Source: MSN, Pauline Lacsamana
Photo: Courtesy of Ama

Why we love this deal

Owning a home is a milestone that many have dreamed about. But with rising prices, it’s a goal that feels less and less attainable. Homes can cost anywhere from $150K to millions of dollars, depending on your location and criteria. However, there’s a solution that many are turning to in lieu of a standard house, and that’s investing in a tiny home.

Believe it or not, a place you can get one from is none other than Amazon, the retailer that truly seems to sell everything. In addition to groceries and a new sectional sofa, you can add a tiny home to your cart and be well on your way to building a tiny but mighty dream home. The Prefab A-Frame Tiny Home caught our eye, and it boasts a cozy, retro design for under $40K.

Why do shoppers love it?

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the median sale price of a home in the United States in 2025 was nearly $411K (AKA not cheap). As a result, tiny homes have risen in popularity due to their affordability and flexibility, but just because they’re more budget-friendly than a standard home doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice style, too. The Prefab A-Frame Tiny Home proves just that with a surprisingly chic and retro design that would easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more otherwise.

With an A-frame silhouette, this tiny house taps into the charm of mid-century modern style, but for significantly less. We fully get the appeal of an original mid-century house, but as is the case with many older homes, they typically need a lot of repairs and updates that can cut deep into your budget. This tiny home is the perfect compromise that allows you to start from scratch.

Despite being a tiny home, the A-frame design takes advantage of every inch of vertical space, making the end result spacious and airy. The home is customizable in many ways, fitting two to four bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. As a prefab house, the assembly is meant to be easy and completed quickly. Each piece is made of metal, and it utilizes steel panels to create a durable frame that can withstand harsh weather, from snowstorms to heavy rain.

The only catch is that you’ll need to hire professionals to install electrical and plumbing systems. We also suggest doing additional research to ensure you have all of the required permits and are abiding by laws, regulations, and restrictions for your city or state.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/amazon-is-selling-a-cozy-a-frame-tiny-house-that-s-customizable-with-up-to-4-bedrooms-for-under-40k

Source: Fast Company, Adele Peters
Photo: David Esquivel/UCLA

Nearly 10 months after the Eaton wildfire, the rebuild process is slowly getting underway. Now, residents are turning to prefab to build their houses faster, more cheaply, and largely in factories.

At 3:20 a.m. on January 8, Steve Gibson and his wife were jolted awake by a phone call: the Eaton fire was approaching their home in Altadena, California, and they had to evacuate.

“We left in about 15 minutes,” Gibson says. “So we only took our passports, our insurance papers, three pairs of underwear, and our little dog, Cantinflas.” They thought that they’d be able to come back within a few hours. But they soon learned that their house—and their entire block—had been destroyed.

They spent the next few weeks moving from short-term rental to short-term rental, and finally moved into an apartment, though they knew that insurance would only cover the cost temporarily. Then they faced the next challenge: what would it take to rebuild their home?

More than 10 months after the L.A. fires, the rebuilding process in the fire zone is painfully slow. In Altadena, where more than 5,000 houses burned in the Eaton fire, only a few hundred are currently being rebuilt. (Only one, an ADU, has been completed as of mid-November.) But some—including Gibson’s—are moving faster than others because homeowners have turned to prefab construction.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91445960/prefab-housing-rebuild-effort-altadena

Source: Knowledge@Wharton, Angie Basiouny
Photo: Overhead view of constructor workers building a house

New research from Wharton’s Joseph Gyourko looks back 50 years to explain why home prices are so high now.

Homes in America’s Sunbelt don’t cost as much as they do in the sky-high metropolitan markets of New York and California — but they ultimately will if new housing supply continues to decline.

Research from Wharton real estate professor Joseph Gyourko and Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser shows the rate of new home construction across the Sunbelt has been dropping steadily over the last 30 years, almost converging with the very low growth rates of coastal cities. The more limited the housing supply becomes in places such as Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, and Miami, the more those cities resemble Manhattan, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco in terms of house prices. The current median home prices in America’s top 10 markets range from $605,000 to almost $1.4 million.

“This is an important change, and why that’s important is where’s the job growth in America? The answer is in those Sunbelt markets,” Gyourko said. “We would make a much wider swath of America unaffordable in terms of housing, so it’s a big deal.”

He spoke to This Week in Business about the findings in his co-authored paper titled, “America’s Housing Supply Problem: The Closing of the Suburban Frontier.” While many scholars have examined the complex variables that are contributing to all-time-high home prices, Gyourko and Glaeser dug a little deeper. They analyzed 50 years’ worth of data to explain why home values keep rising, especially in places that were once considered affordable.

“It’s a longer-run problem than I would have thought before we did the research,” Gyourko said.

The “Golden Age” of Housing Construction

Steep mortgage interest rates, the rising cost of building materials, and the buying frenzy of the COVID-19 pandemic have helped to boost prices in recent years, but the data show the problem really began in the 1970s.

“The 1950s and 1960s were a golden age of new construction, with extremely high rates of housing unit production in any market with growing demand,” the professors wrote in the paper. The national housing stock boomed from 36 million units in 1950 to 50 million by 1980.

However, the growth was uneven. In the 1960s, for example, the housing stock in Phoenix grew by 8% a year while Detroit grew by 2.5% and Los Angeles by 4.1%.

By the 1970s and over the next two decades, the growth rates dropped everywhere, amounting to “barely half of the rates seen” during the golden era of the ’50s and ’60s. The downward trend continued into 2000 and persists today.

Although construction is sluggish across the country, the professors said it’s the decline across the Sunbelt that’s most troublesome. Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, and Phoenix were once prolific in building new homes to meet rising demand as their populations swelled. But the build rate for each of those cities has flattened so much that they are now not much higher than in Los Angeles and Detroit. Since 2020, the new housing supply growth rate in all six cities has been below 1%.

Local Governments’ Role in the Housing Crisis

The professors said there is evidence that contradicts the belief that growth is constrained because desirable cities are “built out.” The culprit, they said, is local governments that have enacted regulations that make it difficult to build.

“What’s happened in the Sunbelt, particularly in suburban areas, is [they] are figuring out how to slow and stop new developments. A feature of the American system is that zoning and permitting is a very local decision,” Gyourko said.

