EveryJoe » home market

Homes Sales Up, But Below Expectations

Mark Ellis — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:55:17 +0000

The state of the economy, falling wages, and rising unemployment have had a dramatically negative impact on homes sales over the past year, but several factors have recently contributed to a turnaround in the home market. However, the 0.7 percent gain in home sales that was seen last month was far below what analysts on Wall Street expected.

New-home sales increased in August to 429,000, up from the 426,000 homes that were sold in July, according to statistics released by the Commerce Department. Although it was the fifth consecutive month to feature an increase in home sales, the percentage of growth was much smaller than the 3.4 percent of August 2008 and the number of homes sold was significantly under the 440,000 homes that Thomson Reuters predicted.

Every region in the United States posted a decrease in home sales except for the West region, which includes California. New-home sales throughout the West rose 12.1 percent last month compared to July, but the number is still far below the 30.4 percent gain seen in August 2008.

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Post from: EveryJoe

Homes Sales Up, But Below Expectations

Homebuilder Confidence on the Rise

Mark Ellis — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:09:43 +0000

The housing market has certainly experienced dire straits as a result of the global economic recession with staggering foreclosure numbers and banks unwilling to give out home loans. However, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index shows that builder confidence for newly built single-family homes has risen three points in July.

According to the index, which rates builder confidence as 17, it is the highest level since September 2008. A different index that gauges how many prospective buyers there are has risen one point, while the index that determines sales expectations over the next six months has not changed in the month of July.

However, we should not celebrate just yet, as these indexes show that confidence in the market is still extremely low, with any number below 50 signaling a weak market. Although the numbers are not as bad as they were in January, when homebuilder confidence dropped to a rating of 8, there is still plenty of recovery that needs to occur.

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Post from: EveryJoe

Homebuilder Confidence on the Rise

Record Highs in the Mortgage Industry

Mark Ellis — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:40:48 +0000

Unfortunately, reaching highs is not necessarily a good thing. The Mortgage Bankers Association has released data that shows a staggering number of delinquencies and foreclosures in the first quarter. This data has been attributed to record unemployment numbers, as well as to other damaging side effects of the financial crisis.

The survey revealed that around 12.07 percent of mortgage loans were affected by delinquency or foreclosure, which is the largest number that the survey has recorded since it began in 1972. It also marks a rise of 8 percent since a year ago.

Although the government has taken steps to reduce foreclosure rates, the data shows that the government either may not be doing enough or that it may need to change how it goes about doing so. Part of the difficulty in turning around the foreclosure situation has been that once-reliable borrowers have now begun to have trouble paying their mortgages, leading to a flood of troubled loans far beyond anything that has been seen before.

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Post from: EveryJoe

Record Highs in the Mortgage Industry

Worst May Be Over for Home Market

Mark Ellis — Wed, 27 May 2009 03:02:29 +0000

While national home prices have fallen again to a level that has not been seen since 2002, there is evidence that the situation may have hit rock bottom and is creeping back upwards for some areas of the country.

According to The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller National Home Price index, home prices have fallen 19.1 percent in the first quarter compared to last year, 32.2 percent compared to their peak in 2006. The drop from last year to today represents the largest drop in the history of the index.

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Home prices vary remarkably from city to city depending on the local economy, foreclosure activity, and affordability. For some markets, the situation has gotten as bad as it is going to get, while others have not even come close to the bottom. Nationally, however, home prices are expected to creep downward for the rest of the year.

Post from: EveryJoe

Worst May Be Over for Home Market