The financial news that actually matters
A buyer closing on a $400,000 home this week will pay roughly $70 more per month than one who locked a rate in late February, and the gap is still widening. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose to 6.53% for the week ending May 22, 2026, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey…
A couple starting to save for their first home today, earning the national median income and setting aside money at the average American savings rate, will not have enough for a down payment until 2033. That is the core finding of a May 2025 analysis from Realtor.com: seven years of disciplined saving to reach a…
Somewhere in Florida this spring, a homeowner opened a renewal notice, saw a five-figure number, and called an agent convinced it was a typo. That reaction has become routine in a state where the average annual home insurance premium now sits near $8,500, more than triple the national figure. But the sticker shock is no…
More than 330,000 Florida homeowners are about to pay less for property insurance. Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-backed insurer of last resort, will cut rates an average of 8.7 percent starting June 1, 2026, marking the first across-the-board reduction in its homeowners book in roughly eight years. For a policyholder paying near the statewide…
On Sunday, June 1, the Atlantic hurricane season officially begins. For homeowners across Florida and the Gulf Coast who have been putting off buying insurance, the calendar has turned unforgiving: once the National Hurricane Center places a named storm inside its forecast cone, most private carriers in the region stop writing new policies, sometimes within…
A homeowner in Galveston with a 14-year-old asphalt shingle roof and a $15,000 replacement estimate could collect barely $8,000 from a standard insurance policy after a hurricane. The rest, thousands of dollars, would come out of pocket. That scenario is not hypothetical. It is how “actual cash value” roof provisions work in a growing number…
Five months ago, a buyer shopping for a median-priced U.S. home could lock in a 30-year fixed mortgage near 5.75 percent, a level that, if reached, would represent the lowest reading on the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey since late 2024. (Freddie Mac’s PMMS showed rates in the 6.6 to 6.9 percent range through…
June 1, 2026, marks the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season, and the overwhelming majority of American homeowners will enter it without a single dollar of flood coverage. Not because flood insurance is hard to find. Because most people believe the homeowners policy they already pay for will cover a flood. It will not….
The median new home sold in March cost $387,400 — about $30,000 less than the median existing home as builders cut prices on a third of sales A brand-new house now costs less than a used one, and the gap is not small. The median new single-family home sold in March 2026 for $387,400, according…
A seller-funded mortgage rate buy-down cuts a buyer’s monthly payment by about $200 for two years – but the money is wasted if you sell or refinance inside 24 months A home seller in a June 2026 purchase contract offers to fund a temporary mortgage rate buydown. The buyer’s monthly payment drops by a few…