He said if Sunbelt cities continue providing inadequate housing supply, homes there will be as expensive as in coastal cities within 20 years, presuming the demand to live in those markets stays high.

“America once responded to demand by delivering more density, but it does no longer. This suggests that not only is America failing to deliver housing in its most productive metropolitan areas, but we are also failing to deliver housing in our most desirable neighborhoods,” the paper stated.

The professors stopped short of prescribing regulatory remedies in their study. But in his interview, Gyourko mentioned the bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act, which passed the U.S. Senate in early October and is headed toward the House. The legislation is aimed at increasing affordable housing across the country by helping cities streamline permitting, modernize zoning codes, and support housing innovation.

“One way to do it is for the federal government to use its resources to incent localities to permit more. But understand that’s a key distinction. The federal government does not issue building permits,” Gyourko said. “I think the most important thing is change at the local level. There has to be a recognition that these high prices are largely — not totally — due to restrictive permitting and higher regulation at the local level.”

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/what-will-it-take-to-solve-americas-housing-crisis

Source: Fast Company, Lance Lambert
Photo: Lance Lambert, created with Datawrapper; photo: Montri/Adobe Stock

Negative equity is rising in some pandemic boomtowns, yet it’s still nowhere near 2009 territory.

Since the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out in the summer of 2022, some overheated parts of the country—particularly in the West, Southwest, and Southeast—have experienced home-price declines from their peak (see this map).

While many of these markets have seen only modest drops, a few metro areas, such as Punta Gorda, Florida, and Austin have undergone what I’d consider “material” home-price corrections, falling 18.6% and 23.0% respectively from their peaks.

These regional home-price declines raise the question: How many mortgage borrowers are actually “underwater”—meaning their house is worth less than their outstanding mortgage balance—right now?

To find out, ResiClub reached out to ICE Mortgage Technology—formerly known as Black Knight, before it was acquired by Intercontinental Exchange for $11.8 billion in 2023.

1.0% —> The share of outstanding homeowner mortgages with negative equity (i.e., underwater) at the end of April 2025, according to data from ICE Mortgage Technology provided to ResiClub this week.*

23.0% —> The share of outstanding homeowner mortgages with negative equity (i.e., underwater) at the end of September 2009, according CoreLogic/FirstAmerica.

Why, on a nationally aggregated basis, are there still not many homeowners underwater, despite home-price declines in some markets?

Nationally aggregate home prices are still pretty close to all-time highs. While many pockets of the West, Southwest, and Southeast have seen home prices decline at least some from the peak, nationally aggregated single-family prices are still pretty close to all-time highs.

Amortization of ultralow mortgage rates. Many homeowners locked in ultralow mortgage rates during the Pandemic Housing Boom. With fixed rates around 2% to 3%, those monthly payments included a larger proportion of principal repayment from the start. That means borrowers have been paying down their balances more aggressively than they would under higher-rate loans. As of Q4 2024, 54% of outstanding mortgage holders have rates below 4.0%, which has helped some borrowers build equity faster and give them a greater buffer.

Few buyers actually purchased at the peak in correction markets. Even in boom-to-correction markets like Cape Coral, Florida, or Austin, only a small share of homeowners bought at the absolute top of the market in spring 2022. Most current homeowners in those areas either bought before or after the peak. This limited exposure at the peak helps explain why negative equity, so far, hasn’t been a big problem, even in some of the hardest-hit metros.

While only 1.0% of outstanding U.S. homeowner mortgages have negative equity, there are few pockets where it’s getting closer to 5.0%—or has even slightly crossed it.

Among the 100 major metro areas for which ICE Mortgage Technology provided data to ResiClub, these 15 metros have the highest share of homeowner mortgages currently underwater:

Cape Coral, Florida —> 7.8%
Lakeland, Florida —> 4.4%
San Antonio —> 4.3%
Austin —> 4.2%
North Port, Florida —> 3.8%
Jacksonville, Florida —> 2.9%
Baton Rouge, Louisiana —> 2.8%
Palm Bay, Florida —> 2.7%
New Orleans —> 2.7%
Deltona, Florida —> 2.6%
Tampa, Florida —> 2.5%
Colorado Springs, Colorado —> 2.3%
Little Rock, Arkansas —> 2.2%
Dallas —> 1.7%
Oklahoma City —> 1.6%

Even in markets like Cape Coral (7.8%) and Austin (4.2%) that have higher shares of outstanding homeowner mortgages that are currently underwater, that’s still far off from the levels seen at the height of the Great Financial Crisis-era bust. For comparison, back in September 2009, a staggering 68% of mortgage borrowers in Nevada, 48% in Arizona, and 45% in Florida were underwater.

So far, in the down markets it’s really just the 2022, 2023, and 2024 vintages being impacted. Even in Austin—a metro where home prices have fallen 23% from their May 2022 peak—only 1.5% of 2021 borrowers are underwater.

Big picture: If home prices in parts of the Southwest, Southeast, and West continue to experience mild home-price pullbacks, the share of recent borrowers who are underwater in those markets will rise beyond the levels we’ve outlined here. However, barring a major downward shift, it still wouldn’t come close to the depths of negative equity seen in 2009 or 2010 anytime soon.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91383991/housing-market-underwater-mortgages-climb-in-florida-texas-markets

Source: Realtor.com, Snejana Farberov
Photo: Realtor.com/Getty Images

The summer housing market is gradually turning more buyer-friendly—especially in two inventory-rich regions where sellers are increasingly slashing prices in a bid to offload properties.

Economists at Realtor.com® analyzed June 2025 housing data from the largest U.S. metros and identified the 10 markets boasting the highest shares of for-sale homes with price reductions, offering house hunters the opportunity to snag properties below the original asking price.

Notably, all the metros in the ranking are located either in the South or the West—areas where the housing market has been sluggish in recent months due to a combination of surging supply and decreasing buyer demand.

“Sellers in these markets are often listing their homes at prices higher than the market can bear, and being forced to adjust when they don’t sell as quickly as hoped for,” explains Relator.com senior economist Joel Berner.

Topping the list is Denver, where roughly 1 out of 3 listed homes in June came with a price cut in an apparent attempt to draw reluctant buyers.

The typical residential property in “Mile High City” cost $609,950, down 3.6% compared with a year ago, and waited 45 days for a buyer last month, according to the latest housing market trends report.

