Inventory of New Homes Down to Lowest Level in Nearly 50 Years

“In recent years, new housing supply has been running at the lowest levels since the 1960’s due to the slow down in new home construction, the size of homes being built, and the complicated process for selling/buying distressed properties.”

See the whole article here.

Case-Shiller: August Home Prices at 2-Year High

U.S. home prices continued to increase in August as the Case Shiller 20-city Home Price Index increased 0.9 percent to its highest level since September 2010. The 20-city index is up 2.0 percent in the last year.

See the article here.

In bay area, it is absolutely a seller's market. 15 to 30 offers per house is not uncommon at this moment.

Home Prices rise due to Banks' Holding onto REOs ?

A sharp drop in distressed sales is one of the main drivers behind the steady rise in home prices seen in certain areas throughout the country.

In September, the HousingPulse Distressed Property Index (DPI), which measures the proportion of purchase transactions involving distressed properties, hit a record low of 38.6 percent based on a three-month moving average.

The drop marks the fifth consecutive monthly decline and is more than 10 percentage points lower than the February’s near-record-high of 48.7 percent.

Please see the whole article here.

Bay Area housing prices at four-year high on August 2012

The Bay Area's housing recovery showed increasing signs of strength in July, as eager buyers pushed prices to four-year highs.

The region logged its 13th consecutive month of yearly sales increases and the median price for all types of homes in the nine-county Bay Area was at its highest -- $421,000 -- since 2008, according to a report Wednesday from DataQuick. The median sale price has been rising for five months. 
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Prices are still 37 percent off their 2007 peak for all types of homes in the Bay Area. Contra Costa County is down 51 percent from its peak price for single-family homes before the housing crash; Santa Clara County is 19 percent below the peak; San Mateo County almost 23 percent below and Alameda County 35 percent under its peak price.

Read more here. 

The U.S. Housing Bust Is Over

This is the consensus on the street. Check the WSJ article here.

The housing market has turned—at last.

The U.S. finally has moved beyond attention-grabbing predictions from housing "experts" that housing is bottoming. The numbers are now convincing.

Nearly seven years after the housing bubble burst, most indexes of house prices are bending up. "We finally saw some rising home prices," S&P's David Blitzer said a few weeks ago as he reported the first monthly increase in the slow-moving S&P/Case-Shiller house-price data after seven months of declines.

 Economists aren't always right, but on this at least they agree: A new Wall Street Journal survey of forecasters found 44 believe the housing market has reached its bottom; only three don't.

CMBS Delinquencies Hit All-Time High

The delinquency rate for commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) moved up 12 basis points in June to 10.16 percent, reaching an all-time high, according to a report from Trepp.

There was one positive side to the report. Trepp stated that most five-year loans originated in 2007 were made in the first six months of that year, and so now that we are halfway into 2012, this means the number of five-year loans from 2007 are reaching their maturity dates and will fall off over the next six months.

Read the whole article here.

JC: This may mark the peak of the CMBS delinquency. Will the trend get better from here?

Why Aren’t There More Homes for Sale?

It’s no secret to anyone who has watched the real-estate market over the past year that the number of homes for sale has dropped sharply, especially in hard-hit markets such as Miami, Orlando and Phoenix.

Economists at CoreLogic have new evidence showing how big price declines are keeping many home sellers on the sidelines. They found that the supply of homes for sale declines as the rate of negative equity — or the share of borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth — rises.

Many hard-hit markets have seen an influx of well-funded investors scooping up foreclosures that can be rented out, meaning inventory is being taken off the market, at least for now.

Meanwhile, banks have sharply slowed down their foreclosure processes after being caught fraudulently processing the paperwork required to take back those properties two years ago.

Read more on WSJ 6/11/2012 here.