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

CoreLogic® on Tuesday released the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI™) and HPI Forecast™ for July 2018, which show home prices rose both year over year and month over month. Home prices increased nationally by 6.2% year over year from July 2017 to July 2018. On a month-over-month basis, prices increased by 0.3% in July 2018 compared with June 2018. Looking ahead, the CoreLogic HPI Forecast indicates that the national home-price index is projected to continue to increase by 5.1% on a year-over-year basis from July 2018 to July 2019. On a month-over-month basis, home prices are expected to decrease by 0.2% from July to August 2018. “With increased interest rates and home prices, the CoreLogic Home Price Index is rising at a slower rate than it was earlier this year,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. “While markets in the western part of the country continue to experience rapid home-price growth, many of those metros are overvalued, and will l...

Data from  Metrostudy  and school district rankings from  Niche.com  suggest there is truth to the commonly held belief that home prices in top-rated U.S. school districts are higher than neighboring areas. On average, housing prices in counties with highly rated school districts were 25.09% higher than state averages. These numbers support existing research on the relationship between housing prices and school districts. Eli Beracha, a professor of real estate and finance at Miami-based  Florida  International University and a co-author on the 2018 paper “The Capitalization of School Quality into Renter and Owner Housing,” said a positive correlation exists between the two variables. “The literature is very clear and there is consistent evidence that better school quality, all other amenities equal, is correlated with housing prices,” Beracha says. “The magnitude [of the correlation] is different, it depends on how you control for other amenities, but...

There's solid job and wage growth, but spiraling housing costs and high taxes paint a mixed picture for California’s giant economy – in dollar terms now rated the fifth-largest in the world. Retail giant Amazon is hiring hundreds of people for its massive new warehouse in Fresno, a $77-billion high-speed rail system between Los Angeles and San Francisco is under construction, and carmaker Tesla is supporting tens of thousands of jobs in the state – all typical of the high-powered industrial activity taking place within the state. But liberal California faces a relatively hostile federal government in Washington that is critical of the state’s relatively lenient attitude toward immigration. It is also dealing with a scarcity of affordable housing as well as an exodus of businesses, including prominent ones like Toyota and Jacobs Engineering Group, and threats by more companies to pull up stakes if taxes and other costs of operating keep rising.

Katherine Flynn for AIA  ARCHITECT reports that San Francisco is adding more jobs faster than it is adding housing by a factor of eight. Median house prices have risen $205,000 in the last seven months. Rents are up 43% over the last decade. Where will it end? San Francisco’s affordable housing crisis peaked between 2007 and 2014, a period of huge demand and low supply. During that time, Bay Area municipalities issued building permits for only half the number of housing units needed to accommodate its rapidly growing workforce. Currently there is one available unit of housing for every 10 available jobs in the nine-county  San Francisco Bay Area . But area activists, advocates, and architects hope to change that ratio through new infill strategies, one existing land parcel at a time. Demand for housing is only going to continue to trend upward. No one—including current residents, employers, urbanists, and housing advocates—is questioning the fact that the area needs more ...

Builders who have dealt with impact and entitlement fee shock for years in such places as California, Colorado, and, more recently, Florida have grown to be almost philosophically resigned about such dislocations in costs. "There's nothing we're going to be able to do about this issue," many of them conclude. In fact, town officials, council men and women, and other local decision makers can get elected based on "no growth" or "slow growth" positions on planning for the futur e. Now, if men and women get votes and win elections based on their activist advocacy of slow-growth or no-growth local policies, do you think anybody would win an election based on solid planning that would result in a really good teacher's ability to afford to buy a home in the district? In communities all over the United States, local policy--the single biggest influence on residential development and home building's enormous regulatory burden--homeowners mo...

First-time buyers entering the market are going to have a tough time with current starter prices, considering they are at the highest prices since 2008. In the second quarter of the year, first-time buyers needed nearly 23% of their income to afford a typical entry-level home, a number up from 21% last year. The lower end of the market is also challenged with decreasing supply and rising mortgage rates. T he most expensive markets are  New York  and  San Francisco  — where the median household needed to spend about 65 percent of its income to purchase a home. Those cities were followed by  Los Angeles , at 59 percent, and  Miami , at 55 percent. Broadly, it’s getting more expensive to buy a house across the market. A previous report noted affordability fell to the lowest level since late 2008. In May, the median price of a previously owned homes rose to a record $264,800.

The kitchen is one of the most important rooms in any home.  Here are the several trends identified as hot in kitchen design: A Hint of Color  More color – such as deep navy, olive and grey – used in cabinetry,” says Soto. Touch-Activated Faucets A simple touch anywhere on the spout or kitchen faucet handle with your wrist or forearm activates the flow of water, making it easier to entertain for friends and loved ones. Deep Single-Basin Sinks Deeper, one basin sinks make soaking and washing dishes – especially larger pots and roasting pans – much easier. Slab Backsplashes Whether your kitchen is ultra-modern or traditional, the seamless look of a slab backsplash is classic and streamlined,  In smaller kitchens, the lack of grout lines helps the space appear more open and the backsplash clean and refined. Matte Black Finishes From faucets to hardware, matte black in the kitchen is a classic and versatile finish that can work on many different styles,.