Tag Archives: Home Prices

November home sales rose higher this year than figures for the same last year, as markets began to stabilize, according to a recent housing report from RE/MAX. The real estate company said that November marked the fifth straight month for year-over-year sales increases, topping off 1.4 percent above figures seen in October, as home sales fell for the seventeenth consecutive month. Median sales prices for homes taken off the market in November meanwhile averaged $181,322, 1.4 percent more than prices seen in October.

DataQuick released statistics this week that reveal a 4-percent year-over-year increase in California home sales. The analytics company offered up an account of resales in California in a report released Wednesday. Condominiums and resale home sales leapt from 34,087 in October to 31,403 in November last year, with sales in the Golden State still far below lows of 25,578 seen in 2007. The company said that mortgage payments typical of homebuyers averaged $931 in November.

Does housing matter to voters? A recent survey says yes ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô and finds that housing policy will rank higher for voters than even national security come 2012. Houselogic.com, a consumer Web site affiliated with the National Association of Realtors, polled respondents across the country for the HouseLogic survey it released Friday. About one-third of all voters want to hear proposals from presidential candidates that address housing policy. Jobs and unemployment ranked first.

The chief economist with Fannie Mae said Tuesday that Europe is "clearly" in recession and forecasted that the United States will endure market corrections for the next five years as housing largely stays in the doldrums. Fannie Mae economist Doug Duncan spoke at the 2011 MPact Mortgage Banking Conference and Expo, which former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice headlined Monday evening. Rice discussed problems with the euro zone during her keynote address. Duncan predicted that annual growth will hedge toward 1.5 percent over the next year.

The weak capital position of the Federal Housing Administration came into play at a hearing Thursday, where members of the House Financial Services Committee grilled HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. Lawmakers took turns interrogating the Obama administration official over substantially fewer reserves in place to meet loan guarantees at a time when the housing market stays near bottom. The federal agency recently came under fire from news media, think tanks, and academia for failing to meet the minimum threshold.

The Federal Reserve released the Beige Report, describing a stable national economy eclipsed by low consumer confidence and a housing market focused on rental properties.

Home prices drifted lower over the third quarter this year, falling year-over-year by 3.9 percent, according to Standard & Poor├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós Case-Shiller Index. The figures inched forward by only 0.1 percent from last month, with the modest pickup reflecting a 5.8-percent improvement from figures seen for home prices over the second quarter. The numbers beat forecasts for a 3.0-percent slide back from the 20-city composite. Fourteen of 20 cities fell in a southerly direction over September 2011, with figures for home prices in Atlanta, Las Vegas, and others sliding.

New single-family home sales climbed to a seasonally adjusted annual 307,000 over October, 8.9 percent more than those figures estimated over the same time last year. The Commerce Department yielded the data Monday from new residential sales, which it collected and released via the Census Bureau and HUD. Sales for single-family homes meanwhile crawled above revised September rates of 303,000 by 1.3 percent. Data showed that median sales prices for new homes sold over October this year hovered at about $212,300.

Under a final rule, banks with $50 billion or more in assets will need to submit capital plans to the Federal Reserve, which will also begin performing stress tests for the largest financial institutions next year. In accordance with the rule, the Fed will take responsibility for annual evaluations of each institution├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós capital adequacy, internal assessment processes, and capital distribution plans, including dividend payments and stock repurchases.

Mortgage giant Freddie Mac tied weak homebuyer demand to a drop in consumer expenditures in an outlook it released Monday. The GSE captured a look at the financial mood of consumers by releasing the U.S. Economic and Housing Market Outlook, which makes forecasts according to key economic indicators that it uses. The outlook indexed overall economic health for the nation, finding a small uptick by domestic aggregate demand as it climbed to 3.6 percent ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô the second largest gain over the last five years.