This week saw a decrease in overall home purchase applications but the average mortgage rate held steady at or around three-year lows. The latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), released by Freddie Mac Thursday, shows the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaging 6.10%, a slight increase of 1 basis point from last week’s rate average of…

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Lower mortgage rates at the end of 2025 prompted a refinance rush among current homeowners, helping boost prepayment rates to their highest level in three years, according to a new report from ICE Mortgage Technology. The monthly mortgage prepayment rate rose to 0.91% in December, just below the 3.5-year high set in October, ICE reported…

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With predictions flooding in left and right from real estate economists suggesting that 2026 will be an improved year for housing, recent data from ATTOM supports this view—showing that home sale trends that began in 2025 will pave the way toward normalization in the market throughout 2026. ATTOM’s Year-End 2025 U.S. Home Sales Report found…

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Zillow has announced its new national brand platform—“Someday Starts Today”—designed to support people at every stage of the home journey, from those ready to move now to those still only imagining what’s possible. The campaign debuts Feb. 1 in connection with Zillow advertising that will air during the Grammy Awards broadcast, and the portal stated…

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How many remodeling referrals should agents expect to hand out to past clients this year? According to the Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) latest update to its Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA), spending on remodeling is expected to grow, but slow down gradually, as the year goes on.  The current year-over-year…

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Above, Fed Chair Jerome Powell The Federal Reserve has announced its interest rates will remain unchanged during its Jan. 28 meeting. This follows three straight rate cuts from the prior three Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings of 2025. The FOMC announced at its first meeting of 2026 that it has kept interest rates at…

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The LGBTQ+ Real Estate Alliance has filed a First Amended Complaint against former CEO Ryan A. Weyandt in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, seeking substantial damages across eight counts, and claiming he misappropriated the organization’s valuable 10,000-member customer list and engaged in a pattern of false statements designed to damage its…

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From left, Steve and Hans Wydler  For years as luxury real-estate brokers in the DMV (D.C., Maryland, Virginia), we’ve watched a stubborn trend erode housing mobility: Long-time homeowners are increasingly choosing not to sell. It is not because they don’t want to, but because the U.S. tax code penalizes them for doing so. Under current…

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PropStream announced the release of two new dialing workflows and an enhanced skip tracing experience to help simplify how real estate professionals move from property research to real conversations within the PropStream platform. The update enhances how skip tracing—provided by third parties—is accessed across the platform while introducing flexible dialing workflows that support both one-to-one…

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Bright MLS has announced that industry veteran Rajeev Sajja has been named the company’s first Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, a new role created to accelerate the MLS’s transformation as an AI-native, enterprise-scale technology and data platform. Bright said this appointment reflects its belief that AI will redefine how listing data is managed, insights are delivered,…

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