Comfortably affording the typical home purchase in the U.S. now takes close to $99,800 a year in household income, according to Zillow’s July housing data. That’s the income needed to cover a mortgage payment on a typical home without spending more than 30% of earnings on housing, the standard affordability threshold lenders and researchers generally…

Builders pulled permits for new apartment buildings at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 490,000 units in July, according to the Census Bureau and HUD’s joint construction report, down roughly 31% from where multifamily permitting stood at its 2022 peak. That’s a federal number, not a real estate company’s estimate, and it points at what…

Two out of every five rental listings on Zillow offered some kind of concession in July, whether that’s a free month, waived fees, or a gift card for signing a lease. That’s up from roughly one in three a year ago, even as rents themselves are rising at their fastest pace in more than a…

The typical rent on a single-family house rose 3% over the past year, while the typical rent on an apartment climbed just 1.7%, according to Zillow’s July rental report. That’s nearly double the pace, and it marks a break from the past two years, when a historic wave of new apartment construction kept multifamily rents…

When HUD sets a fair market rent for an area, that number becomes the ceiling a Housing Choice Voucher will cover there for the entire fiscal year, whether or not the local housing authority thinks it reflects what units actually rent for. This year’s notice includes a formal way to challenge that number before it…

Freddie Mac’s weekly mortgage survey, released September 3, 2026, put the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 6.71 percent, and the 15-year fixed-rate loan at 6.04 percent. Both numbers are higher than the week before, and both are higher than where rates sat a year ago. For anyone house-hunting or trying to time a refinance, the…

Not every voucher-assisted household needs a full apartment. Some HUD-funded housing covers a single furnished room with shared bathroom or kitchen facilities, and the agency prices that unit type differently than anything else in its rent schedule. Under the fiscal year 2027 fair market rents HUD published September 1, 2026, effective October 1, a single-room-occupancy…

Every October, the Department of Housing and Urban Development recalculates the rent ceilings that decide how much a Housing Choice Voucher will actually cover, and this year’s update takes effect October 1, 2026. Most of that math tracks what a family would really pay to rent a two-bedroom apartment nearby. But once a household needs…

The government’s broadest measure of home values rose just 2.1 percent over the year ending in June, the smallest year-over-year gain the Federal Housing Finance Agency has logged for a second quarter in more than a decade. If you already own a home, that slowdown is quietly changing how much equity you can borrow against.…

A veteran who loses a job and falls behind on a VA-backed mortgage does not automatically lose the house — that is the message the Department of Veterans Affairs is putting directly in front of borrowers this month. VA says a missed payment starts a process a homeowner can still work through, not an ending.…