• Shelby Vanhoy has been personalizing her North Carolina home since December 2023.
• She recently decided to break up her open-concept living space with a glass wall.
• Vanhoy said the space is more functional and calming thanks to the change.

Shelby Vanhoy has been in home decor mode for nearly a year now.

Vanhoy, 34, lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband, 2-year-old son, and two dogs. They relocated from New York City to North Carolina in December 2023 to be closer to family.

"My parents are here, and it just makes our life a lot easier," she said of the change.

Vanhoy and her husband became homeowners when they moved back. Since then, Vanhoy, a full-time content creator who runs the blog Pretty in the Pines, has been customizing their four-bedroom home, built in 1988.

She told Business Insider her style leans traditional with a twist.

"Some people say it's 'grand-millennial' with all the mixing of patterns and prints and kind of like grandma vibes," Vanhoy said of her decor style. "I love tying in antiques and vintage furniture and lights to make our house feel older than it actually is."

Vanhoy also said it's important for her home to function for her family — which is how she decided to enclose her open-concept living space.

Open-concept living didn't work for their home

The main floor of Vanhoy's home featured an open-concept space with a kitchen, dining area, and living room, which she wasn't excited about.

"When we bought the house, it was just something that wasn't my first choice," she said.

After they moved into the house, Vanhoy found the open area didn't work for her family.

"It felt very overstimulating," she said. "I would be in the kitchen cooking things, and then the TV room was right beside the kitchen and the whole downstairs. You could just see everything."

"Even decorating it, it felt like everything had to kind of go together because you're looking at everything all at once," she added.

Vanhoy also works from home and doesn't have a designated office space yet.

"I would be working in the dining room, which was connected to the kitchen and the living room, so everything just felt like you were doing so much at one time," she said. "It just didn't feel very calming when you were on that floor."

Vanhoy decided she wanted to separate the living room to section off the space.

A transparent solution

Rather than fully enclosing the living room, Vanhoy decided to add a partial glass wall to her space.

"Our living room is, natural-light-wise, a little dark," Vanhoy told BI. "I did want to add some sort of wall to enclose it a bit, but I didn't want to lose any of the natural light."

The living room also featured glass French doors that Vanhoy loved, so she took inspiration from them.

"We decided to make it glass and make it look kind of like a window while also making it feel like its own separate room," Vanhoy said.

The wall features an archway in the middle, and the sides are enclosed with walls covered in windows.

Vanhoy hired professionals to complete the project, who added wood beams for support and moved a few outlets to make the wall work. The project cost under $6,000.

The space is more functional

Vanhoy said the glass offers the best of both worlds, as it sections off the space without making it impossible for her to see into the living room.

"The best part about it is that it created other little functions, and it made the whole downstairs feel a lot more functional," Vanhoy said, adding that the design also brought character to the space.

"I made a breakfast nook on one side of the wall, so that added a whole other function that we didn't have," she said. "And then we have a little kids' craft table on another side of the wall."

The glass wall isn't complete, as Vanhoy intends to add more ornate molding to the windows for a personal touch.

But it's already changed the way Vanhoy feels about the space.

"I do like seeing through because that room also has a nice fireplace, and I like seeing the fire on," she said. "But at the same time, it just feels totally separated, and light shines through."

"The one downside, I guess, is it's just more windows to clean," she added.

• Business Insider asked interior designers about the bedroom trends that are in and out for 2025.
• Designers think hand-painted murals, wallpaper, and natural hues will likely be popular next year.
• However, they said trends like matching furniture and recessed lighting will be out.

The new year is a great time to refresh your personal spaces, and the bedroom is no exception.

So, Business Insider asked interior designers to share the bedroom trends they think will make a big impact next year — and which we'll likely see less of. Here's what they said.

One designer said hand-painted murals will be popular in 2025.

San Francisco Bay Area designer Jasmine Wang predicts people will start to embrace hand-painted murals in their bedrooms because they add artistry, warmth, and a deeply personal touch.

She said this trend will take shape with nature-inspired scenes, statement accent walls, personalized artistry, and vintage motifs.

Neutral, restorative hues will likely be popular.

Ali Burgoon Nolan, the owner and principal designer of Studio Burgoon, said restorative hues like sage, clay, and soft taupe will help ground bedrooms with calming energy in 2025.

"Drawn from nature, these colors create harmony, offering a tranquil retreat within the home," she said.

Jordan Miranda, the founder and principal designer of JM Living Concepts, also thinks we'll see more muted-terracotta and warm-taupe tones. She also thinks natural materials like wood and linen will be popular.

Reading nooks are becoming trendy.

The bedroom is a place to unwind, which is why Nolan predicts more people will "transform the bedroom into a space for reflection, rest, and rejuvenation from daily life."

She said clients might do this by incorporating relaxing design features like reading nooks or meditation corners into their bedrooms.

Celeste Robbins, the founder of Robbins Architecture, also sees built-in nooks being popular next year.

"There is something intimate and grounding about a built-in nook in a bedroom," she said. "It's a place to curl up, read, or recharge that is not your bed."

Four-poster canopy beds will help create thoughtful separation in the bedroom.

In the age of at-home work and smaller spaces, Miranda acknowledges that the bedroom often becomes a multi-use environment.

By visually and physically defining the bed as its own cozy sanctuary, a canopy bed reinforces the boundary between work or activity zones and restful sleep areas.

"A canopy bed is a way to keep the sleeping space sacred, creating thoughtful separation between the rest of the room where a desk or exercise equipment might also live," she said.

Wallpaper is also making a comeback.

"One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to enhance a bedroom without major construction is using wallpaper to create a feature wall," Kristin Christensen, the owner and principal designer of Mod Earth Studio, said.

She said wallpaper is "in" again because it's an easy way to add personality and flair to a bedroom for much cheaper than construction or custom pieces.

On the other hand, all-white spaces are out for 2025.

Wang and Nolan both told BI they think all-white, minimalist spaces are on their way out.

Nolan said, they can have a "sterile" look and more people are leaning toward "richer, layered designs that invite relaxation."

"The all-white, ultra-minimalist look is making way for spaces with more warmth, color, and texture," Wang said. "In its place, expect to see more accent-wall colors, layered neutrals, and earthy tones that create a cozy, inviting atmosphere."

Matching furniture sets are on their way out.

Wang and Christensen predict the "bedroom in a box" look will be replaced with a more curated and eclectic approach.

"Designers are mixing and matching materials, finishes, and styles to create a unique, collected-over-time vibe," Wang said.

Christensen recognizes that matching furniture sets provide a convenient solution for creating a polished look, but individuality and self-expression are becoming highly valued by everyday consumers.

"People are increasingly seeking to create spaces that feel more authentic and lived-in," she told BI.

Industrial-heavy styles won't be as popular in 2025.

According to Wang, the ultra-industrial aesthetic will exit bedroom spaces next year.

"While industrial touches may still be popular in certain spaces, the overly rugged look with exposed brick, metal, and harsh edges is being traded for softer, nature-inspired designs," she said. "Organic textures, natural woods, and calming colors are now the go-to for a warmer feel."

Recessed lighting is also out.

Christensen predicts that recessed lighting, a round lighting fixture installed into the ceiling or wall, will be replaced for its lack of ambiance.

"For years, recessed lighting was the go-to choice for many bedrooms, promising a sleek, minimalist look and ample light without taking up visible space," she told BI. "However, in recent years, recessed lighting has started to feel outdated, especially in bedrooms."

Instead, she said, people may opt for alternative lighting solutions with things like smart ceiling lights and dimmable fixtures, table lamps, bedside lighting, wall sconces, or pendant lights.

• Kelly Okrepkie, 47, lives in Monroe, Connecticut and loves Christmas.
• She started decorating Christmas trees in her house in 2011, with the goal to have one in each room.
• She now has 13 Christmas trees that she decorates every year.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kelly Okrepkie. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I love Christmas.

When I was little my mom worked at a department store and I would always walk by their Christmas trees and think, "I want this when I grow up."

I started with my first tree when I got married in 2011. Then I had an idea: why don't I have one tree in each room? And then I started looking at the corners of each room and it slowly started to expand.

Now I have 13 Christmas trees that I put up every year.

Each tree has a meaning

I enjoy decorating trees that represent a certain meaning. I have a gold tree and a silver tree that remind me of the song "Silver and Gold" from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. That song takes me back into my childhood.

I have a tree for my dad. I decorated it with cardinals and I actually found ribbon with music notes on it. He loved music. He grew up on a farm so I used burlap and natural wood, too. I also have a tree for my mother-in-law. She always wore red, so I used lush red roses with big blooms — it's very vibrant. There's an angel at the top to represent her.

I feel so excited when I decorate trees for my loved ones who have passed. It's like I get to celebrate Christmas with them.

I put a little glass angel in every one of my trees as a blessing for the new year. My nephew bought them for me years ago at his school fair.

I like to decorate trees for my husband, Joe. My "Emerald City" tree is for his favorite childhood movie, The Wizard of Oz. For that, I made a hot air balloon and I put ruby slippers under the tree. This year I'm making him a Pontiac-inspired tree. He loves cars.

I plan the trees a year in advance

I start planning my trees a year ahead of time. I begin getting ideas and slowly collect ornaments throughout the year so that when the time comes, I already have everything and I'm ready to start.

I have bins and bins and bins of ornaments in the basement, all categorized. It takes me days to bring everything upstairs. I start making props in July. I made an ornament wall out of styrofoam that I glued to the wall. I hot glued every single ornament. It took me 12 to 14 hours.

When I create, I can't have any interruptions. I get filled with adrenaline and excitement. I just put on Christmas music, put my phone on vibrate and get into the zone.

Each tree takes me about three to five hours to decorate, depending on the size. I always try to update my looks. I try to make them better and invest more into them. I learn a lot from designers on Instagram. I've learned how to work with ribbons and picks. Here's a great tip: if you want a different look for your tree, just buy picks and insert them all around. It's a cost-efficient way to change things up.

I spend between $600 to $1,500 per tree

Each tree, with its decorations, cost me probably between $600 and $1500, depending on the height and width. This year, I took a trip to the Christmas Palace in Florida and I got some giant candy canes and bears and penguins and ornaments and globes.

But you don't need to spend that much to have a beautiful tree. You can do things like add a lot of lights, add picks and cover them with a lot of ornaments to fill it out. Instead of throwing empty boxes out, recycle them under your tree. Wrap them up like big presents. I do this so my cats don't climb the trees.

I would love to design meaningful trees for other people. I'd help them pick colors and items that remind them of their loved ones. My dream is to create a Santa's wonderland where families could come visit and take photos and create traditions of their own.

When my trees are up from November until January, they're the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see before I go to bed. I don't know when this obsession is going to stop but it just makes me so happy.

• US home sales remained low due to high mortgage rates and home prices in 2024.
• Southeast cities like Charlotte and Knoxville saw high demand despite affordability issues.
• Analysts predict a potential rise in home sales in 2025, driven by lower mortgage rates.

