Weekly I produce a short (roughly 5 minute) video update on the St. Louis Real Estate Market that is published on various web sites. I do a quick recap of the news in the St Louis real estate market for the week, then an overview of the St Louis housing market itself. The update includes charts with up to the date data on the St Louis housing market including St Louis home prices, average time to sell a home in the St Louis area as well as other data and charts to show where the St Louis real estate market Continue Reading →
“FHA still could serve 95 percent of its historic targeted market even if the maximum FHA loan limits were reduced by nearly 50 percent.”
Last week, George Washington University released a report, “FHA Assessment Report: The Role and Reform of the Federal Housing Administration in a Recovering U. S. Housing Market,” in which it revealed that the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) current loan limits are larger than necessary to serve its targeted market of first-time and low to moderate income borrowers. The study finds that the Obama Administration’s current proposal to reduce the higher end of FHA’s loan limits Continue Reading →
Following last week’s somewhat encouraging Pending Home Sales report from the National Association of REALTORS which showed increased home sales activity, Radar Logic issued a much less encouraging report. Their report, titled “Don’t be Misled by Gains in Home Price Indices and Pending Homes Sales; Housing Recovery is Still a Long Way Off” pretty much says it all in the title.
Weekly I produce a short (roughly 5 minute) video update on the St. Louis Real Estate Market that is published on various web sites. I do a quick recap of the news in the St Louis real estate market for the week, then an overview of the St Louis housing market itself. The update includes charts with up to the date data on the St Louis housing market including St Louis home prices, average time to sell a home in the St Louis area as well as other data and charts to show where the St Louis real estate market Continue Reading →
A report issued by Lender Processing Services, one of the countries largest loan servicers and aggregators of loan performance data, shows that while mortgage delinquencies continue to decline, lenders are taking longer to foreclose resulting in a drop in foreclosure sales. In fact, there are still significantly fewer foreclosure sales than there were before foreclosure moratoriums were put into place, and foreclosure sales are declining.
Dennis Norman
The National Association of REALTORS Pending Home Sales Index for May shows an increase of 8.2 percent in the index from the month before (seasonally adjusted), and a 13.4 percent increase from a year ago. This is the first time since April 2010 that the index increased on a year-over-year basis, and had the largest monthly gain since last November when the index rose 10.6 percent.
In Britain…
I am not a “misery loves company” guy, nor a “grass on the other side is always greener” guy, but in this case, it’s good to know the grass is greener in the U.S., at least as it relates to the housing market. Granted, I may be getting a little desperate for some good news, but a study I saw on the housing market in Britain by Zoopla.co.uk got my attention when I saw that 80 percent of the 4.32 million homes bought in Britain since 2006 are now worth less than the buyer paid. My first Continue Reading →
Dennis Norman
This morning, the S&P/Case-Shiller Index report for April was released showing US home prices showed a monthly increase for the first time in eight months bringing average home prices in the U.S. back to their summer 2003 levels. The report shows their 20-city composite home price index increased by 0.7 percent from the month before and declined by 4.0 percent from a year ago. and the 10-city composite home price index increased by 0.8 percent from the month before and was down 3.1 percent from the year before.
Last week I got to hear a presentation by Brendan Lowney of Economic Advisors, aptly titled “Groping Toward a Housing Recovery“, which I think is a perfect way of describing our current housing market, so perfect, I borrowed it for the title of this article. Mr. Lowney began his presentation with a very sobering statement, saying “it’s really hard to overestimate the severity of the downturn that we’re in. This is much worse than anything we saw in the ’70s or the early ’80s, if people remember, and it’s really akin in many ways to the Great Depression, and within Continue Reading →
Weekly I produce a short (roughly 5 minute) video update on the St. Louis Real Estate Market that is published on various web sites. I do a quick recap of the news in the St Louis real estate market for the week, then an overview of the St Louis housing market itself. The update includes charts with up to the date data on the St Louis housing market including St Louis home prices, average time to sell a home in the St Louis area as well as other data and charts to show where the St Louis real estate market Continue Reading →
Today, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau released new home sales data for May 2011 showing a decrease of 2.1 percent from the month before, and an increase of 13.5 percent from a year ago.
The seasonally-adjusted new home sales rate for May was 319,000 homes, down from 326,000 the month before. The supply of new homes on the market decreased from an adjusted 6.3 month supply the month before to a 6.2 month supply in May. The median new home price increased for the month to $222,600, a 2.6 percent increase from a Continue Reading →
Today’s existing home sales report from the National Association of REALTORS® shows existing home sales in May were at at a seasonally adjusted-annual rate of 4.81 million units which is a decrease of 3.8 percent from the month before and is a decrease of 15.3 percent from a year ago and is the lowest rate of home sales since November 2010 when it was 4.64 million.
Simple economics tells us that when supply exceeds demand prices suffer, just as we have seen in the housing market over the past three-plus years. A report by Brendan Lowney, a macroeconomist with Forest Economic Advisors (FEA) estimates that an excess home inventory of 2.5 million homes exist at this time. He says that this oversupply has put downward pressure on home prices, which in turn has caused a variety of undesirable effects, such as pushing more home owners “under water” which, in turn, causes even more defaults, thereby further increasing the oversupply.