Excessive supply vs. insufficient demand

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Denver has led the nation in inventory recovery, with supply surging more than 88% from the pre-pandemic era. However, buyer demand has not kept pace, resulting in a glut of unsold homes—and forcing many sellers to slash prices.

A similar scenario has unfolded in Phoenix, where nearly a third of all listings had price reductions last month—the second-highest share among major U.S. metros.

The Western pandemic-era boomtown saw its median home price decrease 3% year over year, dropping down to $520,000.

Additionally, Phoenix stood out for having the nation’s highest absolute number of delistings in May, as many local sellers opted to take their homes off the market rather than compromise on their asking price in a climate of buyer wariness fueled by economic uncertainty and elevated mortgage interest rates.

For sellers who cannot just take their ball and go home, cutting the asking price might be the only play left.

“Supply is outpacing demand in these markets, and sellers who don’t have the choice to delist because they have to move for life reasons are being forced to take less for their home than they anticipated,” says Berner.

Austin, TX, is in the same boat as Denver and Phoenix owing to its surging inventory, which climbed nearly 70% compared with the city’s 2019 norms.

Faced with slower buyer demand, the bustling economic hub saw its share of listings with price cuts reach 32.3% in June, the third-highest level in the U.S.

Tampa, FL and Dallas, TX ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, for the share of for-sale homes offering discounts, topping 30% for both metros.

Beyond the top five metros offering the steepest reductions, budget-conscious homebuyers can still save big in places like Colorado Springs, CO, Jacksonville, FL, Portland, OR, Salt Lake City, and Charleston, SC.

While this trend spells bad news for sellers in the oversupplied regions, Berner says that buyers have an opportunity to get a great deal—especially if they can make a purchase mostly in cash and sidestep the current high mortgage rates.

“If mortgage rates fall, we expect buyer activity to pick back up and for price reductions to slow down,” he notes.

1. Denver

Share of listings with price cuts: 33.7%
Median listing price: $609,950
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -3.6%
Median days on market: 45

2. Phoenix

Share of listings with price cuts: 33.2%
Median listing price: $520,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -3%
Median days on market: 65

3. Austin, TX

Share of listings with price cuts: 32.3%
Median listing price: $524,950
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -4.5%
Median days on market: 58

4. Tampa, FL

Share of listings with price cuts: 31.2%
Median listing price: $419,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -1.4%
Median days on market: 48

5. Dallas

Share of listings with price cuts: 30.6%
Median listing price: $440,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -2.3%
Median days on market: 50

6. Colorado Springs, CO

Share of listings with price cuts: 30.2%
Median listing price: $515,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -1.5%
Median days on market: 43

7. Jacksonville, FL

Share of listings with price cuts: 30.1%
Median listing price: $408,995
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -2.6%
Median days on market: 67

8. Portland, OR

Share of listings with price cuts: 29.6%
Median listing price: $615,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -1.6%
Median days on market: 49

9. Salt Lake City

Share of listings with price cuts: 28.8%
Median listing price: $595,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): -1.2%
Median days on market: 48

10. Charleston, SC

Share of listings with price cuts: 28.5%
Median listing price: $535,000
Price change year-over-year (YoY): 1.1%
Median days on market: 50

Snejana Farberov is a reporter at Realtor.com covering the U.S. housing market and the latest domestic real estate trends. She has worked as a general assignment journalist in New York City and Long Island for 16 years, writing for New York Post, Daily Mail, and News 12. Snejana earned bachelor’s degrees in journalism and Italian from St. John’s University, followed by a master’s degree from Columbia University School of Journalism.

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/phoenix-arizona-homes-sell-below-asking-price-june-2025

Source: The Guardian, Marzio Mian
Photo: The bay of Vlorë on the mainland of Albania, opposite Sazan Island. (Nikos/Alamy)

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner have spent more than $1bn on an Albanian island that will be a luxury resort – once the unexploded ordnance has been removed

On Sazan, a small island off the coast of Albania, the landscape is Jurassic. Ferns, giant lavender, plumbago, rosemary, broom and laurels grow on the mountain at its centre. The view from the top, with its dramatic sunsets, is dizzyingly beautiful.

Albanians call Sazan Ishulli i Trumpëve – Trump Island. Until now mostly untrammelled by development, it is on the verge of becoming a mecca for ultra-luxury tourism, another addition to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s real-estate portfolio. Speaking on the Lex Fridman podcast in July 2024, Trump could barely conceal her excitement: “I’m working with my husband, we have this 1,400-acre island in the Mediterranean and we’re bringing in the best architects and the best brands,” she said. “It’s going to be extraordinary.”

When I reached Kushner by phone the same month, I detected brimming enthusiasm for Sazan, which he seemed to regard as something of a treasure. He said he plans “to create the ideal resort that I’d want to be at with my family and with my friends”.

Before I visited the island, I marvelled at the thought of traversing its roughly 40 miles of trails, climbing its mountains covered in rainforest and exploring its deep waterways with names such as the Bay of Paradise, Hell’s Gorge, Devil’s Gulf and Admiral’s Beach. I wanted to see it before the phrase “I’m going to Sazan” becomes the prerogative of the rich.

When I got there, on a clear day in July 2024, I found that the island doesn’t lend itself to getting lost: it is covered in signs depicting skull and crossbones, warning of landmines. My guide, Arbër Celaj, a lieutenant commander in the Albanian navy, stopped me from venturing too far. He did not want to get a dressing down from his superiors.

Sazan lies between the Adriatic Sea and the Ionian Sea, strategically positioned at the entrance to the bay of Vlorë, in the strait of Otranto that separates Italy from Albania. But as Celaj explained, “Sazan’s climate is not Mediterranean – it’s subtropical. You can see from the vegetation. The biodiversity is crazy.” Indeed, the brush seemed to have emerged from Spielberg’s computer, giving rise to a jungle of colossal ash trees, hornbeams, maritime pines and holm oaks.

Unable to stray off the beaten path, I made do with glimpses of carpets of rare ferns and valleys of tall grass sloping down to turquoise waters. It was like standing at the dawn of time, watching the landscape be created. Kushner was also speechless when he first saw it in 2021, he told me: “I was just very surprised that something like that existed in the middle of the Mediterranean and hadn’t been developed.” Preliminary approval from the Albanian government for Kushner’s project came on 30 December 2024.