Another tough year in the US housing market was anything but boring for those in popular cities.

Home sales were soft for a third straight year, the National Association of Realtors recently noted. Mortgage rates and home prices are down from peak levels, but affordability remains a major issue and has sidelined millions of would-be buyers, who are instead renting.

But sellers in hot markets still won big as buyers battled for scarce spots in coveted cities.

10 places movers flocked to in 2024

To determine this year's most popular US real-estate markets, Business Insider compiled and analyzed data from six sources about moving patterns, rents, rental market competitiveness, search interest from homebuyers, and home price growth history and projections.

Although there were some mixed signals, there were also some clear conclusions about which regions, states, and cities drew the most interest from buyers and renters.

A brief look at migration data from Atlas Van Lines may yield more questions than answers. The moving firm found that the places with the most inbound movers relative to those leaving were Arkansas; Rhode Island; North Carolina; Washington, DC; and Idaho. Also on the list of states with inbound rates of at least 55% are Maine, Connecticut, Washington, Alaska, Alabama, and New Mexico, which essentially covers all four corners of the US.

But while that moving data gives a solid big-picture overview, it doesn't provide insight into which individual markets were most popular. That was instead determined by other measures of demand, like how much prices for homes and apartments rose, or how tough they were to land.

This process was more of an art than a science, but the 10 cities that best fit those criteria within states with substantial positive inflows of movers were all east of the Mississippi River. Even more notable is that the Southeast region was home to eight of those 10 popular markets, which were spread across just three states: North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

North Carolina was tied for second in the nation in mover inbound rate at 63%, due in part to four especially hot markets. Winston-Salem and nearby Greensboro saw their rents rise 6.7% and 5.3% this year, respectively, giving their rental market competitiveness scores a big boost. Meanwhile, two other major cities in the Tar Heel State — Charlotte and Durham — saw rents decline but were among the 20 most searched markets by homebuyers.

Those four North Carolina cities are set for high-single-digit or low-double-digit home price growth next year, per Realtor.com, and the NAR highlighted Charlotte as a top spot in 2025.

Neighboring Tennessee also had one of the nation's highest inbound rates at 62%. Knoxville was one of the more competitive smaller markets despite rent growth of just 1.5%, and it ranked 10th in the nation in homebuyers' searches. It's also on the NAR's list of standout markets next year. Meanwhile, Memphis saw 22.7% rent growth and is in line for 10.5% home price growth.

Kentucky's inbound rate of 56% was more modest. However, it had Lexington with 9.9% rent growth, a lofty rental market competitiveness score, and the eighth spot in buyers' searches, as well as Louisville, which Rent Cafe said was the top trending rental market of 2024.

Jonathan Miller, the cofounder of the real-estate firm Miller Samuel, told Business Insider that the Southeast market is popular because it's relatively warm and has ample housing inventory.

"It's a combination of the weather and housing affordability," Miller said in a recent interview.

The nation's capital represented the bordering Mid-Atlantic with a 63% mover inbound rate and a fifth-place ranking in homebuyers' searches, pushing prices up 10.2%. Washington, DC, was also one of the 30 most competitive rental markets, though supply kept price growth in check.

Rounding out the list was New Haven, Connecticut, which was arguably the hottest market. It was the fourth most competitive rental market this year, and its rent growth was easily the highest in the US in December at 35.7%. It also had 18.3% home price growth in November and is set for another 9.7% next year due to its Yale University ties and proximity to New York City.

What to expect in 2025

The US housing market has slowly thawed after it froze over as mortgage rates spiked. Some real-estate analysts expect sales to heat up in 2025, though others are more skeptical.

Optimists are calling for the biggest jump since the pandemic boom. The National Association of Realtors sees home sales rising 7% to 12% in 2025, including an 11% jump for new units, while eXp Realty's CEO is calling for 10% growth caused by sliding mortgage rates and rising supply.

But Realtor.com's sales forecast is more tempered at 1.5%, as is Miller's call for a 3% increase. The veteran real-estate analyst said mortgage rates will likely stay above 6%, weighing on demand, plus supply is also limited. Even still, he's expecting a 4% to 5% jump in home prices.

"If mortgage rates unexpectedly fall below 6%, we can have a housing boom," Miller said. "It just doesn't appear that that's in the cards, but there's a lot of upside potential in transaction volume, despite higher mortgage rates."

Miller said that against that backdrop, buyers will continue to seek out affordable markets, which are often correlated with abundant inventory. That's why the Sun Belt region was so hot in 2024.

This year's most popular markets will likely be among the winners next year, in Miller's view. He didn't predict the next boom town but said surges into Texas and Florida have run their course. Those states were red-hot in the early 2020s, though each had level moving flows this year.

"It's not that those markets are less attractive," Miller said. "There's less intensity from inbound migration as millions of new residents get situated. The rate of growth is no longer surging."

However, it appears as if the exodus from large states with highly populated cities isn't over, as three of the five states with the most outbound movers were California, Illinois, and New York. Each of those states has relatively high taxes, and Miller has a hunch that some movers might try to preemptively move before the potential expiration of state and local tax deductions slated for the end of 2025.

When Mike Kelly set up his first few Airbnbs in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 2023, he figured it would be a successful move. It was meant to be an investment project for him and his daughter to work on together. But as more people moved away from bustling and expensive urban centers and landed in the Midwest, their hopes were quickly shattered.

The Fort Wayne housing market boomed. High demand for homes, coupled with the city's low housing stock, has kept costs relatively high — a Redfin analysis of housing data found home prices were up 9.2% in October compared with last year. The hot housing market has translated into higher property taxes, which is throwing off the short-term-rental business model. "The houses we purchased to turn into Airbnbs have been assessed so much higher than what we put into them that we almost can't afford to keep them," Kelly said. "The return on equity wouldn't be as high."

Owners of short-term rentals across the country have faced a similar reality, sharing stories of declining revenues over the past few years as the market was flooded with new rentals. AirDNA, an analytics firm that tracks the short-term-rental market, found that revenue per rental decreased by nearly 2% in 2022 and by more than 8% in 2023 due to an overabundance of units available for rent. AirDNA forecast that revenues would move back into the green in 2024 as the market corrected. But as short-term-rental owners felt signs of an "Airbnbust," some realized they needed to pivot.

On one end of the market, however, it's a different picture. While overall demand for short-term rentals rose just 1.8% in 2023, according to AirDNA's data, demand for stays priced at $1,000 or more increased by nearly 8%. For stays over $1,500, demand jumped 12.5%. In fact, demand for rentals costing over $1,000 a night has increased by 73% since 2019. While cheaper rentals are slowing down, luxury, niche, and themed stays are filling their place. Wealthy vacationers are increasingly going after luxe properties such as a secluded Malibu beach mansion or a modern cabin beset by pristine woods — like something off Cabin Porn. Meanwhile, Airbnb alternatives are jumping into the market to cater to the growing demand. A lust for luxury is propelling the short-term-rental market to new heights.

Over the past few years, more travelers have pushed back against the Airbnb model, complaining of outrageous cleaning fees, extensive cleanup requirements, and outright scams. As a result, some travelers have opted to stay in good old-fashioned hotels thanks to their consistent service.

These complaints, however, tend to focus on rentals on the low end of the market — the $200-a-night stay you might book to visit a family member or get out of town for a weekend. The luxury end of the rental market fills a different role. These spots boast plenty of hotellike amenities — such as contactless check-in, high-speed internet, bathroom toiletries, and coffee makers. Because of the high price point, luxury rentals also tend to standardize their cleaning services. Unlike a hotel room, though, a house or apartment comes with a lot more room to host guests, plus amenities such as a kitchen or private pool. When split between multiple guests for a night or weekend, some of the eye-popping price tags end up being surprisingly affordable.

Among high-income travelers, who made up an increasingly large share of vacationers this year, hotels are on the way out. Deloitte's 2024 summer-travel report found a 17-point drop in people who earn over $200,000 opting to stay at full-service hotels compared with the summer before. While middle-income travelers moved toward budget accommodations like bed and breakfasts and RV rentals, high earners shifted toward private-home rentals.

One brand capitalizing on the growing demand is Wander. Launched in 2022, Wander owns all of its 200 properties, each beautifully designed with stunning landscaping. Its founder and CEO, John Andrew Entwistle, had the idea of making a vacation rental feel like a luxury hospitality brand after a disastrous ordeal renting a cabin in Colorado. "The whole experience felt broken, the type of thing all of us has had at a vacation rental one time or another: The place didn't look like the photos. The beds were uncomfortable. The list goes on and on," he said.

He wanted a rental home with heart and soul, where the building was designed around the landscape and high-speed internet flowed across the house. Wander rentals are often in remote spots to give guests a sense of privacy and quiet. The cleaning service is standardized so guests don't have to worry about cleaning up after themselves, and customers can check in on their own through their smartphones. Every unit, which costs an average of $900 a night, also features sleek workstations for digital nomads.

Other travel brands have found similar success in the luxury market. There's Mint House, a cross between a hotel and short-term rental that has 12 properties across 10 major US cities. Visitor experiences are personalized — for instance, guests can request that the refrigerator be stocked with their favorite groceries before they arrive — and there's 24/7 customer care. The apartments, which can be studios or have multiple bedrooms, are priced similarly to hotels and feature bespoke furniture and decor, along with all the necessities of modern accommodations. To explain the brand's success, Christian Lee, the CEO of Mint House, pointed to the company's ability to provide consistent experiences. "Unlike other short-term listings that lack security and guest care and often require a guest to perform chores at checkout, all of our properties are professionally managed to ensure the utmost safety, security, and cleanliness," he said.

The luxuriousness only goes up from there. Rental Escapes, a full-service luxury-villa-rental company founded in 2012, offers over 5,000 villas in more than 70 destinations worldwide. They start at $500 a night — though most go for tens of thousands. Amase Stays, a collection of $10 million rental estates founded this year, creates bespoke experiences for its top-of-the-line properties, with dedicated concierges who can arrange everything from private chefs and spa services to customized excursions.

Chris Lema, a business coach and product strategist, is a Wander superfan. "These are places that are architecturally beautiful, and the land that they sit on feels like a national park," he said. He likes that the company provides attainable luxury — he's stayed in 13 different Wander locations and hopes to "collect them all," he said. He has even started planning trips around Wander rentals.

"I thought this is where Airbnb was going to go with its business model," he said. "If you go to Airbnb's website now, they have these different categories like 'amazing views' or 'lakefront.' But none of these rentals push forward on the issue of experience. There's the Luxe category — but it's not the same thing."

In Airbnb's Luxe category, homes might cost anywhere between $200 and hundreds of thousands of dollars a night. When the category launched in 2019, an Airbnb press release said the homes would have to pass a slate of design and experience criteria, including higher standards for cleanliness and amenities like towels and toiletries. Unlike at other Airbnb properties, a company representative has to walk through Luxe properties to verify them. Despite that, Lema hasn't been impressed.

