Tag Archives: Home Prices

Even as prices continued to rise in last year's fourth quarter, American homeowners found themselves paying less in monthly mortgage payments compared to pre-bubble norms.

Prudential Real Estate released Tuesday the results of its first-quarter Consumer Outlook Survey, revealing Americans' sentiment toward real estate is growing more and more favorable.

Lenders are more bullish on the housing recovery now than they have been in the last several years, according to FICO's quarterly survey of bank risk professionals.

Markets around the country suffered from inventory shortage in February, and Connecticut was no exception, according to data from the Warren Group.

CoreLogic's Home Price Index (HPI) posted its largest annual increase in nearly seven years in February. Among the largest metros, Phoenix posted the largest year-over-year increase at 20.8 percent. Other metros that posted double-digit increases included Los Angeles (+14.5 percent), Riverside (+13.2 percent), and Atlanta (+12.4 percent). Furthermore, CoreLogic's Pending HPI projects another 10.2 percent year-over-year increase. From February to March, prices are expected to rise by 1.2 percent.

While most of the country spent the winter fighting blizzard conditions and flu symptoms, home prices made it through the season relatively unscathed. According to Clear Capital, home prices ended March with a 6.5 percent year-over-year improvement, while the quarterly gain was a modest 0.9 percent. Over the next three quarters, Clear Capital is projecting growth of 1.7 percent, which would bring the 2013 forecast to 2.6 percent. That growth will differ by region, with the Northeast leading in gains.

Investor activity saw a decline last year as the median price for investment homes increased, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported.

Real estate agents are showing heightened optimism for housing as the market continues its swing toward sellers, Redfin observed in its latest Real-Time Agent Survey. According to brokerage's findings, the number of agents saying now is a good time to buy plummeted from 75 percent in Q3 2012 to just 57 percent in Q1 2013. At the same time, the number of agents saying now is a bad time to buy rose slightly, though the percentage is still low--5 percent in Q1 2013 compared to 2 percent in Q3 2012.

For February, DataQuick found home prices grew in 34 of the 42 counties on a monthly and quarterly basis.

Sometimes a story just fits--and sometimes it doesn't. Given that maxim, the explanation from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) for the drop in the Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) for February has to be viewed with a jaundiced eye. According to the NAR, the PHSI dropped because of the low inventory of homes for sale. Of course, that wasn't offered as an explanation one month earlier, when the inventory of homes for sale dropped, and the PHSI increased.