The Housing Market of the Future

REALTOR® Magazine Daily Real Estate News May 12, 2008

New trends will reshape tastes in homes and transform how you buy and sell, experts say. So what will the housing market of the future look like? Money magazine interviewed developers, architects, lenders, and more, to paint the following picture:

Smaller houses. In a February survey of potential home buyers by the National Association of Home Builders, 60 percent said they would rather have a smaller house with more amenities than vice versa. "In the past, people would say 'Give me space and I'll add the features later,' " says Gopal Ahluwalia, the NAHB's vice president of research. Newly built houses will have layouts that can "live bigger" than their square footage would suggest, with rooms that can do double duty, experts say.

New tools for assessing mortgage risk. With foreclosures projected to reach 2 million nationwide by the end of next year, bankers are rethinking how they set mortgage rates. Eventually, mortgage pricing may come to resemble pricing for, say, homeowners insurance, which takes into account dozens of factors. Lenders "want to be able to assess the risk, practically down to the biological level, that you won't pay your mortgage," says Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH Associates, which tracks the home-lending market.

Housing data: no secrets left. With more innovative real estate Web sites popping up, everyone now knows how much everyone else's house is worth, and consumers will continue to have unprecedented access to housing information that was once found only in multiple listing services.

Source: Money, Stephen Gandel (06/01/2008)