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True to its name, this type of home is shaped like the letter A, with walls that begin near the foundation and slope upward at a slant, meeting to form a triangle.

If you’ve ever dreamed of living in a teepee, an A-frame may be the closest you’ll ever get. Sometimes quirky and quaint, sometimes sleek and modern, these triangle-shaped houses have spiked in popularity of late.

Key characteristics

While its triangular shape is its key characteristic, there are other features that make A-frame homes what they are, both inside and out. They typically include the following features:

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Retired baseball superstar Pedro Martinez is ready to part ways with his Winchester, MA, home. He’s listed the five-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom property for $1,995,000.

The lanky hurler cemented his legendary status via a seven-year stint with the Boston Red Sox. In addition to winning two Cy Young Awards with the Red Sox, he was a key member of the team’s memorable 2004 World Series–winning roster.

These days, the Dominican-born superstar has a Florida property to fall back on—a home in North Miami that he snapped up in 2019 for $3 million.

The place he’s selling sits just north of Boston on more than an acre of land. Built in 1995, the 5,120-square-foot home has a traditional vibe inside and out. Martinez purchased the place for $1.3 million in September 2018.

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It’s a home. It’s a smokehouse. It’s a campground. It’s sustainable living at its finest!

A popular 20-acre retreat known as the Eco-Ranch Sustainable Living Educational Center recently hit the market in Alpine, TX, for an affordable $254,450—down from the original listing price of $269,450 in October.

The self-sustaining compound was built from the ground up by its owners, who clearly had a unique vision for the property.

“The owners moved here 15 years ago when they bought just a piece of land,” says listing agent Clay Braden, of Mtn. View Properties. “They lived in an RV there for five years and then started construction of the house.”

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You know what they say: What happens in Vegas eventually finds its way to Palm Springs, CA. Err, close enough, right?

Listed for $11.8 million, this elaborate estate pays homage to Sin City’s old-school luxury—specifically the famed Caesars Palace hotel and casino.

The owners leaned into the 8,000-square-foot property’s roots, searching out 1970s furniture in a nod to its glamorous past while bringing the home into the modern age.

“They actually went to Caesars Palace and got photographs of the outside ironwork and had it duplicated,” says Louise Hampton, a listing agent with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties. “There are touches of Caesars Palace everywhere in this house.”

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The Sunshine State is fully in the rearview mirror for peripatetic college football coach Lane Kiffin. He recently listed his gorgeous home in Boca Raton, FL, for $3.95 million.

When Kiffin was hired as the head coach at Florida Atlantic University five years ago, we examined whether or not the job-hopping coach should consider renting in Florida. But if he manages to score the asking price for the home he eventually purchased, it would nearly double the $2.1 million he paid for it in 2017. A savvy move on Kiffin’s part.

He’s now in the middle of his third season as the head football coach at the University of Mississippi, so it makes sense to try and shed his Florida holdings. However, saying so long to this pretty property was likely a tough call.

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There’s no place better to enjoy an awesome autumn than your own log cabin.

Imagine snuggling up inside a cozy retreat with a crackling fire as the leaves fall outside your window.

And your reverie needn’t break the bank: Log cabin life is affordable and within reach. We found five lovely log cabins for sale across the country, all priced below $300,000. Each is ideal for an autumn weekend getaway—or a much longer stay—while still offering most of the modern comforts of home.

Located in diverse parts of the country, any one of these might be just right for you, winter, spring, summer, or fall. You’ll never know until you take a look.

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All eyes have been glued to mortgage rates lately as those all-important fees continue their seemingly inexorable upward march.

While average rates for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dipped to 6.95% last week, that figure climbed back to 7.08% for the week ending Nov. 10, according to Freddie Mac.

And if inflation refuses to budge, “mortgage rates are more likely to climb than to slip,” says Realtor.com® Chief Economist  Danielle Hale in her analysis.

Yet while interest rates are up, nibbling away at affordability, at least another key metric is heading down to at least partly make up for it: home prices.

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Michael Bidwill, whose family has owned the Arizona Cardinals football team since the 1930s, has announced it’s time to move closer to family. This means his home in Paradise Valley, AZ, is on the market for $5.8 million.

The six-bedroom, seven-bath mansion measures more than 8,500 square feet and sits on an acre and a third. It has commanding views of the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, Mummy Mountain, and Camelback Mountain.

There’s also a two-bedroom guesthouse with its own two-car garage.

The 2003 build offers deluxe living quarters.

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Buying new furniture and accessories isn’t the only way to overhaul your home’s interior. In fact, one of our favorite approaches to updating decor involves beautifying your walls.

DIY wall designs are useful in spaces like bedrooms where you’re unlikely to switch up your furniture. So for this week’s roundup of trending Instagram decor, we chose to feature five DIY wall designs you can easily re-create over the weekend.

Whether you’re looking to bring a splash of color to your bedroom or you’re aiming to go all-out with a unique wall mural or wallpaper display, this list has something for every kind of bedroom.

1. Paint a lively wall mural

If you have a blank wall and leftover paint from other projects, you’re well on your way to re-creating this look from mural artist @househomo.

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A gorgeous, 6,000-square-foot Victorian in Rome, GA, featured in Season 4 of the Netflix show “Stranger Things” is this week’s most popular listing on Realtor.com®.

