The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has finalized the rent figures that will govern the Housing Choice Voucher program for the next year, and they take effect in less than a month. Those figures, called Fair Market Rents, set the ceiling on what a housing agency will subsidize toward a voucher holder’s rent,…

The share of Americans under 35 who own their home fell to 35.2 percent in the second quarter of 2026, down a full percentage point from 36.4 percent a year earlier. It was the only age bracket where the U.S. Census Bureau’s own statisticians flagged the year-over-year change as large enough to be meaningful rather…

The median asking rent for an empty apartment or rental home hit $1,531 in the second quarter of 2026, according to new Census Bureau data, and the share of rental units sitting vacant climbed to its highest second-quarter level since 2020. For the country’s renter households, that combination is unusual: asking rents are still climbing,…

The government’s inflation gauge and the country’s most closely watched home-price index moved in opposite directions again in June, and the gap between them has now persisted for more than a year. S&P Dow Jones Indices reported on August 25 that its national home price index rose 1.5 percent from a year earlier in June,…

The apartment market that punished renters with double-digit rent hikes a few years ago has quietly flipped in the other direction for more than half of the country’s largest cities. Apartment List’s latest national rent report puts the median U.S. apartment at $1,390 a month as of August, and in 52 of the 100 largest…

Anyone waiting for mortgage rates to finally break lower before buying a home or trading down to something smaller did not get the news they wanted in late August. The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage has settled just under 6.7 percent, hovering close to its highest level in about a year. For anyone…

One of the simplest tools for keeping a home in the family is also one of the least known: a transfer-on-death deed. In the states that allow it, this recorded document lets your house pass directly to the people you name when you die, skipping probate entirely. The heirs avoid the court delay and expense…

Housing remains the most stubborn piece of the inflation picture, with shelter costs climbing near 3.2 percent a year — faster than overall inflation and by far the largest line in most household budgets. For renters and homeowners alike, that steady rise is why the cost of living still feels tight even as prices for…

Housing agencies across the country are working against a deadline that lands in the first half of October. It was set on August 10, when HUD issued a four-page notice to every public housing agency that runs a voucher program, giving them 60 days to bring two special voucher programs back inside a rent ceiling…

A three-page notice filed in the Federal Register on August 10 carries a docket number, a bid window, and a dollar figure that stands in for roughly 1,500 American houses. The document is the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s second announcement of a loan sale it calls HNVLS 2026-1, and the loans inside it…