage rate roller coaster since shortly after the pandemic began. For buyers and sellers trying to anticipate the next curve there are some near-term negatives—but the longer term outlook remains brighter.
Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, says rates could once again surpass 7% before the end of the year, depending on the Federal Reserve’s actions. “I was hoping that maybe it could trend down toward 6% by the year end, but now it looks more difficult to reach that low level,” said Yun, whose forecast in May had called for a cut to the fed-funds rate by the end of the year.
Mortgage rates above 6% aren’t unusual historically, but the circumstances in play earlier in the pandemic create a challenging environment for buyers and homeowners considering selling. Rising rates have taken much of the air out of home price increases, but prices this March remained about 37% higher than they were three years prior, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index, putting pressure on buyers’ budgets.
Homeowners with low rates are opting not to move, leading to a shortage of new listings and lending strength to home prices. Roughly 92% of all homeowners with a mortgage have a rate below 6%, according to a recent Redfin analysis.
The short-term outlook is likely little balm for prospective buyers. Yun, the National Association of Realtors economist, says his baseline forecast calls for a roughly 10% reduction in home sales this year, following last year’s roughly 18% drop. “But naturally, if the mortgage rate remains elevated, that means that it’s going to be an even larger decline in sales,” he says.
But there’s reason for optimism. Dietz expects mortgage rates over the next several years to fall to between 5% and 6%—a range he says could loosen the housing market.
“Getting mortgage rates down below 6% does appear to be the sweet spot, or the new normal, for home buyer expectations,” Dietz says. “It doesn’t price in all the demand that was priced out of the market in 2022, but it does price in a significant amount of it.”
Forward-looking housing data flipped in November, so HousingWire created the weekly Housing Market Tracker to provide real-time forward-looking housing data. I also recently joined Mike Simonsen’s Top of Mind podcast to talk about what’s happened in housing over the past year. Forward-looking housing data might not be sexy, but it works.
From FHFA: U.S. house prices rose 4.3 percent between the first quarters of 2022 and 2023, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI). House prices were up 0.5 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. FHFA’s seasonally adjusted monthly index for March was up 0.6 percent from February.
How and why did the index reach this high, and what should we expect in the future?
Inventory is still near record lows
The easiest economic discussion right now is the housing inventory story in the U.S. and that it’s historically low. However, it’s also the most-lied-about topic in recent economic history. People claim inventory isn’t low because “shadow inventory” is on the verge of adding millions of homes into the marketplace any second now. Another myth is that we’ll have a silver tsunami where every Baby Boomer lists their home in one month, flooding the marketplace with inventory.
The NAR total active listings data is between 2 million and 2.5 million in a normal market between 1982-2023. Post COVID-19, we broke to all-time lows and it’s hard to get it back to those levels: we’re currently at 1,040,000 active listings. This is a fact that some people have a hard time believing because they believe the shadow inventory or vacant home thesis.
These are often middle-age male stock traders or anyone from the anti-central bank movement who has been part of a borderline crazy bearish American economic crash squad that only can be matched by the Russian troll movement spreading disinformation about the state of the U.S. economy. Economic cycles come and go, but the 24/7 doom porn people are a one-trick pony that will fall into the grave with all American bears who have failed since 1790.
NAR total inventory since 1982:
I prefer the Altos Research weekly single-family data to the NAR data because it gives us a fresh look at not only active listing data but new listing data. This way, nobody can be surprised when old stale data comes to the marketplace. This is also why we created the weekly Housing Market Tracker article. We want to connect the dots with supply and demand.
The Altos Research new listing data is essential in tracking the supply aspect of housing, which is why I include it as part of the Tracker. Even in 2022, when we had the most significant home sales collapse ever recorded, the new listing data never exploded higher; in fact, it was trending at all-time lows in 2021 and 2022, and now is at a new all-time low in 2023.
The data in the charts above should clear up any shadow inventory and vacant home nonsense we have heard for over 11 years. Let’s talk about the second significant factor: demand!
Last year was a whirlwind for housing economics. The first three months of 2022 were so bad that I deemed it the unhealthiest housing market post-2010. I coined the term savagely unhealthy because we had too many people chasing too few homes. More than 70% of the marketplace saw multiple bids on properties.
In February of 2021, I talked about how we needed higher rates to cool down the housing market because this wasn’t the housing bubble of 2005. However, by February 2022, it was too late; so much home-price growth in such a short time meant that demand would collapse when mortgage rates did rise.
Mortgage rates going from 3% to 5% had been the norm for the markets; mortgage rates going from 3% to 7.37% was another story altogether. As a result, home sales collapsed in 2022 in the most prominent fashion ever recorded in U.S. history.
So what has changed? Well, starting Nov. 9, 2022, mortgage rates fell and mortgage demand got better. We didn’t see a recovery in demand, it just stabilized.
Since Nov. 9, purchase application data has had 17 positive prints versus nine negative prints after making some holiday adjustments. Year to date, we have had 10 positive prints and nine negatives, and tomorrow purchase applications should be negative, which shows the stabilization in demand so far in 2023.
It is simple supply and demand economics. Last year, home sales crashed because mortgage rates exploded higher after the most significant short-term home-price gains ever in history. However, after Nov. 9, that reality changed from crashing home sales to stabilizing.
So the moral of the story is that the market dynamics were very historical last year; active inventory and monthly supply were low, but home sales were crashing, and the inventory that was on the market, especially in the seconnd half of 2022, required price cuts to sell.
In my 2023 forecast for prices, I stated that mortgage rates needed to stay higher, above 5.875%, for prices to have a mild decline, in contrast to the massive price gains we have seen in 2020 through 2022. I chose 5.875% because my affordability index model was shot, but I also saw that the housing market changed when rates moved from 7.37% to 5.99%.
Imagine what the housing data would look like if rates were in the low 5% for 2023. This is why tracking weekly housing data is critical. We don’t have a housing demand recovery as we saw with the COVID-19 recovery, we just have a stabilization in demand, and total active listings are still near all-time lows.
As you can see in the FHFA home price index below, the growth rate of prices cooled down a lot with higher mortgage rates, but those didn’t crash prices like in 2007 and 2008, a period in time with much higher active supply.
