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 Rose by 5.5%
- 273,000 Residential Properties Regained Equity
- 41,000 Completed Foreclosures in November
CoreLogic Reports Home Prices Rose by 5.5 Percent
According to the Corelogic Home Price Index report , home prices nationwide increased 5.5 percent in November 2014 compared to November 2013. This change represents 33 months of consecutive year-over-year increases in home 
prices nationally.
At the state level, including distressed sales, all states and the District of Columbia showed year-over-year home price appreciation in November. Twenty-nine states are at or within 10 percent of their peak.
Seven states reached new highs in the home price index: Colorado, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.
Highlights:
- Including distressed sales, the five states with the highest home price appreciation were: Michigan (+9.0 percent), Colorado (+8.8 percent), Texas (+8.5 percent), North Dakota (+7.9 percent) and Nevada (+7.9 percent).
- Excluding distressed sales, the five states with the highest home price appreciation were: Massachusetts (+8.6 percent), Texas (+7.9 percent), Colorado (+7.8 percent), North Dakota (+7.8 percent) and South Dakota (+7.5 percent).
- Including distressed transactions, the peak-to-current change in the national HPI (from April 2006 to November 2014) was -12.9 percent. Excluding distressed transactions, the peak-to-current change in the HPI for the same period was -9.2 percent.
273,000 Residential Properties Regained Equity in Q3 2014
—5.1 Million Properties Remain in Negative Equity—
According to CoreLogic® nearly 273,000 U.S. homes returned to positive equity in the third quarter of 2014, bringing the total number of mortgaged residential properties with equity to approximately 44.6 million.That’s 90 percent of all mortgaged properties.
Approximately 5.1 million homes, or 10.3 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage, were still in negative
equity as of Q3 2014 compared to 5.4 million homes, or 10.9 percent, for Q2 2014.
This compares to a negative equity share of 13.3 percent, or 6.5 million homes, in Q3 2013, representing a year-over-year decrease in the number of underwater homes by almost 1.5 million (1,433,296), or 3.0 percent.
Nevada had the highest percentage of mortgaged properties in negative equity at 25.4 percent, followed by Florida (23.8 percent), Arizona (19 percent), Rhode Island (14.8 percent) and Illinois (14.1 percent). These top five states together account for 33.1 percent of negative equity in the United States.
Texas had the highest percentage of mortgaged residential properties in an equity position at 97.4 percent, followed Alaska (97.1 percent), Montana (97.1 percent), Hawaii (96.4 percent) and North Dakota (96.1 percent).
41,000 Completed Foreclosures in November 2014
—Foreclosure inventory down 35.5 percent from a year ago—
According to CoreLogic, for the month of November 2014, there were 41,000 completed foreclosures nationally, down from 46,000 in November 2013, a year-over-year decrease of 9.6 percent and down 64 percent from the peak of completed foreclosures in September 2010.
On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures were down 12.6 percent from the 47,000 reported in October 2014. As a basis of comparison, before the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006.
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 5.5 million completed foreclosures across the country. Since home ownership rates peaked in the second quarter of 2004, there have been approximately 7 million homes lost to foreclosure.
As of November 2014, approximately 567,000 homes nationally were in some stage of foreclosure, known as the foreclosure inventory, compared to 880,000 in November 2013, a year-over-year decrease of 35.5 percent.