I last spoke to Kushner and his associate Asher Abehsera, the CEO and cofounder with Kushner of Affinity Global Development, in July 2024. Jonathan Gasthalter, the spokesperson for Affinity Partners, a Miami-based firm belonging to Kushner managing $4.6bn in assets, did not respond to multiple emails and text messages asking for comment from Kushner or Abehsera on updates to the real-estate project.

Implausibly, Sazan’s environment owes a lot to communism. During its communist era, from 1946 to 1991, Albania was known as Europe’s North Korea and Sazan became a symbol of extreme isolation: an inaccessible military fortress that dictator Enver Hoxha, who feared the country would fall prey to a superpower, imagined could help defend them against an attack from Nato or members of the Warsaw Pact.

For decades, soldiers stationed on the island waited for such an attack, scanning the horizon, listening for the submarine that sooner or later would emerge from the depths of the Adriatic. There was a military base on the island, with living quarters, a theatre, a school and a hospital. By the 1970s, about 150 military families lived on the island without contact with the mainland. “But they were privileged. They had food, clothing, education, appliances,” Celaj told me. The waiting only ended with the fall of the regime in 1991.

Walking along a trail with my guide, we came across several bomb shelters and tunnels designed to store supplies and ammunition or act as hideouts in the event of a guerrilla war against the imperial invaders. Celaj told me there are about 10 miles of tunnels, now mostly inhabited by bats, vipers and wild rabbits. There are about 3,600 bunkers on Sazan, armoured concrete mushrooms emerging from the vegetation or perched on mountaintops like lookouts against phantom American aircraft carriers or Soviet frigates. Some will be preserved and integrated into the new real-estate project, according to Kushner.

I asked my guide about the signs warning of landmines. “Actually, they’re not exactly landmines,” he said. “This place is full of unexploded ordnance, there are still many areas that need to be cleared.” He pointed to a ravine on the eastern coast, where Affinity Partners wants to develop a significant part of the real-estate project that will span the entire surface of the island. “The [unexploded ordnance are] remnants of the 1990s,” Celaj went on, “when criminals attacked the island right under the noses of the military, looting the weapons and ammunition depots.” The enemy had come in the end, but in small makeshift vessels and speaking the same language as the soldiers.

These days, the island is controlled by Albanian armed forces. It is patrolled by three sailors, who walk back and forth between the rusty and ramshackle docks on the gulf of San Nicolo (the port where Affinity will build the main marina for the yachts, according to Abehsera).

Albania has risen to the top of some of the most prestigious travel rankings in recent years, largely thanks to the prime minister, Edi Rama, who has turned the country into an economic tiger of the Balkans.

I asked Rama if he worried about any political complications relating to the new real-estate project. He told me his country “can’t afford not to exploit a gift like Sazan”, adding: “We need luxury tourism like a desert needs water.” He isn’t afraid of courting controversy, either, especially “if it helps draw attention and bring investment”.

Rama has been “a great partner” and is very forward thinking, according to Kushner. “The government’s clearly seen that it can be something,” he told me during our conversation in July 2024. “They’re building an airport right there [in the Vlöre area].”

Albania isn’t Kushner’s only target: he is also interested in Serbia, where Affinity Partners plans to turn the former defence ministry building in Belgrade into a luxury hotel. Affinity’s business broker in the region is the former US ambassador Richard Grenell, who served as Trump’s special envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations between 2019 and 2021. According to the New York Times, while Grenell was special envoy, he pushed a related plan that Serbia and the US jointly redevelop the former defence ministry. He has since joined forces with Kushner on the new development deal, and is now a partner in Affinity. (Kushner told me it was Grenell who first suggested he invest in Albania.)

The bay of Vlorë on the mainland of Albania, opposite Sazan Island. Photograph: Nikos/Alamy
Serbia’s president, the opportunistic Aleksandar Vučić, saw in Grenell and Kushner a chance to get close to Trump should he win reelection, according to the Financial Times. Vučić is, in fact, playing a dangerous game: as well as cosying up to Trump’s acolytes, he has refused to impose sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. In May 2024, he rolled out the red carpet for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, whose government has made major investments in new infrastructure in Serbia, Reuters reported. All the while, Vučić continues to express his desire to join the EU but refuses to meet Brussels’ main condition: recognising the borders and independence of Kosovo.

When I spoke to Rama, the Albanian premier, I asked what role American investment played in geopolitics. He replied that it was just business, but didn’t deny it could advance a broader political strategy. “We must keep Serbia in the western sphere and get it out from under Moscow’s thumb,” he said. In an interview with the Financial Times in July 2024, Grenell, too, said investments like the real-estate deal to take over the former defence ministry are meant to bring Serbia closer to the US.

Kushner, who served as a senior adviser to Trump from 2017 to 2021, denied using his position to advance any plans to develop Sazan when we spoke in July 2024. “I never met Prime Minister Rama when I was in government,” Kushner told me. “But even if I had, it’s not a conflict of interest. People who serve in government, they build different relationships.” He claimed that interest in Serbia and Albania “is going up tremendously” as a result of his company’s real-estate deals.

Negotiations with Affinity about the sale of Sazan were kept secret. Residents and parliamentarians were not aware of the $1.4bn deal until it was published in the papers.

Mirela Kumbaro, Albania’s minister for tourism and the environment, defended Rama’s decision to strike a deal with Kushner’s company, which was heavily criticised by the opposition. “We can’t compete with Italy, Croatia and Greece in the mass tourism industry. We don’t have enough infrastructure or experience,” she told me. “We have to focus on quality. On value over volume. More profits and fewer problems.”

Nearly 12 million foreign visitors travelled to Albania in 2024, a 15% increase on the previous year, according to local media. That’s “too many for us, and too much pollution”, Kumbaro said. “Sazan is the way to go. The ideal recipe: nature and luxury tourism.” She was enthusiastic about the project, explaining that Affinity is working closely with the government agency in charge of strategic investments, meaning those that exceed €15m.

The trade-off is substantial: zero taxes during the construction phase and the state takes care of all infrastructure, including water, electricity and sewage, according to Kumbaro. Everything else – the sun, the sea, the monk seals and the subtropical jungle – is already there.