Also, to go along with the FHFA home price index, not only was housing inventory over 4 million in the NAR data in 2007, but we also had massive growth in forced sellers. As we can see in the chart below, we had massive credit stress in the system.
So, as we get ready for the second half of 2023, we will track the weekly housing data. We will focus on the actual data that matter, positive or negative. The most significant change this year is that home sales are not collapsing in the same fashion they were last year.
One quarter of home buyers say they’re planning to move from their current residence, with many saying the COVID-19 pandemic has convinced them to relocate to smaller towns and cities.
Redfin reported last week that its database of more than one million house hunters shows that a record 27% are looking to move to a different metro area from the one they currently reside in.
And it’s not only Redfin that has noticed this trend. Last week, realtor.com released its own report showing that more than half of home searchers in the nation’s 100 largest metros are focused on homes in the suburbs of those areas. Indeed, listing views of homes in the suburbs in May dramatically exceeded those from one year ago. But the migration to the suburbs is not a new trend, as it actually began accelerating prior to the pandemic, according to realtor.com’s director of economic research Javier Vivas.
“After several months of shelter-in-place orders, the desire to have more space and the potential for more people to work remotely are likely two of the factors contributing to the popularity of the burbs,” he said.
In addition, homes in smaller towns are getting more attention too. Redfin said that page views for listings in towns with 50,000 or less residents saw traffic grow by 87% in the last year. That’s almost four-times the 22% annual increase in views of listings in cities with 1 million+ residents.
“While there has been a huge increase in the number of people looking online at homes in small towns, the long-term impact of the pandemic on people actually moving from one part of the country to another remains to be seen,” Taylor Marr, a Redfin economist, said. “People are starting to take the plunge and move away from big, expensive cities, though most of them were probably already considering a lifestyle change. The pandemic and work-from-home opportunities that come with it are accelerating migration patterns that were already in place toward relatively affordable parts of the country. But for many people, the lure of large homes in wide open spaces will be passing a dream fueled by coronavirus-induced isolation.”
The largest net outflow of Redfin searchers in April and May was in the cities of Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, which means more people are moving out of those areas than moving into them. Moreover, Phoenix; Sacramento, Calif.; Las Vegas; and Dallas saw the highest net inflow of users in the same months. Homes in those metros also tend to be more affordable than in the coastal regions.
Mike Wheatley is the senior editor at Realty Biz News. Got a real estate related news article you wish to share, contact Mike at [email protected]
Today’s homebuyers are learning that finding a move-in ready home in a good location that they can comfortably afford is about as rare as a winning Powerball ticket.
A dire housing shortage has kept prices strong and competition fierce among buyers despite high mortgage interest rates. That’s left less than a quarter of the roughly 1.1 million home listings within financial reach of the typical American household, according to a recent joint report from the National Association of Realtors® and Realtor.com®.
The housing market is short about 320,000 listings within the price range of buyers earning the median household income of $75,000 a year. These buyers can generally afford homes up to $256,000. (Listings for single-family homes, condos, townhomes, row homes, and co-ops included only existing homes and did not encompass new construction.)
“The country has the largest shortage of homes in the price range that middle-income buyers can afford,” says NAR Senior Economist Nadia Evangelou. “That can explain why the competition is strongest for these homes.
“We hear again and again that in order to address the housing affordability issue we need to add more housing to the market,” she adds. “We need to add more homes that middle-income buyers can afford.”
Even those making $100,000 can afford only about 38.6% of the homes on the market. And those needing mortgages are faced with rates nearing 7% for 30-year fixed loans, pushing monthly mortgage payments up into the stratosphere.
The problem has worsened significantly over the past five years. In 2018, there were about 810,000 homes on the market that middle-income buyers could afford. That’s compared with nearly 263,000 in April of this year.
The affordability crunch is even worse for people of color. About two-thirds of Black Americans and 59% of Hispanic Americans have household incomes below $75,000. That’s compared with 48% of white Americans and 37% of Asian Americans.
“Our country needs to add at least two affordable homes for middle-income buyers for every home listed for upper-income buyers,” Evangelou says.
Where middle-income buyers can find the fewest affordable homes for sale
Not surprisingly, the nation’s most expensive metropolitan areas had the fewest homes priced for middle-income buyers. In the whole state of California, just 3.7% of all home listings in April were affordable for buyers earning $75,000 or less.
The issue was the most acute in Silicon Valley’s San Jose, where there was just one home listing priced for buyers earning $75,000 in the entire metropolitan area. (NAR and Realtor.com looked at the 100 largest metros for their analysis. Metros include the main city and surrounding towns, suburbs, and smaller urban areas.)
The lack of affordable homes isn’t surprising as the median price in the metro was $1.53 million in May, according to Realtor.com data, which includes new construction.
In Oxnard, CA, 0.2% of homes were affordable for middle-income buyers. It was 0.6% in San Diego, 1% in San Francisco, and 1.2% in Los Angeles.
However, residents in these more expensive areas generally make more money to keep up with the higher cost of living. The median household income in these areas is typically more than $100,000, says Evangelou.
Even in less expensive, yet still pricey areas, there was a dearth of real estate priced for middle-income buyers: just 1.2% of homes in Seattle; 1.3% of homes in Austin, TX; 2% of homes in Boise, ID, and Salt Lake City; and 2.6% of homes in Sacramento, CA.
“In these very expensive areas, especially middle-income buyers can afford to buy very few listings,” says Evangelou. “It’s very difficult.”
Where middle-income buyers can find the most homes for sale
Buyers on a budget will find the greatest selection of affordable homes in the cheaper parts of the country, such as the Rust Belt and Deep South.
In West Virginia and Ohio, more than half of the homes for sale in April were affordable for middle-income buyers. About 59.3% and 55.6% of listings were priced right respectively in those states.
“Some of these areas have an oversupply of housing,” says Evangelou.
In the Youngstown, OH, metro, nearly three-quarters of the homes for sale, about 72%, were within reach of middle-income buyers. In May, the median home price in the metro was $162,450—about a third of the national median price tag of $441,445 in May, according to Realtor.com data.
The metro was followed by Akron, OH, at 61.4%; Toledo, OH, at 60.7%; Cleveland, at 58.6%; and Syracuse, NY, at 54.4%. Rounding out the top 10 were Scranton, PA, at 53.5%; Dayton, OH, at 53%; Pittsburgh, at 52.2%; Rochester, NY, at 51%; and Detroit, at 49.3%.
