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Daily Real Estate News | Monday, February 13, 2012
Florida cities are expected to see some of the biggest recoveries in housing prices in the coming months, according to a new report by Realtor.com that reveals the top turnaround towns. In fact, the signs are already there with drops in inventories and distressed homes, as well as higher listing prices and increases in sales.
The following are the top six housing markets expected to see the biggest turnaround, according to Realtor.com.
1. Miami, Fla.
Median home price: $185,000 Growth: Sales volume of existing single-family homes has jumped 51 percent in the third quarter compared to 12 months prior. A factor in the recovery: International clients are snagging up Miami homes: In May, they purchased 60 percent of existing houses and condos and 90 percent of newly built homes.
2. Phoenix
Median home price: $129,000 Growth: Homes sold 27 percent faster in the fourth quarter compared tot he same period in 2010. A factor in the recovery: An improving job market: Unemployment dropped to 7.7 percent in November, which beats the national average and is a 1.1 percentage point improvement over 2010‘s rate in the city.
3. Orlando
Median home price: $145,000 Growth: Inventory of for-sale homes dropped 44 percent in the fourth quarter and homes that were on the market sold 37 percent faster than they did a year earlier. A factor in the recovery: A strong tourist destination, Orlando is attracting international buyers, such as from South America, Canada, and Europe. Also, the job market is improving there, particularly aided by the development of a major medical complex.
4. Fort Myers, Fla.
Median home price: $115,000 Growth: Median listing prices here had the biggest increase in the nation last year, soaring 31 percent year-over-year. A factor in the recovery: This retirement hot-spot is getting more attention from Canadians, who are taking advantage of a strong Canadian dollar and the fallen home values here.
5. Sarasota, Fla.
Median home price: $181,000 Growth: Sales volume here increased 17 percent during the three months ended Dec. 31 compared to year-over-year. Plus, home prices rose 2 percent in that time period. A factor in the recovery: A drop in bank-owned homes and distressed sales is helping the housing market to recover, as well as an improving job market.
By Chris Taylor | Reuters – Mon, Jan 30, 2012 4:43 PM EST
It was just last summer that Charlotte Perkins made the hardest decision of her life as she and her husband Jim were caught in the vise of the housing bust.
Wanting to downsize their lives as they headed toward retirement, they bought a new house in Mesa, Arizona, before they sold the old one, also in Mesa. Their previous home had been appraised at nearly $400,000 at the height of the market, but as the housing crisis ravaged Arizona, they were told they’d be lucky to get $200,000 for it.
They were carrying a loan of $260,000 on their original home alone, meaning they were well ‘underwater,’ owing much more than it was worth. Combined with the mortgage on the new house, their housing payments had become an “anchor around our necks,” she says, threatening to gobble up all their retirement savings and leave them with nothing.
The couple made a difficult call: They would do a ‘strategic default,’ and simply stop paying the old mortgage. “We really had to wrestle with it,” said Perkins, 60. “We had worked all of our lives to build good strong credit, and we’re proud people. But it came down to, ‘Can we keep doing this?’ We had to say ‘No.’”
As the housing bust drags on, many homeowners are thinking like Perkins. Almost 11 million homes are now underwater, says financial information provider CoreLogic. Around 3.5 million homeowners are behind in their payments and another 1.5 million homes are already in the foreclosure process, according to online marketplace RealtyTrac.
As banks start to work through their backlog of distressed properties, the New York Federal Reserve estimates that 3.6 million foreclosures will take place during the next couple of years.
So, the question is: Does it make sense to keep paying a massive mortgage, knowing that it might be decades before a home regains its prior value? Or is that akin to – as columnist James Surowiecki recently wrote in the New Yorker – “setting a pile of money on fire every month”?
“I constantly get the saddest e-mails from people saying, ‘I’ve exhausted all my life savings, my retirement is gone, and now I have to default,’” said Jon Maddux, CEO of YouWalkAway.com, a foreclosure agency that helps clients with strategic default (and charges a fee for it). “But if they had seen the writing on the wall a couple of years earlier, stopped paying the mortgage and stayed in the home throughout the whole process, they would be in a much better financial position.” Continue reading →
According to DS News, Capital Economics expects the housing crisis to end this year, according to a report released Tuesday. One of the reasons: loosening credit.
The analytics firm notes the average credit score required to attain a mortgage loan is 700. While this is higher than scores required prior to the crisis, it is constant with requirements one year ago.
Additionally, a Fed Senior Loan Officer Survey found credit requirements in the fourth quarter were consistent with the past three quarters.
However, other market indicators point not just to a stabilization of mortgage lending standards, but also a loosening of credit availability.
