As North Carolina House Democrats take another swing at sweeping housing reform, a Democratic senator is seeking to streamline environmental reviews to accelerate construction. Sen. Woodson Bradley filed the “Let Them Build Act” on Thursday afternoon, days after House colleagues filed a bill titled “Relieving Housing Bottlenecks” to address the state’s affordable housing crisis. For […]
“Try a lot of new things. Keep what works.” This has been an operational mantra at Clayton for more than a decade, inspired by Chairman and CEO Kevin Clayton’s embrace of the Japanese principle of kaizen – constant, patient, humble, unrelenting improvement. That ethos – more discipline than buzzword, more practice than promise – frames […]
Colony Ridge discrimination suit ended with prejudice after a judge said the proposed settlement prioritized $48 million infrastructure and $20 million enforcement.
Realtracs will ingest all active Compass International Holdings listings and add United Real Estate feeds, extending an MLS used by 19,000 plus pros across six states.
UWM said it has delivered a revised offer that allows Two Harbors investors to elect either $12 in cash per share or 2.3328 shares of UWM Class A common stock, with no cap or proration on the cash election.
Nearly four years ago, Colorado voters approved a special fund to address the affordable housing crisis following Covid-19. Meeting the fund’s objectives, however, proved harder for participating cities than expected. State legislators are now scrambling to fix that. The Senate passed House Bill 1313 on Thursday with amendments. It is headed back to the House, […]
A tale of two Spring Selling housing markets set the scene for LGI Homes’ Q1 2026 earnings release this week. Structurally, it’s not a market short on demand. Behaviorally and psychologically, though, it’s got homebuilders struggling to convert it. Team LGI’s performance – and every other public homebuilder in the current earnings cycle, for that […]
North Carolina House Democrats will take another shot at sweeping housing reform. Several cycles of defeat on similar legislation loom in their rearview mirror. Undaunted by a string of previously unsuccessful efforts and banking on a redoubled surge of political will to address housing affordability, lawmakers introduced House Bill 1056, titled “Relieving Housing Bottlenecks,” on […]
A growing identity debate has emerged for HEIs — one now spilling into lawsuits, regulatory scrutiny and broader questions about where the product fits in the housing finance ecosystem.
Sound Capital defines why unreliable capital, delayed draws and tighter standards are disrupting builders’ timelines and limiting scalable growth in 2026.
NAIOP’s Spring 2026 CRE Sentiment Index points to slightly better conditions for multifamily over the next 12 months. Yardi expects rent growth to improve, but higher vacancy, softer occupancy, and geopolitical risks may slow the recovery.
Virginia has become the latest state to clear the way for churches and other faith groups to build affordable housing on their land, borrowing a page from a California precedent-setting attainable housing win-win innovation. Virginia-based faith groups have a four-year window beginning Jan. 1, 2027, to start affordable housing projects after the state legislature approved […]
Mortgage industry executives say the shift to new credit score models and lender choice could raise mortgage delinquencies, reshape pricing grids at the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and ultimately push costs back onto borrowers, even if the costs for scores fall on the front end.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner said the agency is rescinding energy-efficiency requirements tied to FHA and USDA-backed loans, announcing the move Tuesday at HousingWire’s The Gathering conference in Austin.
A third go at trying to reboot starter-home construction in Minnesota is on life support at the state Legislature, with supporters scrambling to revive it before the session ends. High-profile zoning reform bills failed in a House committee and missed key Senate deadlines late last month, potentially dooming the effort as had happened over the […]
The Changing Landscape “This is not a forecast. A forecast is a prediction, the validity of which my ego and I are professionally responsible for. What I offer here is speculation – something that is likely enough to write about but not so likely that my ego hangs in the balance.” – George Friedman “When […]
Ginnie Mae will temporarily exclude loans in FHA Trial Payment Plans (TPPs) from issuer delinquency calculations, responding to higher reported rates, the corporation announced last week.
Former Rocket Pro executive Mike Fawaz, who left the company in February, is launching a new broker platform in May, and he's partnering with a previous archrival: United Wholesale Mortgage.
Real will acquire RE/MAX in an $880M deal to form Real REMAX Group, a 180,000-agent global platform blending brokerage, franchise and fintech services.
For decades, mortgage lending has been built around a single objective: to make homeownership affordable.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage became the dominant structure because it lowers monthly payments, expands borrower eligibility, and fits cleanly into underwriting frameworks built around debt-to-income ratios. It works—and it worked at scale.
Rising premiums and limited coverage are reshaping homebuying. See how builders use Westwood Insurance Agency to bring coverage earlier into the transaction.
The fight over Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s sweeping housing reform agenda is intensifying as both sides harden their positions. Supporters and detractors by the thousands delivered their opening arguments Thursday at the first major hearing on Pritzker’s six-bill package. Pritzker’s BUILD plan seeks to lower costs by making construction easier and faster statewide. It would […]
The mid-spring earnings cycle has produced a common-language reality check for America’s public homebuilders: the operating backdrop worsened faster than many management teams expected. In such a context of nearly-universal challenge, doing less-worse may count as a win. Meritage Homes’ Q1 2026 numbers serve as a case in point Orders fell 5% year over year, […]
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has created the Office of Deed Theft Prevention, a new unit housed in the Department of Finance to coordinate citywide efforts to combat fraudulent property transfers.
Jerome Powell's tenure as Federal Reserve chair is coming to an end as the Department of Justice (DOJ) has ended its investigation of alleged cost overruns on the Fed headquarters' renovations.
I started in mortgages in 2007 for a brokerage office in Salem, Oregon. Within my first year and a half, I was one of the top-producing loan officers in the office. At the same time, the world around me was coming apart. I didn’t realize at the time that the industry I had just joined was starting to exhale.
The mid-2000s boom was over, companies were shrinking, and loan officers who had spent years building businesses were leaving the industry cold turkey. Every week seemed to bring another round of layoffs, closures, or panic (implode-o-meter anyone?).
The FICO versus VantageScore debate is about more than score fees, as lender choice, adverse selection and secondary-market pricing could ultimately affect mortgage costs for borrowers.
Reverse Focus co-founder and longtime HECMWorld editor Shannon Hicks announced Thursday that he will leave the reverse mortgage technology and media firm on May 1 to become chief content officer at HighTechLending.
A California home builder sought to build three additional houses on lots it had owned for more than two decades in a coastal county. That should have been easy. It had already built four nearby homes. But it wasn’t. Years of court hearings followed when a state agency overrode San Luis Obispo County’s authority and […]
Tactical discounts, escalating incentives, absorption-at-any-cost strategies, … you all well know the routine of buying sales and making next to no money in Spring 2026. But that’s not for everybody. Exceptions are out there, public and private. Taylor Morrison has chosen a playbook and is well into executing a game plan that leans on the […]
Efforts to revamp New York State environmental laws to lower barriers to building housing more quickly threw the state’s annual budget process into limbo. Negotiations blew past an April 1 budget deliberation deadline, with a proposed overhaul of the State Environmental Quality Review Act emerging as a point of impasse. The outcome could determine whether […]
I keep a blank sheet of paper on my desk. Not for decoration. It’s a reminder of the single greatest advantage a developer can have in 2026: the freedom to start from zero. No legacy baggage. No underwater notes. No commitments made in 2021, when money was cheap, land was flying, and everyone’s pro forma […]
Loan officers are taking their borrower stories to Capitol Hill, giving mortgage advocacy a new frontline voice in the debate over housing affordability and lending policy.
