Tag Archives: Housing Bubble

On Monday, Pro Teck released its March Home Value Forecast, which ranks the hottest and coolest metro markets in the country. California claimed nine of the top 10 slots (Nassau County-Suffolk County, New York, was the other), while Florida claimed seven of the bottom 10 areas for home value appreciation.

In the Trulia’s latest quarterly Bubble Watch report, Jed Kolko estimates national home prices are still around 5 percent undervalued when examining long-term fundamentals like historical prices, incomes, and rents. While ongoing improvements in prices have brought the market close to a tipping point, he notes that it’s far cry from the 39 percent overvaluation in the first quarter of 2006.

As home prices continue to soar year-over-year and commentators draw lines to historical averages, Clear Capital offers one piece of advice to all those waiting to see a national peak anytime soon: Don’t hold your breath. In its latest Home Data Index Market Report, the company says the market won’t reach peak prices again until 2021 at its current rate of growth.

Looking at ongoing trends, Zillow made four major predictions about the course of housing over 2014, and while the company expects conditions next year to be a bit friendlier to homebuyers, that doesn't mean we'll necessarily see more owner-occupied housing. Zillow also combined data on unemployment, population growth, and its own Home Value Forecast to glimpse into what it believes will be the hottest markets in 2014.

One of the earliest phenomenon of the housing bubble was the ascension of home prices, making housing unaffordable relative to incomes. Markets across the nation cascaded from affordable to unaffordable--a key signal that prompted us to warn of the coming housing downturn. And it now appears that this symptom has cropped up once again, as almost all of California's coastal cities are now unaffordable.

Though many analysts in recent months have waved off concerns of a new housing bubble in the making, Fitch Ratings says now might actually be a good time to worry. The agency's analysts have identified a bubble risk in continuing price increases and see several factors that could halt, or even reverse, recent market gains, Fitch explained in a report released Wednesday.

While many indicators suggest the housing market is recovering, some fear another bubble is already forming. A survey by Country Financial, a financial services firm in Illinois, found that some 48 percent of Americans believe the market could reach ""bubble"" status within the next two years. Bubble or no bubble, many Americans continue to suffer financial burdens that impede them from homeownership.

The recent fast-paced home price appreciation across the country led some markets to the brink of a bubble, but deceleration over the summer months has Zillow analysts breathing a sigh of relief as the bubble threat deflates. Home value appreciation has declined steadily for three months, according to Zillow, and half of the nation's 20 largest metros experienced negative appreciation in September.

What's up with the Fed? The venerable, usually media-shy central bank came in for more than its share of attention in the past week and has no one to blame but itself. It started with the withdrawal of Larry Summers as a candidate to replace Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke who, by the way, has not said he's leaving. Then came the conclusion of a two-day, closed-door policy meeting that defied all market expectations.

Existing home sales rose an unexpected 6.5 percent in to an annual sales rate of 5.48 million, the highest level since August 2007 ten months before the onset of the Great Recession -- the National Association of Realtors reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected existing home sales to drop to 5.