America's Top 10 Real Estate News: Recent US Real Estate & Home News

POMPANO BEACH, Fla., Feb. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A look at some of the most interesting recent real estate news stories in the United States. America's Top 10 Real Estate News is featured at TopTenRealEstateDeals.com.

America's Top 10 Real Estate News

Starter Homes Making Comeback In Detroit
Starter homes may be making a comeback in the United States. A recent Realtor.com survey of nationwide building permits showed that new homes have shrunk in size from 2,128 square feet in 2022 to 1,965 square feet in 2024. It seems that Detroit is leading the way with new homes 1,800 to 1,850 square feet with a yard starting at about $330,000 or about $500,000 for a new home with 2,400 square feet and a basement. Detroit's Greatwater Homes has built 32 of the affordable homes and hopes to build 36 more this year.

America's Most Affordable Big Town
According to Zillow, Pittsburgh is America's most affordable large town. Zillow used a number of factors in determining the list of affordable towns, but the ratio of housing costs to income was the most important. Approximately 73% of home listings in Pittsburgh are considered affordable, with housing costs taking less than 30% of a typical household's income. St. Louis and Buffalo were the #2 and #3 most affordable large towns.

US Home Sales Plummet In January
Bad weather and the ongoing issues of high interest rates and low inventory led to a decline of 8.4% in sales of US existing homes in January. Even with a decline in income needed to buy a median-priced home from $103,000 to $91,000, the January numbers were the worst in almost four years. Seasonally adjusted annual sales fell in all four US regions to 3.91 million, a 4.4% decrease from January 2025.

Florida Sweeps Best Beach Picks
In a recent study by Beach.com, the top twelve-rated beaches in the southeastern US are all in Florida. Beach.com analyzed over 1,300 beaches in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, using "NASA satellite data, natural language processing, and proximity data...supported by hundreds of thousands of data points." The #1-ranked beach is Ocean Reef Park in Riviera Beach, Florida. The highest-ranked non-Florida beach is Huntington Beach State Park in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina.

US Home Sales At 30-Year Low
With high mortgage rates, high prices and less inventory, US housing sales are at a 30-year low. The housing market outlook for 2026 is not great.

President Announces Plans To Boost Homeownership
President Donald Trump announced several initiatives to boost US home ownership in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Trump laid out several possible policies, including lower interest rates on home loans and a ban on large institutional purchases of single-family homes. The US housing market has been in a sustained slump since 2022.

Home Buyers Cancel Contracts In Record Numbers
US home buyers canceled their purchase contracts in record numbers in December. With many more home sellers than buyers, more than 40,000 home-purchase agreements were canceled in December. With the higher inventory of homes, buyers are more selective these days looking for the best deal they can find.

Hulk Hogan's Florida Mansion Lists $11 Million
Hulk Hogan's beach home in Clearwater Beach, Florida is on the market for $10.98 million. The 5,400-square-foot home has direct views of the Gulf of Mexico and five bedrooms, including a 1,000-square-foot primary bedroom. The Hulk died in 2025.

More Florida Tourists, Except Canadians
Florida tourism increased from 34.239 million visitors in the third quarter of 2024 to an estimated 34.339 million visitors in the same period in 2025, except for Canadians, who are upset with Donald Trump's anti-Canadian rhetoric and tariffs and have been canceling vacations and real estate purchases in the United States. Florida tourism officials estimated the state had 507,000 Canadian visitors during the quarter, down from 597,000 in the third quarter of 2024. It is the lowest number of Canadian visitors since the fourth quarter of 2021, when the US/Canada border was closed due to covid and only 275,000 Canadians visited the state.

America's Biggest Land Owners
America's richest people are also some of the country's largest landowners. Stan Kroenke owns 2.7 million acres of land spread out in Texas, Wyoming, Nevada, and New Mexico. He is married to Walmart heiress Ann Walton and also owns the Los Angeles Rams. CNN founder and former owner of the Atlanta Braves and one-time husband of Jane Fonda, Ted Turner, owns almost two million acres.

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SOURCE Top Ten Real Estate Deals