Inventories continued to fall to record lows in November and the age of the nation’s listings inventory declined, but asking prices failed to rise as housing markets prepared for their annual wintertime hibernation. Read More »

Nearly three quarters of potential buyers believe home prices will increase in their neighborhood in the next twelve months, twice as many as in the first quarter. Read More »

In the third quarter, homeowners’ equity rose nearly 18 percent over the level of a year ago to reach the highest level recorded since the second quarter of 2008. 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 »

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 »

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 »

Month-to-month inventories have now fallen for 27 consecutive months, according to the monthly RE/MAX National Housing Report. Inventory was 29.1 percent below September 2011 and may have contributed to the drop in sales from August. Read More »

Nominal house prices will continue to rise for the UFA 100, a broad based composite index of 100 US cities. Under current economic conditions commonly used house price indices will rise between 8.5 and 22 percent cumulatively over the next five years, but recovery will be slow for the larger metro areas in the Case-Shiller 10 city composite. Read More »

About one out of eight, or 17 percent, or homeowners with a mortgage believes their home is worth less than the amount they owe when in fact the opposite is true, suggesting that large numbers of owners are undervaluing their homes, perhaps due to recent home price increases. Read More »