October prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased on a year-over-year basis by 6.3 percent in October 2012, the biggest increase since June 2006 and the eighth consecutive increase in home prices nationally on a year-over-year basis, according to the latest data from CoreLogic. Read More »

In addition to banks’ tight mortgage lending standards that were criticized by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke two weeks ago, Fitch also said continued recovery in residential real estate prices will require regional improvements. Read More »

Two of the nation’s most authoritative national housing price indices today reported significant third quarter price increases over last year at this time, and the chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices confirmed that a housing recover is underway. Read More »

The first-time homebuyer share of home purchases fell to 34.7 percent in October, down from the 37.1 percent share in June and the lowest first-time homebuyer share ever recorded in the three-year history of the HousingPulse survey. Read More »

New Jersey , New York and Connecticut got hit with a storm of new foreclosures just days before Superstorm Sandy smashed homes and a knocked out power to missions of homeowners. Read More »

The median downpayment made by all homebuyers in 2012 was 9 percent, ranging from 4 percent for first-time buyers to 13 percent for repeat buyers. The median down payment was the lowest since 2009 but still far above the levels during the housing boom, when nearly half of first-time buyers made no downpayment at all. Read More »

CoreLogic’s pending sales index indicates that October prices will rising by 5.7 percent on a year-over-year basis from October 2011 and falling by 0.5 percent on a month-over-month basis from September 2012 as sales exhibit a seasonal slowdown going into the winter. Read More »

Just as the national homeownership rate showed signs of stabilizing over the past six months (See Has the Homeownership Rate Bottomed Out?), Fannie Mae’s Multifamily Research Group predicted today that the rate would fall another one to two points by 2015 despite the fact that the company, along with Freddie Mac, owns the mortgages for about half the single family homes in the nation. Read More »

Completed foreclosures plunged 68 percent in September from a year ago yet the national foreclosure inventory hardly budged in 12 months, according to the latest CoreLogic report. Read More »

A continuing slide in the volume of distressed properties seen in the housing market is helping to boost home prices in many parts of the country. Meanwhile, uncertainty about the impact of next month’s national elections appears to be causing some would-be homebuyers to delay taking any action until after November, according to the October HousingPulse survey of real estate agents. Read More »