Foreclosure Inventory Hits Lowest Level Since 2006

While judicial foreclosure auctions jumped 34% between June 2012 and last month, national foreclosure activity decreased 14% in June from the previous month, down to its lowest level since December 2006, according to locally based online foreclosure-data source RealtyTrac. The number of foreclosure filings decreased 19% from the previous six months and was down 23% from the first half of 2012.


Judicial foreclosure auctions were up less than 1% from May, but up 34% from June 2012, the firm also reports. Washington was the only Western state where bank repossessions and foreclosure auctions had jumped.

“Halfway through 2013, it is becoming increasingly evident that while foreclosures are no longer a problem nationally, they continue to be a thorn in the side of several state and local markets, particularly where a backlog of delayed distress has built up thanks to a lengthy foreclosure process,” said Daren Blomquist, VP at RealtyTrac, in a prepared statement. “The increases in judicial foreclosure auctions demonstrate that these delayed foreclosure cases are now being moved more quickly through to foreclosure completion.”

Blomquist added that given the rising home prices in most of these markets, now is an opportune time for lenders to dispose of these distressed properties, either at the foreclosure auction to a third-party buyer. They can also by repossess the property at the auction and subsequently sell it as a bank-owned home.

As GlobeSt.com reported last week, two cities in California and one in Oregon represented the western region of the country in RealtyTrac’s newly released top 15 retirement hot spots for real estate investing. Rancho Mirage, CA, ranked 7^th, Florence, OR, ranked 11^th and Seal Beach, CA, ranked 14^th in the firm’s report.

Home Prices Spike 10.7% Nationaly Year Over Year

 

Trulia, a leading online marketplace for home buyers, sellers, renters, and real estate professionals, today released the latest findings from the Trulia Price Monitor and the Trulia Rent Monitor. These indices are the earliest leading indicators available of trends in home prices and rents. Based on the for-sale homes and rentals listed on Trulia, these monitors take into account changes in the mix of listed homes and reflect trends in prices and rents for similar homes in similar neighborhoods through June 30, 2013. To read the full report, see here.

Asking Home Prices Show No Signs of Cooling Off … Yet
Nationally, asking home prices rose 10.7 percent year-over-year (Y-o-Y) in June. Excluding foreclosures, prices jumped 11.4 percent Y-o-Y, signaling that the current rise in asking prices is not primarily driven by the shift away from foreclosure to non-distressed homes for sale. However, the rate of increase in asking prices will eventually slow down as mortgage rates rise, inventory expands, and investor demand falls.

June 2013 Trulia Price Monitor Summary % change in # of 100 largest % change in asking asking prices metros with asking- prices, excluding price increases foreclosures Month-over-month, 1.5% Not reported 1.5% seasonally adjusted Quarter-over-quarter, 4.1% 98 4.5% seasonally adjusted Year-over-year 10.7% 99* 11.4% * Only Philadelphia saw a year-over-year decline, and only slightly, at -0.01%.

Asking Prices Rise in 99 of the 100 Largest Metros
Nationally, asking home prices bottomed in February 2012 – but the turnaround has been uneven. Prices first began to rebound two years ago in San Jose, Phoenix, Denver, Miami, and a few other housing markets where job growth or bargain buying started boosting prices earlier. Meanwhile, prices continued to fall in several East Coast and Midwest markets until three to six months ago. Now with the housing recovery in full swing, asking prices rose in 99 of the 100 largest metros. Among these recently bottoming markets, prices rose more than 7 percent in Edison-New Brunswick, NJ, Chicago, Lake County-Kenosha County, IL-WI, and Baltimore.

Housing Markets Where Asking Prices Rose Most After Bottoming Recently # U.S. Metro Y-o-Y% change in asking prices 1 Edison-New Brunswick, NJ 8.6% 2 Chicago, IL 8.4% 3 Lake County-Kenosha County, IL-WI 7.9% 4 Baltimore, MD 7.1% 5 St. Louis, MO-IL 6.4% 6 Fairfield County, CT 6.4% 7 Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC 5.3% 8 Gary, IN 5.3% 9 New Orleans, LA 4.6% 10 Newark, NJ-PA 3.1% Note: Among markets where prices bottomed in the last 6 months.

