Market Studies

After a break-neck plunge, commercial real estate prices in the United States are beginning to inch up, slowly. Moody's Investors Service reported this week that values of commercial properties increased for the third month in a row in January, rising 1.0 percent from the company's December reading. Prices have now come back 6.3 percent from their October 2009 low, at which point prices were down 43.7 percent from their peak measured in October 2007.

According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) recently-released monthly House Price Index, U.S. house prices fell 0.6 percent from December 2009 to January 2010. And for the12 months ending in January, prices fell 3.3 percent.

The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) will fall far short of the administration's promise to prevent foreclosure for 3 to 4 million homeowners, according to one federal watchdog. Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, says HAMP's disappointing results have raised questions about the program's effectiveness. He's determined that Treasury has set targets that aren't ""meaningful"" and that HAMP is ""particularly vulnerable to re-defaults.""

Florida's existing home and condo sales rose on both a month-to-month and year-over-year basis in February, according housing data released Tuesday by Florida Realtors. Existing home sales increased 21 percent from February 2009, and condo sales surged 59 percent from a year ago.

Marking the second consecutive week of decreased activity, mortgage application volume fell 4.2 percent for the week ending March 19, 2010, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported Wednesday. The slump coincided with 30-year mortgage rates inching above the 5 percent mark.

Seventy-seven percent of real estate professionals think home prices will either stay the same or decrease in the next six months, according to the results of a nationwide survey released by California-based HomeGain Tuesday. Agents and brokers queried expressed concern that home prices could be adversely affected by rising interest rates, expiration of the homebuyer tax credit, persistent unemployment, continued foreclosures, and the release of shadow inventory held by banks.

Although higher than year-ago levels, existing-home sales declined slightly from January to February of this year, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported Tuesday. Sales of previously owned homes slipped 0.6 percent to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 5.02 million units in February. It marked the third consecutive month of sales declines. IHS Global Insight called February's numbers ""further payback for the first-time homebuyers' tax credit that [originally] expired on November 30.""

The Federal Housing Administration has come under fire for the growing number of delinquencies in its portfolio, with some economists and industry observers even predicting that a bailout of the federal mortgage insurer is in the cards. But according to the agency's latest operations report it's beginning to see some improvements in the seriously delinquent column. While still considerably elevated, the rate of loans 90 or more days overdue in FHA's portfolio dropped to 9.2 percent in February, down from a reading of 9.4 percent for the month of January.

The homebuyer tax credit and buyers' market conditions continue to move the Illinois housing market toward stability. According to a report released Monday by the Illinois Association of Realtors (IAR), February marked the sixth consecutive month of growth in year-over-year home sales in the state.

The share of home purchase transactions involving distressed properties surged to almost half in February, according to an industry survey released Monday. Last month distressed properties - those involving homes acquired as part of a foreclosure or pre-foreclosure sale - accounted for 48.1 percent of the home purchase transactions tracked by the survey. It was the highest distressed property market share seen since last July, with short sales accounting for the largest percentage of transactions.