May 2026

Rocket Mortgage and Rocket Pro announced Thursday that they have begun using VantageScore 4.0 alongside Classic FICO scores in the mortgage qualification process, a move the company said is aimed at expanding access to home financing. Rocket’s crosstown rival, United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) began allowing its brokers to access both FICO and VantageScore credit scoring models for conventional...

Housing starts increased in April compared with a year ago, but a deeper dive into the data reveals that this uptick was driven by a noisier boost in multifamily development activity, while single-family starts declined.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s new residential construction data released on Thursday, housing starts, on a seasonally adjusted basis, ticked up 4.6% year-over-year but fell...

Some houses are expensive because they’re large. Others are expensive because they’re rare. And then there are homes like Miramar — where the real story is architectural pedigree. Perched atop a private hill in Mill Neck with wide-open views across Oyster Bay and Centre Island, the estate at 233 Cleft Road is one of only two known Nassau County homes designed by legendary architect Robert A....

After purchasing a classic 1940s bungalow stripped of its original charm, these Seattle parents of two young boys turned to interior designer Jessica Nelson to restore it. Their goal was to reintroduce character through architectural details while keeping the...

Image Combined company expected to build upon existing affordable & mixed-income housing...

Image Bodner says global investors have raised their planned U.S. allocation from 11% to 16% during the last...

The late, legendary Bob Toll once laid bare the fact that he was personally incapable of installing a curtain rod in a living room, let alone knowing the first thing about building a home from the ground up. What Bob did intuit was that the second-floor walls of a typical 1960s two-story home could be bumped out to be flush with the first-floor building enclosure, creating palpably more square footage...

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released a detailed deregulation roadmap aimed at state and local governments that, it argues, could lower per-unit costs and shorten cycle times for homebuilders. HUD’s new “State and Local Best Practices for Home Construction” report offers a set of recommended policy changes that target permitting fees, building codes,...

For many real estate brokers, the dream of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered efficiency has crashed against a hard reality; agents are reluctant to use tools that force them to change habits. Tyler Morton — broker-owner of REMAX Victory + Affiliates in Beavercreek, Ohio — learned this lesson the expensive way. After his first AI platform Victoria failed because agents refused to download...

Mortgage lenders are getting creative to combat the housing affordability crisis fueled by rising interest rates, rolling out novel products and blending existing options to keep borrowers in the market. Bayview Asset Management — which closed its acquisition of Guild Mortgage in November — rolled out a new program on Monday. Partnering with real estate startup Estately, the firm is combining a...