Many Seattle area residents feel like the bar to owning a home just keeps getting higher, and they're not imagining things.

The cost of a monthly mortgage payment is now well beyond double the cost of median rent here — among the largest gaps in the country.

While the typical renter who recently moved is spending an already eye-watering $2,...Read more

Najimah Roberson, a lifelong renter, spent the past two years searching around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a home she could afford — getting outbid nearly 30 times along the way.

The ordeal had the 42-year-old daycare business owner “in tears for weeks” before she finally found a five-bedroom fixer-upper for $340,000. It has an ...Read more

The top U.S. securities regulator is delaying the launch of a wave of novel exchange-traded funds that would let investors wager on events such as elections and economic data as the agency weighs how far the $15 trillion ETF wrapper can stretch.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins said Wednesday that he has instructed staff ...Read more

The home on Bottlebrush Court was built in the early 1980s. The Oceanside property features four bedrooms, two baths and almost 1,600 square feet of living space on a 6,100-square-foot lot just south of the San Luis Rey River.

When it was put up for public foreclosure auction under a trustee sale in late 2022, county property records show the ...Read more

The Trump administration is poised to roll out a plan for trading digital versions of securities that could reshape the landscape of the American stock market as it continues to loosen the rules for free-wheeling crypto markets.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to release its so-called innovation exemption for tokenized ...Read more

Gold doubled in price over the past two years, briefly topping $5,000 a troy ounce on Jan. 28. Since then, it’s stayed close to that price, a record high even after discounting inflation.

Around the same time, silver topped $100 an ounce for the first time, and the price has been bouncing since, from $70 to $90.

Precious metals buyers say ...Read more

The main building at Chicago’s Ford City Mall will shut down permanently in about five weeks due to what city attorneys have described as unsafe conditions, ending its more than 60-year run as a top retail destination for the Southwest Side.

“The main mall will be shuttered June 22 at noon,” Assistant Corporation Counsel Greg Janes said ...Read more

Detroit-based home lender Rocket Mortgage filed a lawsuit Thursday against local archrival United Wholesale Mortgage for alleged breach of contract.

The suit marks the latest escalation in a bitter personal and business feud between Rocket Companies Chairman Dan Gilbert and UWM CEO Mat Ishbia.

The filing from Rocket to the New York state ...Read more

SAN DIEGO — If Measure A passes on June 2, San Diego would join a group of cities in the U.S., Canada and abroad that tax second homes or properties that are unoccupied for most of the year.

San Diego’s “non-primary home” tax, as it is being called, would impose an initial annual levy of $8,000 on more than 5,000 homes that are vacant ...Read more

Even as the relentless rise in Los Angeles housing costs seems to have paused, condominium sales slowed to a trickle this year.

The number of condo units sold in the first two months slid to a more than 20-year low, according to figures from real estate data firm Attom. The median price of a condo fell nearly 5% in February compared with a year...Read more

Homeowners associations across Minnesota will see their powers diminished under a far-reaching “HOA Bill of Rights” approved by state lawmakers this week.

The bipartisan measure that runs more than 50 pages is aimed at protecting homeowners by requiring more transparency from HOAs, limiting their ability to levy fines and foreclose ...Read more

Data center proposals across the country are stoking wide-ranging questions and concerns tied to their consumption of electric power.

The facilities store racks of computing equipment, in row after row, powering main features of modern technology, especially artificial intelligence.

Keeping that machinery humming can consume as much ...Read more

The world’s largest asset manager dismissed worries of an AI bubble and instead said that the industry is providing unrivaled opportunities to investors, in remarks Tuesday at the Milken Institute Global Conference.

Larry Fink, chairman and chief executive of BlackRock, said that despite concerns that AI is being hyped, there is legitimate ...Read more

Keeping a home reasonably clean does not require a full day of scrubbing or an obsessive personality. For most households, the secret is learning to focus on the areas that create the greatest visual impact in the shortest amount of time.

Professional cleaners and organized homeowners alike say that a fast, effective cleaning session often ...Read more

By almost any measure, the smart home should have arrived by now.

For more than 50 years, futurists have promised houses that would anticipate our needs, adjust themselves automatically and free homeowners from countless mundane tasks. In the 1960s, television specials and magazine illustrations depicted suburban families living with ...Read more

By all appearances, the modern American home is becoming a shoe-optional zone.

Whether prompted by concerns about dirt, allergens, comfort or simple habit, more households are asking visitors to remove their shoes at the door. Once that happens, a surprisingly consequential question follows: What comes next?

For some, the answer is a pair of ...Read more