When is the best time to sell my house? It is one of the most common questions I am asked as an "expert" in housing. Assuming that one has the choice of timing the decision to sell one’s home, much of the decision has to do with the amount of equity that has built up since purchasing the house, the return on the investment. Traditional measures of ... Read More ›

Aristotle said, “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” While people are naturally drawn to the idea of an equal society, the truth of the matter is that it is quite rare, sometimes seemingly impossible. The question is determining when inequality has gone too far, and by what standards of measurement. Read More ›

In case you hadn’t heard last week, a Twitter debate exploded between the well-known rapper B.o.B and the also, although possibly not equally, well-known astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. The debate centered on B.o.B’s belief that the world is actually flat and Tyson’s scientifically reasoned explanation of how we know the world is actually ... Read More ›

In December 2015, the Federal Reserve raised the target range for the federal funds rate for the first time in almost a decade. At the time, there was much discussion regarding the impact this move would have on the still burgeoning housing recovery, specifically through higher mortgage rates and an increased cost of borrowing. Initially, it ... Read More ›

In November 2015, real-estate-owned (REO) sales as a share of all residential home sales remained steady on a month-to-month basis, moving up slightly to 8.2 percent from 8.0 percent in October on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. On a year-over-year basis, this was a decrease of 1.2 percentage points when compared to November 2014, which had an ... Read More ›

For the month of December, First American’s proprietary Potential Home Sales model (previously called the Existing-Home Sales Capacity model) showed that the market potential for existing-home sales increased by 0.5 percent compared to November and decreased by 5.1 percent compared to a year ago. The Potential Home Sales model provides a gauge on ... Read More ›