Tag Archives: Home Sales

Economists at both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have stuck to their predictions that housing will recover in 2015 despite receiving recent reports of slower-than-expected economic growth in the first quarter, including job gains that fell well short of expectations in March. "We remain comfortable with our call that the Fed funds rate lift-off will occur in September," Fannie Mae chief economist Doug Duncan said last week. "The setback in the hiring picture is in line with consumer sentiment regarding the housing market from the Fannie Mae National Housing Survey."

After a slight dip in December likely due to seasonality, REO sales once again had a 60 percent cash sales share for January, according to CoreLogic's January 2015 cash sales report released Thursday.

When figuring in distressed sales (short sales and REO transactions), home prices jumped by 5.6 percent year-over-year in February, according to CoreLogic's February 2015 Home Price Index released on Tuesday.

The NAR’s latest look at existing-home sales shows that while sales nationally were 3.2 percent higher this January than last, single-family transactions were down almost 5 percent to 4.82 million. This is the lowest since last April’s 4.75 million.

Housing in Texas heated up in the final quarter of 2014, capping off the second-best year for the market in the state's history, according to data released by a local Realtor group.

December home sales topped the previous month by a double-digit percentage, defying the usual slowdown brought on by seasonal influences, according to a survey of metros nationwide.

The share of all-cash home sales continued its streak of annual declines in October but remained elevated compared to pre-crisis levels, according to data released Wednesday. In a post on the company's blog site, CoreLogic estimated that cash transactions accounted for 35.5 percent of total home sales in October 2014, down from 38.7 percent the year prior.

While lower prices are bound to keep Americans happy at the gas pump, they could potentially be a problem for housing in oil-dependent states, including Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. If the current decline impacts the local labor market (as the Dallas Fed indicated Wednesday in its own Beige Book), it could be a weight on their housing health in the next few years.

Improvements in economic fundamentals, notably employment growth among millennials, will fuel significant increases in home sales and housing starts and a modest rise in home prices in 2015, according to CoreLogic's 2015 Housing Outlook released earlier this week. Sam Khater, deputy chief economist for CoreLogic, predicted an increase of 9 percent in home sales and a 14 percent spike in housing starts for the coming year in the report.

Freddie Mac predicted that 2015 will see the highest level of home sales in the U.S. since 2007 in its December 2014 U.S. Economic and Housing Market Outlook released on Tuesday.