James Rodriguez

Airbnb investors are flocking to South Texas, where they see a chance to capitalize on relatively cheap homes and proximity to Musk’s SpaceX.

A year after Zillow’s home-flipping business flamed out in stunning fashion, Opendoor is battling its own challenges as the housing market cools.

Experts warned in the spring that home flippers could face trouble if the housing market were to suddenly cool. That’s exactly what happened.

A handful of startups believe they can overcome slim margins and regulatory barriers to bring down-payment help to the masses.

Lenders need to make it easier for people with lousy credit to get a mortgage and buy a home — though that will result in more foreclosures.

Highly-paid remote workers drove up house prices during the pandemic. But they’re flocking to cities where it’s easier to build cheaper homes.

When my roommate and I stumbled across an online listing for a spacious, reasonably priced two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s East Village, we figured it was too good to be true. At an open house a few days later, we confirmed that it had practically everything we wanted: soaring ceilings, beautifully aged hardwood, and windows facing a tree-lined street that let in ample light. We were sure there had to be a catch. The owner of the apartment, a soft-spoken former banker named Phil, delivered…

Buying a home has never been simple. Sites like Zillow and Trulia can make it easier to search for houses online, but even if you find the right home, that’s just the start. To get an offer together, you’ll want to consult an agent, apply for a mortgage, and try to figure out how much you can reasonably stretch your budget. Even after making the financial pitch, you’ll find a crowd of middlemen waiting with outstretched hands: brokers, inspectors, appraisers, loan processors, credit companies, a…

On Tuesday afternoon at a courthouse in Kansas City, Missouri, the collective nightmare of the real-estate industry became reality.For decades, the basic structure of how real-estate agents get paid when they help someone buy or sell their home has remained roughly the same. But over the past few years, some of the most powerful organizations in the business — the National Association of Realtors and several of the country’s largest brokerages — have been fighting two multibillion-dollar class-a…

When I met the villains of America’s housing market a couple of years ago, it wasn’t in some ivory tower or on a private island. Instead, the gathering of the country’s most-reviled homebuyers took place at a reasonably plush hotel in the desert near Phoenix. The attendees were employees and executives of single-family-rental companies: a relatively new constellation of private-equity funds, publicly traded firms, and obscure corporations that were spending tens of billions of dollars to scoop u…

The digital renderings of North Bayshore, a massive proposed development in Mountain View, California, are crowded with glistening buildings and cheerful, animated pedestrians. There’s a lot to show off, including 7,000 new homes, three distinct neighborhoods, and nearly 300,000 square feet of retail and community space. Notably, though, the gleaming images don’t bear any hints of the company behind the whole endeavor: Google.Companies like Google and Facebook’s parent, Meta, conquered the digit…

Things are not OK in Realtorland. The US housing market is still reeling from pandemic-era shocks, home sales are stuck in a rut, and mortgage rates, while inching downward, are still near two-decade highs. It’s a bad time to be a buyer, and maybe a worse time to be a seller.Despite all this upheaval, there’s another story brewing in which the stakes for everyone in real estate, from agents to the average consumer, are even higher. It won’t have anything to do with the debate over whether you sh…

You can’t talk about the housing shortage or runaway home prices without boomers on the brain.Baby boomers dominate America’s housing market. Members of the “Me” generation own nearly $19 trillion worth of US real estate — more than double the amount held by millennials and about $5 trillion more than Gen Xers. Their massive land grab has continued well into their twilight years as they’ve used their mountains of savings and accumulated equity to edge out younger buyers.But as the generation age…

Almost as soon as home prices began their unprecedented climb in 2020, doomsayers began warning of a looming crisis. The housing market, they claimed, was a bubble destined to burst.A litany of supposed catalysts was going to send prices into a tailspin: the “Airbnbust,” the sudden surge in mortgage rates, a flood of grifters and hucksters looking to make a quick buck in real estate. Bubble watchers forecast chaos, then sat back and waited. And waited. And waited.I’ve spent the past few years as…

It was shortly before Christmas 2021 when Kennis Schummer received a letter that changed his life.Schummer, a 64-year-old jingle writer turned retail manager, had seen the value of his modest ranch-style home near Pensacola, Florida, balloon during the pandemic. Like a lot of homeowners, Schummer was keen to convert some of his theoretical wealth into real cash. His home needed a new roof and floors, and friends sometimes joked that it was “stuck in the ’70s,” but tapping into the amassed equity…

The last month of 2020 should’ve been a happy time for real-estate agents. The catastrophe of the pandemic had turned into an improbable housing-market boom, as home sales reached 14-year highs. But instead of celebrating their unexpectedly prosperous year, a lot of agents were pissed.In private chats and message boards, they complained about new rules that would publicly expose their commissions. For homebuyers, the amount an agent gets paid has historically been out of sight, out of mind. But…

Things are about to get weird for homebuyers and sellers.I wrote late last year that 2024 would mark the beginning of a great experiment in real estate that would upend the way homebuyers and sellers pay their agents. Well, the experiment officially got underway Friday when the National Association of Realtors agreed to a $418 million settlement to bring to an end a series of class-action lawsuits over agent commissions.The settlement came after a yearslong battle in which hundreds of thousands…

There’s a popular saying in real estate: “Marry the house, date the rate.” In other words, you’re stuck with the home you buy, but mortgage rates are fickle — you borrow money at one rate, then someday you refinance and get a better one, shaving hundreds of dollars off your monthly payments.But as anyone swiping on the apps will tell you, dating isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. That’s especially true for anxious buyers who are holding out hope that high rates will soon drop. Like hopeless romant…

Landlords have a lot of built-in leverage over renters. Moving is a pain, so tenants are more likely to accept rent hikes. Developing new apartments is expensive and time-consuming, which makes it tough for competitors to enter the market. Even during shaky periods for the economy, rents tend to hold steady or even climb — people still need to live somewhere.Over the past few years, the playing field tilted further in favor of landlords. Rents soared thanks to a shortage of apartment units, remo…

Austin Whitt has seen a lot in his six years as a real-estate agent. He weathered the pandemic in Tennessee, slinging homes in the Nashville area and training new Realtors as they piled into the industry. But twice in the past month, Whitt has encountered a rare sight: a buyer without an agent. In his years of listing homes for sale, Whitt had come across this kind of rugged individualist only once before. Sure, the recent run-ins may have been a coincidence, a blip. But given the seismic change…