"They seem to rank Luxe based on the niceness of the residence," Lema said, "but that isn't really the point of what that kind of experience should be."

An Airbnb spokesperson said, "We're proud to be the only travel platform that offers stays for nearly any desired travel experience." They added: "We're also proud of the growth of our Luxe category supply and look forward to expanding the offering."

So far, Wander's model is working out. It launched with only three locations, and two years later, it has 200 houses and an average occupancy rate of 80%, Entwistle said. By the beginning of 2025, Entwistle hopes to launch locations in Mexico and Canada.

Back in Fort Wayne, Kelly ended up pivoting his Airbnb business to cater to this demand for luxury. "We focus on four-bedroom-plus homes where groups can gather for weddings or reunions," he said. Houses with pools and hot tubs are especially desirable, he's found. Kelly has also amassed a thriving collection of themed Airbnbs. He designed one house to look like the childhood home of the fictional character Fawn Liebowitz from the cult classic film "Animal House." He's working on another rental themed around Indiana University sports teams.

"At the end of the day, the 'luxury' houses are more affordable than staying in multiple hotel rooms," he said. Plus, offering something unique, like a theme, helps homes stand out from the crowd. With the new focus, Kelly's Airbnbs are rarely empty, he said.

Part of the shifting demand stems from people viewing luxury rentals as a destination unto themselves — if the place you're staying is cool enough, you don't need to get out much. Others are drawn to them as a means to get away from the hubbub. "In today's globalized world, travel destinations have become more and more homogenous and tourist-burdened," Spencer Bailey, the editor of the new book "Design: The Leading Hotels of the World," said. "People are seeking out distinctive experiences away from the crowds and searching for a certain sense of intimacy, craft, and care." It's not just about top-rate service, intricate design, or even a Michelin-starred restaurant. "It's about being in nature, engaging in local culture, and creating discrete, felt experiences that encourage quietness and slowness, not an Instagram moment," Bailey says.

A private rental is often more secluded, meaning travelers can prioritize spending more time alone with their loved ones. "Travelers are increasingly wising up to the fact that time — and where, how, and with whom you spend it — is the greatest luxury," he said. Michelle Steinhardt, the founder of the luxury travel blog The Trav Nav, wrote about her recent stay at a secluded beachfront property rental in Punta Mita, Mexico: "Even though we were only a few minutes from the local town, our party felt like everyone else was miles away."

Increasingly, getting away from home isn't enough. We also want to get away from other people. For those who can afford it — or have enough friends — luxury-travel companies are more than happy to accommodate.

Michelle Mastro covers lifestyle, travel, architecture, and culture.

• Private home insurers are dropping a growing number of customers in most states, a Senate report found.
• That leaves homeowners at risk, turning to more expensive last-resort options or going uninsured.
• While Florida has managed to reverse the trend somewhat, the risk to homeowners is set to intensify.

As Americans flock to places in the US vulnerable to natural disasters, private home insurance companies are running the other way.

The problem has left a rising number of homeowners with just one option to cover property damage: insurers of last resort.

The scale of homeowners losing their plans became clearer on Wednesday after a Senate Budget Committee investigation found that private insurers' nonrenewals spiked threefold in more than 200 counties between 2018 and 2023.

"What our new data reveal is that the failure to deal with climate change is also affecting whether families can even get homeowners insurance, which threatens their ability to get a mortgage, which spells trouble for property values in climate-exposed communities across the country," Senate Budget Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse said in releasing the report.

A recent study by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies found that between 2018 and 2023, the number of properties enrolled in California and Florida's insurers of last resort more than doubled. A similar trend is playing out in Louisiana. While Florida has reduced participation this year, it still has the highest enrollment in the country.

The problem isn't isolated to the most predictable states. The Senate Budget Committee found that the rate of homeowners losing their private insurance also rose in Hawaii, North Carolina, and Massachusetts.

Policymakers and insurers are trying to stabilize the private market, by enacting new laws and overhauling regulations. However, with scientists predicting that climate-fueled disasters will become more frequent and severe for the foreseeable future, the risk to America's homeowners is mounting.

Growing insurance risk has some states looking for solutions

In nearly three dozen states, insurers of last resort, known as Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, or FAIR, are available to homeowners and businesses who struggle to find insurance on the private market.

The numbers are rising because private insurers are pulling back coverage and hiking premiums in areas at risk of wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, and other disasters often made worse by climate change.

While state-mandated FAIR plans are designed to be a backstop, insurance regulators and private insurance companies are alarmed by how many homeowners and businesses are enrolling, especially in California and Florida. The plans are often more expensive and provide less coverage. Plus, saddling one insurer with the riskiest policies increases the chances of one major disaster sinking the system and leaving taxpayers and insurance companies with the bill.

Florida and California are trying to reverse the trend, and Florida has seen some progress. The state's insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, said on December 4 that its policy count dropped below 1 million for the first time in two years.

Mark Friedlander, a spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute, said the drop reflects a series of changes in recent years to stabilize the state's private insurance market after more than a dozen companies left the state or stopped writing new policies.

The Florida legislature passed laws to curb rampant litigation and claim fraud that drove up legal costs for private insurers. Friedlander said insurance lawsuits in the first three quarters of 2024 are down 56%, compared with the first three quarters of 2021 — the year before the new laws were enacted. Citizens also started a "depopulation" program that shifts customers to the private market. State regulators in October said they had approved at least nine new property companies to enter the market, and premiums weren't rising nearly as much as last year.

In California, many of the deadliest and most destructive wildfires have occurred within the last five years. As a result, some private insurers are hiking premiums and limiting coverage in risky areas, pushing more homeowners to the insurer of last resort. The Harvard study found that policies in the state's FAIR plan doubled between 2018 and 2023 to more than 300,000. As of September, the California Insurance Commission said policies totaled nearly 452,000.

The commission is working to overhaul regulations to slow the trend, including requiring private insurers to sell in risky areas. In exchange, it should be easier for companies to raise premiums that factor in reinsurance costs and the risks of future disasters. That should help stabilize rates, said Michael Sollen, a spokesman for the commission.

Sollen added that in the past, private insurers could seek approval for higher premiums but weren't required to offer coverage in wildfire-prone areas.

"In a year from now, what's happening with the FAIR plan will be a key measure for us," he said. "We expect to see those numbers start to stabilize and go down."

A mounting home insurance crisis

Still, a reduction in state-backed plans isn't necessarily a sign of progress, Steve Koller, a postdoctoral fellow in climate and housing and author of the Harvard report, told Business Insider.

A growing number of homeowners in places like Florida, Louisiana, and California are purchasing private insurance from nontraditional providers barely regulated by state governments. These so-called "non-admitted" insurers don't contribute to a state fund that guarantees homeowners will have their claims paid even if the insurance provider fails, leaving their customers without access to this backup coverage.

"Someone could be moving to a private insurer from Citizens, and that insurer might have higher insolvency risk," Koller said.

He added that more homeowners are opting out of insurance altogether. The number of US homeowners going without insurance has soared from 5% in 2019 to 12% in 2022, the Insurance Information Institute reported.

Plus, Americans are increasingly moving into parts of the country most vulnerable to extreme weather. Tens of thousands more people moved into the most flood—and fire-prone areas of the US last year rather than out of them, the real estate company Redfin reported earlier this year.

As insurers of last resort try to shift more risk to the private market, home insurance premiums are expected to keep rising. That's especially true in the areas hardest hit by climate-fueled disasters.

If private insurers exit hard-hit regions en masse in the future, Koller said states might need to become the predominant insurance provider in the same way the National Flood Insurance Program took over after the private market for flood insurance collapsed in the 1960s. Most flood insurance plans are still issued by the federal government.

"My guess is states are going to work very, very hard to avoid that and ensure the existence of a robust private market, but that's a parallel that I can't personally unthink about," he said.

Have you struggled to get home insurance, moved to an insurer of last resort, or gone uninsured? Contact these reporters at [email protected] or [email protected].

• Three baby boomer homeowners told BI they want to downsize but can't find suitable options.
• Rising home prices have led to a big increase in their home equity over the years.
• But those rising prices also make it harder to find affordable homes for retirement.

As many baby boomer homeowners look to cash in on their home equity and downsize, some are grappling with a shortage of suitable homes.

Older homeowners are increasingly staying put, as mortgage rates and housing costs remain stubbornly elevated and inventory— particularly of affordable and accessible homes — is scarce. Some simply can't find a suitable home that would leave them with enough cash to retire on, while others simply don't feel downsizing is a savvy financial move with housing and borrowing costs so high.

Kim Cayes is one of those boomers who feel stuck. The 67-year-old always banked on selling her four-bedroom house in Parsippany, New Jersey, to help support herself in retirement.

"My plan had kind of been: save everything I can, and then when I retire, move someplace cheap and use the equity in my house to buy a house in cash to reduce my costs," she told Business Insider.

Cayes bought her home for $245,000 in 2000 after her divorce. She added a major addition and has since benefited from New Jersey's soaring home prices — the house was recently appraised at nearly $700,000, according to documents reviewed by Business Insider.

But Cayes, now semi-retired from corporate communications, is no longer interested in leaving northern Jersey for a cheaper part of the country. Two of her three adult children live with her, and she doesn't want to leave her community.

"I would hate to move somewhere and leave one of my kids behind because, not being married, my kids are all I've got," she said. "Especially as you get older, you need a network of people."

Cayes is looking for a single-story home in the $400,000 to $450,000 range. But she hasn't had any luck finding something suitable. She says the homes she's looked at would need a lot of work and aren't in familiar neighborhoods.

"Thinking I'm going to spend the final years of my life in a worse situation than I've ever been in — that's just so depressing," Cayes said. "Especially when my friends are all traveling around the world with their spouses and constantly posting on Facebook which countries they're in."

'A lateral financial move'

Some boomers who can afford to stay in their homes don't want to endure the costs and possible stress associated with downsizing. Even those who are still paying off their homes often have much lower mortgage interest rates than what they could get on the market today, hovering around 6.5%. And leaving a familiar home and neighborhood can be emotionally taxing.

Dorothy Lipovenko, 71, and her husband love the single-family home in a well-connected neighborhood of Montreal where they've lived for nearly 25 years. But the options to downsize in their area seem limited to pricey new condos and old homes that need major repairs. Lipovenko doesn't want to live in a modern condo without green space, but she also doesn't want to take on a home renovation project.

"It becomes a lateral financial move, and that is what has us saying 'no,'" she said. "Downsizing is a huge undertaking, physically and emotionally, and a one-for-one trade makes no sense."

Ideally, Lipovenko and her husband would move to a smaller, single-floor house — she dreams of a Levittown-style suburban starter home, she said.

"It's not just giving up possessions and going into a smaller space; it's shrinking a lot of things to fit a new mindset," she said. "I just can't see my husband and I spending the last decades of our life in a little apartment."

