Chuck Barberini Real Estate

  The Pandemic Roiled the Housing Market—but Small Signs Show It’s Finally Bouncing Back It’s no secret that the pandemic upended the housing market—and the fallout is still reverberating today, affecting homebuyers  and  sellers. A quick recap: In the past four years, list prices shot up, the number of properties on the market plunged, and home sales dropped dramatically. “Some of the problems that existed before the pandemic were magnified,” says Realtor.com® Chief Economist  Danielle Hale . “We had a housing shortage, and that probably was exacerbated by COVID-19 as builders struggled to build and housing demand went through the roof.” And who could forget mortgage rates, which fell to record lows during the pandemic before rebounding—and then some. “The sharp drop in mortgage rates that we saw as policymakers tried to shore up the economy caused a lot of people to choose to move,” Hale explains. “Those movers are now locked into mortgage rates that are much lower than today’s mortg

 Co-Buying, Compromises, And Home Tour Burnout: 2023 First-Time Homebuyers More than three-quarters of today’s first-time homebuyers are making their first home purchase with a co-buyer. And about a third are co-buying with a parent, friend, or sibling. That’s according to Opendoor’s third edition of its First-Time Homebuyer Report, released on March 5, 2024. Thanks to ongoing challenges with housing affordability, co-buying has become fairly common among first-time homebuyers. First-time buyers are purchasing homes— With a spouse/partner: 61% On their own: 23% With parents: 16% With friends: 11% With siblings: 7% First-time buyers who were co-buying with friends tended to tour 20-plus homes (45%) and to argue with their co-buyer about what home to buy (49%). 2023 brought a 35% increase in the number of first-time buyers purchasing a home on their own, but the co-buying trend is growing. More than one in ten first-time homebuyers co-purchased a home with a friend (11%). And the majorit

Know how “location, location, location” has always been the number one priority (generally speaking) when it comes to buying a property? Well, according to a new Coldwell Banker survey, price is now more important for over half the surveyed consumers (56%), leaving location in second place (50%). Also, according to survey results, women (60%) are more likely than men (48%) to value a home’s price more than its location. But even with the stronger emphasis on affordability, 31% of consumers who bought a home last year (2023) bought their dream home. And among those planning to sell in the future, nearly two-thirds (66%) plan to relocate to a different city, state, or country. While many consumers made their dream home purchase last year, the data show that some desire to seek new horizons. For those still looking for their dream home – no matter their price range, whether nearby or afar – I encourage them to contact a real estate agent for local advice and context. The Coldwell Banker b

The income today’s homebuyers need to buy a typical U.S. home has grown 80% since 2020. Or, put another way, today’s homebuyer needs to earn a minimum of roughly $106,500 a year to afford a home purchase—about $47,000 more than they needed four years ago. A new Zillow report highlights the disparity between wage growth and the increase in the cost of buying a home from 2020 to the end of 2023. And while home prices have grown faster than wages, today’s mortgage rates are also responsible for monthly housing costs that are nearly twice what homebuyers paid in 2020. The most affordable markets for homebuyers are Pittsburgh, Memphis, and Cleveland. And, no surprise, California leads U.S. metros with the highest incomes required to afford a home. WAGES HAVE NOT KEPT UP WITH THE INCREASE IN HOUSING COSTS To comfortably afford a typical U.S. home, today’s home buyer needs to earn more than $106,000 a year—80% more than they needed in 2020. Meanwhile, the median U.S. household income has grow

  A new Redfin report on the value of the U.S. housing market shows a $2 trillion annual gain. In percentage terms, the total value of U.S. homes rose 5% over the last 12 months, marking the biggest increase in almost a year. The housing shortage has plenty to do with that. But some metros—most notably affordable East Coast and Midwest markets—are seeing home values rise by wider margins, while pricier metros and pandemic boomtowns are reporting year-over-year declines. The U.S. housing market has grown in value by $2.4 trillion over the past year, raising its total value to $47.5 trillion. Those figures are based on an analysis of the Redfin Estimate for over 90 million residential properties as of December 2023, showing a total value increase of 5.3% since December 2022, marking the biggest year-over-year value increase in 11 months. The total value of U.S. homes is also up 13.3% ($5.6 trillion) compared to two years ago. Buyer demand has slowed due to high mortgage rates and afforda