Forget the Open Floor Plan--It's Time to Bring Back Walls

U.S. homeowners spend $18,342 on average to sell their home, according to Zillow® and Thumbtack's 2018 Hidden Costs of Selling analysis. Zillow and Thumbtack identified several common, but often overlooked, seller expenses and calculated what they would cost around the country. Since most (61%) of today's sellers have never sold a home before, many of these costs may come as a surprise. Home sellers spend more time getting their home ready to sell than it will spend on the market, with the majority (78%) of sellers making at least one home improvement. Sellers who hire professional help spend $4,985 on average to cover many basic seller prep projects like painting, staging, carpet cleaning, lawn care and gardening and local moving costs. However, labor costs can vary significantly by metro. Sellers in San Jose, Calif. pay $6,580 on average, whereas sellers in Dallas pay an average of $3,720 for the same projects. Home sellers are also responsible for a...

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), Americans 36 and younger represented the largest share of home buyers (34%) in 2016. It was the fourth straight year in which millennials paced the home buying landscape. The 2017 NAR data, regarding 2016 numbers, also showed an increased share of buyers 36 and younger who purchased in suburban locations and who purchased detached single-family homes. In addition, 49% of those buyers have children under the age of 18, 66% are married, and 13% are unmarried couples (the largest share of all generations). Moreover, 66% were first-time buyers. Certain markets are prohibitively expensive for first-time buyers, so where are these young Americans buying homes? Using Metro-study data, BUILDER identified the nation’s top markets with the largest share of the coveted millennial buyer. For data purposes, we looked at 18- to 34-year-old buyers, even though it stretches beyond the official millennial generation; the Pew Res...

While publicly traded builders may get more media attention, home building isn’t a one-size-fits-all business. In fact, small-scale builders are front and center in most housing markets. Among NAHB members, 84% started 25 or fewer single-family homes last year. And 69% of members started 10 or fewer single-family homes in 2017.

At the peak of the last real estate boom, the number of new homes selling for less than $250,000 totaled 443,000. Since then, the number of single-family homes in this price range has plummeted, cratering to 146,000 in 2014.   Experts attribute this to supply constraints like soaring land costs, burdensome entitlement fees, and rising labor and material prices. 

In its search for a new headquarters, Amazon is rewriting rules for how cities and their environs  make policy  on basic building blocks like  housing, transit, accessibility, environment, investment, education , reflecting a far more active and engaged stake in who the winning place wants to be when it grows up to be an Amazon base. It will be interesting to watch what happens to NIMBY-ist instincts and effectiveness in blocking needed development in light of the economic adrenaline cities and most of their citizens believe would trigger upon selection. Too, the sally into health care begins to express the "something" in "something's got to give." Everyone knows health care in America is a broken system. Amazon and its two partners are betting they can model and scale a fix for their combined million or so employees and associates, and possibly in the process, create a template that could iterate and scale up even further--this worries incumbent, established...

On the heels of this year’s  New York  Fashion Week, Pantone has announced 10 fresh "seasonal" hues and five “classic” colors the institute predicts will shape fashion, home décor, and interior design palettes for the fall/winter 2018 season. Composed of autumnal hues that were selected to evoke the feeling of leaves on a forest floor, the shades can be mixed up and paired together, or add a colorful statement to any space on their own. Pantone The 10 new seasonal shades (from left to right, clockwise) include: Red Pear, a “deliciously deep red”; Valiant Poppy, “an outgoing red”; Nebulas Blue, a “thoughtful, starry-eyed blue”; Ceylon Yellow, a “savory, spicy yellow that adds an exotic touch”; Martini Olive, a “smooth, sophisticated and urbane green”; Russet Orange, a “warm and earthy forest floor orange”; Ultra Violet, the company’s purple  pick for Color of the Year ; Crocus Petal, a “light, airy and refined hue”; Limelight, a “pungent yellow-green” that’s “animat...

Google, NORAD and other websites have set up free Santa trackers for kids to give you some insight into Saint Nick’s schedule on Christmas Eve 2018. Grab a parent, go online and watch the jolly old elf and his reindeer circle the Earth delivering toys. And, most importantly, make sure you get to bed before he gets to your house. Here’s how to follow Santa online on Christmas Eve. Your first option is the most classic: the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Nicknamed NORAD, the organization was formed decades ago to monitor man-made objects in space and protect the U.S. and Canada from attack. But these days, it’s more famous for its Santa-tracking abilities. Looking to speak with a live person? Email noradtrackssanta@outlook.com or call 1-877-446-6723 for information on where Santa is now. As an alternative, tech giant Google hosts Santa’s Village, which is in its 15th year of providing coding-themed games and map quizzes for kids to complete wh...

Cersale is an international exhibition of architectural ceramics and bathroom furnishings held every September in Bologna, Italy. This year, 840 exhibitors, including 452 ceramic tile manufacturers and 181 bathroom furnishings firms, showed off their new designs. More than a third of the exhibitors and nearly half of the 112,104 visitors came from outside Italy.  Much of what was on display at Cersaie carried forward trends we’ve already been talking about. Other innovations — like a new approach to whirlpool bathtubs   — are responding to current needs or desires to live in smaller homes, disconnect and unwind, minimize consumption, and maximize personalization. Here are the hottest bathroom solutions for 2019. Fap Ceramiche 1. Mix-and-Match Tiles Why limit yourself to just one size and shade for your bathroom tiles? Now the imagination can run wild with wall finishes that can be combined in personalized designs. Companies are coming up with collections of tiles...

Based on an analysis of home-value data and mortgage rates at the ZIP code level, the Business Times has sorted the Bay Area’s ZIP codes by the minimum salaries required in order to purchase a medium-priced home there. Of the top 15, most are in San Mateo and Marin Counties, and four are in  San Francisco . Home to celebrities and CEOs, Atherton, Calif. topped the list both locally and nationally. Atherton has the country's most expensive homes with a median home value of $6.8 million, according to research compiled by Zillow Group. So what sort of salary does it take to gain entry to Atherton's housing market? Roughly $1.3 million a year, according to a Business Times analysis of home-value data and mortgage rates in more than 15,000 ZIP codes nationally. Atherton was the only neighborhood in the country with a minimum salary requirement of more than $1 million, according to the Business Times' findings. In Atherton, that monthly mortgage payment would equal about $32...

HOME  >  MONEY  >  MORTGAGE & FINANCE  >  MBA: MORTGAGE APPLICATIONS DROP 5.8% Mortgage & Finance December 20, 2018    0 Adobe Stock / Chaiyawat Mortgage applications fell 5.8% on a seasonally-adjusted basis from one week earlier for the week ending December 14th, 2018, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey. On an unadjusted basis, the Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, fell by 7% from the previous week. The Refinance Index fell 2% over the same period. The seasonally-adjusted Purchase Index fell 7% from the previous week, while the unadjusted Purchase Index fell 10%. “Despite mortgage rates falling across the board last week to their lowest levels in three months, mortgage applications also declined, as more potential borrowers likely stayed away because of ongoi...