Known as the Creel House on the show, the seven-bedroom home boasts many unique details, including an antique wall safe. The house was recently renovated, but whether demogorgons are included in the sale remains to be seen.

Other digs that drew your clicks include a New Hampshire beauty with an indoor “birdhouse,” a groovy pad in Indiana, and a tiny hunting cabin in Vermont.

For a full look at this week’s 10 most popular homes, keep scrolling.

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Looks can be deceiving, especially when it comes to the surprises tucked inside this magical “Alice in Wonderland”-like find for $785,000 in Pikesville, MD.

The home’s traditional-looking, two-story exterior doesn’t hint at the splashy designs behind its front door.

Expect to be wowed with over-the-top details, including zebra-print carpeted stairs, a mirrored dining room with a wallpaper-lined ceiling, and a bathroom awash in polka dots.

‘Eccentric and whimsical’

“The home is completely unique, eccentric and whimsical,” says Patricia Spigel, a listing agent with Compass. “A lot of love went into every choice that the sellers put in there.”

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Some sobering news: For would-be buyers who have had their home searches foiled or delayed by soaring mortgage interest rates, the housing market is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Mortgage rates are expected to keep rising after new indicators showed that inflation rose 7.7% year over year in October, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released on Thursday. The U.S. Federal Reserve has been hiking its interest rates in an all-out war against stubbornly high inflation, leading to the surge in mortgage rates.

The hikes appear to be making a dent as inflation was down a little from 8.2% year over year in September. But it was still high enough that the Fed is likely to continue to shock the economy with more rate hikes that are pushing the nation to the brink of a recession.

When the Fed raises its rates, mortgage rates typically follow—much to the displeasure of homebuyers. Those higher mortgage rates have priced many first-time buyers out of homeownership, while others have been forced to drastically reduce their budgets and expectations.

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Can you hand off a home loan from one person to another? The answer is usually no. When you sell your home, the buyers have to get their own mortgage and you pay yours off in full with proceeds from the sale.

But there are a few exceptions to the rule. Here are the ways you can transfer a mortgage, and why you might want to consider it.

What kinds of mortgage transfers are possible?

Most loans aren’t transferable, and the reason for this is that they have a “due on sale” clause, explains Chris Combs, founder of Combs Law Group. That means that when the property is sold, the entirety of the loan comes due.

But some loans are created without due on sale clauses, and so they can be transferred from seller to buyer. These are known as “assumable loans,” says Chris Lewis from Angel Oak Home Loans. There are three main types of assumable loans:

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Named for the shape of the container used to hold salt in colonial times, these homes have a steeply sloped roof that is much longer on one side than the other.

Saltbox houses are common in New England, and back in the 18th century, housed many famous pioneers and patriots, including the second U.S. president, John Adams. Sturdy and understated, they are found by the bushel in historic registers and are very popular today. Read on for a brief history of this quaint architectural style, and why it has such enduring appeal.

HGTV

Jonathan and Drew Scott love to shed their adult shoes and horse around like kids, so they are delighted by the house they see on the latest episode of their show “Property Brothers: Forever Home.”

In the “All Grown Up” episode, the Scott brothers head to a house in Manhattan Beach, CA, where every room is filled with toys, games, puzzles, and play equipment designed to inspire activity, wonder, and imagination.

Homeowners Janice and Mark had designed it this way for their three children. But now that the children are pre-teen and into more mature pursuits, that rope jungle gym in the living room isn’t getting used much anymore.

HGTV

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Saddle up! Here’s your chance to claim a corner of Colorado’s storied cowboy culture.

The Old Town Square in Silverton is situated in an old mining town. The historic square is a tourist destination, and most of the attractions on it are included in the $1.6 million asking price.

“There is a train that runs from Durango to Silverton,” says listing agent Olivia Barrett, with Re/Max Pinnacle. “It’s a block away from where the train comes in, so there’s so much foot traffic.”

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Home prices continued to churn higher even as mortgage interest rates jumped, keeping the housing market pricey and competitive.

Across the country, the average home price was 8.6% higher in the third quarter of the year compared with a year ago, according to a recent report from the National Association of Realtors®. That shows that demand for housing remains strong, despite the higher prices and mortgage rates.

However, buyers had to pay up. The monthly mortgage payment on the average house was $1,840, the report found, up a whopping 50% from a year ago.

That meant buyers had to earn quite a bit more to afford a home. They needed to make about $88,300 to purchase the typical home, nearly $40,000 more than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to NAR.

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Inflation, recession, supply chain problems—apparently, none of these things will stop homeowners from fixing up their humble abodes.

A new survey from Houzz polling 4,000 homeowners in October found that only 1% had canceled a home improvement project recently. On the contrary, it’s full steam ahead: More than a third (37%) proudly say they’ve finished a home renovation project in 2022, with half of this cohort saying they’ll start hammering away on new upgrades starting next year.

These survey results underscore how undeterred homeowners are when it comes to making their homes more comfortable, “despite various industry and economic headwinds,” notes Houzz economist Marine Sargsyan.

Even more surprising? Folks aren’t fixing up their houses with the intention of selling anytime soon. They’re in it for the long haul.

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The numbers: The housing sector continues to face headwinds.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.08% as of Nov. 10, according to data released by Freddie Mac on Thursday.

The 30-year was last at this level in mid-2002.

That’s up 13 basis points from the previous week—one basis point is equal to one hundredth of a percentage point, or 1% of 1%.