'I'm lucky I have this house'

Andrea S., 60, already lives in a single-story starter home in Sherman Oaks, California, that's well-suited for a retiree. But Andrea, who requested partial anonymity to protect her privacy, isn't sure she can afford to stay in it.

The former agent and producer bought her two-bedroom bungalow with her ex-partner in 1994 for $245,000. She's lived in the home ever since, hasn't made any major improvements, and has a housemate to split the bills with. The Zillow estimate, reviewed by Business Insider, found the house is now worth about $1.3 million.

"I'm lucky I have this house," she told Business Insider. "I just hate the fact that the house is pretty much my pension fund."

Andrea's income is lower than she expected it to be at this point in her life — she's struggled to work since suffering from a head injury in a car crash in 2021. Meanwhile, the pandemic and Hollywood writers' strike killed off some of her projects, she said. At the same time, maintenance and repair costs for her nearly 75-year-old house are daunting: the HVAC system needs to be replaced, and the pool and large yard are expensive and energy-intensive to maintain.

"If I can't get a job that covers me enough to cover my bills, then I have to think about do I sell the house," she said.

But she's concerned that she won't be able to find an affordable home in a neighborhood as pleasant and walkable as hers, especially on a budget that makes sense. After her crash, she gave up driving and wants to keep living in a place with bus access and grocery stores within walking distance. Plus, she's concerned about the capital gains tax she'll need to pay if she sells the home.

"I'm realizing now, at age 60, all the things that you become very vulnerable to, especially when you're a woman and you don't have a life partner," she said.

Andrea and her friends joke about their dream of retiring together in the British seaside town of Port Isaac — the idyllic setting for the early-2000s TV show "Doc Martin."

"You get some nice little cottage in town. They don't have big yards. And you walk out your door, and you see the lovely English coastline," she said. "That sounds good to me."

Are you struggling to downsize or find a suitable home to retire in? Are you otherwise affected by the cost of retirement housing? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected].

• Nicole Echeverria felt unsafe in the US and wanted to try living abroad.
• She applied for graduate school because she thought getting a student visa would be easier.
• She now lives and works remotely from Nazaré, a beach town an hour and a half from Lisbon.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nicole Echeverria, 31, who moved from New York to Portugal in 2019. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I'd had the itch to try living abroad for some time.

I grew up in New York, graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor's degree in economics in 2015, and then moved to Boston for work.

After the 2016 elections, I began to feel anxious about my safety. That's when I started seriously considering moving abroad. I just needed to find the right opportunity.

I knew a student visa would make it easier to move, so I thought, why don't I apply to graduate school abroad?

Most people think graduate school is only worth it if it can propel their careers forward. However, I saw it as a way to gain valuable life experience and keep me in the same career field.

I had a few requirements: The degree had to be business-related, taught in English, and American-accredited. It also had to be in a country with a lower cost of living so that I could pay for my degree without taking loans.

In the winter of 2018, I found the right program. It was a two-year Masters of Science in Business program at Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics.

At that time, the program cost around 14,300 euros, which I had in savings.

I left Boston, where I had been working in content marketing, and moved back home to live with my parents in Long Island. For nine months, I focused on saving up as much as possible while commuting to New York City for work.

In August 2019, I moved to Lisbon. Although I had traveled to other parts of Europe, I had never visited Portugal. I went purely on the faith that if I wasn't happy there, I'd return to New York once I graduated.

I got really lucky that I ended up loving it. Lisbon instantly gave me a Los Angeles vibe. The weather was hot, but the beaches were beautiful. Everyone had a relaxed attitude, and people weren't on edge like they were in New York.

I didn't intend to stay

Around half a year into my program, the pandemic struck, and everything went remote. Many of my international classmates returned to their home countries. That's when I was faced with the question: Do I want to go back to New York?

Back in the US, I was always hyperaware of gun violence. Anything could happen walking in the streets of Manhattan, for example. A crazy person could approach you, and you just have to keep walking. It also looks like it's gotten worse, with incidents of women getting assaulted on the streets.

As hard as it was to be away from my family and close friends, prioritizing my health and safety was worth the loneliness of moving abroad. I felt less anxious about safety in Portugal, which solidified my decision to stay.

Portugal has a post-graduation work visa that grants international students a year of residence to find employment. After being on the visa for a year, I registered as a freelancer on a regular work permit and have worked as a social media manager since.

My family was surprised by my decision to stay. My dad told me that when my grandparents ask about me, he has to remind them that I live in another country now. But I still return a few times a year for Christmas or special occasions.

I'm planning a wedding in Portugal

In 2022, I met my fiancé through TikTok. He's Portuguese and commented on one of my videos. After two years, we moved in together in Nazaré, a beach town an hour and a half away from Lisbon.

We're planning our wedding in Portugal for August next year. We picked a venue an hour and a half away from Porto in the countryside. It's a gorgeous historic building built in the 1700s, and we're super excited about it.

The venue will cost $3,500 for a two-day rental, offering us the chance to have an affordable wedding.

Sometimes, I tease my fiancé with the idea that once I get my Portuguese passport, we can move to Greece or elsewhere in Europe.

For now, we dream of living in Lisbon and having a summer vacation house in Greece. From the relaxed way of life, lower cost of living, and the fact that I can work remotely as a freelancer, it just makes more sense to have my life here.

I'm definitely planning on staying for the long term.

Real estate venture firm Fifth Wall is raising a new $500 million fund called Fifth Wall React, according to a regulatory filing.

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

• We pay half of our two family members' rent in Los Angeles so we can stay with them when we want.
• Most of the year, we live in our house in Wisconsin, where my husband works and our mortgage is low.
• We've had to get creative to afford to live in both places, but we're happy to make it work.

In August, my husband and I signed a one-year lease for a two-bedroom apartment in Studio City without giving up our home in Wisconsin.

We love the Midwest, but I grew up in Los Angeles County and often miss my home state — especially in winter when temperatures in Wisconsin can plummet below zero.

My family and I have often traveled to California, visiting family and friends, splurging on Disneyland, and enjoying the beach. Our trips have been soul-nourishing and fun but pricey. On average, we've spent about $200 to $300 a night on Airbnbs alone.

We've talked about moving to California, but there are delightful obstacles in our path. First of all, we adore our community, and my husband loves his job in Wisconsin.

We also love our house and the 3 acres of land it's on. Plus, the low 3% interest rate on our mortgage means living in our five-bedroom home in Wisconsin costs about the same a month as renting a 1,000-square-foot apartment in Los Angeles.

So when two members of our family decided to move to Los Angeles, we made a proposal: If you can put us up for some of the year, we'll pay half the rent.

They happily accepted. This way, they could afford a larger place in a nicer neighborhood, and we'd get a pied-à-terre with the flexibility to come and go as we please for just $1,750 a month.

After a fun period of collaborative apartment hunting, we found a great space in Studio City and have been back and forth several times.

To make this work, we've found ways to live frugally and save money

Whenever we've gone to Los Angeles for an extended visit, we've driven the 2,000 miles in our hybrid to save on airfares and car rentals once we arrive.

For shorter trips, we find cheap flights. Since we keep clothes, toiletries, and books in both places, we only need laptop bags when we travel, which saves money on checking bags.

We also arranged for a friend in Wisconsin to stay in our house while we're gone, so we don't need to pay someone to water our plants or mow the lawn.

Our apartment in Los Angeles has been furnished with Ikea sale items, donations from friends, and cheap (or free) finds from Facebook Marketplace and our neighbors.

When we're home in Wisconsin, we live frugally. If we're going to splurge a bit, we prefer to do it in Los Angeles.

Although the cost of living is higher there, we've also found many free or inexpensive things to do for fun: hiking on many of the nearby trails, going to the beach, exploring different neighborhoods, and visiting free museums.

If we go out to eat, we do so during happy hour to take advantage of discounted specials. Potluck meals with friends have also been a great way for us to have fun in Los Angeles without breaking the bank.

Since we live in a neighborhood close to shops and restaurants, we also save money on gas and get our steps in by walking as much as possible.

We still meet our savings goals by using the money we'd normally budget for vacations to support this lifestyle instead.

For now, I hope to continue living across 2 states

My favorite things about living between the Midwest and West Coast have been the excitement of always looking forward to something new, enjoying the beauty in both locales, and spending time with family and friends in each place.

Our lease will be up in August 2025, and I don't know if our family members will continue to live in Los Angeles.

If they move out and on, my husband and I will need to get even more creative to keep making our California-Wisconsin lifestyle work. We'd probably need to downsize the apartment and find other ways to cut back on our spending — but that's fine by me.

Every time I walk along the beach in Malibu on a sunny day in January while it's -10 degrees in Wisconsin, I know it's worth it.

Silicon Valley is the undisputed global tech hub. The small corner of California is the birthplace of Apple, Google, and OpenAI — companies that have, for better or worse, changed modern life.

Far away, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, another tech hub has been finding its footing in the international market. The city of Bengaluru is the startup capital of India and shares similar DNA to California's Silicon Valley.

Bengaluru grew into an IT hub in the wake of the rapid expansion of its electronics manufacturing industry from the 1940s to the 1960s. Back in the US, Silicon Valley was home to the semiconductor industry in the 1950s and owes its name to the silicon transistors produced there in the 1960s.

By the mid-1980s, Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft had a presence in the Valley, while in Bengaluru, large companies like Infosys and Texas Instruments moved in.

Bengaluru is widely referred to as the "Silicon Valley of India," producing tech unicorns and housing offices for companies like Amazon, Google, and Dell. After taking over Twitter, Elon Musk shut the company's offices in Delhi and Mumbai but kept the Bengaluru office. Earlier this year, Virgin Atlantic launched daily direct flights from London to Bengaluru.

However, the city's status as a tech metropole is under pressure as rapid growth tests the local infrastructure. Estimates place the current population at roughly 14 million, compared to 8 million in 2010.

Heavy traffic, water shortages, and rising property prices have led to online speculation that Bengaluru may be crumbling and debates about whether another city will emerge as a new tech hub in India. During a water crisis earlier this year, some tech companies in Bengaluru had to tell employees to stay home.

Business Insider spoke to four current and former Bengaluru residents in and outside the tech industry who shared their experiences of how India's "Silicon Valley" is holding up under the pressures of rapid urbanization and whether they believe it can maintain its place as a global tech hub.

Vikram Chandrashekar

Vikram Chandrashekar, 50, was born in Bengaluru and has worked at Oracle for the past 27 years. He told BI he is happy for the job opportunities Bengaluru's status as a tech hub has brought, but is nostalgic for the city of his youth.

A lake he visited when he was younger, across from a guava and mango orchard, has now been replaced by housing.

Chandrashekar said the IT boom drew people to the city, bringing a larger airport, a more diverse culture, and better internet connectivity. He is also grateful to the startup ecosystem because he has access to new services and products faster than the rest of the country.

