Tag Archives: Home Prices

The Texas-based valuation firm eMortgage Logic (EML) said Tuesday that the company has aligned itself with what EML describes as a ""leading real estate analytics innovator"" to provide clients with a complimentary home price trends chart. This visual aid will now appear on all broker price opinions (BPOs) to illustrate the dynamics of the subject market's volatility.

According to MDA DataQuick, which tracks real estate trends nationally via public property records, Phoenix-area home sales dropped to their lowest level for an October in 15 years. The decline is attributed to low new-home transactions, the slow economic recovery, and the market lull created by the homebuyer tax credits. A total of 6,903 new and resale houses and condos sold during October in the combined Maricopa-Pinal counties metropolitan area, down 6.2 percent from the month before and down 24.6 percent from a year earlier.

Americans are less certain that the housing market has found its floor, and continue to be wary of buying a home. Those are the findings of Fannie Mae's most recent nationwide housing survey. The GSE says consumer attitudes about the housing market are more negative since its second-quarter poll, but the declining optimism is reinforcing realistic attitudes toward owning and renting. For the first time, delinquent borrowers are more likely to say they would rent rather than buy their next home.

Home prices in the U.S. continued to fall in the third quarter, with declines in most parts of the country, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). FHFA's purchase-only house price index is calculated from mortgages acquired by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was 1.6 percent lower in the third quarter when compared to the second. Analysts warn that we may have entered a second downturn, although likely shorter and less severe than the one that brought the financial system to its knees.

The Warren Group reports that year-over-year foreclosure petitions and deeds decreased in the Bay State during October. It was the first time this year that both petitions and deeds fell in Massachusetts. Foreclosure petitions plunged nearly 51 percent from October 2009 to 1,127 last month, the first month since January they have dropped below 2,000. Home sales also fell in October, down more than 28 percent. It's the fourth straight month of year-over-year sales declines.

In September, when existing home sales rose 10 percent, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released a statement declaring the numbers meant a sales recovery had begun. One short month later, and after only two months of gains, sales have slumped 2.2 percent to a 4.43 million annual rate - which was even lower than economists had predicted. Also down was the median price of existing homes sold. Analysts agree that the recent foreclosure freezes likely disrupted a number of pending sales.

Home prices in the United States have declined for two months in a row, according to CoreLogic's market index, after rising for the first seven months of the year. The latest CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI) shows that national home prices, including distressed sales, declined 2.79 percent in September 2010 when compared to September 2009. That follows a drop of 1.08 percent in August 2010 from a year earlier. All but seven states saw a decline in residential property values during the month of September.

Fewer than 500,000 homeowners have received permanent assistance through the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) and are still current on their new payments. During the month of October, only 23,750 permanent modifications were granted. Many have called HAMP's results disappointing, but administration officials assert that the full spectrum of housing policies have helped bring stability to a very challenging housing market.

Despite a bounce in home prices during the first half of 2010, Fiserv Inc. says it expects property values nationally to fall another 7.1 percent over the next 12 months before beginning to stabilize at the end of 2011. The company sees double-dip territory ahead for many major markets, particularly those that saw the strongest appreciation during the spring and summer months of this year. The analysts at Standard & Poor's have released a similar forecast for the path of home prices. They anticipate an additional 7 percent to 10 percent drop through 2011.

According to the Texas Quarterly Housing Report released earlier this month, real estate sales in the Lone Star State decreased 20 percent in the third quarter of 2010 compared to a year earlier, but were essentially flat year-to-date. The Texas Association of Realtors attributes the statistics to an early peak in the market due to the federal homebuyer tax credits. The median home price in Texas remained virtually unchanged at $152,000.