Norway's House Prices Flat in May as Property Market Cools
Prices were unchanged on a seasonally adjusted basis in May, following a 0.2% decline in April that was the first in nine months, according to data published by Real Estate Norway on Wednesday. Norges Bank had expected a gain of 0.5%.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
We had a low mortgage and lived comfortably in Maryland but gave it all up for a fresh start in Georgia. I'm now divorced with a higher mortgage and regret.
My friend was selling her house in Georgia at a fraction of what ours had cost in Maryland. We bought the house and moved, but it wasn't the fresh start we were hoping for. We left, bought another house in Maryland, but eventually divorced. Hindsight is 20/20 — especially when I watch nearly $3,000 disappear from my bank account every month for a mortgage that should be nearly paid off by now. The reason I'm in this financial mess? A well-meaning but costly move to Georgia that changed the course of my life. It was 2000. My (now ex-) husband and I had two little boys — ages 1 and 2 — and we had just upgraded from a townhouse to a single-family home outside Baltimore, Maryland. It was a split-foyer with a third of an acre, mature trees, and a sunroom I loved. We put a wooden swing set with a slide and a little treehouse in the backyard for the boys. Life was comfortable. We'd bought the house for $153,000, so the mortgage was low. I stayed home with our sons and my stepson. My husband co-owned a restaurant with his brother. We were close to both sides of the family, could take quick trips to the beach or the mountains, and spent summers in my dad's pool. Then I visited a friend in Georgia. We moved to Georgia for a fresh start My friend was selling her home for a fraction of what ours would fetch, and when I mentioned the price to my husband, he got excited. He was unhappy at the family restaurant and saw a move as both a fresh start and a way to cut our cost of living. We sold our home and bought a $111,000 rancher in the Augusta area. At first, it was idyllic: beautiful parks, bike trails, and lakes; friendly neighbors; and weekends at Clarks Hill Lake or Savannah Rapids. We took trips to Charleston and Myrtle Beach. But the honeymoon was short. My husband disliked his new job almost immediately, and the one after that, too. That was my first big lesson: if you're perpetually dissatisfied, a new city or job won't fix it. And in Augusta, good jobs weren't exactly falling from the sky. Meanwhile, life back in Maryland was moving on without us. His grandfather was dying of cancer. My stepson was about to become a father. My brother got engaged and married. Each milestone meant a choice: drive 11 hours with two young children to visit, or stay home? Those drives included breaking down on the highway, going back to Georgia with just me and the children, 200 miles from home, and a car pillow fight that knocked out a tooth. There's nothing quite like cruising at 75 mph (yes, I speed) and hearing one child shout, "Mommy, pull over, Ben's mouth is bleeding!" Traveling with toddlers is… well, character-building. Eventually, we moved back. We couldn't get a similar house for a similar price Going from our low-cost-of-living area in Georgia back to a higher one in Maryland was a whole different game. The median sale price for homes in Anne Arundel County when we left in 2004 was $253,000. When we returned in 2009, it was $351,088. Instead of immediately buying a new home this time, we moved in with my in-laws for a few months (which I can confirm is not on any list of Top 10 Marriage-Building Activities) before renting a townhouse. We eventually bought a house that cost more than $100,000 above the one we'd sold in Georgia. It was also smaller, older, and more outdated. Did you know home projects aren't exactly conducive to a stress-free marriage? The financial toll was enormous. My husband was making less money than he did in Georgia, while we had higher monthly expenses, which caused me to go back to work. It's not that I don't love packing and moving three times in five years — people used to ask if we were in the military — and racking up frequent driver miles on I-95, but let's be honest: moving is not fun. The stress of moving three times, the strain of living with extended family, and a much larger mortgage all chipped away at our marriage. Eventually, we divorced. The experience taught me an important life lesson Count the costs before you decide to move. Everything comes with pros and cons, and if you're making a multi-state move, make sure you've considered the drawbacks. Even if your spouse says you're being "annoyingly negative," consider them carefully. I don't dwell on regrets — after all, we shouldn't look back; we aren't going that way — but I do pay for them, every single month. So I keep my eyes forward, click "submit payment" on that mortgage, and try to remember the lessons. Read the original article on Business Insider Solve the daily Crossword
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
They Wanted More Space in Brooklyn. Now They Have Room for Chickens.
By the late 2010s, it was clear to Kaja Kühl and Jay Tsai that they needed more space. As their daughter grew from infant to toddler, their one-bedroom apartment in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, seemed to shrink. The most appealing move, they thought, would be to buy a townhouse where they could spread out, including with some outdoor space, and have more control in creating an energy efficient home. But they found that most townhouses were priced beyond their reach. 'We noticed that the kinds of places that were in our budget tended to be not brownstones,' said Ms. Kühl, 55, 'but the slightly older, wood-frame-on-a-brick-basement houses that were often in not such great shape.' Ms. Kühl, founder of the firm youarethecity and an instructor at the City College in New York and Columbia University, is deeply interested in sustainable building practices, and she saw advantages in the less popular homes. 'I knew they were easier to insulate well because you can put insulation within the wood frame,' as well as behind the exterior siding, she said. When she and Mr. Tsai, 62, a former financial adviser, found an ugly duckling townhouse in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, they had their project. With a facade covered in vinyl siding and security grates, and an interior that had been sliced up into apartments, it needed a complete overhaul. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
Foreigners Are Buying US Homes Again While Americans Get Sidelined
In 2018, Luka Malkovich bought two duplexes in Milwaukee for about $100,000 each. The rental properties became a steady source of passive income, helping him to buy an additional six properties in Wisconsin. The now 30-year-old conducts most of his business from afar, splitting his time between the US, Serbia and his home country of Montenegro. From a real estate standpoint, he says, there's no better bet than America. 'It doesn't matter the administration, doesn't matter the president—it's always the US,' Malkovich says. 'The perfect time to invest here is always five years ago.' Malkovich is too young to have experienced the 2008 housing crisis as a homeowner, but many foreigners hold the same optimistic view of the market. Sales of existing US real estate to non-US citizens hit $56 billion in the year through March, up 33% from the same period the year before, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The more than 78,000 existing properties sold to foreign buyers in that time totaled far fewer than what sales reached at the peak of such purchases, in 2017, but they represent the first increase in eight years.