He said local people have benefited from job opportunities, but they still complain about the issues urbanization has caused. Chandrashekar doesn't plan to leave his hometown and thinks creating other tech hubs in India to redirect the growing population is a solution.

Read Vikram Chandrashekar's full story here.

Dhruv Suyamprakasam

Dhruv Suyamprakasam grew up joining his dad on business trips to Bengaluru and Hyderabad, another large tech hub in India. When Suyamprakasam became a founder himself, he moved to Bengaluru twice.

However, the founder said the city wasn't a golden ticket to success, and Suyamprakasam decided it was better to build his startup in his local city.

Suyamprakasam first moved to Bengaluru in 2010 after launching a medical startup with his relative.

It turned out to be a mistake. Suyamprakasam said Bengaluru's tech ecosystem's "fail-fast" mentality put too much pressure on their medical startup. He also felt excluded for being from a smaller city, not speaking Hindi, or not having studied at India's top engineering school.

Suyamprakasam said access to talent and venture capital are huge advantages of Bengaluru, while smaller cities can offer lower costs and more space.

Still, Bengaluru doesn't compare to Silicon Valley's vast capital and power. The founder said Bengaluru can be great on its own merits, but it needs to start being more inclusive.

Read Dhruv Suyamprakasam's full story here.

Batool Fatima

Batool Fatima, 50, moved to Bengaluru nearly 25 years ago from Hyderabad. Like Chandrashekar, the founder of a local nonprofit organization saw the city known for greenery and lakes change before her eyes.

Fatima said she is concerned that the city may not be able to support further population growth and that residents must work on improving the city's problems.

She said more intellectuals and non-tech workers have moved to Bengaluru which has been beneficial. But there have been reports of tensions between locals and immigrants who don't speak the language.

The influx of people has also caused environmental strains, including a recent water crisis. Fatima said the shortage disproportionality impacted high-rise buildings, a telling example of the lack of planning around urban growth.

The philanthropist said she wanted companies to invest in solutions to protect Bengaluru's natural resources, like funding wetland wildlife reserves. She also said community action, like residents collecting stormwater drainage, is more helpful than complaining about the government.

Fatima said developing nearby suburbs could reduce the strain on the city's center and allow the tech hub to continue to thrive.

Read Batool Fatima's full story here.

Spencer Schneier

Spencer Schneier is from New York, but spends half his year in Bengaluru and the other half in San Francisco running a tech startup.

The pandemic opened Schenier's eyes to the idea of leaving the US. In 2020, Schneier worked with two Indian cofounders and joined them on a trip to Mumbai and Bengaluru. While traveling, he decided to launch a startup from Bengaluru to help businesses expand overseas.

Schneier told BI he chose the city because it gave him access to customers, other founders, and small businesses to learn from. He said the Indian startup ecosystem was more conservative than the US, but the next generation of investors is really promising.

Now Schneier spends half his time in San Francisco and half in Bengaluru. He loves the Indian city's moderate climate and generosity. The tech CEO said he struggles with traffic and bureaucracy in the city, but feels he is part of a larger trend of people moving to India to start businesses.

Schneier told BI he believes the appeal of Bengaluru's talent density and local generosity will gain popularity.

Read Spencer Schneier's full story here.

In the tussle between economic growth and sustainability, can Bengaluru have it all?

Bengaluru has undergone significant changes in its transition from a serene "Garden City" to the Silicon Valley of India. Residents said the rapid urbanization has brought both opportunities and challenges.

The opportunities — a booming tech and startup industry, jobs, and diversity — draw people to the city and keep locals living there. But residents BI spoke to are keenly aware of the tradeoffs, pointing to environmental degradation, rising costs of living, and traffic.

The tension between Bengaluru's growth as a tech hub and the cost for its inhabitants lies at the heart of the city's future.

Harini Nagendra, a professor at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, said, "There's a city which is growing, and there's obviously the economic prosperity it brings, but there's also the ecological degradation that you see everywhere."

Nagendra echoed Batool Fatima's suggestion of a collaborative solution with companies and residents maintaining their local environments.

Narendar Pani, an economics professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bengaluru, said the city's growth also hinges on education – better education in urban planning and the ongoing strength of city's educational institutions.

"When people look at Bangalore's future, they think about roads and water," he said. "Water is important, but I think more than the roads, a much more critical element is education."

He, like other residents who spoke to BI, expressed a cautious hopefulness that Bengaluru would solve its problems and continue to grow.

"I belong here, so I would like to think the ideas will come," he said.

• Single women in the US are outpacing men in homebuying, the National Association of Realtors found.
• In 2024, single women represent 20% of all homebuyers, compared to 8% for single men.
• Three single women shared with BI their motivations for buying a home without a partner or a spouse.

Karla Cobreiro, 33, lived with her parents for nearly a decade after college, diligently saving to buy her own home.

"I didn't want to be house-poor or struggle financially," Cobreiro, a publicist, told Business Insider. "I waited for the right moment — when I had a higher-paying job, had saved up a large down payment, and had built a solid emergency fund.

In 2022, she purchased a 900-square-foot condo in Downtown Doral, a Miami suburb, for around $400,000. She was 31 and single.

"I didn't have a partner at the time, but I didn't think that should stop me," Cobreiro said. "So I went for it."

Cobreiro is one of many single women in the US who haven't let the absence of a relationship or marriage stop them from buying a home — an achievement long seen as a key milestone of wealth building and the American dream.

An analysis of data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) shows that single women have consistently outpaced single men in homebuying since the organization began tracking data in 1981.

The chart below shows that since 2020, the share of single women homebuyers has continued to increase steadily, while the share of single men has declined.

By 2024, the gap has reached its widest, with single women representing 20% of all homebuyers, compared to 8% for single men.

Single women find independence in homeownership

So why are single women statistically more likely to purchase homes than single men?

Brandi Snowden, NAR's director of member and consumer survey research, told BI that it largely comes down to lifestyle choices and women's unique societal roles.

Snowden explained that many single women purchase homes because they desire independence, have experienced divorce, and are responsible for raising children.

NAR found that female buyers are typically older than their male counterparts, with the median age for single women at 60, compared to 58 for single men.

"These buyers may be recently divorced or purchasing a home not just for themselves but also for their children and parents," Snowden said.

"It's just me and this mortgage."

Cobreiro said that buying a home without a spouse has its own challenges, such as settling for a smaller condo since she's not part of a DINK household — an acronym for "dual income, no kids."

Data from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances shows that DINKs have a median net worth of over $200,000. This financial advantage enables them to more easily afford housing or spend their disposable income on luxuries like boats and expensive cars.

Despite the financial benefits of a two-income household, many women have chosen to live independently in an era of increasing financial and social autonomy.

Cobreiro is responsible for a 30-year mortgage, which includes $2,500 in monthly payments and an additional $1,000 in HOA fees — all of which fall entirely on her.

"Though I live comfortably, If I get laid off, break a leg, or face an emergency, I'm on my own, she said. "I always joke to my friends, "It's just me and this mortgage."

Still, she believes the benefits of sole home ownership outweigh the risks of waiting to purchase with a boyfriend.

"I'm glad I didn't wait until I was in a relationship or married to buy a home," she said. "Owning a home with someone you're not committed to can get tricky, especially if you break up. There's no prenup; if you disagree about selling, that can get messy."

Some women say no prenup, no co-owning

New Yorker Jessica Chestler, 33, shares a similar perspective to Cobreiro.

In 2022, Chestler, a real-estate agent with Douglas Elliman and a business owner, purchased a three-bedroom condo in Williamsburg for $3.25 million.

She told BI that she viewed homeownership as an investment in her future, one she wasn't willing to risk with someone she wasn't fully committed to.

"When you're buying a home with someone else, there's obviously a lot more to consider, especially if you're not married," Chestler said. "There's always that uncertainty: What happens if you break up — how do you divide the assets?"

Chestler, who also renovated her home, said the greatest benefit of owning solo is the ability to rely on herself and the freedom to live on her own terms.

"I only had to consider myself," she said. "I didn't have to worry about anyone else's opinion. I loved the apartment, knew my numbers, and was confident I could make it work — That sense of comfort was really important to me."

Women say they don't need a knight in shining armor

Some single women who buy homes may have boyfriends but aren't waiting for a ring to start building wealth through home equity.

Take real-estate agent Ayriel Von Schert, who, in February, purchased a 2,280-square-foot townhouse for $365,000 in Mesa, Arizona, without a cosigner.

Although Von Schert, 30, is in a long-term committed relationship, she wanted to take control of her financial future.

"I think many women feel the same way: Why wait for someone else to help you achieve your goals?" she told BI.

Her decision to buy alone could pay off in the long run. Another unit in Von Schert's complex is on the market for $410,000. If it sells for that price, her home will have appreciated by about $35,000 in one year.

"In a few years, I might sell this place or keep it and rent it out while buying another property," she said. "My long-term goal is to build a real estate portfolio and earn residual income, and I feel like I'm definitely on the right path."

For now, she and her boyfriend are living like roommates, equally splitting the bills for the home, including utilities and the mortgage.

She said it's a win-win situation for both of them.

"I don't think he minds because we no longer have a landlord telling us what we can or can't do," she said.

Are you a single or unmarried woman who purchased a home? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Dual citizen Michael Stiege was raised in Canada but spent many years working in the US.
• The darkness and cold climate of Canada pushed him to sunny California.
• For Americans thinking they can simply move up north, it's not that easy, he said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michael Stiege, 75, a dual citizen of the US and Canada. Stiege was raised in Canada and spent roughly 30 years working in California before moving back to Canada 15 years ago. He soon plans to split his time between the US and Canada. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Because I'm a dual citizen of America and Canada, traveling between the two countries is virtually a non-issue.

If you're an American coming to Canada, you can travel visa-free. Still, if you're planning to move here and be able to work here, that's another story.

You can visit for six months as long as you leave before the end of the six-month period. You can do that back and forth all the time — but you won't get access to the social system and healthcare.

My friends, who used to live in Chicago, moved to California and said, "We're going to move up to Canada when we retire," but they couldn't get a visa.

This fellow's a Ph.D. and a really smart technical guy — and his wife is pretty bright, too. They couldn't get a visa because they were simply too old. Once you're — let's say 50 — the immigration system disadvantages you. They have a merit-based point system and start worrying about things like age. That's the thinking. Once you reach a certain age, or if you don't have certain other legs up, the criteria by which you can get a working visa is stacked against you.

[In Canada's Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) — which rates potential immigrants based on age, language fluency, education, professional expertise, and if you have a Canadian partner — applicants 45 years old or older receive 0 points.]

Whereas if you're a young guy just out of college, you have some reasonable skills, and you even know a few words of French, you probably wouldn't have a problem.

There are ways around it, but if the expectation is, "I'm just going to go up there and apply for a visa and get a visa," it may not happen like that.

I needed a change from the cold and long nights in Canada

I was born in Stuttgart, Germany. When my parents and I moved to Canada, I was about 3 and written into my parents' passports.

