Tag Archives: Rent prices

As the rental market continues to grow stronger, the quality of rental applicants also showed improvement from last year, according to report from CoreLogic. The data provider's multifamily applicant risk (MAR) index report stood at 106 in Q3 2012, an improvement of two points from last year, but a decrease of 3 points from Q2 2012. A score above 100 indicates an applicant pool with reduced average risk of default.

Despite the recent declines in homeownership, the cost burden of owning a home decreased in 2011 and has ""fallen substantially for young owners during the last four years,"" Fannie Mae stated in a recent report. When measuring housing cost burden, analysts often look for households paying more than 30 percent of their gross income in housing costs, which analysts define as rental or mortgage payments combined with utility spending. In 2011, the percentage of homeowners who fell into this category decreased by about one percentage point. In contrast, the number of renters in this category grew.

Demand in the single-family rental market continues to expand even as inventory tightens, according to the latest MarketPulse report from CoreLogic. Comparing lease rates, supply, pricing, and the ratio between bid prices and asking prices clearly demonstrates an increasingly tightening market. Currently, the greatest amount of growth is occurring in North Port, Florida; Cape Coral, Florida; and Honolulu.

The positive outlook on home prices was further strengthened in Fannie Mae's most recent housing survey. In the October survey, respondents raised their expectation for home price growth in the next 12 months to 1.7 percent, up from 1.5 percent in September. In October 2011, consumers expected prices to fall by 0.3 percent. In addition, only 10 percent of respondents expect home prices to drop during the same one-year period.

In a slow recovery, Freddie Mac expects to see further growth in the multifamily sector, while the homeownership rate is projected to tick down from its already historically low rate. According to the GSE's multifamily demand forecast, the homeownership rate will descend by one or two percentage points to around the 65 percent level, which implies more than half of total new households will transition into rental units. On the other hand, the multifamily market is expected to reap somewhere around 1.7 million new renter households from 2011 to 2015. The projection is based on the assumption that the recovery is continuing at a slow pace.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced a third bidder scooped up properties in three states for the agency's REO-to-rental initiative, leaving Atlanta as the sole metro in the program with no winning bidder. Colony Capital, LLC purchased 970 properties in Los Angeles and Riverside, California; Phoenix, Arizona; and Las Vegas, Nevada, the agency revealed Thursday. In a statement Monday, C.A.R. said, ""Fannie Mae and FHFA’s decision to move forward with the REO bulk sale in California amounts to another gift to Wall Street at the expense of taxpayers.""

Rent prices are climbing faster than asking prices and are rising in metros where asking prices are falling, according to a report from Trulia. Year-over-year, nationwide rent prices were up 5.1 percent in October, while asking prices were up 2.9 percent during the same period when including foreclosures. Chicago, which saw a 5.3 percent yearly dip in asking prices in October, still experienced a 7.7 percent gain in rent prices during the same one-year period.

PCV Murcor is unveiling its newest valuation tool to mortgage industry professionals this week at the Mortgage Bankers Association's 99th Annual Convention in Chicago. It's called Rental Broker Price Opinion (BPO)--a tiered offering that includes a BPO, automated rent estimate (ARE), and an optional reconciled broker opinion of the ARE.

Home prices reached a sustainable bottom during the first quarter of this year, according to Barclays' U.S. residential credit strategy team. In many markets, longer-term affordability measures point to equilibrium, the firm's analysts contend. While the floor appears to have materialized, they stress that home prices are likely to recover slowly over the next 4 to 5 years, increasing on average 3 to 4 percent annually. At that rate, Barclays' analysts explained, home prices will remain below their 2006 pre-crisis peaks until June 2021.

The nation's economy generally expanded modestly from mid-August until the end of September, the Federal Reserve said in its periodic Beige Book report issued Wednesday. The report, the last Beige Book to be issued prior to Election Day, painted a mixed regional picture, with a leveling off of economic activity in New York and a slowing in the pace of growth in Kansas City. Residential real estate proved to be a bright spot amid an otherwise pedestrian report.