The June Case-Shiller consensus reports an 8.4% year-over-year increase in the Composite 20 index but the Zillow forecast is for the Composite 20 to slow the increase 8.1% year-over-year, and for prices to be unchanged month-to-month. Zillow’s forecast for Case-Shiller’s July 2014 data cuts the non-seasonally adjusted 20-City Composite Home Price Index increase to 7.0 percent and the 10-City … Read More »

  Household formation over the past 12 months is less than half of predictions, slowing demand for housing even though it’s increasingly cheaper to buy than rent.  The near term outlook for home sales remains gloomy, according to the latest from Freddie Mac’s chief economist. Household formation still remains very slow and the Census Bureau reports that over the past … Read More »

The approval rate for mortgages to buy homes dropped from 63.6 to 50.3 percent in June, the lowest approval rate for homebuyers’ applications in more than three years since Ellie Mae initiated its Origination Insight Report. The dramatic drop in mortgage approvals coincides with the continued difficulties buyer have having, widely cited as a cause for slowing sales and moderating … Read More »

Buying a home remains a real bargain compared to renting in most areas nationwide, as the share of income typically needed to afford the average home is much lower today than it was in the past. But while buying a home is a great deal, for those current renters looking to buy — particularly millennials — saving up the necessary … Read More »

Existing-home sales increased 2.4 percent in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.15 million ibut remain 4.3 percent below the 5.38 million-unit level from last July, which was the peak of 2013. The median existing-home price2 for all housing types in July was $222,900, which is 4.9 percent above July 2013. This marks the 29th consecutive month of … Read More »

  Apartment rentals are setting records right and left.  Year-to-date  effective apartment rent growth through July leads all post-Great Recession years for the fourth straight month and is just 10 basis points away from the recovery’s peak YTD figure, reached in 2012. Annualized effective rent growth was 3.8% in July, a 12 bps increase from the 3.7% recorded in June … Read More »

For the fourth time since January, Freddie Mac has lowered its forecast for home sales this year from 5.6 million in January to 5.31 million in August.  It also reduced its estimate of total mortgage originations  from $1,750,000 to $1,150,000. Freddie kept its projection for 2014 price appreciation at 5 percent, not quite as high as Fannie Mae’s forecast of … Read More »

      No one knows exactly how many renters become homeowners because—or partly because–they love their dog or cat. Faced the option of losing a loved pooch or biting the bullet and buying, certainly many more choose homeownership to keep a pet than admit it. There’s no doubt that pet unfriendly landlords are partly to blame for the boom in … Read More »

    Home price increases that were generated in the heady days of spring are drying up quickly in the summer months, increasing the chances that the year will end with the housing recovery’s performance far short of last year’s stellar performance and possibly in the red in more marginal markets than last year. The national median existing single-family home … Read More »

  Last week FICO announced it would no longer weigh medical debts, which account for about half of all unpaid collections, against debtors as heavily as it has in the past, a move that FICO said could raise some borrowers’ credit scores by as much as 25 points. The revisions, implemented following a study by the Consumer Finance Protection Board … Read More »