Banks are now lending amounts up to 3.5 times borrower earnings. This is up from a low during the crisis of 3.2 times borrower earnings.
Banks are also loosening loan-to-value ratios (LTV), which Capital Economics denotes “the clearest sign yet of an improvement in mortgage credit conditions.”
In contrast to a low of 74 percent reached in mid-2010, banks are now lending at 82 percent LTV.
While credit conditions may have loosened slightly, some potential homebuyers are still struggling with credit requirements. In fact, Capital Economics points out that in November 8 percent of contract cancellations were the result of a potential buyer not qualifying for a loan.
Additionally, Capital Economics says “any improvement in credit conditions won’t be significant enough to generation actual house price gains,” and potential ramifications from the euro-zone pose a threat to future credit availability.
Washington. U.S. home prices fell for a third straight month in nearly all cities tracked by a major index. The declines show that most homeowners are not reaping the benefits from some signs of an improving housing market.
Prices dropped in November from October in 19 of the 20 cities tracked, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home-price index released Tuesday.
The biggest declines were in Atlanta, Chicago and Detroit. Phoenix was the only city to show an increase.
Economists say that home prices are rising up in the areas that were most hard hit during the housing crisis…..Phoenix being one of them. Nice to know the media is finally tuned in to the data instead of being all “doom & gloom”. Buyers need to get off the fence and start getting serious about taking advantage of the prices NOW. Sellers get ready…the time is ripe for getting your home sold….more stable prices & low inventory/competition AND BUYERS WANTING TO BUY!!!
The Cromford Report, founded by Michael Orr, a mathematician and REALTOR®, offers the most up to date statistical information and commentary on the Valley Real Estate market. Unlike information from other sources which is at least a quarter behind, The Cromford Report is up to date assuring that no fresher data exists. What makes The Cromford Report unique is that its data is validated and corrected before it is incorporated into the analysis.
The U.S. economy will gradually improve in 2012 as it continues to chug along at a relatively slow pace, according to a survey of business economists released Monday.
Still, the outlook represents a slight improvement from the last survey of the National Association for Business Economics in October, when only 16 percent of respondents expected the economy to reach a 2 percent annual growth.
In the latest survey, about two-thirds of NABE Industry Survey panelists expect to see real gross domestic product top 2 percent between the fourth quarter of 2011 and the fourth quarter of 2012. Only 28 percent see GDP expanding between 1.1 percent and 2 percent – down from 70 percent in October. But few expect growth to top 3 percent this year.
“The survey results suggest increased optimism concerning real GDP growth, as well as fewer inflationary or deflationary pressures,” said Dr. Nayantara Hensel, professor of industry and business at National Defense University.
Despite the overall sluggish economy, businesses are still managing to make money, according to the survey. More than 80 percent of respondents reported that their companies were seeing unchanged or rising sales and profit margins. And they say inflation remains tame: Nearly all respondents expect that prices will remain unchanged or rise by 5 percent or less.
The prospects for growth in workers’ paychecks aren’t as rosy. More than 70 percent of respondents reported that wages and salaries have remained unchanged. And the share expecting a pickup in hiring over the next six months fell again compared to past surveys; almost two-thirds expect no change in employment. That’s the highest percentage of panelists holding such a view in recent quarters. Continue reading →
Optimism is building that the housing industry is nearing a bottom — finally.
Home sales and home building are forecast to rise this year after sliding steeply the past five years in housing’s worst downturn since the Great Depression. Recovery is expected to be slow, and home prices are widely expected to fall this year. But investors are betting on the start of an upturn, bidding up home builder stocks and causing them to outperform the broader stock market.Chief executives are more positive. Continue reading →
Data from the end of 2011 suggest that a housing-market recovery has begun in metro Phoenix.
The upswing in the market will surprise many because it comes less than five months after the region’s existing-home prices fell to their lowest level since 1999. But even at last year’s low point in August, when the median home price fell to $112,000, many market indicators pointed to an increase in the area’s home prices by year-end. Now, it appears they were right.
The median price of a metro Phoenix home rose to $120,000 in December, its highest level since November 2010, according to the Information Market, a real-estate data firm. That was the first December since 2005 that the region’s median price didn’t drop.
The number of home sales in 2011 climbed to their highest level since the housing market’s peak in 2006. Foreclosures fell to their lowest level since 2008. And the number of Phoenix-area homes listed for sale has dropped to a figure not seen since 2005, indicating demand is finally exceeding supply. This is a complete turnaround from 2007, when the housing crash started and cheap foreclosure homes flooded the market while buyers were few. Continue reading →
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