Pending Sales of U.S. Existing Homes Unexpectedly Climbed 2.1% in February

A gain in the number of Americans signing contracts to buy previously owned homes in February failed to make up for the ground lost a month earlier, a sign the U.S. housing market has yet to join the economic recovery.

The index of pending home resales increased 2.1 percent after a 2.8 percent drop the prior month, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists called for little change.

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4Q Wasatch Front Home Sales, Prices Decline

The residential real estate market remains mired in one of the worst downturns ever along the Wasatch Front, but it is showing some signs of improvement, a new report shows.

In Salt Lake County, 1,934 existing single-family homes were sold in the fourth quarter of 2010, down 21 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2009, the Salt Lake Board of Realtors reported Thursday. The median selling price was $215,000, down 4.4 percent from the same three-month period in 2009. Median prices peaked at $256,000 in the summer of 2007.

The Realtor group attributes the declines in both sales and prices to federal home-buying incentives that boosted demand for homes in late 2009 and early 2010. Sales fell off in the second half of last year after the incentives expired.

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Fear of Foreclosure Fraud Driving Down REO Sales, Home Prices

After the extreme amount of outright fraud in mortgage origination, you would have thought that nothing could dissuade homebuyers from purchases. But the geniuses in the mortgage industry have managed to finally keep buyers sitting on their wallets, because of the scandalous level of foreclosure fraud.

"The ongoing controversy surrounding foreclosures is taking its toll as homebuyers refused to look at distressed properties in October, and foreclosure sales suffered from delays, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance Monthly Survey.
Both the share of home purchases involving distressed properties and average prices for foreclosed properties fell last month, the survey found."

14 percent of owner-occupant homebuyers and 6% of real estate investors refused to look at foreclosed properties last month. In short-sale properties the numbers jumped to 30% of buyers and 20% of investors. Given the worsening of the problem, and the very real possibility that originators never conveyed the mortgages into the trusts who now claim to own them, I can’t see this getting better in the near-term.

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Home Sales Up, Remodeling Flat

Recent data shows new-home sales actually increased in the month of September while remodeling remained relatively unchanged in the third quarter. These statistics show a different view of the homebuilding marketplace than in months past—one that might offer a good sign for homebuilders.

Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, www.hud.gov, Washington, D.C., announced the latest numbers for new single-family home sales in the month of September.

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Home Sales Up; Prices Down

Home sales along the Wasatch Front are up dramatically so far this year, but what happens now that a federal buying incentive of up to $8,000 is expiring?

Certainly, the federal tax credit — along with low mortgage rates — played a leading role in pushing up sales of single-family homes in the first quarter. Although prices continued to fall, sales in Salt Lake County rose by 15.3 percent and condo sales by nearly 27 percent, compared with the same period in 2009.

Exactly how many of the buyers of 1,716 homes and 350 condos that changed hands in the first three months will claim or have claimed the credit isn’t known, but it could have been as high as a third, said Bill Heiner, president of the Salt Lake Board of Realtors, which issued its home-sale report Tuesday.

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Plunge in Home Sales Stokes Economy Fears

U.S. home sales plummeted in July to a level not seen in more than a decade, spurring fears of renewed weakness in housing prices and the broader economy.

Sales of previously owned homes fell 27.2% from June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday, the lowest level since the industry group started its tally in 1999.

The expiration of a home-buyer tax credit in the spring was expected to damp buying, though less severely. Economists said the sales drop—together with a corresponding rise in the inventory of unsold homes—meant another decline in housing prices was on the horizon. House prices had stabilized last year after declining since 2006.

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Salt Lake Home Sales Fall To Lowest Level In 15 Years

If you bought a house in July you were part of small crowd and you might have paid a little bit more than you would have in 2009.

The Salt Lake Board of Realtors reports that existing home sales in Salt Lake County were down 36 percent compared to July of 2009. Despite the drastic drop – 709 closings this July compared to 1,112 closings last July – the average price for houses and condos went up 5 percent.

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Fed Adopts New Mortgage Rules to Protect Consumers

The Federal Reserve adopted new standards that ban yield spread premiums on mortgages, a practice that critics say led to homebuyers being saddled with unfairly high mortgage rates.

The premiums involve lenders paying a bonus to mortgage brokers who brought them customers willing to pay high-interest rates on loans, The New York Times reported. Critics say this practice led to brokers forcing high-interest loans on borrowers, telling them it was the best deal they could get.

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13 Tips for Selling Your Home

We’ve all heard about how “bad” the real estate market is. But what’s bad for sellers can be good for buyers, and these days, savvy buyers are out in spades trying to take advantage of the buyer’s market. Here are 13 thing you can do to help sell your home.

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Wasatch Front Home Sales Increase, But Prices Fall Again In Second Quarter

It's the same story, just a different quarter.

The sales of single-family homes along the Wasatch Front rose in second quarter, but median sales prices continued to fall.

Data released by the Salt Lake Board of Realtors Thursday showed that sales climbed as much as 18.39 percent in Tooele County during the second three months of 2010 compared to the same period last year. However, the median sales price for single-family homes there fell 5.58 percent to $169,950.

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Wasatch Front Foreclosure Picture Continues To Darken

The Wasatch Front’s foreclosure problem continues to grow, a new report shows.

