Housing market news and data for 2026: home prices, inventory, days on market, and buyer demand — plus what the latest trends mean for buyers and sellers.
The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index rose one point to 35 in August, but builder sentiment has now held below the neutral 40 mark for 16 straight months as price cuts and elevated rates persist.
New Redfin research finds the typical family spends 52% of income on housing and childcare combined, ranging from under 40% in Little Rock to nearly 97% in Los Angeles. Redfin is also adding childcare data to its home listings.
Buying a starter home still costs $858 more per month than renting nationally, but Realtor.com’s July report finds seven metros — including Orlando, Miami and Seattle — shifting toward buyers as prices fall faster than rents.
Birmingham, Ala., had the highest net share of investor homebuyers of any major U.S. metro in 2025, according to Realtor.com, as cash-flow-focused investors favor affordable Midwest and Rust Belt cities over coastal markets.
A new SEC filing shows Berkshire Hathaway raised its Lennar stake to about $1.157 billion and opened a small D.R. Horton position in the second quarter, deepening its homebuilder bets after the $8.5 billion Taylor Morrison deal.
Florida single-family and condo sales both rose year over year in July for an 11th consecutive month, even as mortgage rates stayed elevated and statewide inventory kept shrinking, Florida Realtors reports.
NAHB’s Q2 2026 AD&C Financing Survey shows builder borrowing costs rose on land acquisition, land development and speculative construction loans, with effective rates up more than 0.6 points since the end of 2025 even as builders and Fed-surveyed lenders now disagree on credit’s direction.
Single-family permits fell 4.2% nationally in the first half of 2026 while multifamily permits rose 4.5%, according to an NAHB analysis of Census Bureau data, with sharp regional divides between the two segments.
A Little Rock builder’s viral breakdown of flat subcontractor fees and fixed material costs shows why starter homes rarely pencil out for builders, as national entry-level supply remains about 300,000 units short of pre-pandemic levels.
Bipartisan companion bills in the House and Senate would let first-time homebuyers move up to $35,000 in unused 529 college savings, tax-free, toward a down payment.
Record delinquent-tax sales in Cuyahoga County, 24,000 delinquent parcels in Mahoning County, and one-in-three homeowners behind in parts of Youngstown show how Ohio property tax bills have outrun relief efforts, even as the state rolls out an inflation cap, a reform task force, and a proposed valuation cap.
Marc and Joan Hendel moved into their newly built Bourne, Mass., retirement home in March 2025. A month later, the state moved to seize it by eminent domain to replace the aging Sagamore Bridge.
Active buyers fell to a record low in July and sellers now outnumber them by 51.3%, Redfin found, even as a separate weekly report showed the largest jump in new listings in five months.
The Chamber’s new council, with James Hardie, Citi and UMH Properties also on board, aims to turn recently enacted federal housing reforms into local zoning, financing and workforce changes.
More than 2.5 million properties across the 10 most wildfire-exposed Western states face moderate or greater wildfire risk, with a combined reconstruction cost value of $1.4 trillion, according to a 2026 Wildfire Risk Report released Wednesday by Cotality. The findings underscore how wildfire exposure has spread well beyond California’s borders and into fast-growing metros across … Read more
California’s FAIR Plan, the state-created insurer of last resort for homeowners who cannot find coverage in the private market, will raise rates by an average of 29.1% starting Oct. 15, according to reporting confirmed Aug. 11. The increase will hit the roughly 700,000 California households now covered by the plan, whose ranks have grown sharply … Read more
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the K-shaped economy is over, but Realtor.com transaction data shows entry-level home sales still declining faster than any other price tier while $1M-$2M sales keep growing.
Texas homeowners insurance premiums rose 30% between 2019 and 2024, roughly 10 times faster than income growth, pricing nearly two-thirds of the state’s households out of their county’s median-priced home, a Rice University report finds.
U.S. home sales fell to their lowest level in nearly two years in July, with San Antonio, Dallas and Seattle posting the steepest declines even as West Palm Beach and San Francisco saw sales grow, Redfin found.
New York Attorney General Letitia James secured a $700,000-plus settlement from SME Capital Ventures over its handling of a 441 West 37th Street condo building in Hudson Yards, forcing the firm to turn the board over to residents.
Dallas Tanner, CEO of the nation’s largest single-family rental landlord, told CNBC he expects the new federal ban on large-scale institutional homebuying to ease prices over time, but not immediately.
U.S. existing-home sales dropped 1.7% in July to a 4.06 million annual rate as mortgage rates hit a 2026 high, even as the median price set a record for the 37th straight month, NAR reported.
The More Homes on the Market Act would raise the capital gains exclusion on home sales to $500,000/$1 million, up from limits set in 1997. Two bipartisan bills are now in committee with a combined 174 cosponsors.
A new Consumer Federation of America and Weiss Ratings analysis, highlighted by Realtor.com, finds home insurers collectively earn $8.8 million a day in extra investment income for every day a claim payment is delayed — a $61.6 million windfall over a week.
New Realtor.com research finds data centers have spread into more rural, lower-income communities and now sit near 1.5% of home sales nationwide, but the company’s economists found no statistically significant hit to nearby home prices in the two years after a center opens.
Wage growth for residential building workers slowed to 1.0% in June, with inflation-adjusted pay down 2.4% year over year, as softer construction activity weighs on labor demand, NAHB finds.
Peabody, Mass., a Boston-area suburb, ranked No. 1 on Realtor.com’s 2026 Hottest ZIP Codes report, with listings drawing four times the national average traffic and selling in just 20 days.
California, Texas and Florida account for more than a fifth of U.S. remodeling spending, NAHB’s latest state-level data shows, even as national remodeling activity declined for a third straight quarter.
The typical U.S. home seller realized a 44.1% return in the first quarter of 2026, down from 47.2% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 50.2% a year earlier, according to ATTOM. The national median sale price held at $360,000, unchanged from the prior quarter. Sellers are still making substantial money. They are simply making … Read more
First-half home sales in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos area rose 4.8% to 15,698 while the median price fell 2.4% to $425,000, according to Unlock MLS. June pending sales climbed 13.2%, and active listings within the city of Austin fell 22.1% to 4,665. Sales up, prices down, inventory sharply lower — that combination describes a market … Read more
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