They got their visas and eventually became naturalized Canadians, which was bestowed on me. So, for all practical purposes, I'm a Canadian.

I grew up in Toronto, went to school in Toronto, and it wasn't until the early side of my career that I moved out into western Canada to Calgary and British Columbia.

I have an engineering degree and an MBA — which, at that time, was a pretty good combination to earn a job and make a living. I looked at the available jobs in the market and thought, "Go to Silicon Valley, where your skills will be valued the most."

I applied to a couple of things and got a call one day. It said, "Are you interested in coming down?" I said yeah, and there I was.

I needed warmer weather, and I was able to get rid of Canada's long winter nights. The summers in Canada were great — you could golf at 11 p.m. — but the winters were awful.

Seasonal affective disorder really got to me. It's not so much the cold as the long winter nights. It's dark. My wife says I had started hibernating, so I wanted to leave that behind.

I rented in the US and bought a home in Canada

When I moved to the US, I found that if I pushed myself, I could've bought a house, but I kept holding off. I found it easy to rent — it was affordable. I could get by without any problem. What I didn't put into a mortgage, I put into stocks and stuff like that.

I lived there for almost 30 years in two or three residences. I paid about $3,200 monthly in Los Altos Hills, California, right by Stanford University.

I came close to buying a couple of times, but the property tax burden in California is significantly higher than what you would find in Canada.

If you buy a house in California for $3 million, you're looking at $40,000 yearly in property taxes. [Zillow estimates a $3 million home in Santa Clara County would cost $36,300 annually in property taxes.] I could go on a trip for six months on that.

If I did the same thing in Toronto, I might spend between $6,000 and $8,000 — and that's a big difference. [According to the city of Toronto, a $3 million home costs $21,459 in city, education, and building fund taxes.]

I moved back to Canada about 15 years ago. My father was 96 then, and I said, "Let's go back." My wife is Canadian, and we have family up here. We settled in and bought our house.

We have a summer home up north in the lake country. It's not bad, but it gets cold in the winter.

If I ever move back to the US, my preference is California.

• Realtor Patti DiMarco, 76, moved to Babcock Ranch after increasing concerns over hurricane damage.
• She purchased a $480,000 three-bedroom home and moved in two weeks after her first visit.
• DiMarco says she felt safe during the most recent hurricane season.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Patti DiMarco, a 76-year-old Realtor who splits her time between New Jersey and Florida. After increasing concerns over hurricane damage and rising insurance costs, DiMarco moved to the 'hurricane-resistant' community of Babcock Ranch.

Located 20 minutes north of Fort Myers, Babcock Ranch was built on land 30 feet above sea level. Developers took precautions for extreme weather events, like designing smart lakes to combat flooding and burying utilities underground. Babcock Ranch's field house, designed to withstand 150 mph wind gusts, also serves as an evacuation shelter for surrounding areas during a hurricane.

I used to live in a gated community in Naples, Florida, about three miles from the Gulf of Mexico. The homes were of various types, including condos with carports, condos with garages, and single-family homes. I lived in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom home that I purchased for $238,000.

My concerns started with the 2018 Surfside building collapse. After that tragedy, the Florida legislature required all condominium and homeowners associations to modify their accounting. They needed more cash for replacement costs, which would impact owners. I believed I would eventually get hit with a big assessment.

Then, there were the hurricanes. I was on the condominium association board, so I dealt with all the issues and the damage. I started to feel like it was becoming too much to manage. During Hurricane Irma in 2017, seven of our homes lost their roofs, and several people lost their cars. During Hurricane Ian in 2022, 18 garages were damaged.

I started to think, 'Where else do I want to live?' I wanted to stay in Florida but find a better situation. One of my grandchildren studied Babcock Ranch as part of a college course on sustainability. It inspired me to visit.

I visited Babcock Ranch for the first time in December 2023. I moved in two weeks later.

Last December, I visited Babcock Ranch, Florida. I toured it, returned the next day, bought the house, and moved in two weeks later.

I've been a Realtor for almost 50 years. When it's right, you just know.

Purchased for $480,000, it has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a den, and a two-car garage. Although I'm in a golf course community and don't play golf, I like the open space.

Settling into Babcock was easy. I unpacked my stuff and went to the pool the next day. The facilities and each of the different neighborhoods are very welcoming, and the people in the neighborhoods are also nice.

There's so much attention to detail in the community. With the utilities being underground, the smart lakes absorbing water, and even the lakes' overflow designed to flow into the street instead of houses, I feel very safe in the event of a hurricane.

My flood insurance costs around $600 per year, and neighbors have told me that I may even be able to abandon it once the final elevation readings are completed.

For the past hurricane season, I didn't worry at all. I was still in New Jersey and hadn't come down yet. Still, there was a Ring camera on my doorbell, and during the storm all I saw in the video was a little palm tree blow. It was just very reassuring.

I was speaking with my neighbors here, and one of them, in particular, was very nervous. She had just moved and hadn't been through a hurricane season. I kept telling her, 'If they didn't think you were safe here, they would be telling you to leave,' but it's the reverse. They're bringing people to Babcock for shelter.

I miss some of the shopping in Naples, but I don't mind zipping around in my golf cart

The people here are a total variety. There are young families, retired folks, people working remotely, and people working in Cape Coral, about an hour away.

The geographic areas where people are coming from are also very diverse. I've met many people from the Midwest, but I've also met people from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Massachusetts.

I don't miss being closer to the shoreline, but I miss some of the restaurants and shopping I had in Naples. New stores are coming here, though. We have a larger shopping district opening next year.

On the other hand, I drive my golf cart everywhere. I do my errands and then flip back to the pool and restaurants. It's like living in a little village from a Hallmark movie.

• Erwin Jacob Miciano left the Navy in 2021 to focus on his real estate business full-time.
• Miciano and his wife used VA loans to buy a triplex and start their business, Semi Homes.
• Semi Homes helps homeowners avoid foreclosure and launched Miciano's real estate career.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Erwin Jacob Miciano, a 27-year-old real-estate investor and the owner of Semi Homes in South El Monte, California. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a dedicated dad, a committed husband, a real-estate investor, and the co-owner of Semi Homes, a real-estate company specializing in direct-to-seller transactions and marketing strategies. I co-own the company with my wife, Theressa.

I don't have a college degree. I graduated from high school in 2015 and first worked at Wetzel's Pretzels. I decided to join the Navy to support my family abroad in the Philippines and my mom and brother in the US.

In March 2016, after three months of boot camp, I completed the basic training to become a photojournalist. Until September 2021, I served as a mass communication specialist, with most of my overseas years based in Japan, stationed on the USS Ronald Reagan.

I separated from the military in 2021 to pursue real estate full-time

My Navy job included writing press releases, aerial photography, videography, and printing. In later years, I was stationed at the Naval Hospital Balboa in San Diego, where we covered COVID-19, and I was deployed with USNS Mercy to San Pedro in Los Angeles during the pandemic.

I was presented with an "early out" program because of overmanning in my job, and it allowed me to complete my contract a couple of years early. I had already started my business, but leaving the military allowed me to pursue it full-time.

I also wanted to spend more time with my young family. My eldest was born in January 2020.

My wife and I met on the day I arrived on the USS Ronald Reagan in 2016

We became friends through the first-response/firefighting team, where she worked as an electrician. We also noticed each other at church services, and she invited me to her baptism ceremony, where she was baptized inside an open jet fuel tank.

Early in our relationship, we lived together in a small Japanese apartment. Then, we spent about a year doing long-distance, with me still deploying on the carrier and her based in San Diego.

After a year of dating, we got married, and soon after some vacation in the US, we discovered we were expecting our first child. During most of her pregnancy, Theressa lived alone until I got stationed in San Diego around her seventh month.

That same year, I became deeply interested in personal finance and real-estate investing, inspired by stories of blue-collar workers achieving financial freedom through real estate. I learned the most from the BiggerPockets podcasts.

We were motivated to become first-time homebuyers

We were eager to apply what we had learned and planned to use the VA loan entitlement from our military service. VA entitlement is how much lenders can lend to a veteran or active duty member without providing a down payment.

We aimed to buy a multifamily property — ideally a duplex, triplex, or fourplex — so we could live in one unit and rent the others to offset our mortgage. Today, this strategy is known as house hacking.

Being stationed in San Diego gave us a few key advantages

The housing allowance we received as military members was higher than in most US locations, boosting our household income to about $10,000-$12,000 monthly. This allowance was discontinued once we both left the military. Theressa left the Navy almost a year before I did at the end of 2020.

Second, the VA loan allowed us to buy a multifamily property with zero down payment.

Third, we included 75% of the gross rental income from the property in our loan application, increasing our approved loan amount. On paper, our monthly gross increased to $15,000-$17,000.

Finally, new legislation removed local VA loan limits for first-time users, giving us more purchasing power.

After months of searching, we found a triplex listed for $1.2 million

We offered $1 million and settled at $1.1 million. By March 2020, we had moved into a three-bedroom unit while renting out the other two for about $4,000 a month, reducing our housing costs to less than what one-bedroom rentals were going for at the time. This was the start of Semi Homes.

After living in the triplex for two years, we moved in with my mom and brother in September 2021 in the San Gabriel Valley. The triplex is now fully a rental property generating $1,500 to $2,000 monthly profit.

My day-to-day work involves meeting with homeowners who are looking for support in selling their properties

We now buy properties and resell them for a profit. We also help sellers in deep foreclosure and save them from it. My role is to get my team in front of our target audience and guide clients through the entire process, all the way to the closing table.

There are also late-night administrative hours and business-building, which I work on three to four nights a week. The biggest change from my Navy days is that I'm no longer away from my family for long periods — a small freedom I cherish.

I feel both fulfilled and successful

While Semi Homes started as a way to build wealth and achieve financial freedom for my family, it's grown into something more.

We stay in this tough business because we truly believe in the value we provide to the individuals we work with. I'm focused on building our online presence and spreading the word that foreclosing is not the only option.

I see myself in real estate for the rest of my life.

Want to share your story about getting on the property ladder? Email Lauryn Haas at [email protected].

When Zillow debuted in 2006, the fledgling site bore little resemblance to the real-estate behemoth it is now. There were no options to find an agent, get a mortgage, or request a tour — the search portal couldn't even tell you which homes were actually for sale. There was, however, the Zestimate: a "free, unbiased valuation" for 40 million houses around the US, based on a proprietary algorithm. Half the single-family homes in America suddenly had a dollar figure attached to them, and anyone could take a peek. Zillow's site crashed within hours as a million people raced to ogle at the results.

The initial rush was a sign of things to come. Nowadays, the Zestimate is arguably the most popular — and polarizing — number in real estate. An entire generation of homeowners doesn't know life without the algorithm; some obsessively track its output as they would a stock portfolio or the price of bitcoin. By the time a seller hires a real-estate agent, there's a good chance they've already consulted the digital oracle. For anyone with even a passing interest in the housing market, the Zestimate is a breezy way to take the temperature. Keep tabs on mortgage rates all you want, but they can't tell you that your house has appreciated 20% over the past year, or that your annoying coworker's property is worth more than yours.

