Tag Archives: Competition

The housing market’s high-end segment saw the highest price appreciation in four years due to a shortage of inventory, a report found. How did it impact sales?

With low housing inventory and rising home prices, which city had most homebuyers putting more money down, have high credit scores, and start loan shopping before home shopping? Spoiler Alert: California cities take the top spots.

While 2015 was a prosperous year for lenders, a tougher mortgage market lies ahead in 2016. With the Fed hanging at least four rate hikes over the industry, this could place damper on origination business operations.

Regulators are hindering much-needed competition in the banking industry and placing consumers and taxpayers at risk, according to a report released on Thursday from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) titled "A Bird in the Hand and No Banks in the Bush." The report also noted that this lack of competition in banking furthers the same too-big-to-fail rationale that led to past bank bailouts.

A survey released by Redfin showed that nearly half the company's Northeast agents and about 40 percent of its Midwest agents believe competition among buyers will be far more fierce this spring. The bedrock of these beliefs lies in a combination of low inventory and an end to the winter hibernation among potential buyers in areas hit hard by the 2013-14 winter.

A look at buyers' and sellers' markets around the country from Zillow shows that the better job market in the West is drawing more buyers and driving up competition for homes in more economically stable cities, thus giving sellers the upper hand in home sales negotiations in western metro areas. Meanwhile, leverage for buyers is strongest in cities in the East and Midwest, where less competition for homes will likely give them more room for bargaining on prices.