Tag Archives: Zillow

The housing market has been seeing some noticeable changes this year as home values move upward. According to the May Zillow Real Estate Market Reports, bidding wars are pushing home values up in the nation’s most popular housing markets, although home values are not anywhere near their peak points during the real estate bubble in smaller markets.

When purchasing a home, it’s important to consider the extra or hidden costs. Many homeowners are blissfully unaware of just how much these additional fees can costs on top of their mortgage. Zillow and Thumbtack recently released a study that found homeowners can pay more than $9,000 in hidden and home maintenance costs every year.

Borrowers who owe more money to banks than their home is worth is slowing decreasing, however more than half of these borrowers are stuck in an underwater free fall with little to no hope of resurfacing. According to Zillow’s first quarter Negative Equity Report released today, although the negative equity rate is falling, more than half or 4 million homeowners owed the bank at least 20 percent more than the worth of their home.

Zillow released a mortgage analysis of loan requests and quotes finding that borrowers with loans of $100,000 pay 10 percent more for every dollar borrowed due to higher interest rates and fees compared to borrowers with $400,000 home loans. Furthermore, borrowers with small loans tend to have trouble finding lenders to lend to them.

According to a study released by Zillow, low income and rising home values have made homeownership unaffordable and unattainable for the country’s lowest paid workers. Over the past two years, one-third of Americans have not been able to afford homes due to low wages. As the housing market recovered, incomes did not.

Affordability is worst in fast growing cities that have fallen behind in building homes to keep up with population growth. Currently the average U.S. homebuyer can expect to spend 15.3 percent of their monthly income on a mortgage payment.

Florida and the Midwest have some markets with more than a quarter of mortgaged homes underwater. Home values rose 5.9 percent nationally last year, making low-end homes far more likely to be worth less than the balance of their mortgage. While the percentage of mortgages that are in negative equity nationally is at 16.9 percent as of the fourth quarter of 2014, the negative equity rate among low end homes is much higher at 27.3 percent. The national negative equity rate is expected to fall to 15.4 percent by the end of 2015.

Renter confidence rose 4.4 points from last year to 62.4, with roughly 5.2 million renters saying they expect to buy a home this year. That’s an increase of 1 million from last year, when 4.2 million renters said they expect to buy a home. Homeowner confidence rose 3.3 points from last year to 70.6.

Mortgage credit availability reached its peak in August 2004, recording an index score of 134.6. Access began to drop over the next several years. Then, in May 2007, both the housing and mortgage availability began a multiple year plunge, leaving home values down more than 22 percent and credit the tightest it had been in years. In September 2010, the ZMAI bottomed out at 9.6. Today, the ZMAI currently sits at 71.5 and access to mortgage credit has improved significantly, and is roughly two-thirds of the way back to the 2002 pre-crisis level of 100.

The current 30-year fixed mortgage rate on Zillow mortgages has taken a slight dip down to 3.76 percent after reaching a 13-week high of 3.85 percent on Tuesday.