“Ongoing high housing costs and the scarcity of available homes continues to present budget challenges for many prospective buyers, and it’s likely keeping some buyers in the rental market or on the sidelines,” Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale said in a statement.
“Those who are able to overcome affordability constraints may be increasingly drawn to newly constructed homes or to the suburbs and beyond, both of which may offer buyers more realistic opportunities for homeownership.”
Homes are selling faster now than any time since spring 2018, a new Zillow analysis shows.
It means that potential buyers should be prepared to strike quickly, and sellers who have been on the fence through the onset of the coronavirus pandemic might now want to list.
Though many sellers have taken a wait-and-see approach through the pandemic, homes that have made it onto the market have been snatched up relatively quickly by eager buyers. In mid-June, the typical home sold in the U.S. had an offer accepted 22 days after it was listed for sale. That’s as fast as homes have sold since early June 2018, when they typically sold in 21 days. Even at the slowest point of the spring – in late May – that number only climbed to 31 days, just six days slower than late May last year.
The same limited-inventory dynamic – with sellers pulling back from the market more than buyers – has kept home prices relatively steady during the pandemic, though signs point to a modest decline in the coming months.
More homes are coming onto the market – new listings are up 14% month over month – showing sellers appear to be gaining confidence in that buyer demand. Many who listed their homes during the past few weeks were rewarded with a quick sale. Inventory remains incredibly tight and sales are happening quickly, so buyers should be prepared to move fast when they find a home they’re interested in.
“Buyers shopping today might expect to be welcomed by desperate sellers, but they’ll instead discover houses selling like hotcakes in the speediest market in recent memory,” said Zillow economist Jeff Tucker. “The market did slow down in April, but anyone shopping this summer needs to be prepared to keep up with the lightning-quick pace of sales today. The question is whether the tempo will slow after buyers finish playing catch-up from planned spring moves, or if this fast-paced market will stay hot thanks to continued low interest rates and buyers scrambling over record-low summer inventory.”
In 29 of the 35 largest U.S. metros, homes are typically seeing offers accepted faster than a year ago. Homes are selling the fastest – in only five days – in Columbus. Cincinnati (six days), Kansas City (six days), Seattle (seven days) and Indianapolis (seven days) are just behind. Pittsburgh has seen the most dramatic acceleration of late, with sellers typically accepting an offer 17 days sooner than at this time last year and 40 days sooner than a month ago.
The slowest market by some margin is New York, where homes are typically spending 70 days on the market before an offer is accepted, more than three weeks longer than at this time last year. Miami (55 days) and Atlanta (38 days) are the next slowest.
New York and Miami have typically been among the slowest-moving for-sale markets, so the recent slowdown may not be fully attributable to the pandemic. Still, the year-over-year slowdown of 23 days in New York is the biggest in the country, and the six-day slowdown in Miami is the third-biggest behind New York and Atlanta.
Mike Wheatley is the senior editor at Realty Biz News. Got a real estate related news article you wish to share, contact Mike at [email protected]
According to the FTC, Americans have lost $610 million to “income illusions” since 2016 – and $150 million of that was in the first nine months of 2020 alone.
Predatory get-rich-quick schemes have become so audacious, so prevalent that the federal government has launched a full-scale operation targeting them: Operation Income Illusion.
So what are all the modern scams and schemes that young people should look out for? How can you spot the especially sneaky ones? What are the early warning signs of a bad online business course or a phony job listing?
And how can you convince that one relative of yours that they’re in an MLM?
Let’s cover this and more as we explore modern get-rich-quick schemes (and how to spot them).
What’s Ahead:
Common signs of a get-rich-quick scheme
Before we get into specifics, it’s worth pointing out some of the most common signs of any get-rich-quick scheme:
A promise or guarantee of income.
Payment requested upfront to cover supplies/training/application fees.
Sketchy websites or email addresses.
Zero online reviews or ratings.
Hyperbolic marketing language (achieve your dreams, become your own boss, etc.).
The perfect opportunity somehow found you (instead of the other way around).
A request for sensitive info: credit card info, SSN, or a photo of your passport/ID.
They give you a bad gut feeling. When you have a bad gut feeling about a person in real life, you walk away. Do the same online.
1. Cryptocurrency
Ah, crypto.
Perhaps no other investment in history has produced as much FOMO as Bitcoin. After all, everybody knows of somebody who got rich off of it, or alternatively, some rare altcoin (read: any crypto that isn’t Bitcoin) that exploded overnight.
It would be an overreach to call cryptocurrency a scam, but it’s certainly not the investor gravy train it’s made out to be.
Read more: The Top 10 Things You Need To Know About Bitcoin
What they promise
A $10,000 investment in Bitcoin in 2017 became $640,000 just four years later. Invest your money and buckle up, because you’re about to get rich.
Or, alternatively, keep your eyes on the crypto forums. If you get in on the ground floor of a new crypto before it explodes, that’s another easy way to 100x your investment overnight.
What really happens
A $10,000 investment in Bitcoin in November, 2021 would be worth $6,175.36 in February 2022.
Cryptocurrency values are 100% speculation, upheld by investor demand alone. There’s simply no guarantee (or even near-guarantee) that your investment will grow in value in the short- or long-term.
That’s especially true of new or obscure “altcoins” that trade for pennies a pop. Sure, a small percentage of them may blow up – but many more are simply scams or pump-and-dump schemes – and it’s extremely difficult to detect which is which.
Read more: From High Risk To High Cost: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Bitcoin
How to spot a crypto scam
Any crypto that promises to multiply in value is a scam. Again, the only thing propping up crypto values is investor interest, which is fickle, fleeting, and unpredictable.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other bonafide cryptos aren’t scams, but they’re ultra-risky investments nonetheless. For more on why, check out Crypto Crash Course – Everything You Need To Know About Bitcoin, Blockchain, And More.
2. Multi-level marketing schemes
MLMs are notorious for using psychology and manipulation to lure unsuspecting income-seekers into their midst. Then, they squeeze capital out of them on the dangling promise of eventually multiplying their returns.
