https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/mortgage-lock-in-effect-january-housing-report/

https://curated.tncontentexchange.com/partners/pr_newswire/subject/surveys_polls_and_research/home-equity-holds-steady-around-u-s-during-fourth-quarter-as-housing-market-remains-strong/article_f1e2c572-5ba7-5aa7-87d0-84d0f48c64b4.html

https://www.nola.com/news/business/housing-market-saw-price-drops-in-2024-across-two-thirds-of-the-new-orleans-metro/article_5af115ce-dffe-11ef-9b5f-5b325ba66cb8.html

“Every time we’d crunch the numbers, the note was more than we could afford,” Candace Harris said. “On one house, the insurance premium was $13,000 — $500 a month over our budget.”

Insane premiums

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/78-000-california-condo-owners-to-see-major-insurance-rate-hike/ar-AA1ycRiX

Starting in April, Allstate will raise its average rates for condo insurance by 30%, according to a filing with the California Department of Insurance.

Allstate’s approximately 78,000 condo insurance customers in the state can expect to see their rates change at the first renewal date following April 1, the filing shows. Some may see their rates decline as much as 25%, while others will have their rates double. Filings show the majority of policyholders will see increases of 15% to 30%.

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"IN SOME WAYS, it’s useful for people to be priced out. The insurance market is one way of signaling where people shouldn’t live; more-expensive plans may divert people from high-risk areas. But as the insurance math becomes unworkable in wider swathes of the country, FAIR Plans won’t be a tenable solution. “We need to be dramatically rethinking how homeowners’ insurance works and what it covers,” he says.

One potential fix would be for the federal government to offer to provide insurance (called reinsurance) for FAIR Plans, essentially backstopping them if they don’t have enough money to pay out claims, says Jones, the former insurance commissioner. That would also help FAIR Plans save money on buying insurance from the private markets. Jones also suggests creating an Obamacare-style marketplace for home insurance, where the government could subsidize low- or moderate-income households buying insurance." Time Magazine The Price of Disaster

The first paragraph makes sense, the second doesn't. Why should the taxpayer bail out the insured when all they want to do is rebuild their homes in high-risk, uninsurable spaces?

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https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/alarming-number-millennials-have-more-debt-savings-how-turn-around

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-30/pending-sales-of-us-homes-fall-for-first-time-since-july

Pending sales of US homes declined last month for the first time since July, as high borrowing costs and prices especially hit the costliest parts of the country.

Contract signings fell 5.5% to 74.2 in December, according to a National Association of Realtors index released Thursday. The drop was weaker than all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists and was dragged most by the West and Northeast, which each saw their biggest monthly declines since 2022.

“Contract activity fell more sharply in the high-priced regions of the Northeast and West, where elevated mortgage rates have appreciably cut affordability,” Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, said in a statement. “It is unclear if heavier-than-usual winter precipitation impacted the timing of purchases.”

Mortgage rates that reached a two-year low of just above 6% in September have since rebounded to more than 7%. Meantime, home prices have continued to rise, although at a slower pace. Nationwide prices rose 3.8% in November compared with a year ago, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index of home prices.

Pending-homes sales tend to be a leading indicator for previously owned homes, as houses typically go under contract a month or two before they’re sold. Last month’s signings figures don’t bode well for the new year after 2024 marked the worst year in the home resale market since 1995.

Pending sales also dropped in the South, the biggest housing region, as well as the Midwest.

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https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/two-family-homes-multigenerational-housing-new-hampshire/?cid=eml__1946:66e221571a4446d4e6969d41:rm202501291130_Marketing_Consumer_Daily_EditorialRSSDynamic