All the Real Estate News That’s Fit to RE-Print™

Welcome to our weekly edition of Real Estate Investing News This Week. We have a massive amount of real estate news this week:

• The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices show accelerating home prices

• Shadow Inventory is down 28% from its 2010 peak

• New home sales see steepest drop in two years while building permits jump 4%

• Foreclosure inventory increases 9% from a year ago

• The mortgage delinquency rate in February slipped below 7%

• CoreLogic releases its National Foreclosure Report

We hope these real estate news items help you stay up-to-date with your real estate investing strategies and inspire some profitable real estate deals for you.

Home Prices Accelerate in January 2013 According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices

Data through January 2013, released Tuesday by S&P Dow Jones Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices showed average home prices increased 7.3% for the 10-City Composite and 8.1% for the 20-City Composite in the 12 months ending in January 2013. Access complete details, including charts and graphs here. See also:

Case-Shiller Indices Post Strongest Gain Since 2006 “Home prices posted their strongest year-over-year gain in almost seven years in January, according to the Case-Shiller 10- and 20-city Home Price Indices released Tuesday. Home prices rose year-over-year in all 20 of the cities in the Case-Shiller survey.”

CoreLogic Reports Shadow Inventory Down 28 Percent From 2010 Peak

On Tuesday, CoreLogic^® reported that the overall shadow inventory is down 28 percent from its peak in January 2010, when it reached 3 million homes. Current residential shadow inventory as of January 2013 was at 2.2 million units, representing a supply of nine months. This figure represents an 18-percent drop from January 2012, when shadow inventory stood at 2.6 million units. Data Highlights as of January 2013:

• As of January 2013, shadow inventory was at 2.2 million units, or nine months’ supply, and represented 85 percent of the 2.6 million properties currently seriously delinquent, in foreclosure or REO.

• Of the 2.2 million properties currently in the shadow inventory, 1 million units are seriously delinquent, 798,000 are in some stage of foreclosure and 342,000 are already in REO.

• The value of shadow inventory was $350 billion as of January 2013, down from $402 billion a year ago and down from $381 billion six months ago.

• Over the twelve months ending January 2013, serious delinquencies, which are the main driver of the shadow inventory, declined the most in Arizona (40 percent), California (33 percent), Colorado (27 percent), Michigan (25 percent) and Wyoming (23 percent).

• As of January 2013, Florida, California, New York, Illinois and New Jersey carried 44 percent of all distressed properties in the country. Florida continues to account for 16 percent of the nation’s distressed properties.

The full January 2013 Shadow Inventory Report with additional charts and roll rate information is available here.

New Home Sales in Steepest Drop in Two Years

Mark Lieberman reports:
“New home sales fell 4.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 411,000 in February, the sharpest drop in two years, the Census Bureau and HUD reported Tuesday….
The sharp drop in sales combined with the steep price increase suggests builders are facing some price pushback from buyers for new homes even as supplies of existing single-family homes remain at historic lows….
In February, builders completed 574,000 new single-family homes. In the last year, builders have completed 1.5 million more new single-family homes than were sold.” [Emphasis added.]

Building Permits For Residential Units Rise

From HousingWire: “The number of building permits issued for residential units jumped 4% nationwide from January to February, the U.S. Census Bureau said.”

U.S Foreclosure Inventory Increases 9 Percent From Year Ago in Q1

On Tuesday, RealtyTrac® released its U.S. Foreclosure Inventory Analysis, which shows nearly 1.5 million  U.S. properties were actively in the foreclosure process or bank-owned (REO) in  the first quarter of 2013, up 9 percent from the first quarter of 2012 but  still down 32 percent from the peak of 2.2 million in December 2010. Details of the entire foreclosure inventory analysis, along with illustrating charts, are in a 14-page report available here. See also:

Foreclosures Not All Behind Us “…1.5 million U.S. properties were actively in the foreclosure process or bank-owned (REO) in the first quarter of 2013, up 9 percent from the first quarter of 2012…” Delinquent Loans Rolling into Foreclosure Inventory after Settlement “Foreclosure inventory seems to be making a comeback after experiencing steady declines following the national mortgage settlement, RealtyTrac revealed in a reportThursday.”

Delinquency Rate Slides Under 7% in February

Esther Cho reports: “The mortgage delinquency rate in February slipped below 7 percent, according data from Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS). On Tuesday, LPS provided an early look at month-end mortgage performance data for February and found the delinquency rate is at 6.80 percent, down 3.16 percent from January’s 7.03 percent and a decrease of 6.51 percent from February 2012.”

CoreLogic Reports 54,000 Completed Foreclosures in February

On Thursday, CoreLogic^® released its National Foreclosure Report for February, which provides data on completed U.S. foreclosures and the overall foreclosure inventory. According to CoreLogic, there were 54,000 completed foreclosures in the U.S. in February 2013, down from 67,000 in February 2012, a year-over-year decrease of 19 percent. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures fell from 58,000 in January 2013 to the February level of 54,000, a decrease of 7 percent. As a basis of comparison, prior to the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006. Download your copy of the CoreLogic Foreclosure Report February 2013.