U.S. Home Prices Up 5% Year-Over-Year
With jobless claims going down, consumer spending up and home prices rising, this may be a sign of an actual recovery. To be sure, we still have need to see large gains in the job market to really believe we will have a sustained and durable recovery.
Let us not forget if we look at the U6 unemployment number, we have over 15% unemployment and that represents discouraged workers that have given up looking for work. Once jobs start being created rapidly, those workers are going to re-enter the labor market and that will but a strain on the recovery. We are walking a fine line right now and hopefully we can get through this without creating another bubble.
DS News - New data released by Clear Capital Thursday shows that home prices nationally are up 5.0 percent compared to February 2009. The quarter-over-quarter price change for the numbers through last month was flat at 0.0 percent, indicating a softening during the winter months.
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U.S. existing home sales fall 7.2% to 7-month low
“It’s not good news,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the real estate industry lobbying group. “There is rising concern about the strength of the housing recovery.” This is what I have been thinking for some time, with the amount of support we have in the system and high unemployment. We need to work on creating jobs that provide an income that will support and mortgage payment and property taxes.
Resales of U.S. homes and condos fell 7.2% in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.05 million, the lowest in seven months, raising concerns about the durability of the housing recovery, the National Association of Realtors reported Friday.
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Simon Offers $10 Billion for General Growth Properties
The people at Simon are pretty smart and they have done due diligence on the books for General Growth but I am wondering is this is a good deal for the amount of retail and residential exposure Simon is now opened up to now. With us still being in the woods and it is not clear if we are in recovery or bear market rally, I hope this was not a little premature on their part. Hopefully they have a large cash reserve setup for this just in case the recovery takes longer than they are projecting.
Wall Street Journal - Mall giant Simon Properties Group Inc. on Tuesday announced it has offered $10 billion to acquire bankrupt rival General Growth Properties Inc., potentially creating the largest U.S. owner of high-end malls.
General Growth also has been negotiating with Canadian real-estate concern Brookfield Asset Management Inc. about Brookfield providing General Growth billions of dollars in capital, perhaps as part of a larger sale of new General Growth stock, to emerge from bankruptcy.
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Home prices fell 12% in the U.S. for 2009
CNN, New York - The real estate roller-coaster ride continued last year as the median price of U.S. single-family home plunged 11.9% to $173,200.
The housing situation had been looking up earlier in the year, with prices gaining ground in the first nine months. But the increases weren’t enough to push the median home price above 2008’s bar of $196,600, according to the National Association of Realtors.
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Mortgage Rates on 30-Year U.S. Loans Fall to 4.99%
Very interesting the long bond dipped below the 5% mark, this may be a sign that we are in for some deflation? Maybe not and its just a temporary dip while the market figures out what direction we are heading. I do think we will see some home buying stimulated with these low rates but it will be harder with the FHA increasing their lending standards even though this is a good thing for the long-term.
Mortgage rates in the U.S. dropped for a third week, lowering borrowing costs for consumers and supporting government efforts to boost the housing market.
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New York City’s REO Inventory Increases by Six-Fold in Two Years
The number of REO properties in New York has grown at an overwhelming rate, according to a recent report by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, a joint network of the New York University (NYU) School of Law and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU.
The report looked at the outcomes of New York City properties over the last 15 years, paying particular attention to trends in recent years. Although only a small portion of properties entering foreclosure ended up as bank-owned, the increased rate at which these properties entered REO status was staggering. From December 2006 to December 2008, the number of bank-owned properties in the city jumped from 290 to 1,830 and dropped slightly to 1,750 in September 2009.
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Pending U.S. home sales fall 16% in November
With the home buyer tax credit extended this does not bode well for a recovery in the U.S. real estate market. We still have a “shadow inventory” of homes that are not on the market, waiting for sales to pickup. Banks will eventually have to mark down these homes even more and that will strain their balance-sheets. The first two quarters of 2010 will be very telling to see if we are in fully swing recovery or a double-dip in 2010.
A forecasting gauge of housing-market activity slid more than expected in November, the result of an earlier surge caused by buyers racing to close deals ahead of the initial expiration of a government tax-credit program.
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