Tag Archives: housing market

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Repeat Buyers, Backbone of Housing Recovery

The growing ranks of repeat home buyers are helping to drive the housing recovery, making up for the dwindling numbers of first-time buyers.

Repeat home buyers accounted for 54 percent of existing-home sales in June, up from 49 percent just one year prior, according to the National Association of REALTORS®. Meanwhile, first-time buyers — who usually account for 40 percent of the market share — shrank to 29 percent in June. A lack of lower-priced homes and strict lending requirements are edging more first-time buyers out of the market.

“What we’re seeing are these buyers who’ve waited around and who have finally realized this is a good time to move,” says David Crowe, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders. “They will feed the demand until our economy gets a little more solid.”

The article…

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After months of rising prices, is the Puget Sound housing market cooling off?

 Komo 4 Video

The housing headlines have been screaming all spring and summer about how home buyers have been pushing prices up in King County.

There have been bidding wars for some Seattle-area homes, and median home prices are up 15 percent over a year ago.

Around Lake Sammamish, home prices are back up to peak levels set in 2007. In West Seattle, homes in some turn-of-the-century neighborhoods have been selling for up to $650,000 or more. And in other areas, sellers are getting 10 or 20 offers on a single property.

But now it’s beginning to appear that the price and pace of sales may be cooling off in the Puget Sound housing market.

Watch the KOMOnews…

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Surprising Foreclosure Hot Spots

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While housing markets across the country are recovering from the deepest throes of the foreclosure crisis, others are just stumbling into it — and they aren’t exactly the places you’d expect.

States like Maryland, Oregon and New Jersey, which maintained relatively stable markets after the housing bubble popped, saw new foreclosure filings climb by double- and triple-digit percentages in July, according to RealtyTrac.

Read more…

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The President Moves on Housing Reform

With the great housing reform debate underway, the White House recently weighed in with President Obama’s plan for the future of housing finance in America. The President laid out a vision for housing finance, with key elements similar to those embraced by many stakeholders in the nation’s housing finance system. This is an issue that affects the well-being of every American, whether a homeowner or a renter, and we welcome the President’s attention and leadership.

Read more…

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3 Multiple Personality Market Musts for Smart Sellers

In the dramatic world of the theater, they say “it ain’t over ‘till the fat lady sings.“ In the dramatic world of the real estate market, headlines touting multiple offers and appreciating home values can feel like a premature declaration that the recession is over to some homeowners.

As you’ve probably heard a million times, real estate is hyperlocal. And it’s true – in many, many markets across the country, a mood of exuberant recovery has eclipsed the recession era’s stagnation, doom and gloom.  But the fat lady hasn’t sung for the 10 million homeowners who are still upside down on their mortgages, according to CoreLogic, or for sellers whose homes aren’t following the national trend of flying off the market  after receiving dozens of contingency-free, cash offers.

Here are a few multiple personality market musts for smart sellers…

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The U.S. Housing Market and Its Huge Geographic Differences

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The U.S. housing market can no longer be painted with one brush, as the housing recovery is playing out very differently across the country. Here are some anecdotes gleaned from a consulting team…

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Jobs Market Not Helping Housing

Neighborhood at Sunset

The housing recovery is juicing the jobs market, but the jobs market isn’t returning the favor, according to Jed Kolko, chief economist at Trulia.

Riding on rising home sales, residential construction employment has shot up 4.5 percent year over year, far outpacing the national employment growth rate of 1.7 percent, he said.

But a high unemployment rate is holding back housing demand, Kolko noted, saying 25 to 34-year-olds in particular are suffering from the still-weak jobs climate, with only 75 percent of that cohort employed.

Read more…

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Home Prices Climb in Seattle and Beyond

King 5 Video

Home prices in 20 major U.S. cities increased 12.2 percent in May compared to a year ago, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index released on Tuesday.

And according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, prices locally continue to rise. The median price for last month’s closed sales area-wide was $279,950, which is about 9.8 percent higher than the year-ago.

The red hot housing market is prompting some realtors to get creative to satisfy eager home buyers that are tired of losing bids on their home of their choice.

New figures from the MLS also show pending sales during June jumped 10.6 percent from twelve months ago as buyers scrambled to lock in loan rates and bid on a limited supply of homes.

View the local news on King 5…

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Building the Foundation for Successful Housing Reform

According to David Stevens, President and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association:

“The U.S. housing market is showing definite signs of recovery with purchase originations beginning to increase and more liquidity in the market. The recent “good times” can be attributed to two factors – the federal government’s Quantitative Easing (QE) program which created extremely low interest rates, and refinancing ease of negative equity loans due to HARP.

Now that these programs have almost run their course and given a much-needed boost to the marketplace, as anticipated, the federal government is beginning to plan for reducing the QE program and the refinance boom is coming to an end, causing overall market contraction. When the market contracts we can see the true operational impacts of regulations.”

Read his article…

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More Homes Coming To Market

Neighborhood

Bidding wars aren’t over, but the number of homes listed for sale is increasing, by quite a bit in some of the tightest markets.

According to the latest National Housing Trend Report by Realtor.com, the number of homes listed for sale grew 4.26% from May to June, with a total of 1.93 million listed for sale nationwide.

The number of homes for sale grew significantly more in some areas where the inventory shortage had become the most acute, particularly in California.

Read more…