U.S. home prices are on the rise
The U.S. housing market has taken a sharp upward turn, trapping homebuyers in a Catch-22: pay significantly more for a property than just a year ago or wait and risk paying a higher interest rate.
Asking prices for existing homes shot up by 10 percent year-over-year nationwide in February because of low inventory and higher demand as a result of rising rents and falling interest rates, the Wall Street Journal reported. [more]
Despite rising housing prices, homes across the nation are becoming more affordable to median-income families, thanks to lower interest rates, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index, released today. Greater New York, however, continues to be the least affordable major housing market in the country.
Nationwide, the median price of new and existing homes sold in the third quarter was $189,000, $13,000 higher than the previous year, the report stated. But the reduced mortgage rates — they’re at the lowest they’ve been in more than a decade – meant that 74.1 percent of these homes were affordable to median-income families, up from 73.8 percent in the previous quarter. [more]
A U.S. housing market with rising demand but stagnant prices may be the new normal, according to the New York Times. The numbers bore that out yesterday when the National Association of Realtors reported prices decreased between June and July even as sales of existing homes rose 2.3 percent over that same period.
Even though concerns that a backlog of distressed properties would hit the market have mostly subsided, sales of new homes have trended higher and there is generally percieved to be a shortage of residential inventory, the Times suggested that prices would barely increase over the next decade. [more]
More real estate experts are forecasting larger-than-expected U.S. home price declines, as foreclosures make their way through the market. Citing Moody’s data, Bloomberg News reported that sales of repossessed properties will rise 25 percent this year from the 1 million such sales recorded in 2011.
Because repossessed properties sell at a 35 percent discount from lenders’ valuation of the homes — and a 60 percent discount for distressed homes on the market for two years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland — home prices are sure to fall with the continued foreclosure activity. [more]
Zillow.com 2012 Home Values (click image to enlarge)
Nationwide home values will decline 3.7 percent in 2012, according to a forward looking study released today by Zillow.com, which represents an improvement over the 4.7 percent decline last year. Most markets will see shrinking home values this year, Zillow said.
Prices have now fallen 24.2 percent since the peak, and while the report expected record-low interest rates to fuel more sales activity this year, much of that will be concentrated in the cheap supply created by the foreclosure crisis. [more]
U.S. housing prices will continue to fall in 2012, but the rate of decline is slowing, according to two separate Zillow.com reports cited by Bloomberg News.
Thanks in part to foreclosures, housing prices will fall further until at least 2013, according to a survey of 109 economists, despite record low mortgage rates. Yesterday’s existing home sales report supported that belief, showing prices declined 3.5 percent in November. When values do rise, the same economists said they probably wouldn’t match the prices recorded prior to the housing collapse.
Prices are already down 31 percent from their July 2006 peak, the most recent Case-Shiller Index shows, and they will drop another 7 percent, according to Scott Simon, head of mortgage and asset-backed securities at California-based Pacific Investment Management. … [more]
Home prices in the U.S. decreased by 1.3 percent in October, in their third straight month-over-month decline, according to data released today by real estate analytics provider CoreLogic.
Prices of existing single-family homes, also declined, by 3.9 percent year-over-year, an increase from September’s year-over-year decline of 3.8 percent.. The year-over-year decline was 0.5 percent when excluding distressed sales.
However, in the New York-White Plains-Wayne, N.J. area, home prices increased by 2.6 percent year-over-year in October, including distressed sales. The decline was a greater 3.6 percent when distressed sales were excluded. – Guelda Voien
… [more]
National housing prices declined on both a month-over-month and year-over-year basis in September, according to the Housing Market Index released yesterday by CoreLogic, but the news was far better for the New York City area.
The New York-White Plains-Wayne, N.J. market experienced a 2.2 percent increase in single-family housing prices between September 2010 and September 2011, taking into account distressed sales. Excluding those sales, the year-over-year increase was 2.9 percent. – Adam Fusfeld… [more]
Considering the sluggish sales activity, rock bottom pricing and glut of foreclosures, the national housing market is suffering from a new, surprising problem. According to the Wall Street Journal there is actually a lack of inventory, as the number of home sales has declined 20 percent in the last 12 months to 2.19 million homes, according to Realtor.com.
Though declining inventory is usually seen as a sign of a healthy market, the current shortage has arisen for two reasons: banks have been slow to process foreclosed properties that would otherwise be on the market and sellers reluctant to accept discounted prices are pulling their homes off the market…. [more]
U.S. home prices are incrementally increasing, but that appears to be a seasonal shift as prices remain far below levels of a year ago. According to the June Home Price Index released today by analytics firm CoreLogic, nationwide single-family housing prices gained 0.7 percent in June compared to May, marking the third consecutive month-over-month gain in prices. But prices are still down 6.8 percent from June 2010, an even worse decline than the 6.7 percent experienced from May 2010 to May 2011. That suggests the increase is almost entirely due to seasonality. – Adam Fusfeld… [more]
For NYC real estate updates provide email below
