If you’re a homeowner, odds are your equity has grown significantly over the last few years as home prices skyrocketed and you made your monthly mortgage payments. Home equity builds over time and can help you achieve certain goals. According to the latest Equity Insights Report from CoreLogic, the average borrower with a home loan has almost $300,000 in equity right now.
As you weigh your options, especially in the face of inflation and talk of a recession, it’s important to understand your assets and how you can leverage them. A real estate professional is the best resource to help you understand how much home equity you have and advise you on some of the ways you can use it.  Here are a few examples.
1. Buy a Home That Fits Your Needs
If you no longer have the space you need, it might be time to move into a larger home. Or it’s possible you have too much space and need something. ...

With all the headlines and talk in the media about the shift in the housing market, you might be thinking this is a housing bubble. It’s only natural for those thoughts to creep in that make you think it could be a repeat of what took place in 2008. But the good news is, there’s concrete data to show why this is nothing like the last time.
There’s Still a Shortage of Homes on the Market Today, Not a Surplus
For historical context, there were too many homes for sale during the housing crisis (many of which were short sales and foreclosures), and that caused prices to fall dramatically. Supply has increased since the start of this year, but there’s still a shortage of inventory available overall, primarily due to almost 15 years of underbuilding homes.
The graph below uses data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) to show how the months’ supply of homes available now compares to the crash. Today, unsold ...

If you’re thinking about selling your house but wondering if buyers are still out there, know that there are still people who are searching for a home to buy today. And your house may be exactly what they’re looking for.
While the millennial generation has been dubbed the renter generation, that namesake may not be appropriate anymore. Millennials, the largest generation, are actually a significant driving force for buyer demand in the housing market today. Here’s why.
Millennial Homebuying Power
While there’s no denying higher mortgage rates are making it more challenging to afford a home today, many millennials are still eager and able to buy homes – whether it’s their first or they’re moving up. That’s in large part because of the value they place on education.
A recent article from First American says millennials may be the most educated generation in our nation’s history. Be. ...

Here are my four predictions for next year’s real estate market.

2021 has been a banner year for real estate. We've seen high prices like never before and so I’m getting a lot of questions right now about what can be expected in 2022. Today I'll share four predictions that I have for next year:
1. 2022 will be more buyer-friendly. Over the last six months, we’ve started to see signs of the market starting to shift. We will likely continue to see the market balance out more next year. It won’t become a buyer's market, but it should be more buyer-friendly.
2. Expect to see more inventory. January is typically one of our heaviest months for new inventory and it can be a great time to start looking again. We will likely see more options for most buyers.
3. Don’t expect prices to fall. They're not going to go up as much as they did this year, but nothing in the data is telling us that prices are going to decrease. Most experts expect steady appreciatio ...

Here’s why Zillow had to cancel all of their iBuyer operations.

One of the biggest iBuyers in Phoenix has completely ceased operations. That's right; it’s Zillow Offers, the same company I was talking about two months ago. But why did they fail? Let’s start with some backstory.

Zillow Offers started in about 2018, trying to compete with other iBuyers for the market. They were buying at a sustainable rate, but, over the summer, Zillow and other iBuyers started buying everything they could. Zillow came out recently and said they were losing so much money that they had to completely stop operations.
"It’ll be interesting to see where Zillow goes from here."

In Q2, Zillow lost $400 million on their iBuyer program, but what about the other companies? In my opinion, Zillow was making the most egregious offers out there, buying homes for way more than they were worth. Zillow had to sell 91% of the Phoenix homes they bought at or below what they paid for the ...