Home Ownership

While we love to complain about them, property taxes are also incredibly misunderstood. (Kind of like teenagers.) Let’s try to demystify them.

Higher mortgage rates and home prices have pushed the monthly payment to buy the median-priced home in the U.S. up more than 50% since the start of last year. Many first-time buyers can't afford it.

A new data analysis from the Texas Real Estate Research Center seeks to dismiss assumptions about Texas transplants driving up residential real estate.

State officials have rolled out a "Texas Homeowner Assistance Fund" that is designed to help homeowners who’ve fallen behind on mortgage payments and other housing costs during the pandemic.

A cash offer is hard to beat. It used to be that only wealthy people and investors had the money. But now some lenders are helping the rest of us do it too, even if you don't actually have the cash.

Lots of speculators are jockeying to get in on the hot market. Sometime they call homeowners multiple times a day. It can be an invasive nuisance, or worse.

Racial covenants made it illegal for Black people to live in white neighborhoods. Now they're illegal, but you might still have one on your home's deed. And they're hard to remove.

The City Council voted Thursday to double the current general homestead exemption, taking it to 20%. That means homeowners will not have to pay property taxes on one-fifth of the value of their primary home.

The homestead exemption for older and disabled residents will be raised from the current value, $88,000, to an amount not to exceed $113,000.

One wall in Earlene and Willie Williams’ living room in Southeast Austin is covered almost entirely with family photos – something that’s easy to do when…