Another day, another piece of evidence that the U.S. economy is expanding. Thursday, the Census Bureau released the April Retail Sales report. Excluding cars and auto parts, retail receipts rose for the 10th straight month and, at $321 billion, reached an all-time high. Retail sales account for roughly half of consumer spending, and roughly one-third [...]

I am placing a stake in the ground and raising the flag that  ”Now is a great time to buy a house”.  I am going to announce it with exuberance and exclaim it as an agent who has survived and is surviving a less than excited real estate market. OK OK.  I’ll take it down a [...]

Be prepared for Friday morning. Mortgage rates and home affordability could worsen quickly. At 8:30 AM ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its April Non-Farm Payrolls report and momentum has been strong. The monthly jobs report is a market-mover and analysts expect that 196,000 new jobs were added last month. If those expectations are exceeded — [...]

The National Association of REALTORS® Pending Home Sales Index rose for the third straight month last month. A “pending home sale” is a home under contract to sell, but not yet closed. The Pending Home Sales Index rose 5 percent in March, posting its second-highest reading since April 2010. Not coincidentally, that month marked the [...]

How do you use your garage? If you’re like most homeowners, you park your car(s) in it, then use the remaining available space for the random storage of “things that don’t go in the house”.  Your garage can do so much more — all it needs is a little bit of organization. In this 4-minute [...]

According to the Census Bureau, seasonally-adjusted, single-family Housing Starts rebounded in March, increasing 8 percent over February’s 2-year low. We can’t put too much faith in the data, however, because for the second straight month, the government reports that the data’s margin of error — 15 percent – exceeds its actual measurement. As written in the [...]