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 »

  Price increases over the last two years of the recovery are reducing the numbers of households who can afford to buy homes above the lowest pricing tiers, creating a bottom heavy market. At the base of the market for housing is a large number of households with relatively modest incomes. The homes that these households can afford are also … Read More »

As a percent of all sales, distressed sales fell to 18 percent in July from their peak of 40.8 percent in March of 2011. The major shift in home sale type, from distressed to fair market, will continue to impact future growth potential for markets overall, reports Clear Capital’s July Market Report. Does that mean home price gains will continue … Read More »

With vacancy rates at a 13-year low, a large cohort of young adult renters and potential renters and a continued demand for apartments that is expected to meet the new supply of units under construction, the multifamily market is looking extraordinarily strong at mid-year. Freddie Mac’s six month outlook for the multifamily rental housing market is strong despite the fluctuating … Read More »

  Prospective buyers aren’t even going through the motions of applying for financing as applications for purchase mortgages weakened in May.  Most housing markets remain stalled largely markets moved into their stable range of housing activity according to Freddie Mac’s Multi-Indicator Market Index (MiMi). The national MiMi value stands at -2.64 points indicating a weak housing market overall with only … Read More »

Student loans have been a problem for first-time buyers for generations, but they didn’t stop first-timers from buying 40 percent of the homes sold ten years ago. So what’s the whining all about? One thing that’s different is the size and scope of the problem.  Overall student loan debt recently breached the $1 trillion mark. There are more individuals with … Read More »

  The national Property Valuation Fraud Risk Index rose 27 percent in the first quarter and 17 percent from a year ago, evidence that an epidemic of fraudulent home valuations is sweeping certain real estate markets on the East and West Coasts. Property valuations are increasingly being manipulated by individuals who purchase and list multiple properties in the same neighborhoods … Read More »

The folks in Conecticut will be unpleasantly surprised to learn they beat out Vegas and Miami as the riskiest market to buy a home. Zillow set out to look at the markets where housing prices have declined the most over the past 35 years  and chained the Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) backward in time to 1979 Q4 using the … Read More »

  Price increases compared to three years ago, before the recovery officially began, and one year ago have been declining steadily since the end of May, according to the latest national DataQuick data. Median sales prices have increased 25 percent since 2011 as of July 7, but on May 29 they were 28 percent above the level of three years … Read More »

Now that the spring buying season is ending, price increases will chill for the balance of the year.  Yet they will continue to rise next year, but at a slower rate, about  6 percent year over year rather than the 8.1 percent increase reached in May. That’s what CoreLogic’s forecast looks like.  The CoreLogic HPI Forecast indicates that home prices, … Read More »