Now that John Oliver and others have shone a light on the industry, the MLMs have had to get even sneakier.
What they promise
Join [Herbalife, Amway, Infinitus] and you’ll become your own boss, get free training, and earn six figures in your first year!
Who doesn’t want to become their own CEO for a small initial investment of just $150, especially when you can make 1000x within 10 months!
What really happens
99% of MLM participants lose money, according to the Consumer Awareness Institute. Anyone appearing like they’re making money from an MLM on social media is simply trying to dupe others into distributing for them.
How to spot an MLM scheme
If you’re wondering whether the sales opportunity you’re considering is part of an MLM, or you’re trying to convince someone that they’re in an MLM, here are a few steps that you can take:
See if it’s already a known MLM. TitleMax (of all places) published a helpful list of the top 25 MLMs by revenue. If your future “employer” is on the list, take a hard pass.
Search for complaints about the company. Reddit, The Better Business Bureau, and your state Attorney General’s office website are all helpful places to find consumer ratings, reviews, and official complaints.
Vet the products. MLMs tend to sell sketchy products with dubious or unsubstantiated research proving their efficacy. If you wouldn’t buy the product, you definitely shouldn’t sell it.
ID the “startup fee”. If a company has a flat fee for upfront training or especially your first round of inventory, it’s most likely an MLM.
Get a second opinion. Ask the company to provide all of its contracts and legal documents, and have a friend, mentor, or your attorney look over everything with a skeptical eye. Don’t try to convince them it’s legit; ask them to convince you that it’s an MLM.
3. The lottery
There’s no more open and honest get-rich-quick scheme than the lottery!
Playing the lotto in tiny doses can be fun when you expect to lose. My better half and I buy a ticket or two per year and fantasize about how we’ll fill our 20-car garage.
Then we lose and laugh.
But playing the lottery with even the faintest expectation that your investment will eventually pay off is a slippery slope – both financially and psychologically.
Read more: Why You Should Never Play The Lottery – And How To Better Spend Your Money
What they promise
Whether it’s $10,000 or $10,000,000, you’re just a scratch away from winning life-changing money.
What really happens
It’s better to gamble your money in Vegas than to play the lottery.
I say that because generally speaking, you have a 5% to 30% chance of beating the house in a Vegas casino (WSJ). Your chances of winning the lottery are 1 in 300 million (CNBC).
But what about a non-jackpot? Can you profit from buying scratch-offs?
“Scratchies” typically list their odds of winning on the back of a card, usually between 5% and 20%. Your chances of winning something are better – but your chances of profiting are still extremely low.
Lotteries are also inherently problematic and controversial. Supporters say they benefit society by generating tax revenue – but it’s worth considering where that revenue is originating.
A mass study on the lottery’s net impact on society found that “the percentage of income spent on the lottery is significantly higher for players with low family incomes and low education,” hence the lottery’s ignominious nickname: “a tax on the poor.”
While it may be more transparent, make no mistake – the lottery is just as bad of a get-rich-quick scheme as an MLM (just with much worse odds).
4. Phony job listings
This one’s more of a straight-up scam than a scheme – and even as far as scams go, it’s pretty nefarious. FBI Special Agent, Jeanette Harper writes:
“Fake Job Scams have existed for a long time but technology has made this scam easier and more lucrative.”
What they promise
A supposed rep from a legit-looking company – or even one pretending to be from a company you’ve heard of – will reach out and say they’re hiring for a high-salary role.
They either say “no experience necessary” or that you’d be perfect for it, and since they want to fill the role right away, they’ll just do the interview via a chat window.
Before your start date for your high-salary role, they’ll need to add you to payroll and benefits – so you’ll need to pass along your W-9, 1099, and/or a scan of your ID.
What really happens
The scammer uses this sensitive information to steal your money and/or identity.
How to spot a phony job listing
Fake job opportunities are pretty insidious, but at least they’re pretty easy to spot. Here are some of the telltale signs:
The job listing appeared on social media (nearly all legit companies recruit via job boards, LinkedIn, or by referral only).
The rep’s email address doesn’t match the company name.
The company has no website/social media/LinkedIn presence (or a sketchy one).
The rep won’t reveal themselves – they won’t share their own personal data nor will they get on a video call with you – they insist on communicating via chat.
Everything they’re telling you seems oddly vague.
The interview process is moving oddly quickly – you’re accepted in minutes or hours, when the real-world process takes days or weeks.
The rep wants money – such as a $25 fee to submit your application.
5. COVID-era robocall scams
At the risk of sounding indelicate, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a target-rich environment for robocallers who peddle MLMs, phony jobs, or shady website building services.
To give an example, the FTC is going after scam company National Web Design for sending out millions of illegal robocalls specifically targeting people who’d just lost their jobs, guaranteeing them passive income if they just paid a little upfront.
I try not to use the term evil lightly…
What they promise
Here’s what National Web Design told its victims: you could earn up to $400 a day as an Amazon affiliate. Just let us build your site for $2,000 and your passive income awaits.
What really happens
The scammers may actually deliver a product, but it never works as advertised. You’re out $2,000 and they never pick up the phone.
How to spot a robocall scam
If someone calls you offering a job or passive income opportunity, it’s a scam. But don’t just hang up – report their call as spam on your phone and report the company to the FTC using this form.
BONUS: how to prevent robocalls in the first place
You can help stem the flow of robocalls to your own phone by adding your number to the official Do Not Call Registry. Don’t worry, it’s free and 100% legit.
The second thing you can do is to never, ever, ever give your phone to a business unless it’s essential to your wellbeing. Even companies that claim to “protect your privacy” will still sell your data to their partners (since it’s not a violation of their own privacy policy).
6. Bad online business courses
Here’s one that I fell for.
To my credit, it wasn’t named so blatantly – and I can tell that the instructor was being sincere in his advice – but it was still bad advice that I paid an embarrassing amount of money for.
Bad online courses always seem like good investments upfront. They’re taught by people who’ve “made it” in the industry and who promise to tell you all of their “best money-making secrets.”
They’re also sold to you at a weirdly high discount (e.g. 97% off) and sometimes, you even have to apply to be in the course.
But crappy online courses aren’t just dangerous due to high cost and missed expectations – they can teach you the wrong things that actually hinder your progress and take months to unlearn.
