Market Studies

Wall Street has long struggled with indexing and analyzing real estate as an international investment, according to Winans International, a California-based investment advisor and research firm. Winans International's market researchers Ken Winans and Dr. Bryan Taylor tackled the problem by gathering the data from 36 countries and developing an approach to combine these global studies of home prices into a single data set, tracking housing prices since 1975.

The state of California is cashing in on the last days of the traditional homebuying season, with sales soaring in August and the median home price touching on its highest reading of the year. The California Association of Realtors puts last month's median price point at a level not seen since last December, and home sales up more than 10 percent from last year. At the same time, unsold housing inventory statewide has declined to five-months' supply.

A recent study by Jihad C. Dagher and Ning Fu of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found a correlation between the increase in originations from ""lightly regulated"" non-bank lenders and the rise in foreclosures and unemployment in the United States. The authors believe stricter regulation of non-bank mortgage originators could have prevented the housing crisis altogether or at least averted some of the volatility seen in the current housing environment.

Foreclosure starts soared during the month of August in states along the country's western coast, reversing what had been a declining trend over the past several months, according to ForeclosureRadar. The firm keeps close tabs on foreclosure activity in the states of Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. It recorded a spike in the first notice filed in the foreclosure process across the five-state coverage area, driven by a 116 percent month-over-month increase in activity from Bank of America.

Home price depreciation over the past few years has made housing more undervalued relative to incomes than ever before, yet home sales have continued to decline. Even more striking is that the dampened activity can be largely attributed to a weakening in demand from cash buyers and investors, according to the researchers at Capital Economics. The firm has found that since January, the number of homes purchased by cash buyers and investors has fallen by 26 percent.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and the 15-year fixed-rate mortgage both set new record lows this week, according to Freddie Mac's survey released Thursday. Freddie Mac's chief economist believes the new lows are the result of concerns surrounding the European debt market, which has driven investors to the safety of U.S. Treasury bonds and allowed mortgage rates to ease yet again. Freddie Mac puts the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate at 4.09 percent and the 15-year rate at 3.30 percent.

The lingering effects of the foreclosure moratoriums enacted after evidence of improper foreclosure processing came to light appear to be fading. Data released by RealtyTrac Thursday shows foreclosure filings heading upward during the month of August, with all of the increase coming from new default notices. The tracking company says overall filings jumped 7 percent between July and August. Default notices posted their biggest month-to-month increase since August of 2007, up 33 percent.

Nearly 10.9 million, or 22.5 percent, of all residential mortgages had negative equity at the end of the second quarter of the year, according to a report released Tuesday by the analytics firm CoreLogic. The figure is actually a slight improvement from the 22.7 percent of all mortgages with negative equity in the first quarter of 2011. CoreLogic says nearly three-quarters of homeowners in negative equity situations are also paying higher, above-market interest on their mortgages.

Mortgage fraud grew in the second quarter of the year but was down from where it was a year earlier, according to the Second Quarter 2011 Mortgage Fraud Index, released Monday by MortgageDaily.com. The index, based on criminal and civil cases in which defendants allegedly attempted to deceive real estate lenders into making credit decisions based on fraudulent documentation or false appraisal values, increased to 1261 based on 194 cases during the quarter, up 27 percent from the previous period, but down from 1699 for the same period last year.

Commercial and multifamily mortgage delinquency rates among four out of five major investor groups decreased in the second quarter of 2011, with only the 30-day delinquency rate for loans held in commercial mortgage-backed securities increasing, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The rate for loans held by FDIC-insured banks and thrifts that were at least 90 days delinquent decreased 0.25 percent between the first and second quarters, while delinquencies for life company portfolios and the GSEs both declined, but by smaller ratios.