If you’re currently feeling the stress of affording your mortgage payment, or if you know someone who is, there’s still time to get help. For homeowners experiencing financial hardship this year, the CARES Act provides mortgage payment deferral options, creating much-needed relief in these challenging times.
It’s important, however, to understand how forbearance works. It’s not automatic. You need to take action now and apply for the program before these options expire.
A study by the Urban Institute determined:

“Approximately 400,000 homeowners who became delinquent after the pandemic began have forgone forbearance and become delinquent. These borrowers may not know they are eligible for forbearance.”

Thankfully, there’s still time to apply for forbearance, even if you’re just learning about it now. Doing so may be the game-changer you need to stay in your home, just when you n ...

Talk of a housing bubble is beginning to crop up as home prices have appreciated at a rapid pace this year. This is understandable since the appreciation of residential real estate is well above historic annual averages. According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), annual appreciation since 1991 has averaged 3.8%. Here are the latest 2020 appreciation numbers from three reliable sources:

FHFA: 7.8%
CoreLogic: 7.3%
Case-Shiller: 7%

It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that house appreciation is out of control in today’s market. However, we need to put these numbers into context first.
Inflation and the Comeback from the Housing Crash
Following the housing crash, home values depreciated dramatically from 2007-2011. Values are still recovering from that unusually long period of falling prices. We must also realize that normal inflation has had an impact.
Bill McBride, the founder of the well-respected Calculated Risk blo ...

As we have seen the state shut down and ro-open the past few months we are seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases here in Utah. Let's take a look at what we are seeing in the Salt Lake County market and how homes sales are being impacted. 
 
Here is some data to show what we are seeing. The following reports show you where we were last year and where we are this year. 
 
Active

When we review from the beginning of March (start of the pandemic shutdown here in Utah) you see a steady increase in active listings until the middle of April, then you see that number head downward. You can see compared to last year, that downward trend cut our active listings by almost half this same time last year widening the gap from the number of active listings the same time last year.  

 
Under Contract

The under contracts are continuing to increase compared to last year when you combine it with the graph above you can see this creates a very diffi ...

As we have seen the state shut down and ro-open the past few months we are seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases here in Utah. Let's take a look at what we are seeing in the Salt Lake County market and how homes sales are being impacted. 
 
Here is some data to show what we are seeing. The following reports show you where we were last year and where we are this year. 
 
Active

When we review from the beginning of March (start of the pandemic shutdown here in Utah) you see a steady increase in active listings until the middle of April, then you see that number head downward. You can see compared to last year, that downward trend cut our active listings by almost half this same time last year.  

 
Under Contract

You can see in early March we were following the same trend as the previous year with slightly less under contracts but headed toward the same trend. You see when we went into mandatory quarantine under contracts took a large di ...

Will Home Values Appreciate or Depreciate in 2020?




With the housing market staggered to some degree by the health crisis the country is currently facing, some potential purchasers are questioning whether home values will be impacted. The price of any item is determined by supply as well as the market’s demand for that item.

Each month the National Association of Realtors (NAR) surveys “over 50,000 real estate practitioners about their expectations for home sales, prices and market conditions” for the REALTORS Confidence Index.

Their latest edition sheds some light on the relationship between seller traffic (supply) and buyer traffic (demand) during this pandemic.

Buyer Demand

The map below was created after asking the question: “How would you rate buyer traffic in your area?”The darker the blue, the stronger the demand for homes is in that area. The survey shows that in 34 of the 50 U.S. states, buyer dema ...