Weekly I produce a short (roughly 5 minute) video update on the St. Louis Real Estate Market that is published on various web sites. I do a quick recap of the news in the St Louis real estate market for the week, then an overview of the St Louis housing market itself. The update includes charts with up to the date data on the St Louis housing market including St Louis home prices, average time to sell a home in the St Louis area as well as other data and charts to show where the St Louis real estate market Continue Reading →
The U.S. Census Bureau and US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued their report on New Residential Construction for May 2011 showing a 2.5 percent increase in single-family home building permits from the month before, and a 3.7 percent increase in new home starts compared to the month before.
The headline today on a CNBC article was “US Housing Crisis is Now Worse than Great Depression” and there are many similar articles in other publications as well…in fact, if you Google “Housing Crisis Worse Than Great Depression” there are over 100 exact matches just in the past month. The writer’s all seem to be hanging onto one stat that came out of the Case-Shiller home price index reports, that being that the “peak to trough” decline in home prices during this housing recession has hit 33 percent, which exceeds the 31 percent decline during the Great Depression. But wait, Continue Reading →
The Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) was established as a result of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA) of 2008. It’s purpose is to allow state and local governments to purchase and redevelop abandoned or foreclosed properties in areas in the greatest need of help.
The NSP program is designed to help low, moderate, and middle income families purchase REHABBED foreclosed homes and stimulate the economy. This is a middle income housing program that has an income limit for buyers at 120% of the Area Median Income. It is important to note that NSP is not just for first-time-home Continue Reading →
Weekly I produce a short (roughly 5 minute) video update on the St. Louis Real Estate Market that is published on various web sites. I do a quick recap of the news in the St Louis real estate market for the week, then an overview of the St Louis housing market itself. The update includes charts with up to the date data on the St Louis housing market including St Louis home prices, average time to sell a home in the St Louis area as well as other data and charts to show where the St Louis real estate market Continue Reading →
Robert Shiller
I’m doing this article as I attend a presentation by Robert Shiller, Yale Economics Professor and Co-Founder of the S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Indices at the S&P Housing Summit 2011, as he discussed “Unusual Factors Influencing the Outlook for the U.S. Housing Market. So it may be a little choppy, but here are the highlights of his presentation “live”:
The “State of the Nation’s Housing“ Report for 2011 by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University does not paint a very pretty picture of the housing market, nor does it give us a whole lot to look forward to with regard to the near-term future of the U.S. housing market.
Weekly I produce a short (roughly 5 minute) video update on the St. Louis Real Estate Market that is published on various web sites. I do a quick recap of the news in the St Louis real estate market for the week, then an overview of the St Louis housing market itself. The update includes charts with up to the date data on the St Louis housing market including St Louis home prices, average time to sell a home in the St Louis area as well as other data and charts to show where the St Louis real estate market Continue Reading →
There is a lot of talk in the media today about the poor housing market and how an increase in employment would help bring the housing market back. However, the question is, will a recovery in the job market bring the housing market back, or will a recovery in the housing market bring the job market back?
Thinking of purchasing a home or refinancing a mortgage? Here are some tips to help make the process smooth:
Know your current situation. Be aware of your credit history; your credit report may contain out of date, or inaccurate items. Carefully review your credit report and make a note of items that should be fixed. It takes time, but you can correct mistakes successfully with a written request to the individual credit bureaus. It is also a good idea to examine your monthly housing expenses to determine how comfortable you are with your budget without sacrificing important necessities.
A report released this morning by CoreLogic shows home prices in the St. Louis declined in April 2011 by 9.70 percent from the year before which is a larger decline than the month before when St Louis home prices were down 9.44 percent from the year before. If we take “distressed sales” (foreclosures, REO’s and short-sales) out then home prices declined by 3.53 percent in April from the year before.
Dennis Norman
Today the S&P/Case-Shiller Index report for the first quarter of 2011 was released showing home prices continue to fall and that the national home price index hit a new recession low. Nationally, home prices are back to their mid-2002 levels according to the report.
RealtyTrac released their foreclosure report this morning for the first quarter of 2011 showing that foreclosure homes (sales of bank-owned homes and those in some stage of foreclosure) accounted for 28 percent of all U.S. residential sales during the quarter. This is up slightly from 27 percent the prior quarter and the highest percentage since the first quarter of 2010, when 29 percent of all sales were foreclosure sales.
Today, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau released new home sales data for April 2011 showing an increase of 7.3 percent from the month before, and a decrease of 23.1 percent from a year ago.
The seasonally-adjusted new home sales rate for April was 323,000 homes. The supply of new homes on the market decreased from an adjusted 7.2 month supply the month before to a 6.5 month supply in April. The median new home price increased for the month to $217,900, a 1.6 percent increase from a revised median price of $214,500 the Continue Reading →
UGH…
According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive® on behalf of Trulia and RealtyTrac, 54 percent of American adults believe that recovery in the housing market will not happen until 2014 or later. In a previous survey, six months ago, 42 percent of American adults said they thought the market would turn around by 2012 or had already turned around, but now only 23 percent think this will happen.
St. Louis existing-home sales in April were down 30.1 percent from a year ago, after the prior month’s sales were down 20.3 percent from the year prior. This disturbing trend points to a decrease in the number of home sales in St. Louis in 2011 from 2010, even though industry experts are predicting an increase in U.S. existing home sales this year over last.
Negative equity is the dominant factor driving the real estate market according to CoreLogic in it’s “U.S. Housing and Market Trends” report that was released today. According to the report, as of the 4th quarter of 2010, over 11 million (23 percent) of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage were in a negative equity position, meaning they owe more on their mortgages than the current value of their home.