Tag Archives: Housing Supply

The national homeownership rate fell by 1.1 percentage points between 2000 and 2010. The U.S. Census Bureau says it's the steepest drop since the period from 1930 to 1940. Housing woes are, without question, taking a bite out of the American Dream. Unprecedented levels of foreclosures have forced more than 3 million homeowners out of their homes over the past four years. And with $7 trillion in home equity wiped out since 2005, many are leery of putting their hard-earned dollars toward an investment that is still depreciating.

The industry's shadows are shrinking, according to CoreLogic. Based on the analytics firm's calculations, the residential shadow inventory of unlisted REOs and soon-to-be REOs stood at 1.6 million units as of July 2011. CoreLogic says that tally represents a supply of five months and is down from 1.7 million units in April and 1.9 million units in July of 2010. The company says the decline is driven by a pace of new delinquencies that is slower than the disposition pace of distressed assets.

Florida has one of the longest foreclosure timelines in the country, and some state lawmakers hope to shorten that timeline by removing the courts from the process. Florida is one of more than 20 judicial states -- states that require foreclosures to funnel through the courts before becoming official. Governor Rick Scott says he is interested in learning more about the prospect of moving to a non-judicial process, but not all state officials are open to the idea.

Last month's 18.6 percent surge in existing-home sales from a year earlier had some market observers doing a double-take, but Galen Ward, who runs a real estate brokerage web site, says it wasn't unexpected. Michael Simonsen of Altos Research says anything is going to look good coming off the market's tax-credit hangover this time last year. But the fact that the median home price was down more than 5 percent from August 2010 at the same time sales jumped so sharply is one of the most telling stats for Clear Capital's Alex Villacorta.

The state of California is cashing in on the last days of the traditional homebuying season, with sales soaring in August and the median home price touching on its highest reading of the year. The California Association of Realtors puts last month's median price point at a level not seen since last December, and home sales up more than 10 percent from last year. At the same time, unsold housing inventory statewide has declined to five-months' supply.

At a Senate hearing titled, ""New Ideas to Address the Glut of Foreclosed Properties,"" industry experts shared varying opinions on the concept of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac conducting bulk sales of REOs to investors, but most agreed that long-term investors from the private sector should be part of the solution. One analyst with Amherst Securities says investors are the only potential buyers for many distressed homes likely to hit the market over the next five to six years.

Banks held about 476,000 homes that they repossessed from delinquent mortgage borrowers as of the end of July, according to Barclays Capital. That tally represents a 17 percent contraction from 574,000 REOs on the books just 10 months earlier, in September of 2010, just as the robo-signing scandal began grabbing headlines. According to Barclays' analysis, the average number of months a loan has spent in foreclosure has climbed from around 10 months just before October of last year to more than 12 months today.

Housing has become an industry afraid of its shadows. That shadow inventory of repossessed and soon-to-be repossessed homes has professionals from every side of the business worried about the impact such a sizeable volume of distress will have on property values and overall market fundamentals. But according to Standard & Poor's, the obscurity hiding in the corner is getting smaller. The agency's current estimate of time-to-clear the market's distress is 47 months. That represents a five-month decline from its first-quarter estimate.

There were 3.65 million existing-homes available for sale at the end of July, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). That tally is down 1.7 percent from June, but the time it will take to clear the supply from the market has lengthened to 9.4 months because sales have slowed considerably over the summer months. NAR says sales of existing homes fell 3.5 percent in July to an annual rate of 4.67 million. Short sales and REOs accounted for 29 percent of last month's volume.

Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York plans to propose a bill he says will reduce the housing glut, create jobs, and stimulate the economy. Deriving inspiration from the success of the Homestead Act of 1862 -- which offered 160 acres to Americans in order to promote Western settlement -- Ackerman's Homestead: Act 2 aims to get 3 million properties off an already depressed market by providing a subsidy of up to $20,000 for down payments on foreclosed homes and a tax break for investors who purchase foreclosures for rental properties.