That is precisely what worries environmentalists such as Olsi Nika, a marine biologist and the director of the NGO EcoAlbania. “This area is in the Karaburun-Sazan maritime national park. It means the beaches and waters within 2km (1.25 miles) of the shore are protected. What will large public works, the building of docks, yacht traffic and sewage run-off do to the place?”

Abehsera, from Affinity, told me the company had hired the global sustainable development firm Arup as a consultant on the project. “Their practice is principally focused on really accentuating and respecting the local ecology and the environment,” he said.

Kushner, too, had an answer at the ready. “When people announce a development, everyone gets scared,” he said in July 2024. “Everybody assumes the worst. But once they see the plans we have, the way we’re designing it, the way we’re being faithful and considerate of the environment around us, I think that people will be very, very pleased. And again, with developments, you never make everyone happy.”

When I met Abehsera for lunch in Vlöre in August 2024, he gave me a preview of the plans for the island’s development. The hotel, he said, would be a “jewel on the Mediterranean”, the answer to people who ask, “What have I not seen yet?” The design of the hotel would not “impose” on nature; the buildings would be “sculpted or even scalloped by nature”. It will feel “more like you’re nestled in a beautiful tree”.

I was having difficulty following. I asked him whether the island would remain accessible to normal people, to locals who want to make use of its beaches. “I think everyone should have the opportunity to visit the island,” he told me.

Kushner was more sceptical. “We’re creating a very high-end luxury product,” he told me. “One of the most compelling points about the island is just the ability to have privacy … But I also think there are certain aspects of the island we can build out that will give people the opportunity to come visit and enjoy some of the food and the trails.”

I thought back to my afternoon with Celaj. He’d told me that until a few years ago, soldiers on patrol would sometimes report seeing a little grey donkey among the wild fig trees in a clearing or in Hell’s Gorge. Then it would just disappear. I wondered if it was just a legend, or if the grey donkey died along with the mystery of the island, the last bastion of wilderness in the Mediterranean, conquered, in the end, without a single shot being fired. All it took was for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to climb out of a helicopter and say, “Wow!”

This piece was originally published on Reportagen and the Dial. Translation by Elettra Pauletto

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/24/trump-family-kushner-undeveloped-island-mediterranean-sazan-albania

Source: Realtor.com, Kiri Blakeley
Photo: Courtesy of Realtor.com

Home prices are reaching new highs and mortgage rates aren’t budging, making more affordable states appealing to real estate investors.

“Investors are keenly aware of economic growth and housing demand, but must balance home price with potential returns,” says Realtor.com® senior economic research analyst Hannah Jones in the latest Investor Report.

Last year, 13% of homes bought were purchased by an investor. Despite the rise of interest rates and prices, slightly more investors bought properties last year than in 2023. However, the investor buyer share still lagged behind the 2022 peak of 13.3%.

Less cash, more debt

And in a slightly troubling sign, all-cash investor sales fell to the lowest level since 2008, but they remained nearly double the cash share of total home sales. Both mom-and-pop and corporate investors were more likely to take on debt to finance a purchase.

“The 2024 housing market boasted more for-sale inventory than at any point back to the beginning of the [COVID-19] pandemic,” explains Jones. “More inventory means less competitive conditions, which likely led to fewer all-cash investor purchases.”

Additionally, the growing share of small investors means more of them are relying on mortgages to buy property, as mom-and-pop investors are less likely to have all cash on hand for a purchase.

Investors still lead the charge on cash purchases. Overall, 62.3% of investors purchased in all cash, nearly double the 33.4% of all buyers to do the same.

What draws investors to a state?

Price, of course, is key when it comes to where investors choose to spend their money.

The more affordable an area, the more likely it is to be a good bet for the real estate investor, whether for rentals or flipping. But it goes beyond that. Rental prices need to have held up better than national rents. Additionally, rental prices need to be affordable relative to local incomes. After all, if no one in the area can afford that plentiful rent, then, as a landlord, you have a problem.

A state where investors are flocking to right now? Kansas.

Kansas City, which straddles the Kansas-Missouri border, saw the highest rental price growth in the country in April 2025. And the state saw one of the highest year-over-year percentage growths of share of investor buyers, at 1%.

While asking rents dipped nationally in all size rentals by $29, or -1.7%, year over year, Kansas rents grew 4.9%, to $1,381 a month. This did mean a worsening affordability ratio for locals, especially in Kansas City, which was the only market in April to experience a higher rent share of income.

A typical household income in Kansas City would spend 20.7% of its monthly paycheck on the typical rental (which is still below the maximum of 30% recommended).

“Yields are attractive, not just that prices are lower but that rents are relatively high,” Douglas Bendt of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices tells Realtor.com of Kansas. “Net yields of 6% are common, compared to 5% or less in many other regions, and 2% or less in expensive areas like New York or California.”

But Kansas doesn’t top the list for share of investor buyers. That would be Missouri at 21.2%, followed by Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah, Georgia, Montana, Mississippi, Wyoming, Indiana, and Alabama.

“The thing that almost all of these states have in common is relatively low prices,” Martin Orefice, the CEO of Rent To Own Labs, tells Realtor.com. “That means that investors can get good deals on existing properties, especially residential ones. With homeownership being harder and harder to achieve, more people are being forced to rent to make ends meet, and these investors are cashing in.”

It’s more than just affordability

Scarce inventory is a magnet for investors, too. Little inventory keeps pressure on renters to keep on renting. A landlord loves a market where renters don’t have too many options for graduating to buyers.

“Families have a hard time coming up with the deposit here to buy their own place,” Doug Valdez of Summit Realty in Sheridan, WY, tells Realtor.com.

Wyoming, like many other rural states, experienced a dramatic increase in prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The first-time homebuyer is having trouble finding anything under $300,000,” Valdez says.

Rentals remain robust as in-migrants come to the mountain state for the strong job market, quality of life, abundance of outdoor activities, low crime, no income tax, scenic views, and proximity to the Denver airport.

“It’s one of the friendliest places,” adds Valdez. “People smile and say Hi to you. A lot of people moved here from out of state, and they say, ‘I’m not telling my friends where I live.'”

