CoreLogic recently reported that the number of underwater homes, properties worth less than what is owed on them, fell from 6.3 million to 5.3 million between the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2014. This change is large and important for the health of the housing market.
After a slow start this year, partly due to the frigidly cold winter, home sales are picking up steam. Existing-home sales have risen for four straight months and in July were at the highest pace of the year, 5.15 million. Pending contracts point to more gains, too.
Jobs are always important for home sales, and in the last 12 months they’ve grown by 2.6 million. North Dakota, Texas, Utah, and parts of California are good examples of job growth leading to healthy real estate activity. Amazingly, mortgage rates refuse to rise, even after the Federal Reserve has started talking about tightening its monetary policy, keeping the recovery intact.
There are dozens of Internet sites out there that reveal how much your home is worth. They are called “automated valuation model” (AVM) sites, which use statistical modeling techniques that calculate the property value by comparing it with similar-sized homes that have recently sold in your area. These tools crunch their data with publicly available numbers from several listing services and combine them with regional trends to set a sale price for your property.
Cool, right? Now, here is the question that every seller asks themselves: Do I still need a real estate agent to help me through this “assessment” process?
Well, there is a reason for the existence of a real estate agent; actually, there are several reasons why these professionals are so important in any real estate transaction. Let’s review the reasons…
Labor Day marks the end of summer – and the end of the traditional house-hunting season. Based on properties viewed on the Trulia website for the full years of 2011-2013, home search activity jumps in March, stays high through summer, and then falls below the annual average in September and stays that way until the new year begins. Nationally, home searches for September and October combined are 6% below the annual average.
Does that mean that everyone looking to buy or sell a home in 2014 has missed the boat? Not necessarily. Every local market has its own seasonal pattern for house hunting. Comparing September and October search activity with annual averages in 2011-2013, we found markets where the autumn slowdown is slight. And there are a handful of local housing markets where autumn is actually prime house-hunting season – mostly vacation areas that are in the mountains and forests but not near the beach.
Mortgage borrowers under the age of 30 have the lowest mortgage delinquency rate of any other age group, according to a newly released TransUnion mortgage report. However, the age group also makes up the smallest share of all mortgage accounts at 4.16 percent, TransUnion notes.
“It is encouraging to see younger borrowers perform well, since their generation was significantly impacted by the recession and their loans are among the newest,” says Steve Chaouki, head of financial services for TransUnion.
Fannie Mae economists have downgraded their housing outlook after a weak end to the second quarter, and they say that near-term indicators are suggesting only a minor improvement in the second half of the year.
“The impact on mortgage rates from the market’s expectation that the Federal Reserve would soon start tapering their securities purchases, combined to some degree with the weather effect in the first half of 2014, led to very little seasonal growth in housing,” says Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae’s chief economist. “In the first six months of the year, total sales have run below last year’s pace.”
Also, Duncan notes that “on the demand side, there appears to be a conservatism among consumers and their willingness to take on big-ticket purchases, such as homes.”
The median house price in Seattle just set a record, topping the 2007 peak for the first time since the Great Recession.
The median price of a house that sold in the city last month was $543,500, up 16.9 percent from a year earlier and 8.9 percent from June, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service reported last Wednesday. The previous peak was $501,000, in August 2007.
Baby boomers aren’t showing any signs of leaving the single-family home market that has defined their generation’s real estate habits, despite many predictions that they would by now. As boomers hit age 65 and become empty nesters, many housing analysts forecasted that a huge wave of them would downsize and move into an apartment, condo, or townhouse.
But Fannie Mae researcher Patrick Simmons says that isn’t happening yet.
When it comes to building a booming real estate business, you’ve got to know where the next hot group of buyers and sellers may be focusing their home seeking-attentions. Popular beliefs tell us that millennials—those between the age of 18 and 34—just aren’t buying homes. Right?
Not so fast. The official homeownership rate published by the Census gives a misleading picture of homeownership trends. In fact, homeownership among young adults is not too far off from where demographics say it should be.
And, as it turns out, young adult homeownership is actually on the rise. Is your market poised to become the next hotbed of young homeowners?
Recent Census Bureau findings show that millennials are flocking to big-city suburbs and lower-density cities. Check out these 10 cities, which made the list of the top 10 metros for millennial population growth—they may just be the next hottest real estate for millennial home buyers and sellers!
Home prices were on the rise again last month, but in a stark contrast to last year, price increases were more generalized and less concentrated to just a few metro pockets, according to realtor.com’s May 2014 National Housing Trend Report.
In May, the median list price of homes was $214,900 nationwide, an 8 percent increase year-over-year. All but eight of the 146 markets that realtor.com tracks reported year-over-year price increases in May. “This broad increase in price suggests a more evenly distributed recovery and a healthier national housing market,” reads a realtor.com statement on the findings.
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