Council on Foreign Relations (August 25)
“American homeowners already coping with extreme weather now face a new risk: disappearing property insurance. Private companies have increasingly reduced coverage, concluding that the risks—and potential losses—threatened by climate change outweigh probable profits. As of now, this primarily affects a handful of coastal U.S. states, including California. In other states, insurers have substantially increased the price of property insurance.”
Tags: California, Climate change, Coastal, Coverage, Extreme weather, Homeowners, Potential losses, Private companies, Profits, Property insurance, Risks, U.S.
Wall Street Journal (July 20)
“With American homeowners “reluctant to sell because they can’t afford to give up the low mortgage rates they have now,” homebuyers are increasingly turning to new construction. Just over a million existing homes were on the market at May 31, a record low. In contrast, “newly built homes accounted for nearly one-third of single-family homes for sale nationwide in May, compared with a historical norm of 10% to 20%.” This marks “another example of how this housing market is behaving like no other.”
Tags: Construction, Existing, Homebuyers, Homeowners, Housing market, Mortgage rates, Newly built, Record, Reluctant, Sell, Single family, U.S.
The Street (November 11)
“Amid record low inventory and sky-high demand, the average American home now sits on the market for only seven days — a phenomenon that is pushing many homeowners into moving quickly.” The National Association of Realtors found “the time that a home spent on the market before going into contract” hit a record low of “seven days between July 2020 and June 2021.”
Chicago Tribune (September 7)
“Homeowners located in areas that are expected to flood every 100 years are required to buy flood insurance…. But they pay rates far lower than the risks warrant. That gap deprives builders of incentives to stay out of low-lying areas that are vulnerable to flooding — or to elevate structures to keep them dry when the waters rise. It also promotes the destruction of wetlands that could reduce flooding. Oh, and it helps to tilt migration toward vulnerable coastal regions like those of Texas and Florida.”
Tags: Builders, Coastal regions, Destruction, Flood, Florida, Homeowners, Insurance, Rates, Texas, Vulnerable, Wetlands
Boston Globe (October 25)
The state’s Supreme Judicial Court sent shock waves through the real estate industry last week. In a ruling which could impact thousands of other home purchases, the Court ruled that a man who purchased a foreclosed property five years ago “doesn’t actually hold title to the property…because the bank had illegally seized the property from its former owner.” Big banks failed to follow “the most basic, common-sense aspects of the law.” Now a cloud hangs over other homeowners who could face the same situation.
Tags: Banks, Foreclosures, Homeowners, Law
New York Times (August 25)
President Obama should push to see that underwater homeowners, whose home values are less than the balance of their loans, are able to refinance their mortgages at lower rates. There will be opposition, but “the public benefit from fewer defaults and foreclosures—along with the impact of more consumer spending—should trump any benefit derived from squeezing every last penny of interest from homeowners.”
Tags: Consumer spending, Economy, Homeowners, Mortgage, Obama, U.S.