The current housing recovery is an uneasy one. Even as it unfolds before our eyes, with home sales and prices steadily rising and talk of underwater homes giving way to talk of bubbles, there is a sense that something is very wrong. According to Lawrence Yun, the Chief Economist for the National Association of Realtors, the recovery’s missing link is that there are too few … [Read more...]

The days when you had to build your own home are long gone, but many Americans still pride themselves on doing their own handywork. With roughly 300 billion dollars spent on home improvement last year, there is plenty of work to keep both us and the professionals busy. Doing a project by yourself is estimated to save between 25% and 50%, but doing it yourself requires time and … [Read more...]

By Issi Romem, BuildZoom Chief Economist *** Note (October 6, 2015): an earlier version of this blog post reported figures obtained by comparing search results on Zillow.com and on Realtor.com within the core cities of the 51 largest metros. However, because the geographic boundaries associated with each city differ on the two websites, sometimes substantially, we have revised … [Read more...]

On April 7th, the freshly minted Zillow Group lost its single-most important source of home sale listings when ListHub terminated its agreements with both Zillow and Trulia, raising concerns that their joint coverage would be devastated. The termination of the agreements marks the latest skirmish in the war between Zillow Group and Move.com, which owns both Realtor.com and … [Read more...]