Chuck Barberini Real Estate

  “Just Thinking" OK, Daylight Saving Time starts this weekend. Daylight Saving Time (DST) exists because of a long-running attempt to shift human activity to better match daylight hours — mainly to save energy and make more use of natural light. I hate it. Just let it roll. Although I did read a good meme that said, “Great, an extra hour of sleep… to get up and take a leak.” Another thing, “spring forward and fall back.” Is supposed to explain everything, right? I never truly got it. I just knew that in my younger days football practice would end earlier, and later in my 20s we’d try to convince the bartender to stay open an extra hour on Saturday night, since the time officially fell back at 1:00 a.m. Sunday morning. I remember that it was always attributed to Ben Franklin who somehow found time between harnessing electricity, writing Poor Richard’s Almanack, helping to draft the Declaration of Independence, and serving as ambassador to France he talked about it way back in 1784...

    If you stepped back from your home search over the past few years, you’re not alone – and you’re definitely not out of options. In fact, now might be the ideal time to take another look. With more homes to choose from, prices leveling off in many areas, and mortgage rates easing, today’s market is offering something you haven’t had in a while: options. Experts agree, buyers are in a better spot right now than they’ve been in quite a long time. Here’s what they have to say. Affordability Is Finally Improving   Lisa Sturtevant, Chief Economist at  Bright MLS , says affordability is finally starting to turn the corner: “Slower price growth coupled with a slight drop in mortgage rates will improve affordability and create a window for some buyers to get into the market.”  Mortgage rates have eased from their recent highs, price growth has slowed, and that one-two combo is making homes  more affordable  than they’ve been in months. There Are More Homes ...

  Check Out This Weeks Newsletter Buying a home shouldn’t feel like a horror movie, but for many Americans, it does. High prices, low inventory, and rising costs have made today’s market frightening enough that ghosts barely make the list of dealbreakers. Slap on the right price, and a lot of buyers would overlook a small thing like a haunting. But add some funky smells, spider webs, and suspicious wall stains, and those same buyers will nope right out the door. That’s one of the big takeaways from a new  Real Estate Witch  survey: more than half of U.S. buyers say they’d purchase a haunted house. And most would do it for a discount. But anything that smells like “this would be expensive to fix” is a big no. Turns out, the real horrors in housing aren’t supernatural. They’re financial. Haunted Homes and Unbothered Buyers Nearly one in five Americans (19%) believe they’ve lived in a haunted home, and a growing number are fine with it. A full 25% of those who’ve shared spac...

    Mortgage rates have been the monster under the bed for a while. Every time they tick up, people flinch and say,  “Maybe I’ll wait.”  But here’s the twist. Waiting for that perfect 5-point-something rate could end up haunting your wallet later. The Magic Number According  to the  National Association of Realtors  (NAR): “. . . a 30-year fixed rate mortgage of 6% would make the median-priced home affordable for about 5.5 million more households—including 1.6 million renters.  If rates were to hit that magic number, it’s likely that about 10%—or 550,000—of those additional households would buy a home over the next 12 or 18 months. ” When the market hits that mortgage rate sweet spot, as  expert forecasters  are starting to say is more likely in 2026, the psychological shift to lower rates will kick in for more of today’s hopeful buyers. That will unleash some pent-up demand that’s been waiting on the sidelines, and the increase in activ...

    A few years ago, inventory hit a record low. Just about anything sold – and fast. But now, there are far more homes on the market. Listings are up  almost 20%  from this time last year. And in some areas, supply is even back to levels we last saw in 2017–2019. For sellers, that means one thing: Your house needs to stand out and grab attention from day one. That’s especially true when you consider  why  the number of homes for sale   is up. Here’s how it works. Available inventory is a mix of:  Active Listings:  homes that have been sitting on the market, but haven’t sold yet New Listings:  homes that were just put on the market Data  from  Realtor.com  shows most of the inventory growth lately is actually from active listings that are staying on the market and taking longer to sell ( see the graph below ). The blue bars show active listings. These are the homes that are sitting month to month and not selling. The green...

  Scroll through your feed and you’ll see plenty of finger-pointing about why homes cost so much. And according to a national survey, a lot of people believe big investors are to blame. Even though data shows that’s not true, nearly half of Americans surveyed ( 48% ) think investors are the top reason housing feels so expensive  ( see graph below ): But that theory doesn’t actually hold up once you look at the data. The Truth About Investors Investors do play a role in the housing market, especially in certain areas. But they’re not buying up all the homes like so many people on social media say. Nationwide,  Realtor.com  found only 2.8% of all home purchases last year were made by big investors (who own more than 50 properties).  That means roughly 97% of homes were bought and sold by regular people, not corporate giants. Danielle Hale, Chief Economist at  Realtor.com , explains: “Investors do own significant shares of the housing stock in some neighborhoo...

“Just Thinking" I had a little extra time on my hands this week and was reflecting on some of the decisions that I made in my life and, weather good or bad, how they led to where I am now. The truth is that it is never just the one choice that we make, but the choice, plus the subsequential choices that pave the path of the road that we travel.  As Yogi Berra said, when you come to a fork in the road, take it. People have interpreted this advice about making decisions as to not getting stuck in indecision. I reality Yogi used this phrase when giving directions to his home in Montclair, New Jersey. The road leading to his house literally split into two paths that both ended up at his driveway so no matter which fork you took, you’d arrive at the same place. Our Lives are filled with daily moments that seem small or insignificant at the time, a decision, a conversation, a simple yes or no. Yet it is often these moments that shape the directions that our lives take, that we would nev...