Affordability continues to be a challenge in housing, and a new report from the National Association of Home Builders shows how that’s influencing both buyers and builders in 2026. 

Complete with towers, turrets and Corinthian columns, the sellers built this Spring Grove, Illinois, property in 2012 and nicknamed it the “castle of love.”

After five years of worsening, housing affordability has finally started to improve, according to a new Redfin study. 

With mortgage rates approaching 6%, 5.5 million additional buyers that could not qualify for a mortgage one year ago would qualify at today’s lower rates, the National Association of REALTORS® said. 

Estates in Bellevue and Clyde Hill topped the list of the 10 most expensive Seattle-area home sales in January.

In a rare housing market shift, newly built homes saw price reductions more frequently than existing homes in late 2025 for the first time in recent history, according to a new report from Realtor.com.  

As the housing market continues to adjust, design and community strategy have become drivers of buyer preference, according to Jenni Nichols, vice president of design at John Burns Research and Consulting.

Rate has entered a multi-year partnership with Alianza, a national grassroots soccer platform serving Latino communities, to expand access to bilingual homeownership education and financial resources. 

The change comes as Robert Reffkin takes the role of chairman and CEO of the newly formed Compass International Holdings.

In this edition of Local Look, Windermere Principal Economist Jeff Tucker explains how homebuyers have increasingly gained leverage in the local housing market as home prices have softened.

“Today’s ruling is a clear victory not just for Zillow, but for consumers, agents, brokerages and the real estate industry at large,” a Zillow spokesperson told Agent Publishing.

“Congratulations to the 2025 top performers for another extraordinary year leading luxury for our brokerage and for our industry alike,” said President and CEO Dean Jones.

Ryan Schneider, former CEO of Anywhere Real Estate, has left the company following its acquisition by Compass, a representative from Anywhere confirmed. 

Affordable units — defined by RentCafe as those where rent doesn’t exceed 30% of the area median income — now make up nearly one in four new apartments in Seattle.

The brokerage is the first defendant in the lawsuit that alleges that it, RE/MAX, Anywhere Real Estate and the National Association of REALTORS® conspired to fix agent commissions and inflate home prices. 

Advocus National Title Insurance Company, a Rate-acquired company, has appointed Kelli Fogarty as executive vice president, business development and Stan Czaja as executive vice president and general manager as part of a strategic effort to scale its underwriting platform nationwide.