Many industry insiders, however, regard the number as a starting point at best and dangerously misguided at worst. Real-estate agents recount arguments with sellers who reject their pricing advice, choosing instead to take the Zestimate as the word of God. One meme likens its disciples to adults who still believe in Santa. Zillow itself lost hundreds of millions of dollars during the pandemic when it relied on its algorithm to buy homes at what turned out to be inflated prices, part of an ill-fated attempt to flip homes at scale.

The Zestimate is just one of a slew of automated valuation models that are increasingly used by banks, investors, and laypeople to estimate the value of homes. No other model, however, has wormed its way into our culture like the Zestimate. The model, like other consumer-facing AVMs, is prone to errors that render it more of an amusement than a serious pricing tool. But while the algo's price-guessing skills may be suspect, it's undeniably elite at one thing: luring people to Zillow-dot-com.

The Zestimate is both everywhere and an enigma. About 104 million homes, or 71% of the US housing stock, have a little dollar figure hovering above them on Zillow's website. One of them is the house in Austin where I was raised until the age of 10. It's not for sale, but right underneath the address, in bold, is the Zestimate. Next to it is a "Rent Zestimate," or the amount the owner could probably charge a tenant each month. You can click to see a graph of its Zestimate over the past decade — the Zillow-fied value of my childhood home rose a staggering 72% from May 2020 to its peak in May 2022 but has since dropped 24% from that top tick thanks to the chill running through the Austin market. In just the past 30 days, the Zestimate has dropped by $4,455. Ouch.

Just how accurate are those numbers, though? Until the house actually trades hands, it's impossible to say. Zillow's own explanation of the methodology, and its outcomes, can be misleading. The model, the company says, is based on thousands of data points from public sources like county records, tax documents, and multiple listing services — local databases used by real-estate agents where most homes are advertised for sale. Zillow's formula also incorporates user-submitted info: If you get a fancy new kitchen, for example, your Zestimate might see a nice bump if you let the company know. Zillow makes sure to note that the Zestimate can't replace an actual appraisal, but articles on its website also hail the tool as a "powerful starting point in determining a home's value" and "generally quite accurate." The median error rate for on-market homes is just 2.4%, per the company's website, while the median error rate for off-market homes is 7.49%. Not bad, you might think.

But that's where things get sticky. By definition, half of homes sell within the median error rate, e.g., within 2.4% of the Zestimate in either direction for on-market homes. But the other half don't, and Zillow doesn't offer many details on how bad those misses are. And while the Zestimate is appealing because it attempts to measure what a house is worth even when it's not for sale, it becomes much more accurate when a house actually hits the market. That's because it's leaning on actual humans, not computers, to do a lot of the grunt work. When somebody lists their house for sale, the Zestimate will adjust to include all the new seller-provided info: new photos, details on recent renovations, and, most importantly, the list price. The Zestimate keeps adjusting until the house actually sells. At that point, the difference between the sale price and the latest Zestimate is used to calculate the on-market error rate, which, again, is pretty good: In Austin, for instance, a little more than 94% of on-market homes end up selling for within 10% of the last Zestimate before the deal goes through. But Zillow also keeps a second Zestimate humming in the background, one that never sees the light of day. This version doesn't factor in the list price — it's carrying on as if the house never went up for sale at all. Instead, it's used to calculate the "off-market" error rate. When the house sells, the difference between the final price and this shadow algorithm reveals an error rate that's much less satisfactory: In Austin, only about 66% of these "off-market Zestimates" come within 10% of the actual sale price. In Atlanta, it's 65%; Chicago, 58%; Nashville, 63%; Seattle, 69%. At today's median home price of $420,000, a 10% error would mean a difference of more than $40,000.

Without sellers spoonfeeding Zillow the most crucial piece of information — the list price — the Zestimate is hamstrung. It's a lot easier to estimate what a home will sell for once the sellers broadcast, "Hey, this is the price we're trying to sell for." Because the vast majority of sellers work with an agent, the list price is also usually based on that agent's knowledge of the local market, the finer details of the house, and comparable sales in the area. This September, per Zillow's own data, the typical home sold for 99.8% of the list price — almost exactly spot on. That may not always be the case, but the list price is generally a good indicator of the sale figure down the line. For a computer model of home prices, it's basically the prized data point. In the world of AVMs, models that achieve success by fitting their results to list prices are deemed "springy" or "bouncy" — like a ball tethered to a string, they won't stray too far. Several people I talked to for this story say they've seen this in action with Zillow's model: A seller lists a home and asks for a number significantly different from the Zestimate, and then watches as the Zestimate moves within a respectable distance of that list price anyway. Zillow itself makes no secret of the fact that it leans on the list price to arrive at its own estimate.

Other sites have their versions of the Zestimate, too — there are actually about 25 different AVMs in the market, says Lee Kennedy, the founder and managing director of AVMetrics, a company known for independently testing these models. Realtor.com will show you three estimates, each from a different AVM provider. Redfin, a Zillow competitor, also has its own model. Kennedy has been studying AVMs for more than three decades, but it wasn't until the advent of Zillow that the masses became aware of them. Consumer-facing AVMs, like the Zestimate or the Redfin Estimate (Restimate?) are meant to be used informally, he says, as casual starting points before consulting real experts. They're not supposed to be used for real pricing, which should be left to the big guys — the "business-to-business" AVMs used by banks, investors, and the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Lauryn Dempsey, a real-estate agent in the Denver area, gives similar advice to her clients.

"They're tools that provide information," Dempsey says, "but they should not be used in a vacuum to make decisions."

The business-to-business models are so costly to develop, Kennedy tells me, that they'll probably never be offered to regular people for free. But his testing indicates they're much more reliable. His firm has unveiled blind testing that looks at how models perform before taking into account the list price, a method that penalizes those aforementioned bouncy algorithms. The standard measurement breaks down how often the model can get within 10%, in either direction, of the actual selling price. In a highly urbanized area with lots of housing transactions, some of the models can correctly get close to the final selling price about 80% to 90% of the time — "not bad," Kennedy says. AVMs of all kinds work best in areas with a lot of homes that look and feel roughly the same. Cookie-cutter suburbs are heaven; areas with a wide range of home styles and ages, like Boston, pose a greater challenge. The value of a ranch home in the middle of nowhere is even tougher to peg.

So the Zestimate isn't exactly unique, and it's far from the best. But to the average internet surfer, no AVM carries the weight, or swagger, of the original. To someone like Jonathan Miller, the president and CEO of the appraisal and consulting company Miller Samuel, the enduring appeal of the Zestimate is maddening. "When you think of the Zestimate, for many, it gives a false anchor for what the value actually is," Miller says.

Miller is no unbiased observer. Given that he's an appraiser who estimates the value of homes for a living, it should come as no surprise that he's siding with the humans over the robots. But he raises real issues, highlighting the disconnect between the public's continued use of the Zestimate and its actual track record.

I could say that I virtually stalked my childhood home for "research," but let's be real: By the time I scrolled to the bottom of the page, I had fully surrendered to the voyeuristic urges that draw millions of visitors to the Zillow website each month. It's been almost two decades since I've stepped inside the house, and I can only imagine the changes its new owners have made to my old room (sadly, no pics of the interior). But with the aid of Zillow, my trip down memory lane was lined with data: I walked away with intimate knowledge of the home and its occupants. Prior to 2006, no regular person had this kind of power.

The launch of Zillow spawned a whole genre of internet snooping that, if anything, has only intensified in the years since. When I call up John Wake, a former economist and real-estate agent who now writes the newsletter Real Estate Decoded, he reveals that he, too, looked up his childhood home only a few months ago. "That part is really fun," he tells me. Keeping tabs on your own Zestimate, though, can provide less of a thrill. In December 2022, after interest-rate hikes tamped down home prices, Wake shared with his followers on X that his Zestimate was down 18% from May: "YIKES!" In a 2020 column, the Wall Street Journal editor Kris Frieswick opened up about the difficulty of quitting the algorithm: "My self-worth is defined by my Zestimate. Each day I approach Zillow.com filled with hope, and fear." The column reads mostly as tongue-in-cheek, but plenty of people take their number very seriously. As Frieswick pointed out, at least several disgruntled homeowners have actually sued Zillow over Zestimates they said were inaccurate.

Looking up other people's houses, by comparison, is a mostly harmless pastime. Bosses, neighbors, lovers, and exes — all are fair game in the all-seeing eyes of the tool. During the heat of the 2021 homebuying frenzy, a "Saturday Night Live" sendup of a Zillow ad declared: "The pleasure you once got from sex now comes from looking at other people's houses." The skit, which featured a lot of moaning and sultry mood lighting, was mostly about the fantasies of browsing homes for sale on Zillow — as one YouTube commenter observed, "They didn't even get into the naughty pleasure of looking up all your friends' Zestimate values." This kicked off a thread of others chiming in with "guilty!" and lots of cry-laughing emojis. "OMG I thought this was just my kink," another person replied. I imagine all of these people at a raucous dinner party, bonding over their exploits on zillow.com. And here I am, the buzzkill in the corner talking about median error rates.

Virtual spelunking aside, the hazards of the Zestimate are most obvious when a seller actually decides to list their home. Francine Carstensen, a real-estate agent in Alabama, says those in her line of work have a complicated relationship with the Zestimate: "We love it, and we hate it." A lofty estimate might jolt a homeowner into action — "I could sell my house for what?!" — and drive more business her way. But the number can also make it hard to do her job. A few times, she tells me, she's lost clients over a pricing disagreement involving the Zestimate. It can be difficult enough to pry a seller away from their unrealistic expectations without a number on a screen confirming their hopes for a bigger payday.

"I hate it when they tell me, 'Well, this is what Zillow tells me my house is worth,'" Carstensen says. "Because it's very rarely accurate."

Accuracy may not even be the point. It didn't appear to be in 2006, when the beta version of the Zestimate launched. "The Zestimate started out fairly inaccurate, but it didn't matter," Rich Barton, a Zillow cofounder who was then its CEO, recalled in a 2021 podcast episode. "It was provocative." Spencer Rascoff, another cofounder and former CEO, sold his own home in 2016 for 40% less than its Zestimate. The next year, the company offered $1 million to whoever could improve the Zestimate algorithm the most. The winning team, a group of three data scientists working remotely from the US, Canada, and Morocco, beat the Zillow benchmark by 13%.

