Normally, altering a driveway configuration in the front yard of a home in a residential neighborhood on suburban Chicago's North Shore would draw scant attention and interest from the broader public.

However, when it’s one of the Chicago area’s single best-known residential properties — the iconic “Home Alone” mansion in Winnetka ...Read more

If you picture a first-time homebuyer in the Seattle area, you probably wouldn’t think of 24-year-old Edwin Nino Delgado with his hip-hop posters taped to the wall of his $770,000 Lake City triplex.

He’s nowhere near the age of the typical first-time homebuyer, which is now a record high of 40 nationwide, according to the National Realtors ...Read more

Just because you can buy a home, should you?

It seems like a no-brainer when home prices soar year after year. But experts say first-time homebuyers need to consider factors beyond pure capital before jumping into the market.

The median age of a first-time homebuyer has reached a record high of 40 — a time when most people are settled. But ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — Frank Gillis laid out four sheets of fiberglass inside the Penn College Building Performance Lab in Pittsburgh's Homewood neighborhood.

With a knife, he demonstrated how to cut through the insulation layer, stopping short of the aluminum cover — "like filleting a fish" — and how to fold the sheet into a rectangular duct, ...Read more

The American dream of owning a home has never seemed further out of reach for young people. You can hardly blame Gen Z and younger millennials for adopting an economic nihilism that prioritizes the here and now — whether that’s $400 Lola blankets or risky crypto trading — over stashing money away for a down payment.

But there’s an ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The land below the Beverly Hills flagship store of luxury retailer Neiman Marcus has been sold to a New York investor as the owners of the department store chain sell property to pay debts.

Neiman Marcus, which has occupied the 9700 Wilshire Boulevard store since it opened in 1979, will continue to serve customers there as a ...Read more

Mortgage rates could briefly drop below 6 percent in 2026 which could unlock parts of the Las Vegas Valley housing market, according to a new forecast.

Lending Tree’s 2026 Housing and Economic Predictions report expects mortgage rates to drop into the 5 percent range sometime next year, something that has not happened since 2022. Freddie Mac ...Read more

At the big banks and the boutique investment shops, an optimistic consensus has taken hold: the U.S. stock market will rally in 2026 for a fourth straight year, marking the longest winning streak in nearly two decades.

There’s plenty of angst about the risks to the bull run that’s pushed the S&P 500 Index up some 90% since its October 2022 ...Read more

Robo-advisors automate the investing process for you, making it simple to invest in a diversified portfolio of assets — and they cost much less than a typical financial advisor. It’s little wonder that many investors have turned to them, and robo-advisors now manage hundreds of billions of dollars.

What a robo-advisor does

A robo-advisor ...Read more

Downtown L.A. is doing better than you think it is, but the government needs to do more to energize the city, said one of the region's longest and most successful real estate leaders.

Bill Witte is retiring after running Related California, a large-scale developer of both luxury and low-income apartments, for more than three decades.

Among the...Read more

DETROIT — Downtown bustled this week with shoppers like Bill Atwood, 55, who stopped by GW Home to buy his wife a lamp for Christmas. The Detroiter has lived in Brush Park for 26 years and remembers the scarce retail offerings back then.

“I always dreamed of being able to Christmas shop here,” he said. “Back in 1999 there was almost ...Read more

After business consultant Len Kendall lost his Pacific Palisades home in the January firestorms, he sought to put a temporary stop on his mortgage payments but set aside the effort after realizing the paperwork involved.

So he was pleased to learn in September about a new state law that required mortgage servicers to offer up to 12 months of ...Read more

If you’re buying a home, refinancing your mortgage, or just want to know how much your home is worth, you’re probably going to need a property appraisal.

At its most basic, “an appraisal is an opinion of value for a home,” said Matthew Sestito, a Philadelphia-based appraiser who works throughout the five-county area for the national ...Read more

Unexpected events, such as an emergency room visit or a broken-down car, can result in major financial problems when you don’t have an emergency fund in place.

It’s not just about having some cash — ideally enough to cover at least six months of your expenses — set aside for those worst-case scenarios, though. Where you keep that money...Read more

As vet bills skyrocket, more and more pet owners are turning to insurance programs to prevent their pets’ surprise illness from becoming a financial hardship.

But the devil is in the details, and complaints have surfaced that procedures and care that consumers thought were covered by the policies they purchased actually weren’t covered.

A ...Read more

More homebuyers have been backing out of home-purchase agreements in many parts of Florida and across the U.S., a new analysis shows.

Florida and Texas are seeing more newly built homes “than anywhere else in the country,” leading some buyers to back out of deals because they feel they might find a better option, according to Redfin, a real...Read more