Tag Archives: Rent prices

Home values rose in May month-over-month, marking the third consecutive month of increases, but fell on a yearly basis, according to Zillow's Real Estate Market Reports. Prices moved upwards by 0.5 percent from the month before in April to $148,100, but home values continued their downward fall on a yearly basis, dropping 0.9 percent from May 2011. The upside to the yearly decline is it's the smallest year-over-year drop since October 2007, according to the Zillow's Home Value Index. Rent prices also hiked up month-over-month in May by 1.8 percent and year-over-year by 4.6 percent.

While other experts and analysts have concluded home prices are on the rise and the recovery is under way, Radar Logic released a report challenging the upbeat viewpoint. The analytics firm stated in a report that it believes the oversupply of homes relative to demand will prevent sustained home price gains for some time. The argument made is that as buyers absorb the supply of homes for sale in certain markets and prices start to stabilize as a result, home owners who have been waiting on the sidelines to sell will do so once price start to improve. This will increase supply once again, and home prices will stop appreciating as supply exceeds demand.

With vacancies declining and rental prices rising, the climate in the housing industry is clearly warming up to rental properties. According to Moody's Analytics, ""weak income gains, favorable demographics, and the foreclosure crises"" are all causing people to choose renting over buying, and demand for rent will remain solid over the next two years.

Lulls in employment and income growth led to a plateau in consumer sentiment in May, according to Fannie Mae's May 2012 National Housing Survey. The data released by Fannie Mae on Thursday showed that although many consumers (72 percent) believe that now is a good time to purchase a house, the percentage of respondents who said they would buy a house after moving actually dropped for the second consecutive month-63 percent in May compared to 64 percent in April and 66 percent in March. Fifteen percent of respondents said now is a good time to sell a home.

The June 6 edition of HVF's ""Lessons from the Data"" showed that rent-to-value ratios, also called rental yields, tend to be highest in areas with elastic markets, such as Las Vegas. In areas of the city where the ease of adding new housing keeps home prices low, rental yields in certain neighborhoods climbed to 14 percent or higher. On the other hand, areas with restrained housing markets (like many neighborhoods in the New York metro) see yields lower than 2 percent.

Asking prices fell flat in May after three consecutive monthly increases while also decreasing from the year before, according to reports from Trulia. Asking prices on homes for sale were unchanged in May on a seasonally adjusted basis and fell by 0.2 percent year-over-year. However, when excluding foreclosures, asking prices actually rose 1 percent on a yearly basis, while foreclosure prices dropped 5.8 percent over the same time period.