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:
- S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices Up 13.6%
- Market Analysts Expect Slowdown in Housing Recovery in 2014
- All Cash Sales Reach New High in November
- 791,000 More Residential Properties Return to Positive Equity
- And more…
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.
S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices Up 13.6% But the Boom is Fading
House prices are still rising…
The 10-City and 20-City Composites posted year-over-year gains of 13.6%. This is their highest gain since February 2006 and marks the seventeenth consecutive month that both Composites increased on an annual basis.
“Home prices increased again in October,” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “Both Composites’ annual returns have been in double-digit territory since March 2013 and increasing, now up 13.6% in the year ending in October. However, monthly numbers show we are living on borrowed time and the boom is fading.
“The key economic question facing housing is the Fed’s future course to scale back quantitative easing and how this will affect mortgage rates. Other housing data paint a mixed picture suggesting that we may be close to the peak gains in prices. However, other economic data point to somewhat faster growth in the new year. Most forecasts for home prices point to single digit growth in 2014.”
Market Analysts Expect Slowdown in Housing Recovery in 2014
By Carrie Bay
“The housing market recovery is entering a new phase, according to the analysts at Capital Economics. They say the rapid bounce in home prices seen this year, which was driven by investors and tight supply conditions, will soon start to moderate, and the next stage of the recovery will be characterized by strengthening activity among owner-occupants and mortgage-dependent buyers, as well as a much more moderate pace of house price inflation.”
All Cash Sales Reach New High in November
RealtyTrac’s November 2013 U.S. Residential & Foreclosure Sales Report, shows that U.S. residential properties, including single family homes, condominiums and townhomes, sold at an estimated annual pace of 5,146,565 in November up 10 percent from November 2012.
Annualized sale volume declined from the previous month in 18 states and was down from a year ago in four states: California (down 14 percent), Arizona (down 12 percent), Nevada (down 9 percent), and Rhode Island (down 4 percent).
Annualized sales volume declined from a year ago in 14 of the nation’s 50 largest metros, including seven California metros, two metros in both Arizona and New York, along with Las Vegas, New Haven, Conn., and Portland, Ore.
Other high-level findings from the report:
- All-cash purchases accounted for 42.0 percent of all residential property sales in November, up from 38.8 percent in October and also up from a year ago to the highest level since RealtyTrac began tracking all-cash purchases in January 2011.
- States with the highest percentage of cash sales were Florida (62.7 percent), Georgia (51.3 percent), Nevada (51.0 percent), South Carolina (50.3 percent), and Michigan (49.0 percent).
- Institutional investor purchases represented 7.7 percent of all residential property sales in November, up from 7.1 percent in October and up from 6.3 percent a year ago.
- Markets with the highest share of institutional investor purchases included Columbus, Ohio, Phoenix, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Fla., and Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla.
Existing-Home Sales Decline in November
Existing-home sales fell in November, although median prices continue to show strong year-over-year growth, according to the National Association of Realtors®.
Total existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, dropped 4.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.90 million in November from 5.12 million in October, and are 1.2 percent below the 4.96 million-unit pace in November 2012.
This is the first time in 29 months that sales were below year-ago levels.
Fed’s Taper is Here
By David Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee S&P Dow Jones Indices
The long awaited tapering by the Fed is here as the central bank announced it would reduce its monthly bond buying by $10 billion beginning in January….
The Fed’s shift is likely to mean slightly high mortgage interest rates in the new year and less stimulus for the housing markets.
791,000 More Residential Properties Return to Positive Equity
––6.4 Million Houses with a Mortgage Still in Negative Equity––
Nearly 800,000 homes returned to a state of positive equity during the third quarter—leaving about 6.4 million underwater, according to the latest data from CoreLogic.
This figure is down from 7.2 million homes (14.7 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage) at the end of the second quarter of 2013.
Get your copy of the CoreLogic Q3 2013 Equity Report >>>