What they promise
Sellers of “How To Get Rich In XYZ Industry” courses promise exactly that – that you can make millions in a certain industry by simply following in the instructor’s footsteps.
What really happens
The advice you learn in an unaccredited online course can range from good to bad to downright toxic. And if you’re new to an industry, it can be hard to distinguish which is which.
You could be paying for advice that could win new clients – or immediately turn them off.
That’s why you’ll want to be extremely careful who you learn from. Some instructors truly are at the top of their industry and their tips are worth their weight in gold.
But others are on their way out – their way of doing things in their industry no longer works, so they’re packaging and selling bad and outdated advice to make up for lost income.
How to spot a bad online course
Part of the challenge to spotting bad online business courses is that they’re often marketed exceedingly well – so well, in fact, that if it’s a course in How To Make Millions Selling Bad Online Courses, maybe it’s worth it!
Facetiousness aside, here are some of the signs that the course you’re considering isn’t worth it:
The instructor has limited, outdated, or vague experience – e.g. they’ve “worked with dozens of Fortune 500 companies” but won’t say who, in what capacity, or how much they actually earned.
The course promises or downright guarantees income. No course can guarantee income, so that’s a huge red flag.
High-pressure sales tactics. If the vendor of an online business course gives you a short time window to decide, or says the price will increase in 13 hours, just shrug and hang up the phone.
No reviews or ratings. If the instructor can’t point to a single successful past student, that’s probably a sign that one doesn’t exist – and you won’t be the first.
A high price tag. Finally, if a 3-day “Mastermind” costs thousands of dollars, that could be a sign that the instructor values his or her advice. It could also mean that they need the money because their clients dried up.
7. Mystery shopper scams
Mystery shopping is when a restaurant, retailer, or third-party data company will hire you to go into a store or restaurant and report back on your experience. Mystery shoppers are often paid a flat fee per assignment, and sometimes even get the product/meal reimbursed, too.
From what I’ve heard, it’s a fun gig if you can get it. But since lots of folks are interested, the scammers are taking advantage.
What they promise
Mystery shopping scams often start with a text stating that you can earn $200 to $500 per assignment by becoming a secret/mystery shopper or “filling out a survey.”
All you have to do is visit a retail store, purchase a product or a gift card, send it to a specific address, and report on your experience. You’ll be compensated upon completion. Easy $500.
This may sound like an obvious scam, but in the victims’ defense, this isn’t too far removed from how legit mystery shopping works.
What really happens
In the case of the scam, you send the product or gift card and are never compensated. To rub salt on the wound, the scammer may sell or abuse the personal data you gave them.
How to spot a mystery shopping scam
Luckily, the Mystery Shopping Professional Association (MSPA) publishes a running list of all the mystery shopping scams they’ve seen.
If you don’t see the potential scam listed there, cross-reference it with their free online directory of legitimate mystery shopping companies.
Summary
To a pandemic-stricken society, get-rich-quick schemes are becoming harder to spot and more seductive all at once.
But by helping yourself and your loved ones avoid them, you can protect your money and ride out the storm.
Before deciding which house to buy, think about your lifestyle, your current and anticipated housing needs, and your budget. It’s a good idea to create a prioritized list of features you want in your next home – you’ll soon discover finding the right house involves striking a balance between your “must-haves” and your “nice-to-haves.”
To start, consider your lifestyle. If you love to cook, you’ll want a well-equipped kitchen. If you’re into gardening, you’ll want a yard. If you’re planning your office at home, you may want a room for a separate library or work space. If you have several cars, you may require a larger garage. Use this list as your search guide.
Next, think about what you might need in the future. As you consider your housing needs, it’s important to consider how long you may live in your home. If you’re newly married, you might not be concerned with a school district right now, but you could be in a few years. If you have aging parents, you may want to look at homes that offer living arrangements for them as well as you. It’s important to think about your new home’s location just as carefully as you do about a house’s features. Location is a huge part of any move. In addition to considering the distance to work, you need to evaluate the availability of shopping, police and fire protection, medical facilities, school and day-care, traffic and parking, trash and garbage collection, even recreational facilities.
Perhaps the most important decision is deciding on the type of home you want. Do you want a condominium or a co-op? A town house or a detached single-family home? Do you want brick, stone, stucco, wood, vinyl siding, or something else? Do you prefer a new home or an older one?
Through all of this, make sure to talk to your real estate professional about where you want to live. While more buyers now use the Internet to gain access to listings, or available properties for sale, it is still a good idea to use an agent. The agent brings value to the entire process: he or she is available to analyze data, answer questions, share their professional expertise, and handle all the paperwork and legwork that is involved in the real estate transaction.
Well, folks, this spring marks a major milestone in the housing market: Annual home list prices have gone negative for the first time in years. In other words, they are actually dropping nationally.
Looking at the country as a whole, sellers have priced their homes this May below where homes were priced just one year ago. That hasn’t happened in recent memory, especially after the past few years of unprecedented price hikes. But as mortgage interest rates shot up, buyers have been unable to afford the higher monthly housing payments.
Something had to give. And while today’s price dips are slight, there are no indications that overall prices will begin rising anytime soon.
So where are home prices falling the most? The data team at Realtor.com® found out. These are mostly places where prices shot up the most during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Western and Southern swaths of the country. In most of these places, there has been a lot of new construction helping to ease the housing shortage and taking the pressure off of prices to remain quite so high.
“Those markets that got the most juiced during the pandemic—where the prices really took off—are the markets where they’re now suffering the biggest declines because affordability has been the hardest there,” says Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics chief economist.
“The market is trying to adjust to the surge in mortgage rates and the collapse in affordability,” says Zandi. With mortgage rates hovering around 7%, he believes the price declines will continue in the near future.
“I’d be surprised if we don’t have this same conversation a year from now and prices aren’t another 3% or 4% lower than where they are today,” he adds.
For example, look at Boise, ID, No. 1 on our list, or Austin, TX, which came in at No. 2. Both were practically synonymous with the housing market’s pandemic price pump.
People who previously had to spend their nine-to-five in a big-city office building were turned into remote workers with more flexibility in where they could live. That led many people to leave more expensive cities like San Francisco and Seattle for smaller cities where they could get more space for their money.