Rents Fall Where Asking Prices Skyrocket
Marking its biggest Y-o-Y increase since January, rents rose 2.8 percent Y-o-Y nationally in June. Rents climbed most in Houston, Miami, and Tampa-St. Petersburg, but fell in markets where asking prices were up more than 30 percent: Las Vegas, Oakland, and Sacramento. In fact, asking prices outpaced rents in 22 of the 25 largest rental markets. Only in Houston, New York, and Philadelphia did rents rise faster than asking prices.

Housing Markets Where Rents Fell Most # U.S. Metro Y-o-Y% change Y-o-Y% change in rents in asking prices 1 Las Vegas, NV -0.8% 30.8% 2 Oakland, CA -0.5% 34.2% 3 Sacramento, CA -0.4% 32.6% Among 25 largest rental markets.

Salinas Real Estate Heats Up

For the Monterey County real-estate industry, it’s game on. Key indicators across the board are showing a vibrancy not seen since the financial market crash of 2008.

More homeowners are seeing equity return as fewer mortgages are underwater. Home sale prices are back to within a whisker’s width of where they were in 2008 at the start of the real-estate crash. And homes going on the market are attracting multiple offers and are staying on the market only half as long as they were five years ago.

“Right now a listing can almost mean an assured sale,” said Sandy Haney, chief executive officer of the Monterey County Association of Realtors.

Indeed, MCAR data from a three-month rolling average of March, April and May show a strength in the market not seen in years. The median countywide home price stood at $375,000, up nearly 23 percent from the same three months a year ago and within 0.5 percent of matching the same three months in 2008 — a mere $1,700 difference.

The median is the price where half the homes sold for more and half for less. Economists consider it a more accurate yardstick because using averages can be dramatically affected by an extremely expensive sale or anomalously cheap sale.

Another key indicator is the number of days a home stays on the market after it is listed. For the current March-May timeframe, the median number of days stood at 65, far fewer than the 91 days homes were on the market last year at this time, and nearly half the 118 days homes languished in 2008.

The drivers behind this growth are a relatively low inventory of homes — supply is limited and demand is strong — and the increasing number of homeowners seeing their equity move into the positive side for the first time in several years.

“In the fourth quarter we again saw an improvement in the equity position of households,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic, an Irvine-based analytics company. “Housing market improvements, particularly in the hardest hit states, are the catalyst for households to regain equity and become participants in 2013’s housing market.”

California Real Estate Forcast-Summer 2013

 

 

Are you finally off the fence and doing a little home shopping? As the market heats up and sellers regain control, here are a couple of trends to consider.

Low mortgage rates

The 30-year fixed mortgage rate onZillow Mortgage Marketplace is currently hovering near historic lows, at 3.78 percent. And while rates have crept up this past week, they’re not going to skyrocket suddenly, says Erin Lantz, director of mortgages at Zillow. “Even if the Federal Reserve starts to scale back its stimulus program, the Fed will still help keep rates low for the remainder of the year in order to accelerate the housing market recovery. As the Fed withdraws support and the economy recovers, we expect rates will rise gradually over the next 18 months.”

Slim pickings

As of February, slightly less than 2 million homes were for sale nationwide. This represents a supply of less than five months (six months’ supply is considered “normal”). During the same period last year, the supply was 6.4 months. In a dozen markets, there is less than a three-month supply of homes on the market! Granted, rising home prices should lead to more inventory (and ultimately more sales because it encourages new construction and encourages homeowners to sell), but one key question is whether prices will rise enough so that for-sale inventory will hit bottom and start expanding again.

Home stalking

As demand from home buyers grows faster than the supply of homes for sale, many buyers are taking less conventional routes to find their dream home: They’re knocking on the doors of homes they like, writing handwritten notes, and tracking down the owners in hopes they may be willing to sell even though their home is not technically on the market. Zillow’s Make Me Move® section, where homeowners list their properties with a “dream” price, is seeing a flurry of activity: There are now 148,000 listings, and contacts to owners are up 132 percent over last year.

Bidding wars

As many of the nation’s markets heat up, bidding wars are quickly becoming the norm — especially in places such as California (San Francisco, Sacramento and cities in Southern California), Boston, Washington, Seattle and New York. This poses a challenge, in particular, for first-time buyers seeking entry-level properties in Las Vegas, Tampa and other markets where investor demand is particularly strong. Who do you think wins the bidding competition — investors with all-cash offers or buyers who need to obtain financing and have the home appraised at their offered price?

