Housing Recovery

Six months ago all the stars were aligned for a spring market that would take America’s housing recovery to new levels and perhaps the rest of the national economy with it. Since then too many things have gone wrong take for granted another good year.  First, inventories dragged, failing to replenish at a healthy rate through most of the winter ... Read More »

  Home sales took another deep dive in February, falling 7.1 percent below the 4.95 million-unit level in February 2013 to the lowest level of sales in any month since July 2012, when annualized sales stood at 4.59 million.  The size of the sudden decline suggests that there might be more than bad weather behind the bad news. NAR chief ... Read More »

    The outlook for a more abundant, more affordable selection of homes for sale this spring improved considerably in February.  Sellers in most markets are responding to the price increases of the past year, suggesting they are increasingly optimistic about the housing recovery and the underlying strength of market demand through 2014, according to the latest February data from ... Read More »

Foreclosure filings fell 10 percent from January to February and sank to the lowest monthly total since December 2006 — a more than seven-year low, RealtyTrac reported. Yet more and more vacant foreclosures poison neighboring home values. As of the first quarter of 2014, a total of 152,033 U.S. properties in the foreclosure process (excluding bank-owned properties) had been vacated ... Read More »

Consumer expectations on home prices rose unexpectedly in February, just in time to build seller confidence to list their houses and restore tight inventories for the fast approaching spring season. Fannie Mae’s February 2014 National Housing Survey took a right turn from January’s results as respondents’ home price expectations climbed significantly  – with 50 percent saying home prices will go ... Read More »

Flat prices at the end of the year brought to a halt the steady progress that has been made since 2009 to free homeowners from the grips of negative equity.  As a result, some 6.5 million properties are still frozen in place and their owners vulnerable to foreclosure. Some 4 million homes returned to positive equity in 2013, bringing the ... Read More »

  With the significant declines over past two years, the demise of distress sales as a matter pf concern has seemed a matter of a few months, until now.  Like a zombie rising from a grave, distress sales of various sorts have returned this winter and still account for one in four home sales, according to Clear Capital. February national ... Read More »

  Inventories continue to linger below seasonal norms, raising the prospect that low supplies of homes for sale will again plague housing markets next spring, inflating prices, reducing choices for buyers and depressing sales. January reports from both Realtor.com and existing homes series from the National Association of Realtors show that sales are down to record lows and inventory shortages ... Read More »

The data provided are gathered from TransUnion’s proprietary Industry Insights Report, a quarterly overview summarizing data, trends and perspectives on the U.S. consumer lending industry. The report is based on anonymized credit data from virtually every credit-active consumer in the United States. “It’s encouraging to see the mortgage delinquency rate drop for two consecutive years, but at the same time, ... Read More »

  The combination of tough new rules denying qualified mortgages to applicants without the ability to repay and soaring study loan debt may be doing more than anything else to shut an entire generation out of homeownership. First-time buyer market share has fallen to 27 percent in recent months.  Rising prices, thin inventories of starter homes, rising down payment requirements ... Read More »