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:
- Rate of Home Price Gains Drops Sharply
- Distressed Sales and Short Sales Down to 14.3% of Sales
- New-Home Sales Up 18.6%
- Existing-Home Sales Heat Up
- Foreclosure Inventory Continues to Shrink
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.
Rate of Home Price Gains Drops Sharply
According to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the 10-City and 20-City Composites posted annual gains of 10.8%. This is a significantly lower rate when compared to last month.
Nineteen of the 20 cities saw lower annual gains in April than in March.
California (Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco) saw their returns worsen by approximately three percentage points. Boston was the only city to see its annual rate improve.
As of April 2014, average home prices across the United States are back to their summer 2004 levels.
“Although home prices rose in April, the annual gains weakened,” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “Overall, prices are rising month-to-month but at a slower rate.
Last year some Sunbelt cities were seeing year-over-year numbers close to 30%, now all are below 20%: Las Vegas (18.8%), Los Angeles (14.0%), Phoenix (9.8%), San Diego (15.3%) and San Francisco (18.2%).”
Distressed Sales and Short Sales Down to 14.3 Percent of Sales
On Tuesday, RealtyTrac® released its May 2014 Residential & Foreclosure Sales Report, which shows that U.S. residential properties, including single family homes, condominiums and townhomes, sold at an estimated annual pace of 5,147,550 in May, virtually unchanged from April and an increase of less than 1 percent from May 2013.
The median sales price of U.S. residential properties — including both distressed and non-distressed sales — was $180,000, up 6 percent from the previous month and up 13 percent from a year ago.
The year-over-year increase in May was the second consecutive month with a double-digit annual increase in U.S. home prices, and the biggest annual increase since U.S.
The median price of distressed sales — properties in the foreclosure process or bank-owned — was $120,000, 37 percent below the median price of non-distressed properties: $190,000.
Distressed sales and short sales combined accounted for 14.3 percent of all U.S. residential sales in May, down from 15.6 percent of sales in April and down from 15.9 percent of all sales in May 2013.
New-Home Sales Up 18.6 Percent in May
Sales of newly built, single-family homes rose 18.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 504,000 units in May, according to newly released data by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau. This is the highest rate since May 2008.
Regionally, new-home sales were up across the board. Sales rose 54.5 percent in the Northeast, 34 percent in the West, 14.2 percent in the South and 1.4 percent in the Midwest.
The inventory of new homes for sale held steady at 189,000 units in May. This is a 4.5-month supply at the current sales pace.
Existing-Home Sales Heat Up in May
Inventory Levels Continue to Improve
Sales are still 5% below May 2013.
Existing-home sales rose strongly in May and inventory gains continued to help moderate price growth, according to the National Association of Realtors®. All four regions of the country experienced sales gains compared to a month earlier.
Total existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, rose 4.9 percent in May but remain 5.0 percent below the level in May 2013. The 4.9 percent month-over-month gain in May was the highest monthly rise since August 2011 (5.5 percent).
Total housing inventory at the end of May climbed 2.2 percent, which represents a 5.6-month supply at the current sales pace, down slightly from 5.7 months in April.
Unsold inventory is 6.0 percent higher than a year ago.
The median existing-home price for all housing types in May was $213,400, which is 5.1 percent above May 2013.
Distressed homes – foreclosures and short sales – accounted for 11 percent of May sales, down from 18 percent in May 2013.
Eight percent of May sales were foreclosures and three percent were short sales.
Foreclosures sold for an average discount of 18 percent below market value in May, while short sales were discounted 11 percent.
Foreclosure Inventory Continues to Shrink in May
By Colin Roberts
“Black Knight Financial Services released its “First Look” at May Mortgage data, which found that foreclosure inventory declined to its lowest level since July 2008. As a percentage of total inventory, foreclosure pre-sale inventory is 1.91 percent, down 5.56 percent month-over month.
Foreclosure starts totaled 86,300 for the month of May, an increase of 9.52 percent from April. Yearly, foreclosure starts remain down by 26.11 percent. Overall delinquency rates remained steady….”