The big caveat here is that there are still real estate markets around the country where prices are rising steadily. These are typically more affordable Midwestern markets that didn’t see the large upswings that other markets experienced during the pandemic.
To figure out where prices are falling the most, we looked at the median price per square foot in the 100 largest metropolitan areas. Then we compared median prices in May 2023 with May 2022.
We used price per square foot as the most reliable metric to track home price movement. This means in a few instances, overall home prices in a metro might be rising while the price per square foot is falling. Price per square foot is generally considered a better indicator of prices because it accounts for changes in the mix of homes for sale. For example, right now many larger, more expensive homes are sitting on the market without attracting buyers. Since those homes aren’t moving, it’s bringing up the overall price for these metros. But the price per square foot compares apples to apples and shows that in some of these markets, it’s actually cheaper to purchase a home now than a year earlier.
We looked at only one metro per state to ensure geographical diversity. Metros include the main city and surrounding towns, suburbs, and smaller urban areas.
Here’s where home prices are down the most.
Median listing price: $609,875 Median listing price per square foot: $282 Change in year-over-year price per square foot: -7.8%
Boise has been one of the poster children for the run-up in home prices during the pandemic. The area saw a massive influx of residents and soaring demand over the past few years, especially from Californians. And it’s not hard to see why.
The city checks many of the standard quality-of-life boxes that people are seeking: Homes are larger than the national average, and there’s plenty of natural beauty and outdoor recreation.
Homes in the city, surrounded by mountains, used to be a bargain. Then the pandemic hit, and from March 2020 to May 2022, prices rose 63%. Now prices are coming back down to earth.
“It’s the entry-level homes where we’re losing value,” says Boise real estate agent Rob Inman, with Boise’s Best Real Estate Keller Williams, “those homes that people got into for $400,000 to $500,000.”
That reality is rough for buyers who bought at the peak, Inman says, especially first-time buyers. The one consolation, he says, is the low interest rate they probably have on the mortgage.
But for buyers still looking for a home on the more affordable end of the spectrum in Boise, there’s a lot more to choose from now.
“Now, you can actually find stuff between $350,000 and $425,000, right in that entry-level price point,” he says. “There’s even new construction.”
Median listing price: $583,751 Median listing price per square foot: $276 Change in year-over-year price per square foot: -7.7%
When it comes to pandemic hot spots, you can’t mention Boise without bringing up Austin, too. This cultural hub and capital of the Lone Star State has attracted hordes of tech companies and homebuyers leading to a surge in prices.
During the pandemic, the price per square foot for a home in the Austin metro rose around 75% from February 2020 to May 2022. The median home list price, not standardized for size, went from about $364,000 to almost $630,000. Pandemic price growth in Austin outpaced all others on the list.
Higher mortgage rates have cooled off buyers’ ability to purchase at the same price point. Right now, a relatively new, one-bedroom condo in East Austin is being listed for $420,000, with a recent $5,000 price reduction.
Median listing price: $366,075 Median listing price per square foot: $225 Change in year-over-year price per square foot: -7.3%
Myrtle Beach, nestled in the center of South Carolina’s “Grand Strand” shoreline, is a popular and affordable summer destination. The city, named after the abundant wax myrtle tree in the area, was recently named one of the nation’s most affordable golf towns by Realtor.com.
With its beaches, boardwalk and amusement parks, and plenty of golf courses, it’s another spot where prices rose over the past few years and are now coming down.
Some of that is due to the abundance of new construction in the area. With so many homes to choose from, buyers aren’t under as much pressure to bid them up.
Homes in Myrtle Beach are relatively small, so if buyers aren’t looking for a colossal home, the actual median price on homes there is 15% to 20% less than the national median. This remodeled three-bedroom, two-bathroom house is on the market for $284,900 after a $15,000 price cut.
Median listing price: $529,450 Median listing price per square foot: $274 Change in year-over-year price per square foot: -5.6%
During the COVID-19 pandemic, home prices in Phoenix got as hot as a sweltering Sonoran summer, and just as the monsoons mark the end of the season, raised interest rates have come like a cold downpour on the market. After more than 50% pandemic-era appreciation here, the median price per square foot is down more than 5%.
But the housing boom in Phoenix—as well as the subsequent correction—is nothing new for the Valley of the Sun. Phoenix was one of the markets with the biggest swing up and down during the late 2000s housing bubble and crash.
Part of the reason why is that Phoenix has the capacity for so much growth. Without a real winter to speak of, home construction can go on year-round. And the only thing surrounding Phoenix is more land, so developers can continue to build outward.
“Developers can keep sprawling,” says local real estate agent Angela MacDonald. “Without the new homes, we wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demand for people moving here.”
Even with the price decline, sellers still have a bit of an edge in the market. There are still many buyers and not as many homes to go around.
Median listing price: $549,900 Median listing price per square foot: $305 Change in year-over-year price per square foot: -4.7%
Florida was another red-hot real estate market during the pandemic. As more folks could work remotely, many migrated to the Sunshine State with its low taxes, reasonable cost of living, and year-round warm temperatures.
Part of the reason Sarasota, about an hour south of Tampa on the southwestern coast of Florida, made our list is because it’s also one of the places in the U.S. where the number of homes for sale has risen the most.
Sarasota homes are also spending longer on the market, with the median listing on the market for nearly eight weeks. Homes were selling in about half of that time a year ago.
This midcentury three-bedroom home near downtown Sarasota has undergone a price reduction bringing it down to $499,000.
Median listing price: $635,000 Median listing price per square foot: $247 Change in year-over-year price per square foot: -4.0%
Salt Lake City is another area that’s grown in popularity over the past few years and attracted more tech companies and workers. That led prices to rise—until recently.
“Buyers are holding back a little when it comes to waiving contingencies or inspections,” says Lory Hendry, a real estate agent at Windermere Real Estate in Salt Lake City, ”
That’s in contrast to the frenzy of the pandemic, when fast sales were often sealed without those protections.
Salt Lake City has the biggest homes of any metro on our list. So buyers looking for more home for their money might want to give the city a hard look. Surprisingly, it’s the higher end of the market, the larger, more luxurious homes, where high demand is still leading to quick sales and competition among buyers.
