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Latest Real Estate News
Showing items 16 - 30 of 687
Two national market reports released today carried a singular message. The nation's heartland is now the focus for price declines, no longer the South or West. From Milwaukee to Columbus, REO foreclosures are increasing and prices are falling.
Mirroring the uneven economic recovery, the housing market is expected to move in a slow, gradual upward path in 2012, while encountering its share of speed bumps along the road, according to economists participating in yesterday's National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) construction forecast webinar on the housing and economic outlook.
Though optimism is spurring new multifamily construction, access to capital is handcuffing new construction, especially in secondary and tertiary markets.
Cleaning and decluttering will garner sellers a 403 percent return on their investment when they sell their homes this spring compared to a 293 percent return for electrical and plumbing upgrades and 196 percent for staging.
Atlanta had the only double-digit negative annual price decline falling 17.3 percent below February 2010 in the latest S&P/ Caser-Shiller Home Price Index.
What's wrong with this picture?
While inventories of homes for sale have been shrinking this spring, MLSs are filling the void with rental listings for single family homes that until recently were foreclosures. Some 16.1 percent of all listings on MLSs today are rentals, more than double the number in 2006.
The market share of foreclosures and short sales have fallen 27 percent from a year ago, pulling down March overall existing home sales 2.6 percent as inventories of foreclosures and short sales suddenly declined last month.
The rates that foreclosures and short sales are discounted from full-price properties have declined significantly in 2012, especially discounts for higher priced properties and in some of the markets hit hardest by foreclosures in the past.
For the ninth straight month, home sales in RE/MAX National Housing Report were higher than they were a year ago, rising 1.5 percent in March over 2011 and month-over-month sales were 25.4 percent higher than in February.
Lenders haven't budged an inch on tough origination standards as the 2012 spring sales season opened last month and conventional purchase and FHA loans gained greater market share.
Down payments greater than or equal to 20 percent were made by 34 percent of all residential home purchasers last month, a percentage that has remained relatively stable over the past year, according to the latest Realtor Confidence Index survey from the National Association of Realtors.
Most of markets with the highest median year-over-year list price increases in March also experienced the largest reductions in their for-sale inventories and were among the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis.
Introduced about 15 years ago, sites accepting online mortgage applications continue to increase market share. The latest data from an online lending leader suggests that today's home buyers are shopping and applying for mortgages on the Internet as never before.
Even though foreclosure activity over past three months hit the lowest level in five years, don't break out the bubbly. We're enjoying the calm before the storm.
