REO

Single-family rental investing is a $3 trillion market, according to a CoreLogic’s MarketPulse report, which further stated that the single-family rental market accounts for $21 million rental units, or 52 percent of the residential rental market. With reports showing rental prices have gone up and home prices have decreased, it's no surprise that large investors have shown interest in buying up single-family homes at a discount to convert them to rental units. Based on the 26 major markets CoreLogic assessed, the markets that yield the highest single-family rental cap rates were generally in Florida or the Midwest.

The economy continued to expand at a modest to moderate pace from mid-February through late March, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday in its periodic Beige Book, reporting faster and solid growth in Kansas City and Minneapolis but moderate or modest growth in Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco Cleveland and St. Louis. New York reported economic growth picked up somewhat while Philadelphia and Richmond cited improving business conditions.

The FDIC is going to do something it has never done before organize an online real estate auction. The online auction will be managed by Micoley Auctions and the properties auctioned will be concentrated in the Midwest region, with assets in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Nineteen members of California's congressional delegation want to keep Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's ""for rent"" signs outside their state's borders. Led by Congressman Gary Miller, the group sent a letter to Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, petitioning him to exclude the 600 homes in California slated for the pilot program of the REO Initiative, which aims to sell off homes repossessed by the GSEs and FHA to institutional investors who will turn the properties into rental homes.

Home prices for January 2012 dropped 0.9 percent, an even greater increase from the 0.4 percent drop in December 2011, according to Lender Processing Services' Home Price Index (HPI). For January, home prices averaged at $195,000, dropping from December’s average of $196,000.

The Obama Administration released its March Housing Scorecard Friday, which showed delinquencies on a downward decline, while modifications continue to help struggling homeowners through reduced monthly payments. Foreclosure completions were down though, but delays are expected to pick up due to the mortgage settlement, which just received approval from a federal judge Friday.

The nation added 120,000 jobs in March, far below expectations of the fourth straight month of 200,000-plus payroll gains. Payroll gains for January and February were revised, adding 13,000 to the February numbers but subtracting 9,000 from January.

The general policy of the Federal Reserve is that banks should make every effort to dispose of foreclosed properties and get them off their books as quickly as feasibly possible. However, holding onto these properties and renting them out to tenants may be the way to go ""in light of the extraordinary market conditions that currently prevail,"" the Fed said Thursday. Provided their REO rentals constitute community development under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), lenders will receive favorable CRA consideration for this course of action.

The valuation firm Clear Capital released the results of its home price forecasting models Thursday. The company expects residential property values at the national level to begin to show slight increases over the next three months, ending the year with a growth rate of 1.2 percent. Clear Capital's diagrams depict the valley shape with current prices at the bottom and a subtle upward trend from March through December of 2012. Markets in the southern part of the country are expected to perform the strongest.

When excluding distressed sales, such as short sales and REO transactions, prices actually increased on a month-over-month basis in February, according to the February 2012 Home Price Index released by CoreLogic Wednesday. Though, when including distressed sales, prices decreased compared to the month before. Month-over-month home prices increased by 0.7 percent in February when not factoring in distressed sales and decreased 0.8 percent compared to the year before.