housing

Should I Sell My House Now?

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sell my home now

As the housing market appears to be peaking, at least for now, a number of people are pondering whether or not to sell their home. But, answering should I sell my house is not a simple question. Is Now the Right Time to Sell My House? Let’s start from the beginning. Assuming you only own one home, the one you live in, the question about whether or not to sell your house now is mostly moot. You need your house to live in. You need it to be in a certain location so that you can go to work, your kids can go to good schools, or so that you are near all the things you love to see and do. Reading too much financial news and information is no different than spending all day consuming “news.” Either way, you develop a warped sense of the world around you. You start seeing your life as a series of financial transactions. I used to see this as a financial planner with people who were doing just fine but were giving themselves ulcers by constantly evaluating their lives through their bank accounts. Your life is not a spreadsheet. Selling the place you …

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New Home Sales and Post Covid Life

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new home sales housing us

Here is a quick bit of news to inform how you look at investing and personal finance moving into a post-Covid world. New Home Sales Rise New home sales were up 19% annually. That is much more than predicted by analysts. There are few trends pushing the higher home sales and those same trends are worth noting across your investing. Covid knocked down the home buying market to basically zero, as showings were banned. Covid also made people more conservative and protective of their finances. Staying put seemed easier and less risky than trying to move. But… Now, as things move toward a post Covid mindset, buyers are looking for new homes. However, there is a very low supply of existing homes on the market, so one of the easy ways to buy a house is to buy new. That means that what existing homes do go on the market are selling for asking price or higher, and selling quickly because of all the demand. This is good news because that experience will lead others out of their cocoon to sell. This news obviously helps home builders, although that still remains a very risky investment. See Is Zelle Safe on …

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New Home Sales Up During Covid

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new housing

An interesting wrinkle in the new Covid economy showed up today. The U.S. Department of Commerce reported that new home sales in August rose by 4.8%, on top of a spike 13.9% in July. Buying New Homes Overall home sales are having difficulty in no small part because home buyers are reluctant to do several showings in a day in a Covid world. Those showings are what motivate buyers to purchase existing homes. Unlike existing home sales, new homes are typically sold via model homes. Model home are shiny, bright, and seem cleaner, even though more people may actually move through them each day. Furthermore, rather than having to see numerous homes to find the perfect one, buyers need only find a model they like. Builders then allow buyers to tweak that model. Low Mortgage Rates Record low mortgage rates are also helping drive sales for new construction. Unlike existing home sales that are dependent upon subjective appraisals, lenders can easily get a feel for the current value of the one of many new buildings a particular buyer looks to purchase. Is Zelle a scam? Finding a mortgage, however, even for new construction is getting harder. It turns out lenders …

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New Home Sales Rise

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Sales of new houses rose 7.3 percent, to 323,000 annual pace, the highest level in 2011. Of course, this comes on the heels of a record low just two months ago. New home sales statistics are quoted on an annual basis. In other words, if April’s new home sales numbers were what the new home sales numbers would be for every month of the year, how many new homes would be sold. So, the 323,000 new homes sold number means that there would be 323,000 new homes sold for the year. There are two important things about this latest economic data and how it will affect investors and the economy. First, the number is slightly higher than what economists were expecting. Any time a number surprises to the upside, that is good news, because it means that things were actually better than everyone thought. Second, while the number is higher, it is still very weak, meaning that IF the housing market is recovering, it is doing so very meekly. The big problem for new home sales is that there are so many existing homes for sale on the market today. Foreclosures and distressed owners continue to flood the housing market, …

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