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

Welcome to our weekly edition of Real Estate Investing News This Week. Here’s the best of this week’s real estate news:

• July existing home sales highest since 2009

• Home appreciation at 6% – highest since 2006

• Conflicting picture in housing data

• RealtyTrac’s first Housing Market Recovery Index

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.

July Existing-Home Sales at Highest Level Since 2009

By Mark Lieberman, Five Star Institute Economist
“Existing-home sales soared 6.5 percent in July to an annual sales rate of 5.39 million—the highest level since November 2009—as the price of a single-family home slipped 0.2 percent, the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday….
The boost in sales came two months after a sharp jump in NAR’s Pending Home Sales Index, which was 111.3 in May, up 5.8 percent from April.
Despite the month-over-month decline, the median price of an existing-home was $213,500, 13.7 percent ahead of the price in July 2012. It was the strongest yearly price gain since October 2005.”

Home Value Appreciation Rate Hits 6 Percent for First Time Since 2006

Zillow’s July Real Estate Market Reports show that national home values rose 0.4% from June to July to $161,600. On a year-over-year basis, home values were up 6% from July 2012.
The last time national home values were at this level was in September 2004.

Home Values

The July Zillow Real Estate Market Reports cover 393 metropolitan and micropolitan areas. In July, 289 (73.5%) of the 393 markets showed monthly home value appreciation, and 303 (77.1%) of the 393 markets saw annual home value appreciation.
Among the top 30 metros, all of them experienced monthly and annual home value appreciation.

Foreclosures

The rate of homes foreclosed continued to decline in July with 4.9 out of every 10,000 homes in the country being liquidated.
The last time it was at this rate was in October 2007. Nationally, foreclosure resales also continued to fall, making up 8.7% of all sales in July.
This is down 3.4 percentage points from July 2012 and down 11.2 percentage points from its peak level of 19.9% in March 2009.

Home Prices See Annual, Monthly Gains Across Largest U.S. Counties

By Andy Beth Miller
“A July monthly property intelligence report conducted by DataQuick, a provider of real estate information solutions, reveals a monthly and annual rise in home prices for every single participating U.S. county out of the 42 evaluated.
In fact, home prices have hiked an average of over 13 percent versus this time last year. Per DataQuick’s data, this rise in prices has been directly linked to fewer foreclosures, limited property availability, and an overall decline in total amount of July property transactions.”

Conflicting Picture in Housing Data

From David Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee S & P Dow Jones Indices
“Data for housing permits and starts and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Sentiment Index offer conflicting stories about housing.
Permits and Starts were up with permits rising 2.7% on the months and starts gaining 5.9% from June. However, much of the action was in apartment construction, not single family homes, and the share of single family homes in total starts is down over the past year.
Further, the total number of permits at 943,000 and starts at 896,000 remains less than robust. The NAHB sentiment figure was 59, the highest since 2005, but July was revised down from 57 to 56….”

RealtyTrac Housing Market Recovery Index

RealtyTrac® (www.realtytrac.com) released its first-ever Housing Market Recovery Index this week.
Metro area markets in upstate New York, southwest Florida and the Bay Area of Northern California are leading the housing recovery while markets in northern Maryland, southeast Pennsylvania and downstate Illinois are lagging the furthest behind in the recovery.
The index was calculated based on seven different factors relating to the health of the real estate market: unemployment rate, underwater loans percentage, foreclosure activity percent change from peak, distressed sales percent of total sales, institutional investors share of total sales, cash purchases share of total sales, and median home price percent change from bottom.
Top 20 markets leading the real estate recovery

Bottom 20 markets lagging the real estate recovery