California Distressed Home Sales Continue Decline

Distressed home sales in California in April declined to their lowest level since February 2008, according to the California Association of Realtors.

Distressed sales fell to 24.4 percent, down from 27.9 percent in March and 45.8 percent in April last year.

CAR also said the share of lender-owned sales fell to single digit percentages for the first time since late 2007 – 9.2 percent in April, compared with 10.2 percent in March and 24.3 percent in April 2012.

In Sacramento County, CAR said the share of distressed single-family home sales in April was 32 percent, down from 37 percent in March and 60 percent in April 2012.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/23/5441832/distressed-home-sales-decline.html#storylink=cpy

California Real Estate Posts Strongest Price Increase in US

Real estate prices continue to rise, and housing markets in the West are leading the way. Some East Coast markets are exhibiting weakness. 

In March, the median sales price for new homes was $247,000, increasing from the previous month's $226,400, according to the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The average sales price fell, however, to $279,900 from $286,300. 

A forecast from the National Association of Realtors projects that the national median existing-home price will rise about 7.5 percent this year from 2012. 

The trade group said that the national median existing-home price for all housing types was $184,300 in March, rising from $173,000 the previous month. The price was 11.8 percent higher than 12 months prior and up for the 13th consecutive month. 

U.S. home prices increased 1.0 percent between January and February based on Lender Processing Services Inc.'s Home Price Index. That left the index at $210,000. Compared to a year earlier, the index -- which represents the price of non-distressed sales by taking into account price discounts for REO and short sales -- was up 7.3 percent. 

California and Washington home prices rose 2.2 percent from January -- the most of any states in the LPS report. Nine of the 10-strongest metropolitan areas were in the Golden State. Nevada's 1.8 percent followed, then 1.6 percent in Hawaii and 1.4 percent in Illinois. The only state with a decline was Connecticut: down 0.3 percent.

Half of the top 10 metropolitan markets identified by Pro Teck Valuation Services in its April Home Value Forecast were in California. Two of the worst markets were in Florida, and another two were in Louisiana. 

CoreLogic's Home Price Index inched up 0.5 percent in February from January and was up 10.2 percent from February 2012. 

Santa Ana, Calif.-based CoreLogic announced that it acquired Case-Shiller on March 20 from Fiserv Inc. for $6 million. 

A seasonally adjusted 0.7 percent increase between January and February was reported for the Federal Housing Finance Agency's House Price Index. Compared to the same month last year, FHFA's index was up 7.1 percent. The index stands 13.6 below its April 2007 peak. 

FHFA, which utilizes purchase prices on homes financed with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loans to determine its index, said that the Middle Atlantic had a 1.9 percent year-over-year increase -- the worst of any area. The Pacific was up more than any other area: 15.3 percent. 

Another index, the FNC Residential Price Index, indicated that national home prices increased 0.2 percent from January to February -- a 28-month high and the 12th consecutive increase. Compared to a year earlier, the index was up 6.1 percent, "its fastest acceleration since July 2006." 

Phoenix and Las Vegas had the biggest month-over-month gain of any metropolitan statistical area at 1.9 percent. Phoenix and the biggest year-over-year gain at 29.3 percent, while No. 2 Las Vegas had a 14.5 percent increase from February 2012. 

US Home Prices Post Highest Increase Since 2006

Home prices rose by 9.3 percent across the nation’s 20 major metropolitan areas in the year ending in February 2013 for the highest annual increase in growth since May 2006, according to real estate market trends reported today by S&P/Case-Shiller.

For the first time since early 2005, all 20 areas have posted year-over-year increase for at least two consecutive months, and the rate of annual growth accelerated in 16 of the cities, according to the group’s Home Price Indices for February.

“Home prices continue to show solid increases across all 20 cities,” David M. Blitzer, Index Committee chair at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement interpreting the latest real estate market trends. “Despite some recent mixed economic reports for March, housing continues to be one of the brighter spots in the economy.”

The largest annual price increases were seen in Phoenix, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Atlanta, Blitzer said. The Atlanta housing market suffered a wave of foreclosures in 2012, while the Western cities were among the hardest hit by the housing market collapse.
In other real estate market trends, investment in residential real estate accelerated from the fourth quarter of 2012 to the first quarter of 2013, making a “positive contribution” to economic growth, Blitxer said. The mix of housing is also shifting to include a larger-than-typical share of apartments.