“Anything in that $1 million to $2 million price point is going pretty quickly,” says Hendry.
For people looking for a bit more of a bargain, the Ogden metro, just north of Salt Lake City, is a little less expensive and was recently featured on our list of places where the number of homes for sale is growing the most right now. The number of listings in the Ogden area has roughly tripled over the past year.
Median listing price: $238,250 Median listing price per square foot: $152 Change in year-over-year price per square foot: -3.9%
Venturing outside of the West and South, the “Steel City” is the only Northeastern spot on our list.
Pittsburgh stands out on our list as a place with some of the smaller homes, with a median home size around 1,600 square feet. Combined with a price per square foot that’s about one-third less expensive than the national median, this means the price of a Pittsburgh home is quite a bit lower than in most other places.
This anchor of the Steel Belt didn’t see the same kind of pandemic-era price appreciation as others on the list. However, the overall housing slowdown seems to have pulled down prices anyway.
Buyers looking in the area can find a three-bedroom home in the South Side Flats neighborhood for $285,000. It recently underwent a $10,000 price reduction.
Median listing price: $345,899 Median listing price per square foot: $148 Change in year-over-year price per square foot: -3.6%
For the previous few metros on our list, there’s a quirk to how home price data is affected by the mix of homes for sale. The anomaly is the most pronounced in the Winston-Salem metro. While the median list price per square foot has dropped, overall prices in the metro are rising.
This is due to shifting buyer preference. As mortgage rates rose and buyer budgets shrunk, many buyers shied away from larger, more expensive homes. That left these properties on the market as the cheaper, smaller homes were more quickly scooped up. The bigger homes have been pulling up overall prices for the metro even though local real estate costs less than it did a year ago.
If you were to compare the median home list price in Winston-Salem with Pittsburgh, you’d see that the Winston-Salem price is about $100,000 more. But the median home listing in Winston-Salem is more than 500 square feet larger. So buyers get more space for their money.
A nearly 100-year-old, three-bedroom home about 10 minutes south of downtown Winston-Salem is listed now for $220,000, after a $9,000 price reduction.
Median listing price: $662,875 Median listing price per square foot: $340 Change in year-over-year price per square foot: -3.4%
Sacramento, California’s capital city, may be the most expensive of any on our list, with homes priced around 50% higher than the national average. But for California, Sacramento is cheap! The state’s median list price per square foot is more than 30% higher.
The city became a popular alternative to the pricier San Francisco Bay Area during the pandemic as buyers sought out more space for less money. But as companies have been calling workers back to their offices, the area isn’t as hot as it was during the pandemic. There has also been plenty of new construction in the area.
A two-bedroom townhome near downtown Sacramento can be picked up for a little under $500,000 right now.
Median listing price: $376,000 Median listing price per square foot: $205 Change in year-over-year price per square foot: -1.1%
The real estate market in the “Windy City” is really a tale of two cities, says Compass real estate agent Amy Duong Kim.
Chicago’s dense downtown should be thought of as one market, she says. The suburbs on the periphery, where about two-thirds of the metro residents live, should be thought of as another.
“In River North and Gold Coast and the other downtown neighborhoods, they were hit the hardest during COVID,” Duong Kim says. “Unfortunately, they haven’t bounced back yet.”
The listing data backs up her point about the two different markets of Chicago. Where the larger metro area is showing a 1.1% decline in price per square foot, the city of Chicago at the center of the metro is showing the list price per square foot is down just a little more than 4%.
This two-bedroom, one-bathroom condo in downtown Chicago is on the market for $299,000.
Wondering when the best time to buy a home is? And the worst time? Well, thanks to data science, we no longer have to guess whether it’s fall and winter, or spring and summer.
I’ll save you the suspense: the very best time to buy your dream home is late summer, namely August and September, this according to a new study from real estate listing website Zillow.
Apparently prospective home buyers will find the most home inventory and a greater number of price cuts during these temperature-hot months, giving them better odds of finding that perfect home.
This means it might be easier to negotiate prices and perhaps even snag a lower price if the property stays on the market for a prolonged period of time.
Inventory Remains a Problem
An inventory glut in late summer
Could be the perfect time to buy a home
Because home sellers will be getting desperate
And there might be fewer competing buyers at that time
As you probably know (if you’ve been house hunting), inventory is scarce. It’s slim pickings out there and hasn’t gotten any better, despite predictions telling us otherwise. They were wrong about mortgage rates going up too…
Overall, inventory is off 5.3% from a year ago, meaning you’ll have to buckle your seatbelt and prepare for another tough year if you’re in the market to buy a home, or getting ready to be. Real estate investing is also getting a lot less attractive, and not so easy.
Conversely, if you’re a seller, you don’t even have to clean your house, make the bed, or mow your lawn – it’s already sold!
Okay, maybe you should do those things to fetch a higher price, but the seemingly endless seller’s market persists.
However, there are some house hacks (pardon the awful, awful buzzword) to increase your chances of landing your dream home.
Zillow found out that in most major metros, the month of August featured more for-sale listings than any other month during the year.
For example, last year in Los Angeles there were about 8,000 more homes for sale in August than in April. The total number of homes for sale increased from 26,000 to 34,000, a major 31% increase.
The same trend was found in many other metros, from Detroit to San Francisco, though not all of them.
However, it wasn’t just inventory that improved. Competition also went down in late summer, so even if fewer homes were on the market, there were fewer buyers chasing them.
Conventional logic tells us that many would-be buyers want to get situated well before summer ends to ensure they can get their kids enrolled in the new school. They may also be taking family vacations during late summer.
It’s also just plain hot in some parts of the country, which might affect buyer traffic and seller motivation, regardless of market conditions.
Price Reductions Most Common in Late Summer
As time goes on and desperation grows
Home price reductions might become more prevalent
Which leads to opportunity
And the potential to negotiate even lower!
With more homes and fewer prospective buyers comes price reductions. After all, the business law of supply and demand will dictate a homes price, and if fewer people are chasing more homes, the sales price must down come.
Zillow discovered that 15.1% of active real estate listings had a price cut in August, significantly higher than the 12.8% of homes in April.
That increases your chances of finding a home on sale, assuming the starting points (listing price) were relatively similar. September was also a good month to find a deal, with 14.3% of homes on sale, so to speak.
