Category: Real Estate and Mortgages

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is running about 6.5%–6.7% as of late July 2026. The median existing home price is $440,600, up 1.8% from a year ago. Those two facts sitting next to each other confuse a lot of people — rates are more than double where they were…

Two separate reporting requirements tend to get conflated by landlords and anyone with money outside the U.S.: issuing 1099s to contractors you pay for property work, and disclosing foreign financial accounts to the Treasury. Both have real deadlines and real penalties, and both changed meaningfully under recent legislation. 1099 Reporting…

As of mid-2026, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is running around 6.5%-6.6%, while the 15-year fixed averages roughly 5.8%-5.95%, according to Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey. That gap of roughly 0.7 to 0.9 percentage points is a big part of why the 15-year option keeps coming up whenever…

If you sell your main home in 2026, you can still exclude up to $250,000 of gain from your taxable income if you're single, or $500,000 if you're married filing jointly. That number hasn't changed since the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 — nearly thirty years, no inflation adjustment, ever.…

Government incentives and a booming economy have definitely made this a sellers market. But the key for any seller to get the highest price possible is to still make their home stand out to prospective buyers, which involves having a good sales strategy before and while selling the house. Here…

Short answer: there is no active federal first-time homebuyer tax credit for 2026. If you're searching for this because you've heard about a "$15,000 homebuyer credit," you're likely thinking of a proposal from the Biden administration's housing agenda that was floated but never passed Congress. It's not law today, though…

The 2026 FHA loan limit just rose to $541,287 in most of the country, and conventional conforming loans now top out at $832,750. Beyond those limits, the core FHA-versus-conventional decision hasn't changed: it comes down to your down payment, your credit score, and how mortgage insurance is structured on each.…

The national average apartment rent was $1,742 a month in June 2026, up slightly from May, according to Apartments.com's rent report, while the Census Bureau's rental vacancy rate has climbed to around 7.2–7.3% — one of the highest readings in years. That combination (rents drifting up, vacancies also up) means…

Reverse mortgages let homeowners age 62 and older convert home equity into cash without selling or taking on a monthly payment. The federally insured version — a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) — is still the most common way to do this, and the program looks meaningfully different than it…