All the Real Estate News That’s Fit to RE-Print™
Welcome to our weekly edition of Real Estate Investing News This Week. Highlights this week include:
- Home prices defy weak sales numbers
- Home flipping down to 3.7% of all sales
- Foreclosure inventory down 37% nationally
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 Defy Weak Sales Numbers
S&P Dow Jones Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices show that the annual rates of gain slowed for the 10-City and 20-City Composites.
The Composites posted 13.1% and 12.9% in the twelve months ending February 2014. Thirteen cities saw lower annual rates in February. Las Vegas, the leader, posted 23.1% year-over-year versus 24.9% in January. The only city in the Sun Belt that saw improvement in its year-over-year return was San Diego with an increase of 19.9%.
Thirteen of the twenty cities declined in February.
The chart above depicts the 10-City Composite and the 20-City Composite Home Price Indices. In February 2014, the 10-City and 20-City Composites posted year-over-year increases of 13.1% and 12.9%.
Home Flipping Down to 3.7% of All Sales in Q1
Flipping Down in Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Up in Dallas, Seattle, Nashville
RealtyTrac’s Q1 2014 U.S. Home Flipping Report shows 3.7 percent of all U.S. single family home sales were flips — where a home is purchased and subsequently sold again within six months — in the first quarter of 2014, down from 4.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013 and down from 6.5 percent in the first quarter of 2013.
Flips completed in the first quarter took an average of 101 days to complete, up from an average of 92 days in the previous quarter and up from an average of 79 days for flips completed in the first quarter of 2013.
CoreLogic Reports 48,000 Completed Foreclosures in March
—Foreclosure inventory down 37 percent nationally from a year ago—
According to Corelogic’s National Foreclosure Report, there were 48,000 completed foreclosures nationally, down from 53,000 in March 2013, a year-over-year decrease of 10 percent.
Completed foreclosures are an indication of the total number of homes actually lost to foreclosure. Since the financial crisis began in September 2008, there have been approximately 5 million completed foreclosures across the country.
As of March 2014, approximately 720,000 homes in the United States were in some stage of foreclosure, known as the foreclosure inventory, compared to 1.1 million in March 2013, a year-over-year decrease of 37 percent.
“The inventory of homes in foreclosure and serious delinquency status are back to 2008 levels, yet remain elevated from a historical perspective,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “While getting healthier, the housing market is a long way from being fully recovered….”
Download the CoreLogic Foreclosure Report March 2014 >>>
Pending Home Sales Increase in March
After months of stagnant activity, pending home sales rose in March, marking the first gain in the past nine months, according to the National Association of Realtors®.
The Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, rose 3.4 percent to 97.4 from an upwardly revised 94.2 in February, but is 7.9 percent below March 2013 when it was 105.7.
Good morning, I have been doing a lot of reading and studying about Real Estate investing. Daring myself to make the jump into the process. What I think is holding me back is my fear, that I do not know enough. I probably know more than I think I really need to get started.
Like when I started my career as an Automotive mechanic back in high school, I learn better by doing. On the job training. That is so I can see how things work to understand them better.
I hope to get started into the Real Estate investing by June of this year. I am looking to try and get into a group in my area here in Rhode Island. Thank you for reading, Glenn