Tag Archives: Clear Capital

Data through the end of January released by Clear Capital Monday shows home prices in the U.S. are down 2.6 percent from a year ago. The company's rolling quarter assessment, which compares the four months through January 2012 to the previous three months, returned a 1.6 percent decline in home prices at the national level, after three months of stability. Clear Capital says the culprit is the Midwest market, which saw a dramatic turnaround in momentum in January and led the nation in quarterly losses.

While year-over-year home price measurements notched down in 2011, prices are expected to see a slight uptick in 2012, according to Clear Capital. Should the valuation company's predictions ring true, it would be the first time since 2006 that the change in annual home prices has landed in positive territory. Data released by Clear Capital Monday shows year-over-year, national home prices dropped 2.1 percent in 2011. For 2012, the company projects a slight gain of 0.2 percent.

The housing market may be stabilizing as house prices and REO saturation rates show little change on a quarterly and yearly basis, according to Clear Capital's most recent Home Data Index. Nationally, prices rose just 0.3 percent while the REO saturation rate was relatively unchanged at 24.6 percent over the most recent quarter, according to data through the end of November. Clear Capital measures housing data on a rolling quarter, which compares the most recent four months with the previous three.

Home price predictions have traditionally been fairly straightforward, relying heavily on employment and income levels, according to Michael Sklarz of Collateral Analytics. However, the last cycle has posed challenges for analysts, Sklarz noted during a panel at the Five Star MPact Conference held in Dallas this week. Industry experts participating in the discussion stressed that national predictors - even if accurate - may not be relevant on a local basis.

Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), has announced the appointments of Richard B. Hornsby, as FHFA's COO and Jon Greenlee as the agency's deputy director of the division of enterprise regulation. Hornsby served at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco for 26 years, holding a variety of senior level management and banking supervision positions. Greenlee joins FHFA from KPMG LLP, where he was the managing director in the financial services regulatory advisory practice.

Temperatures are falling, and so are home prices in most local markets. Clear Capital says it's expecting another long winter as the housing industry tries to cope with the downward forces of weak demand, record-low consumer confidence, and distressed inventory. The company says the seasonal gains seen during the stronger spring and summer months have not been enough to push year-over-year home prices into the black. Clear Capital's October index puts national home prices 2.8 percent below a year ago.

Clear Capital announced Thursday the appointments of Gabriel Nacht as CFO and Brian Wick as VP of marketing. Both individuals bring more than 24 years of experience to their positions with the company. A few weeks ago, Clear Capital also announced the appointment of Erik Lundquist to head its commercial valuations team, and the company says it's looking to add further to its staff, with a number of key positions currently available.

The analysts at Barclays Capital say a ""triple-dip"" in home prices will likely materialize by early next year. The term ""triple-dip"" emerged in a Clear Capital report a couple of weeks ago, and Barclays says its analysis corroborates the idea. The research firm warns that home prices will likely slip another 6 to 7 percent over the coming winter months. That would put median prices at a new low for this cycle, in fact 3 percent below the double-dip measurement of last spring.

Clear Capital has released its forecast for home prices heading into the first part of next year. The company says the market is flirting with a ""triple-dip"" by next spring. Last spring prices did a double-dip, dropping below this cycle's previous low point. While prices have ticked up in recent months, Clear Capital is projecting a drop of 1.6 percent over the last three months of this year, and another 3.2 percent by next April, moving prices dangerously close to the levels seen at the end of the first quarter of 2011.

Last month's 18.6 percent surge in existing-home sales from a year earlier had some market observers doing a double-take, but Galen Ward, who runs a real estate brokerage web site, says it wasn't unexpected. Michael Simonsen of Altos Research says anything is going to look good coming off the market's tax-credit hangover this time last year. But the fact that the median home price was down more than 5 percent from August 2010 at the same time sales jumped so sharply is one of the most telling stats for Clear Capital's Alex Villacorta.