Can Your Relationship Handle Buying a Home?

As more millennials and Gen Xers enter the housing market, it is an exciting yet stressful time, especially for those buying a house with their significant other.

In fact, LendingHome, the largest, fastest-growing mortgage marketplace lender, today revealed new survey data showing that 60 percent of millennial and Gen X couples disagreed occasionally, frequently, or “a lot” when buying a house with their partner or spouse.

Couples may be able to more harmoniously navigate the homebuying process by being together longer before jumping into the housing market.

The data shows that couples together for 5-plus years disagreed frequently or more only 14 percent of the time when searching for a home. In contrast, couples together for four years or less disagreed twice as much with nearly 30 percent disagreeing frequently or more.

Fear of Debt Top Disagreement

Top disagreements among couples include the level of debt to take on (49 percent), the style of house (46 percent), size of house (45 percent), and whether or not to buy a house in need of renovation (43 percent).

Some couples may also struggle with different housing preferences based on gender and location. The data shows that women prefer traditional, cozy homes (48 percent) in the suburbs (54 percent), while men are more open to modern homes (48 percent) in urban-like settings (40 percent). Additionally, survey respondents from the West opted for city living (31 percent) more than those from the Midwest (8 percent).

“Buying a home is stressful for just about anyone, but even more so for couples and first-time homebuyers,” said Matt Humphrey, co-founder and CEO of LendingHome. “To navigate the homebuying process smoothly starts by first being aware of some of the pitfalls. We hope that this data and the resources we provide help couples manage their differences and better communicate during the process.”

In searching for your dream home, it’s important to get clear on your wants versus needs, your firm deal breakers, and ability to analyze the pros and cons. The goal is to get on the same page at the beginning of the search in order to minimize conflict throughout the process.”

Key Housing Differences Among Men and Women

The data shows key housing preferences and differences between men and women:

• Women prefer traditional/cozy houses (48 percent) versus modern homes (34 percent). They also prefer the suburbs (54 percent) versus a big city (15 percent), and established neighborhoods (46 percent) versus an urban-like environment (21 percent).

• Men are more open to the the style and location of their home. They like modern houses slightly more (48 percent) than traditional/cozy homes (42 percent). They equally like living in an urban-like environment (40 percent) and an established neighborhood (39 percent).

• While most men also prefer the suburbs (42 percent) -- yet 12 percent less than women -- their second choice is equally split between living in a city (25 percent) and countryside (24 percent).

All’s Well That Ends Well

In the end, most couples leave their disagreements behind and many are more committed:

• 60 percent of couples said that their disagreements when buying a house didn’t matter in the end.

• Over 50 percent of couples felt more committed to the relationship after purchasing the house.

Source: Lendinghome

Zillow Quits Home-Flipping Business, Cites Inability to Forecast Prices

Zillow, the real estate website known for estimating house values, said on Tuesday that it would exit the business of rapidly buying and selling houses amid heavy losses and that it planned to let go about nearly 25 percent of its employees.

The announcement was a major strategic retreat and a black eye for Richard Barton, Zillow’s chief executive, who founded the company 16 years ago and has long talked about transitioning Zillow’s popular website into a marketplace. Last year, Mr. Barton predicted Zillow Offers, which made instant offers on homes in a practice known as iBuying, could generate $20 billion a year.

On Tuesday, Zillow, which said it has 8,000 employees, said the division had been the source of huge losses and had made the company’s overall bottom line unpredictable. Zillow Offers lost more than $420 million in the three months ending in September, roughly the same amount that the company had earned in total during the prior 12 months. “We’ve determined the unpredictability in forecasting home prices far exceeds what we anticipated,” Mr. Barton said in a statement accompanying its quarterly financials.

Mr. Barton, speaking on a conference call with analysts on Tuesday afternoon, said the decision had “weighed heavily” on him. “We could blame the current losses on exogenous market events,” Mr. Barton said. “But it would be naïve to predict that unpredictable events won’t happen in the future.”

In all the company lost nearly $330 million in the third quarter, which was far worse than Wall Street analysts had predicted. The company made a $40 million profit in the same period a year ago.

Shares of Zillow have fallen more than 50 percent from a high of nearly $200 in February, when it was still a darling of investors as the housing market heated up. The stock dropped 11.5 percent on Tuesday to about $85.50 before it released its financials, and a further 7.5 percent in after-hours trading. (Even so, Zillow’s shares are worth double what they were at the beginning of the pandemic.)

Source: The New York Times

Can You Get Your Down Payment Back On A House?

A lot of Filipinos are buying real estate properties in the Philippines, like condos, townhouses or residential homes, as vacation houses or for investment purposes.

Most of these purchases are financed either by a bank or the seller, and the buyer pays on an installment basis for a period of 10 to 30 years, depending on the value of the property and the terms of the loan.

Sometimes, however, there are unavoidable situations where the buyer is unable to continue making the monthly payments on the loan. In such case, the seller or lender can cancel the sale contract or foreclose the mortgage on the property.

Luckily for the buyer, there is a Philippine law that protects him or her in case of default in making installment payments. Under the Realty Installment Buyer Act (Republic Act No. 6552) or the Maceda Law, a buyer of real estate property on an installment basis has the following rights:

1. Right to a grace period to pay the installments due. If the buyer has paid at least two years of installment, the buyer has a grace period of 30 days for every year of installment payments made; if only less than two years installment payments have been made, the buyer has 60 days from the date the installment became due.

2. Right to a 30-day notice of cancellation. If the buyer is unable to pay the installment due within the grace period, the sale contract will only be canceled after 30 days from receipt by the buyer of a written notice of cancellation or a notarized demand for rescission of the contract.

3. Right to refund of payments made. Under Section 3(b) of the law, if the contract is canceled or rescinded, the buyer is entitled to a fifty per cent refund of payments made, if buyer has already paid at least two years of installment. The refund percentage is increased to five percent for every year after five years of installment payments made, up to a maximum of ninety per cent. The down payment, deposit or option payment on the contract are included in the computation of the total installment payments made.

It is common practice among sellers to impose penalties, charges or other fees if the contract is canceled or rescinded and to deduct these from the refund amount, thereby leaving the buyer with a smaller refund.

This practice is of doubtful legality because the law expressly states that any stipulation in a contract that is contrary to the foregoing rights shall be void. Since the deductions would reduce the refund amount to less than fifty or more per cent (depending on the length of payments) of the installment payments made, this would contravene Section 3(b).

The realty installment buyer can also sell or assign his or her right under the contract before it is cancelled. And if he or she pays the whole balance in advance, no interest shall accrue on such unpaid balance.