A look at the hardest-hit areas around NYC (source: Zillow)

For all the recent signs of the improving U.S. housing market, nearly one in three Americans with home mortgages are still underwater on their property, according to a report released today by Zillow. About 16 million Americans, or 31.4 percent of those with mortgages, owed more on their mortgages than their home was worth in the first quarter. That’s a slight increase from 31.1 percent recorded in the fourth quarter of 2011. However, they continue to make payments, as just one in 10 of the underwater borrowers is more than 90 days delinquent. [more]

From left: Zillow's Spencer Rascoff and RentJuice CEO David Vivero

Real estate information site Zillow.com has entered into an agreement to acquire RentJuice, the San Francisco-based online rental management company which launched in 2009 and expanded to New York last year, for $40 million in cash.

RentJuice, which has 31 employees, provides rental management software for landlords, property managers and rental brokers. It offers subscription-based marketing tools for rental professionals, including rental listings management software, consumer credit screening and an online system for consumers to submit rental applications. Zillow.com meanwhile, is a comprehensive real estate database that famously uses a proprietary algorithm called the “Zestimate” to appraise property values. [more]

"Jersey Shore" house in Seaside Heights

From the February issue: Zillow last month released a list of the Top 10 Most Viewed Homes on its site for 2011. Topping the list was the “Jersey Shore” house — a six-bedroom home in Seaside Heights that famously hosted the hard-partying cast of the popular MTV reality show. The 1209 Ocean Terrace home, which rents for $6,500 per night in the summer, beat out even the White House: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue placed eighth on Zillow’s list. [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]

Source: Zillow.com

Mortgage rates for 30-year fixed mortgages declined once again this week after rising to 4.07 the previous week, Zillow.com data shows, with the current rate borrowers were quoted on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace at 3.92 percent, a drop from last week. This is only the second time that the rate has dropped below 4 percent since Aug. 10 and is a return to the lowest rate recorded since Zillow Mortgage Marketplace launched in April 2008. The rate hovered between 3.98 percent and 4.05 percent before diving to the current rate early this morning, Zillow says. The rate for av15-year fixed mortgage is 3.17. – Katherine Clarke
[more]

Shares of real estate listings website Zillow.com have opened on the NASDAQ at $60 per share, technology blog TechCrunch.com reported, giving the company a $1.6 billion valuation. Zillow priced its initial public offering at $20 per share yesterday, after increasing the pricing of its IPO to $16 to $18 per share. The company raised $69 million in the offering.
Zillow is the third most visited real estate-related site in the U.S., according to Experian Hitwise, and received 5.36 percent of all real estate traffic in March, up 53 percent from March 2010. However, the company has been seeing losses in net income over the past three years, TechCrunch said.
In the three months ending March 31, Zillow generated revenue of $11.3 million, an increase of 111 percent from the same period in 2010. [more]

When online real estate database Zillow.com modified the formula it uses to estimate the value of some 97.3 million American homes, known as the zestimate, last month, it caused a great deal of distress for homeowners, some of whom saw significant decreases in Zillow’s valuation of their properties.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the company, headed by CEO Spencer Rascoff, added 25 million new zestimates, dropping its margin of error from 12 percent to 8.5 percent. Though most adjustments were of 10 percent or less, some, especially in markets with more volatile housing markets, were more dramatic. Zillow says that slightly more zestimates went down than went up, but declined to provide more specific information. [more]

No region was spared from the U.S. housing collapse, but some had it worse than others. The Wall Street Journal and Zillow mapped out housing price declines from 2006 to the present by different zip codes in six major markets, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago and New York, and found that housing prices slumped worse in poorer center-city neighborhoods and distant suburbs, while upscale areas retained much of their value. Zillow said because subprime loans were handed out more frequently in lower-priced neighborhoods, and because those areas developed excess supply during the boom, they were hit harder by the recession. The price maps show that New York City retained much of its value, and zip code 10128, which covers part of the Upper East Side, actually retained its 2006 value. See the complete breakdown in New York by clicking here. [more]

New Jersey real estate professionals are searching for any signs of housing recovery after a recent report by Zillow.com showed that Garden State home prices have fallen 9 percent in the last year. Sales, inventory and foreclosures are still in free fall and experts are now predicting that they may not reach rock bottom till 2013. Zillow also reported that New Jersey first-quarter median home prices had fallen 3.3 percent in 2011, a step up from the 6.6 percent cited by an Otteau Valuation Group. [more]

Lenz speaks on Fox News this week

New York real estate attorney Adam Leitman Bailey declared that the housing market has another five years to go before recovery, on Fox News’ “America Live with Megyn Kelly” earlier this week. Bailey, who appeared on a panel with Dolly Lenz of Prudential Douglas Elliman and Liz MacDonald of Fox Business Network, was reacting to the latest home price report from Zillow.com, which sent shockwaves through the industry with its prediction that the U.S. housing market won’t bottom out until 2012. “It doesn’t make any sense to me why anyone has thought that we were close to the bottom,” Bailey said. “We can’t be.” [more]