Devin Meenan

Above, a screenshot from one of Homes.com’s new ads featuring Dan Levy of “Schitt’s Creek” fame and SNL’s Heidi Gardner.  During one of America’s most enduring traditions, Super Bowl Sunday, Homes.com plans to make history, regardless of who takes home the championship trophy.  Through four commercials reaching some 113 million viewers, the rapidly ascending real…

What region of the country is seeing the most booming real estate market? While the South seems to be the obvious answer currently—with lower taxes and booming industries a natural draw to homebuyers—data suggests 17 out of 20 Sun Belt states are actually overvalued, a tell that a market at least isn’t cold.  Research by…

Six federal agencies—including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)—recently announced a new standard of quality controls for automated valuation models, or AVMs, as used by mortgage originators and secondary market issuers. AVMs are algorithms that can estimate a property’s value using large…

Editor’s note: The COURT REPORT is RISMedia’s weekly look at current and upcoming lawsuits, investigations and other legal developments around real estate. The latest legal proceedings ranged from class-action lawsuits targeted specifically at the real estate industry to wide-ranging national decisions that will include housing in its wake. NAR’s petition for rehearing with DOJ has…

High housing costs are one of the greatest burdens facing Americans today—and President Joe Biden and his administration have announced a new plan to deal with rising costs that are keeping prospective buyers from achieving the American Dream of homeownership. The proposal, first reported by the Washington Post, would institute a nationwide rule designed to…

Editor’s Note: The Mortgage Mix is RISMedia’s weekly highlight reel of need-to-know mortgage-industry happenings. Watch for it each Friday afternoon. As of July 11, 2024, the average 30-year mortgage rate is 6.89% (down from 6.95% the previous week). The 15-year rate is 6.17% (down from 6.25%).  For mortgage rates to come down, interest rates will…

During the first half of 2024, 177,431 properties in the U.S. had foreclosure filings, according to the Mid-Year 2024 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report from ATTOM Data. This figure represents one in every 794 housing units in the United States.  These rates are down 4.4% from where foreclosures were in 2023—but up 7.8% from where they…

Steve Capezza is the first and current president of brokerage platform Side, which offers member agents/brokers a suite of technology services they can use to grow their companies. He believes that Side’s collaborative nature is one of the many things that makes it stand out in the industry. In this exclusive interview, RISMedia speaks with…

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testified before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, mostly dodging questions about rate cuts while being pressed by lawmakers on housing affordability, inventory and a wobbly commercial real estate market. Powell struck a measured tone; he did not offer a timeframe on when the Fed might lower…

Several mortgage companies were beset by cyberattacks in 2023, and as real estate companies carry valuable customer information, this makes them valuable targets. If you’re on a team, you share the risk with your teammates. There’s a plethora of good options out there to firm up your business cybersecurity, including group-focused options that will ensure…

Inventory is a consistent hurdle to the housing market, and a hurdle to increasing inventory is a lower-than-needed amount of new construction. In June 2024, new housing starts were reported as being at a four-year low. The University of California Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation has looked at this issue in a new paper…