The states that saw the investor share pick up the most year over year in 2024 were all states with scarce inventory: Delaware (+3.8 ppts), Ohio (+2.2 ppts), DC (+1.8 ppts), Hawaii (+1.4 ppts), and Nevada (+1.3 ppts).

“Investors can take advantage of the high demand in these markets, especially as home prices in Ohio and Delaware tend to be lower than other markets nearby,” explains Jones.

Toledo, OH, is ranked as the top housing market overall in the Wall Street Journal/Realtor.com Housing Market Ranking, with investor buying as a major reason why. That report took into account affordability, a low cost of living, and climate resiliency for where states landed in the rankings.

And some states, while still high in share of investor purchasers, saw a decrease from 2023. Mississippi decreased the most, at -1.1%.

Here are the top 10 states where investors bought properties in 2024:

Missouri
Share of investor buyers: 21.2%
Year over year: +0.3%

Kansas
Share of investor buyers: 18.4%
Year over year: +1%

Utah
Share of investor buyers: 18%
Year over year: +0.3%

Montana
Share of investor buyers: 17.2%
Year over year: -0.1%

Mississippi
Share of investor buyers: 16.7%
Year over year: -1.1%

Wyoming
Share of investor buyers: 16.3%
Year over year: +0.9%

Alabama
Share of investor buyers: 15.9%
Year over year: +0.8%

Affordable cities attracting investors

Aside from affordable states where investor buyers are putting down cash, they’ve also been zeroing in on cities where they can get a good return. The popular regions are the South and Midwest—two of the most affordable regions in the U.S., as identified in the report.

Memphis, TN, Oklahoma City, OK, and St. Louis saw the highest investor buyer share with all but one of the top 10 markets seeing a median investor purchase price below $300,000. Five of the markets saw a median investor purchase price below $200,000.

Kiri Blakeley writes about trending news at Realtor.com. She has also worked at Forbes Magazine, Forbes.com, CafeMom, and DailyMail.com, covering everything from billionaires to celebrities to crime. Her work can be found in news outlets worldwide, including Yahoo, SF Gate, New York Post, Seattle-Post Intelligencer, Marie Claire, She Knows, Huffington Post, and New York Magazine. She has an M.A. in journalism from Columbia University. In her spare time, she writes psychological thrillers under a pen name. She lives in Brooklyn, and her cat foster Instagram account has over 4 million views.

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/investors-are-snapping-up-homes-in-these-affordable-states

Source: Fast Company, Lance Lambert
Photo: Getty Images

America’s second-largest homebuilder Lennar spent the equivalent of 13% of home sales on buyer incentives last quarter. For a $400,000 home, that translates to $52,000 in incentives.

Lennar—the nation’s second-largest homebuilder—told investors on Friday that their spring selling season is off to a soft start.

“We do not see the seasonal pickup typically associated with the beginning of the spring selling season. So we continue to lean into our machine focusing on converting leads and appointments and adjusting incentives as needed to maintain sales pace. These adjustments came in the form of mortgage rate buydowns, price reductions, and closing cost assistance,” Jon Jaffe, co-CEO of Lennar, said on the Friday earnings call.

In addition to Lennar acknowledging a soft start to the spring season, here are six other key takeaways from its Q1 2025 earnings report, covering the period from December 1 to February 28.

1. Lennar continues to see weakness in Florida and Texas

As ResiClub as reported, many markets in those states, particularly San Antonio in Texas and Cape Coral and Punta Gorda in Southwest Florida, have seen active inventory rise well above pre-pandemic levels and home prices decline amid weakened housing demand.

“In general, homebuyers in Florida and Texas, our two highest volume states, needed more help than most other markets around the country,” Jon Jaffe, co-CEO of Lennar, said on the Friday earnings call. “We needed more incentives in Florida and Texas markets to assist buyers achieve mortgage payments they can afford as well as to offset both a slowing in migration environment and increased inventory. All markets around the country require incentives to assist buyers in the current home buying environment.”

2. Lennar is deploying bigger sales incentives—especially in Florida and Texas

Lennar’s average sales price, net of incentives, declined 1% from $413,000 in Q1 2024 to $408,000 in Q1 2025.

Last quarter, Lennar spent the equivalent of 13% of the final sales price on sales incentives, such as mortgage rate buydowns. For a $400,000 home, that translates to $52,000 in incentives.

According to John Burns Research and Consulting, that’s the highest incentive level Lennar has offered since 2009—and it’s significantly higher than Lennar’s cycle low in Q2 2022, when it spent 1.5% of the final sales price on sales incentives. (See historical chart here.)

Lennar co-CEO Stuart Miller said on Friday that: “These are outsized [incentives] for the moment and normalized incentives should be around 5% to 6%.”

In other words, where and when needed—like pockets of Florida and Texas where active housing inventory has bounced back and buyers have gained leverage—Lennar is cutting net effective prices through larger incentives to find the market and keep sales rolling.

That said, a homebuilder’s average sales price can also be skewed by changes in home size. To at least some degree, this is the case for Lennar, which has introduced more smaller home offerings over the past few years.

3. More margin compression

During the pandemic housing boom, publicly-traded homebuilders achieved record profit margins as home prices soared and buyer demand ran red hot. Once the national housing demand boom fizzled out in the summer of 2022, many large homebuilders made affordability adjustments where and when needed to maintain their sales pace. Despite some profit margin compression, almost every major homebuilder entered 2024 with gross margins still above pre-pandemic 2019 levels. However, in recent quarters, margin compression has returned.

During Lennar’s December 2024 earnings call, CFO Diane Bessette stated that they anticipate further margin compression, with gross margins expected to range between 19% and 19.25% for Q1 2025. Lennar’s Q1 2025 gross margin ended up being 18.7%—its lowest in over a decade.

On the March 2025 earnings call, Lennar co-CEO Stuart Miller said he expects the company’s Q2 2025 gross margin to be 18% and that they “expect to continue to see margin pressure on deliveries that will be sold during the quarter.”

4. Lennar chooses volume over margins

Last year, when it became clear that Lennar would have to choose between offering greater incentives in 2025 (i.e., smaller margins) or lower volume, the builder made it clear it would choose the former.

“We’re going to adjust to market. We’re going to maintain [sales] volume,” Lennar co-CEO Stuart Miller said in December.