Of course, this wasn’t the case everywhere, with cities like Ft. Lauderdale seeing pride reductions drop in the six months from March to September.
By the way, if you’re wondering when it’s the best time to sell a home, it’s supposedly early May, per Zillow, though Redfin argued winter was the best back in 2013. Of course, for a lot of buyers and sellers, the sale and purchase have to happen concurrently.
The Best Time to Buy a Home Is a Moving Target
Just remember that the perfect time to buy isn’t set in stone
Nor will it be the same in every market nationwide
It can change depending on what’s happening in the economy
And the local housing market in question
Like anything else, the best time to buy (or sell) is really dependent on a number of factors that can’t be summed up by one datapoint.
The old adage says real estate is local. Today, you can add hyper to the front of local. Real estate markets are different, plain and simple. One neighborhood might be cold with days on market creeping higher and higher while a nearby pocket or street is on fire, with bidding wars the norm.
That’s why things like median sales, census bureau data, nationwide home inventory, and what the Federal Reserve is doing might not matter all that much, if at all. Who cares what the median sales price is in Orange County if you live in LA?
There’s also the practicality of timing a buy, or even a home sale. Buying and selling isn’t only dictated by price. It’s usually driven by life events, which tend not to happen at the ideal time.
For home buyers, the process is a long one that isn’t just decided on one night. You can’t say, “Honey, we should buy a home this August.”
Or, “I will sell my house in April.” That might mean you need to buy a home in April too, which could be the worst time because everyone else is out house hunting too.
Nope, it takes lots of time and research, touring, open houses, ups and downs, close calls, and more to finally snag that right property, even if it happens to take place in the worst month.
Zillow even says the average buyer spends more than four months shopping for a home, and makes at least two offers along the way.
I feel like it’s pretty rare to make one offer on one home and have that be the end of the story. Sure, it may depend on the housing market (and the buyer), but nowadays it seems you have to strike out once or twice before getting a hit.
Sometimes that could be walking away during the home inspection period, while other times you might get outbid or be unwilling to offer more than someone else looking to buy.
Whatever the case, odds are good that the home buying process will take many, many months, if not years. So if you happen to buy in August or September, great! You may have found a property with a price cut. The same might be true even if it drags into the winter months.
But telling your significant other that it’s prudent to wait until later this year probably won’t fly. You’ll at least want to get the ball rolling as soon as possible.
On top of all this, there’s a good chance Zillow will tell us that the best time to buy is a different month after more data is analyzed next year. So it’s probably best to chalk this one up to interesting, but not words to live by.
Be Proactive to Get a Lower Price
Stay on top of your own finances
While tracking the real estate market
To ensure you get approved for a home loan
At the best possible price
A smarter move might be focusing on your finances to land a better mortgage rate, which can lower your homeowner costs at any price point.
For example, instead of worrying what month it is, or avoiding the worst months to buy, worry about your three credit scores. Make sure they’re all in tip-top shape to avoid unnecessary pricing adjustments on your home loan.
Also take the time to shop mortgage rates with different lenders instead of going to one bank, broker, or credit union. And compare loan programs.
These two steps alone can make a huge difference in what you pay each month to own your home, no matter the sales price at closing.
While you’re at it, choosing the right real estate agent is also key. Find one who knows the art of negotiating to ensure you get a good deal no matter what the month.
Some real estate agents are afraid to make lowball offers, while others are willing to take chances when they see opportunities. This is another factor to consider.
Along those same lines, it’s important to get pre-approved beforehand and show the sellers you’re a serious candidate.
It’s not unheard of to show them you’ve got assets available for a large down payment to get your offer accepted, even if there’s a slightly higher offer already submitted.
Lastly, make sure it’s a good time for you personally. Are you ready to become a homeowner? Is now the right time mentally and financially? Did you do your research, set aside funds for a down payment and closing costs, learn about mortgages, etc.?
Using these common-sense tips, you can get a good deal on a home during any month of the year, even in a red-hot market, and even when it’s supposedly the worst time to buy.
Mortgage rates are climbing again, raising the cost of a home loan to its highest level in seven months.
The average rate on a typical 30-year mortgage is now 6.91%, up from 6.69% a week ago, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said Wednesday. The average rate on a 15-year home loan increased to 6.41% from 6.15% a week ago.
Mortgage costs are rising largely because the Federal Reserve’s year-long campaign to tame prices by lifting its benchmark rate has yet to bring inflation close to the central bank’s 2% target, suggesting that more hikes may be necessary.
hundreds of dollars to a property’s monthly payments, depending on the size of the loan.
Home prices are also rising. The median list price grew to $430,000 in April, up from $406,000 at the beginning of the year, according to Realtor.com. Buying a home is cheaper than renting in only 4 U.S. cities — Cleveland, Detroit, Houston and Philadelphia — according to real estate company Redfin.
Mortgage rates, which fell as low as 6% in February, are now at their highest point since November. The higher rates caused the number of mortgage applications nationwide to drop 3.7% this week compared to a week ago, MBA said.
The number of homes available for sale remains tight. Real estate experts said there’s fewer options for house hunters these days partly because construction companies haven’t been able to keep up with demand and because homeowners haven’t been willing to list their property.
Home builders erected only 70,000 new homes nationwide in April, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The nation has a current shortfall of about 6.5 million homes, Realtor.com data shows.
“Low inventory, maintained by an extremely low level of new listings coming onto the market, has fueled demand amongst the few buyers who can afford to stay shopping,” said Nicole Bacahaud, a senior economist at Zillow. “As inventory remains a challenge in this market, so, too, will affordability be rocked by stubbornly high prices that aren’t looking to move drastically any time soon.”
Despite such obstacles, and since falling during the pandemic to its lowest level in 50 years, homeownership across the U.S. is on the rise, including for people with modest income. Recent Census Bureau data shows that as of early 2023 more than 53% of households below the median income owned a home. That’s up from 51.4% in late 2019 and the highest figure since 1994, the year when the agency started tracking the figure, noted economist Dean Baker.
Khristopher J. Brooks
Khristopher J. Brooks is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering business, consumer and financial stories that range from economic inequality and housing issues to bankruptcies and the business of sports.