Tag Archives: Home Prices

Freddie Mac sent a letter to investors regarding bulk sales of foreclosed homes. The GSE offers investors the opportunity to purchase properties in bulk from HomeSteps - a division of Freddie Mac that offers sales of the GSE's foreclosed properties. The GSE says it has found most investors are interested in purchasing at 40 to 60 cents on the dollar below current list price, but Freddie is not considering such significant price cuts. The GSE says it is ""extremely mindful"" of how its pricing affects the market.

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.

Santa Ana, California-based CoreLogic has exceeded 1 million active real estate listings on its Partner InfoNet program, which started operation in June 2010. Partner InfoNet is a revenue sharing program in which multiple listing services (MLSs) license their listing data to CoreLogic for use in risk management products for mortgage lenders, servicers, and capital markets. The program represents more than 300,000 real estate professionals.

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.

The Federal Reserve has published a new rendition of its market-gauging Beige Book, which indicates economic activity across the country is expanding at only a modest pace. Residential real estate markets were described as ""weak"" overall, however, a few districts did report slight improvements. Markets in the New York district are seeing an increasing share of foreign buyers paying cash. Florida contacts report a rise in sales activity but a decline in bank-owned homes.

Americans continue to harbor a glum outlook for the housing industry and the economy at large. According to Fannie Mae's latest National Housing Survey, August was the third month in a row that more respondents expect housing prices to decrease than increase over the next 12 months. Twenty-seven percent of Americans say prices will likely head lower, while 20 percent hold out hope for appreciation. More than two-thirds say the economic recovery is on the wrong track.

The warm weather homebuying season has kept prices moving up, but Clear Capital says the rate of appreciation is already slowing and weak consumer confidence points to a stormy rest of the year. The company's latest report shows that home prices rose 4 percent over the four-month period ending in August when compared to the previous three months. But Clear Capital notes the recent gains have not been enough to recoup longer-term declines, with national home prices still more than 6 percent below last year's levels.

Home prices rose 0.8 percent in July, marking the fourth consecutive monthly increase, according to the latest home price index from CoreLogic. Capital Economics responded to CoreLogic's report saying, its analysts ""are wary"" of reading too much into the ""fairly optimistic"" house price report because prices have yet to respond to the recent weakening in consumer demand. Despite the monthly increase, Corelogic says home prices are down 5.2 percent from where they stood a year ago.

Home prices increased 3.6 percent over the second quarter of this year, after having fallen 4.1 percent in the first quarter, according to the latest S&P/Case Shiller index. With the second quarter's data, the national index reading recovered from the double-dip cyclical low hit at the end of the first quarter, but still posted an annual decline of 5.9 percent when compared to the second quarter of 2010. Nationally, home prices are back to their early 2003 levels, according to Standard & Poor's.

The marketplace was zeroed in on Ben Bernanke and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in hopes of a signal from the Federal Reserve's chief that new stimulus measures were in the works to rekindle the stalled economy. But there was no mention of new action. Housing was the black eye of the Fed chairman's speech. He said this recession was ""unusual"" because it was linked to a very deep slump in the housing market, and with an overhang of distressed properties and still-declining home prices, the housing sector is hindering economic growth.