That’s exactly what it did. It’s also why net new orders in Q1 2025 (18,355) were essentially flat compared to Q1 2024 (18,130) despite the choppier sales environment.

5. No impact from tariffs—yet

Given that Lennar is America’s second-largest homebuilder, it serves as a good proxy to figure out how Trump administration policy could be impacting homebuilders.

On Friday, Lennar executives stated that tariff policy has not yet impacted their business.

“We’ve been in discussions regarding the potential impacts of tariffs with our supply chain,” Lennar co-CEO Jon Jaffe told investors on Friday. “These discussions all start with a review of margin reductions Lennar has already taken. This leads to a constructive effort to identify alternative sourcing and material strategies. Additionally, we prepare our trade partners to absorb potential increases to their supply chain costs in the event of tariffs . . . To date, we have had no impact to our cost from tariffs and we will work closely with all our trade partners that further tariffs present themselves to mitigate offset cost impacts.”

6. No impact from immigration policy—yet

While it’s unclear how many undocumented immigrants work in construction, we know it’s a chunk. In 2016, Pew Research Center estimated that 13% of the U.S. construction workforce is undocumented. In 2021, the Center for American Progress estimated that 23% of construction laborers are undocumented (see the full breakdown above).

While undocumented workers are more likely to be employed by subcontractors rather than the builder, business disruptions due to deportations, if they are to occur, would still be noticed by general contractors and homebuilders.

So far, Lennar hasn’t seen disruptions caused by changes in immigration policy.

“With respect to potential labor disruptions that could derive from immigration policy enforcement, our consistent high volume makes our construction a priority for our trade partners,” Lennar co-CEO Jon Jaffe told investors on Friday. “To date, there has been no shortage of labor or impact to cycle time. Again, our strategic trade partners appreciate the financial impact to our margins of maintaining our consistent high volume and we expect to be as well-positioned as possible should any disruptions present themselves.”

The final deadline for Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators Awards is this Friday, March 28, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lance Lambert is the co-founder and editor of ResiClub, a media and research company dedicated to in-depth tracking, reporting, and analysis of regional housing markets. He has been publishing his reporting in Fast Company since 2023.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91304658/housing-market-florida-texas-are-so-choppy-that-lennars-incentives-hit-highest-since-2009

Source: Realtor.com, Keith Griffith
Photo: Courtesy of Richmond American Homes via Realtor.com

Leading Japanese homebuilder Sekisui House is quietly expanding operations in the U.S., bringing new investment and innovation to a home construction sector that is racing to keep pace with demand.

Last January, Sekisui House acquired major U.S. homebuilder MDC Holdings, which builds single-family homes under the name Richmond American Homes, in a $5 billion cash deal.

Sekisui House also owns American subsidiaries Woodside Homes, Holt Homes, Chesmar Homes, and Hubble Homes. Together, the company estimates those subsidiaries will deliver 15,000 new homes annually across 16 states.

It would make Sekisui House the fifth-largest builder in the United States by units, based on 2023 completion statistics compiled by trade publication ProBuilder. While Sekisui House’s construction stats remain far behind the biggest U.S. builders such as Lennar and D.R. Horton, the company’s quiet expansion has made it a significant player in the U.S. market.

In Japan, Sekisui House is a high-end builder focused on custom homes, and the country’s No. 2 builder by revenue. But with Japan’s housing market decelerating due to a rapidly aging and shrinking population, the company has turned to America to expand its opportunities for growth.

Sekisui House CEO Yoshihiro Nakai said last year that the MDC acquisition “marks a significant advancement of our strategy to expand in the U.S. and bring the value of our philosophies and technology to U.S. homebuilding.”

He added, “We believe that we can become a one-of-a-kind entity in the U.S. by combining Japanese and U.S. technologies and, above all, sharing our passion for providing quality housing.”

Sekisui House plans to train U.S. construction workers in new skills

As soon as this month, Sekisui House plans to send a team of 20 experts to the U.S. to begin training local contractors such as carpenters, marking the company’s largest overseas training program to date.

The company hopes the new training program will help it grapple with a labor shortage that has plagued the U.S. homebuilding industry. The National Association of Home Builders says the country needs thousands of new skilled construction workers to address a housing shortfall of some 1.5 million units.

In Japan, homes are typically built with far fewer workers than in the U.S., in part because Japanese construction workers are multidisciplinary and trained in a variety of key tasks. A Financial Times analysis from 2017 found that the average Japanese construction worker produces about 37% more new homes each year than the average U.S. construction worker.

Now, Sekisui House is exploring how it could bring elements of the multidisciplinary construction worker approach to the U.S. through its new training program.

“Homebuilders may compete for labor, so having multiskilled workers is one of the initiatives we want to consider most,” Nakai has said, according to Japanese news outlet Nikkei Asia.

However, it remains to be seen whether the Japanese approach to homebuilding will translate to the U.S., where builders are constrained by thickets of regulations, and union rules often strictly prescribe which tasks must be performed by members only.

“Sekisui will face the same fundamental challenges that other U.S. builders are facing, namely high input costs (like land, labor, and lumber), regulatory hurdles, and weakened buyer demand in the current environment of high mortgage rates,” says Realtor.com® senior economist Joel Berner.

“Sekisui may have some advantages as well, from a lower cost of capital than American builders that allows them to keep prices competitive, to a differentiated product from American builders that may attract buyers,” he adds. “Another opportunity for Sekisui to flex its financial muscles as a large international company may be to offer preferred financing directly to homebuyers in the form of mortgage rate buy-downs or below-market rates.”

Will Americans embrace Japanese home design?

For now, Sekisui House continues to operate its U.S. subsidiaries under their original brands, offering homes built in the same style and with the same methods as they have been in the past.

But as time goes on, the company plans to add new offerings and test the U.S. appetite for homes constructed with Japanese technology and design influences.

According to Nikkei Asia, Sekisui House expects to build 20,000 units in the U.S. in the year ending January 2032 and hopes that its Shawood line of Japanese-style wood houses will account for 3,000 of them.

The Shawood home line adjusts the structure of the home to its local environment and climate, controlling sunlight and airflow to reduce heating and cooling costs. The homes also focus on the use of advanced insulation material and “airtight” construction methods to boost energy efficiency.