No misstep appeared more damning, however, than the implosion of Zillow's homebuying business. In 2018, the company launched Zillow Offers, making all-cash offers to sellers looking to move quickly and seamlessly. In theory, Zillow could then turn around and offload the home in short order for a modest fee, plus however much the home had appreciated. The company used a combination of internal algorithms and human analysts to value the home and predict what it could sell for in a few months — in some cases, homeowners could get an immediate cash offer based on their Zestimate with just a few clicks. But the company's forecasts turned out to be way off base. Zillow Offers squandered $422 million in the third quarter of 2021 alone — a Business Insider investigation found that almost two-thirds of the homes listed by Zillow in Atlanta, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, and Minneapolis were being marketed at a loss. Amanda Pendleton, a Zillow spokesperson, tells me it was the volatility of the market, not the Zestimate, that really led to the program's downfall. Once the losses came to light, the company swiftly shuttered the division and laid off a quarter of its staff.

I remember wondering whether this would be the death knell for the Zestimate, a kind of algorithm-has-no-clothes moment. I was wrong. Zillow and its best-known creation haven't gone anywhere — the company continues to highlight its progress, providing periodic updates as its data scientists tinker away at the formulas. As search portals like Homes.com and Redfin jockey with Zillow for dominance, the Zestimate is too valuable of an asset to give up. People still flock to Zillow for those little numbers next to each home, for the thrill of feasting their eyes upon something that, like salaries, is considered taboo to talk about in person. For Zillow, that's an unequivocal win.

"It's 100% a marketing tool," says Mike DelPrete, a scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies the intersection of tech and real estate. "Like, not even 99%. It's a marketing tool."

James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

• The US housing market might be much more friendly to homebuyers in 2025.
• Home sales should rise significantly as inventory grows and prices inch higher.
• Here are 10 real-estate markets that could see a surge of activity next year.

Homebuyers should stock up on champagne — and not just for New Year's Eve.

Next year may present long-awaited opportunities for aspiring property owners to trade their apartments for homes, or for families to get the upgrades they've been pining for. There's a growing sense among real-estate analysts that an extended home sales contraction will snap in 2025 as housing inventory rises and mortgage rates fall.

"Homebuyers will have more success next year," said Lawrence Yun, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, in a statement about the firm's 2025 outlook. "The worst of the affordability challenges are over as more inventory, stable mortgage rates, and continued job and income growth pave the way for more Americans to achieve homeownership."

Housing market transactions will soar 7% to 12% in the year ahead to 4.5 million units before an even larger 10% to 15% jump in 2026, according to the NAR. New home sales are expected to climb 11% next year and 8% the year after.

Earlier this month, real-estate brokerage titan eXp Realty's CEO told Business Insider that sales could advance 10% in 2025, though Realtor.com called for a comparatively modest 1.5% gain.

But a home sales boom seems plausible, based on what should be healthy supply and demand.

That inventory uptick will keep property price growth in check at only 2% in each of the next two years, the NAR predicted, which would translate to a median existing-home price of $410,700. And buyers may also move off the sidelines as mortgage rates drift toward 6% from around 7%, the firm added.

"If rates stabilize around 6%, about 6.2 million households can once again be able to afford median-priced homes, compared to the current constraints with rates near 7%," the NAR noted.

Slower home-price growth and lower mortgage rates will go a long way toward easing the affordability crisis that has plagued the US since the pandemic. Just over a year ago, buyers suffered through the least affordable quarter since 1985. That may soon be a distant memory.

10 hot real-estate markets

Home sales should surge across the US next year, especially in a healthy economy with solid job gains. However, researchers at the NAR expect certain cities to be far busier than others.

Buyers will flock to 10 top housing markets in 2025 due to a combination of rising home supply, manageable mortgage rates, and healthy local economies, the firm said. Healthy demand should underpin further home-price appreciation for owners in those metropolitan areas.

These soon-to-be-hot markets share several similarities, including strong property price growth since the pandemic, a sizable supply of starter homes, positive net migration, and an outsized share of out-of-state movers who are buying homes. Other factors were a market's job growth, mortgage rates, how long most homeowners had been there, and the share of millennial renters who could buy. The NAR outlined its full methodology for this exercise in a press release.

Below are the 10 real-estate markets that the NAR is bullish on next year, along with select economic and demographic considerations.

Along with each metro area is its home price growth in the last five years, starter homes as a share of total inventory, the share of homeowners who've been in place for more than 16 years and therefore may be ready to sell, net migration ratio, the share of out-of-state movers purchasing homes, job growth since late 2019, and commentary from the NAR.

1. Boston, Massachusetts

Price appreciation history: 51.5%

Starter homes as share of inventory: 41.1%

Share of long-term homeowners: 10.2%

Net migration to population ratio: 0.1

Share of out-of-state purchasers: 18.8%

Job growth history: -0.2%

Commentary: "Boston's housing market is expected to see significant benefits from stabilizing mortgage rates. With fewer locked-in homeowners, the impact of the 'lock-in effect' may lessen in the coming year as rates stabilize near 6%, encouraging more homeowners to sell and easing inventory constraints in this supply-tight market. Additionally, Boston's mortgage rates have been relatively lower than the national average, which provides a competitive edge in today's challenging financing environment. A lower rate could help mitigate some of the affordability pressures. Surprisingly, Boston has also a larger proportion of starter-homes, with about 41% of the owner-occupied units valued below $550,000."

2. Charlotte, North Carolina

Price appreciation history: 72.8%

Starter homes as share of inventory: 72.8%

Share of long-term homeowners: 46.9%

Net migration to population ratio: 1.4

Share of out-of-state purchasers: 23.5%

Job growth history: 10.1%

Commentary: "With an impressive 10% job growth over the last five years and strong migration gains, Charlotte's economy and housing market are poised for continued growth. More than 11% of the households are set to reach the age of 35 to 40 within the next five years, ensuring sustained demand for housing. Prospective buyers in Charlotte also benefit from a wider range of affordable options, as 43% of homes fall within the starter-home category (priced less than $324,000), making the market particularly appealing to first-time buyers and young families."

3. Grand Rapids, Michigan

Price appreciation history: 64.4%

Starter homes as share of inventory: 39.6%

Share of long-term homeowners: 50.7%

Net migration to population ratio: 0.2

Share of out-of-state purchasers: 38.7%

Job growth history: 3.1%

Commentary: "Grand Rapids offers a unique combination of affordability and promising long-term prospects. With 36% of Millennial renters able to afford homeownership and 12% of households entering prime homebuying age within the next five years, the demand for housing will remain strong. A smaller proportion of originations with rates below 6%, compared to the national level, suggests a reduced 'lock-in effect,' which could lead to more inventory in this area. Additionally, the availability of starter-homes allows newcomers to purchase a home and establish roots, making Grand Rapids a standout market for 2025."

4. Greenville, South Carolina

Price appreciation history: 68.8%

Starter homes as share of inventory: 42.2%

Share of long-term homeowners: 49.7%

Net migration to population ratio: 1.7

Share of out-of-state purchasers: 43%

Job growth history: 8%

Commentary: "Greenville stands out as the area that checks off the most criteria on NAR's top 10 list. This area particularly benefits from a strong net migration rate and affordability. The metro's average mortgage rate of 6.9% in 2023 is well below the national average, providing additional relief for buyers. With 42% of homes categorized as starter homes and 43% of movers purchasing homes, Greenville offers accessibility and stability for families and young professionals alike."

5. Hartford, Connecticut

Price appreciation history: 62.8%

Starter homes as share of inventory: 38.7%

Share of long-term homeowners: 58.1%

Net migration to population ratio: 0.3

Share of out-of-state purchasers: 45%

Job growth history: 0.2%

Commentary: "Hartford offers a favorable financing environment, with an average mortgage rate of 6.5% in 2023 — one of the lowest among the top markets — enhancing affordability for buyers. Additionally, Hartford holds the highest proportion of homeowners surpassing the area's average tenure of 17 years, indicating a potential increase in local inventory, which could help alleviate supply constraints."

6. Indianapolis, Indiana

Price appreciation history: 60%

Starter homes as share of inventory: 41.7%

Share of long-term homeowners: 48.5%

Net migration to population ratio: 0.5

Share of out-of-state purchasers: 21.7%

Job growth history: 9.3%

Commentary: "Indianapolis earned a spot on the list due its strong job growth and housing affordability, which continue to attract new residents and foster a stable demand for housing. Nearly 42% of the housing stock is priced below $236,000, making the market especially appealing to first-time buyers and young families. With fewer 'locked-in' homeowners than the national level, this area is likely to see more available inventory as mortgage rates stabilize around 6% next year."

7. Kansas City, Missouri/Kansas

Price appreciation history: 59.9%

Starter homes as share of inventory: 41%

Share of long-term homeowners: 50%

Net migration to population ratio: 0.3

Share of out-of-state purchasers: 25%

Job growth history: 4.8%

Commentary: "Kansas City is one of the few areas with both a lower average mortgage rate and smaller share of locked-in homeowners, creating favorable conditions for financing and increased inventory. This area is also one of the most affordable markets for Millennial renters, with one in three of them able to afford homeownership. This affordability, combined with its competitive financing environments, makes Kansas City a key player among top-performing housing markets in the coming year."

8. Knoxville, Tennessee

Price appreciation history: 90.9%

Starter homes as share of inventory: 42%

Share of long-term homeowners: 52.9%

Net migration to population ratio: 1.6

Share of out-of-state purchasers: 48.9%

Job growth history: 8.8%

Commentary: “Knoxville made up the top 10 list due to its strong migration gains and the appeal it holds for new residents seeking long-term stability as nearly 50% of movers in Knoxville chose to purchase a home. The impact of the ‘lock-in effect’ is expected to be less pronounced here, as fewer borrowers hold mortgages with rates below 6%. At the same time, homeowners in Knoxville have built substantial wealth, with home prices now nearly double their pre-pandemic levels. This combination of strong migration, high homeownership among movers, and significant wealth gains makes Knoxville a market with strong potential in 2025.”

9. Phoenix, Arizona

Price appreciation history: 72.3%

Starter homes as share of inventory: 39.3%

Share of long-term homeowners: 42.5%

Net migration to population ratio: 0.7

Share of out-of-state purchasers: 35.8%

Job growth history: 11.9%

Commentary: "Phoenix has become a key destination for residents migrating from California, driven by its comparatively lower cost of living and housing affordability. This migration is further supported by Phoenix's strong job growth, which has expanded by 12% in the last five years. This combination of demographic shifts and economic expansion has established Phoenix as a prosperous and dynamic market."

10. San Antonio, Texas

Price appreciation history: 44.8%

Starter homes as share of inventory: 40.5%

Share of long-term homeowners: 48.5%

Net migration to population ratio: 1.3

Share of out-of-state purchasers: 39%

Job growth history: 10.7%

Commentary: "The Texas Triangle couldn't be left off this list. Borrowers in San Antonio were able to secure mortgage rates well below the national average in 2023, at 6.4%. This suggests that buyers in the area benefit from a combination of local market dynamics that lead lenders to assess lower risk in this area. Additionally, San Antonio has experienced one of the strongest rates of job creation since pre-pandemic levels, which continues to draw new residents to the area."