Trump seeks to prioritize affordable housing with an executive order, proposed mortgage reforms are already adding on to borrowing costs, new home sales tick lower again and more in our weekly roundup of national real estate news.

The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University released its annual State of the Nation’s Housing report for 2019 and we were on hand to get the big picture on affordability, inventory pressures, predictions for the future and more from researchers and policy experts

In March, the luxury home market saw the largest drop in sales since 2010 with an 8.3 percent year-over-year decrease in closings, according to data gathered by Realtor.com. There were just 8,343 sales in excess of $1 million across

A provision within the most recent tax reform bill attempts to remedy the place-based polarization that’s plaguing many communities across the country, including Chicago. CAR’s Commercial Forum recently hosted a seminar on the issue, bringing together real estate professionals, community leaders and even a key architect of the program to discuss its impact.

By the end of 2018, it was easy to see storms on the horizon in terms of the domestic and global economic outlook, with price growth beginning to slow and construction activity continuing to underwhelm. At the midpoint of 2019, however, we’ve already seen several surprises in the housing market, many of them on the positive side.

A Romanesque revival-style church in Washington, D.C., is on the market for $2.225 million as a six-unit townhouse. Morningstar Community Development started the conversion project in 2016, and now the 125-year-old building — which still looks like a Gothic-style

A Frank Lloyd Wright designed Los Angeles mansion featuring Mesoamerican-inspired design is on the market for $23 million. Known as The Ennis House, the 8,000-square-foot home is covered with concrete blocks molded to look like a Mayan temple. The

Real estate news this week includes stories about investors growing their share of home sales, Fannie and Freddie’s support for pre-fab homes yielding mixed results, and low rates failing to be a panacea in the housing market.

The latest numbers demonstrate that consumers may have responded to the combination of continuing low interest rates and newly increased inventory sooner than some watchers of the market had expected.

While sales may be down, the number of attached homes that went under contract is on the rise. Also, zoning standards are softened to make way for a new suburban town center and a new study looks at renter stats in Cook County.

An increasing number of Americans believe the situation is improving for both homebuyers and sellers, according to the latest survey from NAR.

The Federal Reserve announced it would not make changes to targets for its key interest rate, but in line with some projections, the Federal Open Market Committee made significant revisions to forecasts on future interest rate adjustments in response to new concerns that economic growth is slowing.

Single-family housing starts fell in the Northeast, Midwest and West, but rose in the South, where majority of house building takes place. Still, there’s a reason for optimism going forward.

The latest RE/MAX report for the Chicago metro area shows some improvement over last month, but year-over-year numbers still fall short of national totals.

This is the first quarter since Q3 2016 that more respondents saw a positive rather than negative outlook for profitability, and is the second-highest margin of optimism recorded in the survey’s six-year history.

In every decision they make, parents tend to make their children their top priority. The same goes for the considerations they make when shopping for a new home. Find out how the way families search for and finance a home might differ from your single and non-parent clients.