Homes are getting more affordable. Families earning the median household income of $61,500 could afford to buy 53.8 percent of all new and existing homes sold nationwide during the first three months of 2008, according to the Housing Opportunity Index released this week by Wells Fargo and the National Association of Home Builders. That’s up from 44 percent during the first three months of 2007 and the most affordable housing has been since the second quarter of 2004. This trend is a result of home prices falling off record highs, […]

We frequently hear and read news reports and statistics about what is going on nationally in the real estate market. I don’t really believe there is any such thing as a “nationalâ€? real estate market. Different parts of the country behave very differently when it comes to real estate and different factors affect areas in vastly different ways. For instance, turmoil in the car industry could have a devastating affect on the housing market in Michigan and surrounding states and no affect at all in the market in Georgia or […]

The Real Estate consulting company, Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, sees some positive signs in the housing market. They site their optimism on housing starts posting monthly increases and single family permits posting a positive gain in April. One thing of note is the comment about housing affordability being the highest it has been in years. This is a fancy way of saying homes are cheaper than they’ve been in a long long time, and as investors we like cheap houses. While March housing data showed that the sales environment for […]