Owners of nearly 8,300 residential properties in the Salt Lake metro area received a foreclosure-related filing in the first six months of the year, according to RealtyTrac, a company that tracks foreclosures nationally. That’s up more than 55 percent from the same six-month period last year.

By comparison, the number of households nationally facing foreclosure rose only 8.3 percent from January to June.

The Salt Lake area was among 154 out of 206 metro areas with a population of at least 200,000 that had an increase in foreclosure activity. But the rate locally tops the national average, with one in every 48 homes receiving a filing, compared with one in 78 U.S. homes.

“Obviously, the numbers are a little depressing,” said Salt Lake City economist Jeff Thredgold, a consultant to Zions Bank.

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Is The Real Estate Market Turning Around?

The home sales index spike from the home buyer tax credit has almost run out. If you didn't have a deal in escrow by April 30, you didn't get the credit. The time to close a deal was extended to September 30. The predictions were that we'd see a fall in July activity which is exactly what is occurring.

The reports that are currently coming in don't yet reflect July sales which will show a drop in sales. For example, the Case-Shiller report came in yesterday for May, 2010, but that report is a three-month average of prices. The report said prices were up 1.2% MoM, and 5.4% YoY. That was the peak of housing credit driven sales.

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Lower Home Prices Are Spurring Sales In Utah

About one quarter of all real estate transactions in Park City involve distressed properties.

That's not bad, said Deanna Devey of the Utah Association of Realtors. It's average for the state if not slightly better.

Foreclosure activity is definitely improving, said Park City Board of Realtors president Mark Seltenrich.

"They appear to be trending down, but remain historically high," according to the second quarter report summary from the board released July 22.

Devey said short sales account for 13 percent of all sales in Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, Weber and Tooele counties. They are only 10 percent of sales in Summit and Wasatch counties.

"Comparatively, Summit County isn't doing too bad," she said via email.

Statistics that sound negative but are actually good news was a theme for the mid-year report from the board of Realtors.

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Home Prices Falling Despite Low Mortgage Rates

The fine bloggers over at Calculated Risk have a good article today about the future of housing prices. In essence the article asserts that there have been declines in home values in both May and June that have yet to fully show up in many measures of home prices.

This premise is based upon data from Campbell Surveys that shows prices for short sales fell 6.3%, move-in ready foreclosures fell 6.8 percent, and non-distressed properties dropped 4.6 percent.

The decline can likely be traced to several factors. First is the collapse in demand for homes following the expiration of the first time home buyer tax credit at the end of April (the overall weakness of the economy also plays a part in the lack of demand). The next factor is the massive overhang of houses on the market and in the hands of banks and lenders. Finally, the sheer volume of foreclosed and distressed homes negatively affects the price of homes.

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Pricing Your Home To Sell In Today's Market

With no federal tax credit to entice buyers, today's home sellers have to get even more serious about making a deal.

That means pricing aggressively -- low enough to compete with foreclosures in some markets. It's a conversation that stings, said Summer Greene, a real-estate agent for a Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate brokerage office in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

"It's like telling them that their children are ugly," she said.

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National Home Prices Show Strong Growth Over Last Year

Despite record unemployment and REO levels, US housing prices through June 2010 showed significant improvement nationwide. Housing prices in the US Midwest showed double digit increases year-over-year, posting the strongest gains in the country. See the following article from HousingWire for more on this.

House prices rose in June across the US in both the rolling quarter and the previous-year data, according to real estate asset valuation data provider Clear Capital.

National prices rose 5.2% over the previous three-month period and 8.8% since June 2009. The quarterly and yearly growth seen in June builds on already positive data, after prices climbed 6.8% in May from the year before.

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Foreign Buyers Like U.S. Residential Real Estate

International buyers are snatching up U.S. residential real estate, with people from Canada, Mexico, the U.K. and China doing the most buying, according to a report in the Washington Business Journal.

The National Association of Realtors said foreign buyers accounted for 7 percent of all U.S. residential sales in the year ending March 31.

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Sector Snap: Housing Stocks Rise On Housing Report

Shares of several homebuilders jumped Wednesday after a report showed pending home sales surged in April to the highest level since October.

The National Association of Realtors said its seasonally adjusted index of sales agreements for previously occupied homes rose 6 percent in April from a month earlier to a reading of 110.9. March's reading was revised upward to 104.6.

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Foreclosures Shifting To Affluent ZIP Codes

Foreclosures are going upscale across the Bay Area.

Nearly 1,000 homes valued above $730,000 were repossessed by banks in the nine-county region in each of the past two years, according to a Chronicle review of public records compiled by MDA DataQuick, a San Diego research firm. This year is on track for similar numbers, with 223 homes in that price bracket repossessed by banks since January.

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House Prices Up 5.1 Percent in April Amid Slower REO Growth

Home prices in April gained 5.1% from last year, while REO levels across the country slowed their climb, according to the real estate data provider Clear Capital.

The firm measures home prices on a rolling three-month period. On that timescale, prices dropped another 5% in April after a 3.9% decrease in March. But the 5.1% gain from last year matched the yearly gain shown in March.

REO took up 29.6% of the market in April, less than a percentage point of growth from 28.9% in March when levels increased from 26.1% in February.

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