However, the Shawood homes use framing techniques that require precision joining down to the millimeter. That level of precision will require special training, and it remains to be seen whether U.S. construction workers will embrace the new training and techniques required for the Shawood line.

Regardless, the MDC acquisition signals that Sekisui House is serious about expansion and investment in the U.S. market, which the company’s financial results show is a rapidly growing part of its total business.

For the first nine months of 2024, Sekisui House reported about $5 million in revenue from overseas sales. That was up 156% from a year earlier, and accounted for about 30% of the company’s total revenue, up from just a 15% share last year.

“It’s always great to see increased investment in homebuilding in the United States,” says Berner. “The housing supply gap is one of the most important domestic issues of our time, and if we’re serious about providing safe, affordable, sustainable places for American families to live, then we invite Sekisui House to show us what it can do.”

Keith Griffith is a journalist at Realtor.com covering housing policy, real estate news, and trends in the residential market. Previously, his work has appeared in Business Insider, The Street, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Post, and the Daily Mail, among other publications. He has a master of arts degree in economic and business journalism from Columbia University.

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/japanese-homebuilder-sekisui-house

Source: Realtor.com, Julie Taylor
Photo: Courtesy of @discoveroshkosh; @downtownoshkosh; @oshkoshyachtclub

America’s hottest real estate market might be known more for sharing a name with a popular children’s clothing line—but it’s the city’s budget-friendly home prices and peaceful surroundings that are whipping buyers into a frenzy.

Oshkosh, WI, has just ranked as the most desirable market in the U.S. for the first time in the data’s history, according to the Realtor.com® Hottest Housing Markets rankings for July.

The area—which is home to the clothing line OshKosh B’Gosh, a major employer—has homes with a median list price of $374,000, which is $65,950 less than the national median.

These budget-friendly prices combined with the tranquil surroundings helped elevate this Wisconsin city to the top of July’s rankings, according to Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst at Realtor.com.

Oshkosh, WI, has just ranked as the most desirable market in the U.S. for the first time in the data’s history, according to the Realtor.com Hottest Housing Markets rankings for July.(Getty Images)
“Situated on Lake Winnebago, Oshkosh offers buyers affordability in an idyllic setting,” she says.

Realtor.com listings in Oshkosh received 3.7 times more views per property in July than the national average. With all those eyeballs, properties sit a mere 18 days on the market before getting snapped up by eager buyers—a whopping 32 fewer days than usual nationwide.

Real estate agents around Oshkosh agree that homes for sale here don’t sit around long.

“We are still getting multiple offers in Oshkosh and even seeing some bidding wars,” says local real estate agent Kate Schlagel-Grier, of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.

Real estate agent Chris Siamhof, also with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, agrees there’s stiff competition in Oshkosh, and her clients have had to get creative to get their offers noticed.

“Clients are waiving home inspections, offering appraisal gap coverage, letting owners rent back, or even paying the owner’s property taxes for a year—anything they can do to make their offers stand out,” Siamhof says. “And we are still seeing some houses going for up to $30,000 over asking.”

Many of these home shoppers hail from bigger cities nearby like Milwaukee and are seeking cheaper places to settle down, says Schlagel-Grier.

“Oshkosh is a very nice town with a much lower cost of living than Milwaukee or the Upper Valley,” she says. “This draws many people to the area.”

Oshkosh may be leading the pack, but it’s just one of many Midwest markets that have been heating up.

“Oshkosh has ascended the hottest markets ranks over the last couple of years along with many other Midwest metros,” says Jones.

As mortgage rates started to climb in 2022—and home prices remained stubbornly high across much of the country—buyer attention zeroed in on the Midwest, according to Jones.

“As a result, many Midwest markets, such as Oshkosh, have seen inventory levels fail to keep up with rising popularity,” she explains.

Though listing levels improved 24.2% year over year in Oshkosh in July, there were 72.8% fewer homes for sale this July compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The gap between inventory and buyer demand sent Oshkosh to the top of this month’s list,” Jones says.

Following Oshkosh was Hartford, CT, at No. 2. Its listings received 4.3 times more views than the national average in July, and the average home here costs $444,000. It appeals to many because of its proximity to New York City, which is about 90 minutes away.

Manchester, NH, ranked No. 3. The state’s largest city has a median house price of $585,000. It’s just an hour outside Boston and has no state income tax. In July, the houses here spent a median of just 20 days on the market.

Rounding out the top five on the list were Rockford, IL, with a median house price of $216,000, and Akron, OH, with a median house price of $257,000.

In addition to Oshkosh, the other two places in Wisconsin that made the top 20 are Janesville (No. 9) and Green Bay (No. 18). With the lowest median price of $335,000 in the Janesville area, Wisconsin is affordable, family-friendly, and a top spot for outdoor recreation.

The trio of Ohio towns that made the top 20 are Akron (No. 5), Canton (No. 11), and Cleveland (No. 20). All three had median housing prices in the $200,000s, and Ohio is known for its low cost of living.

The towns in Illinois that made the top 20 are Rockford (No. 4), Springfield (No. 12), and Peoria (No. 16). Peoria is also the city with the lowest median housing price in the top 20, at $179,ooo. This metro is midway between Chicago and St. Louis, which are each three hours away.

In July, home prices in the majority of the U.S. remained stable compared with last year, at a median of $439,950 nationwide. However, home prices of America’s 20 Hottest Markets were still climbing, spiking 11% year over year.

Homes in July’s hottest markets also received 2.8 times more views per property than the national average. This is largely due to these areas’ high demand and low housing stock, which “drives views per property higher, upping the competition for homes in the hottest markets and leading to snappier home sales,” Jones notes in her analysis.

Houses in America’s 20 hottest markets spent just 26 days on the market on average, which was roughly half the national average of 50 days.

The five large markets that saw the biggest jump in rankings were Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Kansas City, MO, Minneapolis, and Chicago.

Las Vegas saw the biggest jump in its hotness ranking among large U.S. metros, up 73 spots over last year.

Shockingly, prices fell an average of 1.1% in these large urban markets, which was the first-ever large-market average annual decline in the data’s history.

“This suggests that large markets are starting to adjust to subdued buyer demand by lowering home prices and selling lower-priced homes,” Jones explains.

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/hottest-housing-markets-july-2024-oshkosh-wi