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 »

Too many homeowners are still underwater on their mortgages for home values in half of the nation’s 100 largest metro areas to reach their pre-recession peak levels  within the next  three-plus years, according to the second quarter Zillow Real Estate Market Reports Nationally, home values remain 11.3 percent below their 2007 peak. Looking ahead, U.S. home values are expected to … 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 »

  Price growth will plummet to an annual rate of only 0.9 percent for the balance of the year after the tumble began with a stumble when price increases fell to just a 0.9 percent quarter over quarter growth rate at the end of second quarter in June. That’s the latest prognosis from Dr. Alex Villacorta, Clear Capital’s  vice president … Read More »

Sea changes are in store for residential real estate ten years from now.  Millions of new households will lift rental and starter home markets, half of the new families will be minorities and their ability to access mortgage finance will determine whether they own or rent. Those are some of the headlines from the Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies’ … Read More »

  Most housing markets remain weak despite declining mortgage delinquencies, improving local employment, house price gains and attractive mortgage rates due to weak home purchase mortgage applications. The latest data from Freddie Mac’s Multi-Indicator Market Index(SM) (MiMi(SM)) showing mixed signals for the U.S. housing market: The national MiMi value stands at -3.01 points indicating a weak housing market overall with … Read More »